The Translation of Dr Apelles

by David Treuer

  He turns from the window. It is not far to his apartment. Night has truly fallen. The hint of light in the sky before—uniformly blue, all the more deep and blue because of the blackness of the buildings, all the more blue because it has been cut into strips and framed by the buildings, like the streets directly below the sky, like canals, rivers of night—is all gone. The streetlights illuminate the sidewalks, but barely. They are still crowded with people, and more light comes from the lighted windows of shops and apartments and offices.

  He hurries. He reaches his building, nods to the doorman, and takes a right past the front desk. It is a small affair; after all, what need does a doorman have for a big desk? It is the safety projected by his presence and his demeanor and the power of his memory for the residents of the building that are his tools.

  Dr Apelles takes three steps to the bank of mailboxes. He opens his with its special brass key, but there is nothing inside except a single medium-sized envelope from an obscure academic journal that contains the page proofs of a short, overcautious article about the use of obviation in Algonquian languages. He closes his mailbox and goes back down the three steps and turns left and punches the elevator call button and waits and when the door opens he steps in, pushes the button for the eleventh floor and the door closes, the elevator starts.

  His thoughts climb through the various levels of his life as the elevator heads steadily toward his floor.

  His parents are dead. He has no children. He had crushes in high school and a brief painful affair in college. But nothing for a long time. And he has not missed the absence of obligation. He has been content with the shape of his life.

  He does not own his apartment. He has no need of a car. Mortgage statements, insurance, and assessments will find their way to other mailboxes. He does not carry a credit card, and so he does not receive mailers, promotions, or solicitations. This has been, until today, a source of pride for him. He is, so he has thought, an unencumbered man, obligated only to his job—he does have a job after all—and to the dead languages that keep him company.

  The elevator stops. He turns right and walks the hall to his door, which he opens deftly. After he sets down his satchel and hangs up his jacket and takes off his blazer, he grills himself a cheese sandwich and opens a beer. Home at last.

  What then?

  What is there that can satisfy him? Nothing it seems. He is restless. He lost his usual poise somewhere between opening the manuscript that morning and sipping the last of his beer in the evening. The journals and magazines—dry speculations on translations, on narrative and discourse—that he usually nods off to at day’s end will not suffice. He is too agitated to let himself be lulled by the intellect. And masturbation seems just as unsatisfactory. He already feels emptied out and does not have the energy to call forth his own orgasm because the expense would exceed the payment of pleasure. Mai’s Massage Parlour is probably still open, and he could go there, to his usual place, and have someone else lend him a hand. But it is not his usual night to go there and the distance feels too great and the degree of need too extreme, too pathetic. He almost picks up the phone—what lonely people do in movies, what agitated people do in movies. He doesn’t have any one to call. Neither his brothers, or his sister, or the few friends he has, are the kind of people with whom he could discuss, truly, what is bothering him.

  He feels hot, stifled, and actually moves his hand to his throat to loosen his tie—another cinematic gesture—which he is not wearing. He stands and walks to the window. The sounds of traffic instantly greet his ears—horns, sirens in the distance, someone far below whistles for a cab in the reverse of birdsong, which usually comes from above. All of it movie-set noise, separated from him, surrounding him. The lighted windows in the buildings across the way seem to promise something, but he does not know what. But what?

  He looks out the window at the scatter of light from thousands of other windows just like his, opening into apartments just like his, with people looking out into the terrible and wonderful night, people who are not at all like him. Feeling as he does and thinking what he thinks and knowing what he knows, he knows he is alone.

  And the freedom he usually associates with singularity feels like freedom no more. He is a ghost. No one has claim, or investment, or stake in him. He is not needed by life, and this is result of his past choices as much as a result of what he has learned today.

  I want to love somebody but I don’t know whom. And I don’t know how.

  He is standing by the window, his arms braced on either side.

  I’ve translated more difficult things. I have translated the ravel of more complicated thought, like rivers through strange lands. I should therefore be able to make love happen. I should be able to make love. I should be able to translate it into a language that someone, somewhere, will want to read. And he knows, surely, that the answer to both the translation and to love will be the same.

  He can see, from his vantage by the window, the city below. But he can also see—reflected in the glass, himself, a pale reflection of himself, and he can also catch glimpses of his life in review—the days of his childhood, and then school, and college, his affair with Annette, and his more lasting affair with the wonder of language, his walks from the archive and his little restaurant with Zola and Elizabeth, and his job at RECAP and the people there, Ms Manger, and Campaspe, in particular, and his time alone and his time spent with people. The whole of it running breathlessly to this point—the full stop of his existence. And he sees, for some reason, the figure of his coworker, Campaspe, as she goes about her work. Maybe her? he wonders. Maybe I can love her.

  He is ready. He looks to each side—and though he is alone in his apartment, he feels as though someone is watching him. He clears his throat, a small frail sound itself swallowed by the larger mouth of the night. The city noise is hushed. The night has become quiet, a silent theater for the drama of his heart, a silent audience for the play of his tongue.

  He says something as he faces the window.

  And it is free. It has been released from his mouth, too early perhaps, because the words seem to fall through the air, unable to support themselves. But then, they recover their balance, put out their wings and fly, and who knows where? He is satisfied. It is perfect. He looks up from the manuscript in front of him on the library table, he has just finished the first part of his translation.

  ~ Book I ~

  1. From an early age, from the time Bimaadiz was five or six, upon watching the men prepare to hunt, he would set up a piteous wail until Jiigibiig—not without some embarrassment—fitted him with his own set of snowshoes made just for him and told him to follow along. Once in the bush he quieted down and never once scared the game by making noise and never once ruined the hunt by urinating when the wind might blow the scent toward the game. He was happy only when he was in the woods—and so, since Jiigibiig and Zhookaagiizhigookwe only wanted Bimaadiz to be happy, they let him go hunting at his pleasure. By the time he turned sixteen (and the time at which our story really begins), he was such an accomplished hunter he single-handedly supplied the village with most of the meat it needed. Such was his skill and care that Jiigibiig let the youngster use the Winchester repeating rifle. Bimaadiz didn’t need more than one shot, unless there was more than one deer or moose, but it was an honor to carry it. Jiigibiig and Zhookaagiizhigookwe, and those who remembered how he was found, suspected his power was the result of his contact with the cow moose during his infancy. Once, after hearing Bimaadiz shoot, Jiigibiig walked back into the woods with a sled to help him haul out his catch (for he was sure to have killed something, no doubt there was meat cooling on the ground), and he saw Bimaadiz kneeling over a dead moose, singing gently to the animal as he skinned it. It sounded like a lullaby, not a victory song, and the way Bimaadiz skinned the animal made the scene seem more like a birth than butchery. Because of the nimbus of affection surrounding him and b
ecause of the gifts given to him by his first mother and the milk he received from his second mother, the moose, Bimaadiz grew into a singular young man. He was tall and strong but not thick; his body was supple and slender, with wide shoulders and very long fingers. His waist was narrow, but like a coiled spring—full of potential strength. His black hair was thick and smooth and he kept it cut short and parted in the middle, slicked down with hair oil. All the girls, even the older women, gasped when he walked by. It was a good life at Agencytown in those years; meat was never so plentiful and everyone loved the quiet hunter who provided for them so well.

  2. Eta had grown up, too. She alone, perhaps, possessed more beauty than Bimaadiz did. She was tall for her age, and though not fine boned, she was lean and strong. Yet she had delicate fingers, and straight black hair that was always in two braids that hung down to her lower back. Her waist was narrow and her breasts, in advance of her years, were round and firm. All the boys and all the men sighed when she walked past. Her skin was smooth, clear, coppery, and healthy year round, except on her left cheek there was a dark round mark, very faint, that looked as though it had been left there when the wolf who had suckled her had kissed her cheek with her nose. It was really only a birthmark, it had been there before the she-wolf nosed the infant, but Aantti and Mary liked to think the wolf had left its mark.

  It seemed to the villagers that Eta had acquired some of the wolf’s characteristics: she was incredibly intelligent, patient, concerned for others, and serious when anyone was looking, but silly and girl-like when she thought she was unobserved. Aantti and Mary were overjoyed at the unexpected gift of a daughter, especially since they thought they would never have one of their own. And so, being the object of so much happiness, Eta grew up receiving happiness. Her parents doted on her and gave her whatever it was that she wanted. They didn’t have much to give—a poor sawyer and his Indian wife. Buttons, a bit of cloth, these were her toys. But all the same, the girl didn’t want much. And she worked hard. Once her mother saw her hanging off the pump handle, her feet off the ground, as she tried to fill the water bucket. She helped her mother in all things—fetching water, wrapping big blue stem with wiigoob to make brooms and whisks. The thing she really wanted was to accompany her mother on the trapline, and this from even before she could walk properly. Mary bundled her in furs and placed her in the toboggan along with the snares and mink bait and set off for the string of lean-tos and temporary shelters along their trapping grounds.

  Mary never had to worry that Eta would struggle out of her wrappings or cry with impatience or trample the clean trails where she set the snares for rabbit and fox. Eta stayed in the toboggan, and as long as she could see above the tumble of tools and furs and watch Mary’s hands at work, she was happy. Even when she was teething, all her mother had to do, upon finding a rabbit in a snare, was cut off the lower leg and hand it to Eta for her to chew on—the flesh was so tough and cold, so laced with tendons that the rubbery texture soothed Eta’s gums and she did not cry and sat quietly and observed Mary’s broad back in front of the heavily loaded toboggan. As soon as she could walk, Eta followed behind the toboggan. Sometimes Mary pulled out of sight because Eta was still a small child and could not keep up, but all she had to do was follow the marks left by the toboggan and she would catch up eventually. By the time she was six years old she was setting all the rabbit snares herself. They never ate so many rabbits as when Eta set her snares. She secured them at just the right height and was so adept at matching the color of the snare to its surroundings that even a creature as suspicious as a rabbit could not see it.

  Mary said nothing about why she thought Eta was such a good trapper, but she suspected it was a result of her contact with the she-wolf, a benefit of the wolf’s milk. By the time Eta was twelve years old (and the point at which our story starts), she had taken over all the trapping. Mary could stay in the village and found much relief in her daughter’s abilities; Mary was getting old and trapping had become difficult.

  For Eta trapping was as easy as breathing. She loaded the sled herself and, sometimes with a team of dogs pulling the sled, sometimes pulling it herself, set off for weeks at a time. When she came back the sled would always be full of fur—beaver, mink, martin, fisher, weasel, bobcat, lynx—and loaded with meat too because sometimes she did some hunting on the side. Aantti was so pleased he gave her his puukko, the only possession that remained with him that he had taken from Finland. It had been his father’s and the curved steel blade was perfect for skinning. Eta kept it sharp and made sure it never rusted. Who could hope for a better child? Skilled, earnest, respectful, concerned only for her parents and the animals she trapped. Her parents’ only worry was about her beauty. She was so beautiful she caused everyone near her to shudder with longing, to stand up straight, to talk loudly in voices meant for her to hear. Some of them bragged about what they’d caught in their traps. But this only made her ignore them all the more. Eta loved the animals she trapped and took care to put their carcasses where the dogs would not ravage them. She brushed their fur before she sold them, conscious always of the life the animals were bestowing on her family. To brag about killing them was beneath her contempt. So, for the time being, Aantti and Mary put their worries aside. Eta seemed to be safe from the dangers of desire.

  3. Bimaadiz had one other interest other than hunting and that was Eta. As for the beautiful girl, Bimaadiz was as precious to her as the animals she trapped. From an early age Bimaadiz’s hunting and Eta’s trapping had brought them together since his hunting grounds and her trapline overlapped. Bimaadiz, drawing out the first syllable of her name, would say “Eh-taa”—and shyly, in response, she would elongate the second syllable of his name, saying Bi-maaa-diz”—and so they had a special of addressing each other and took the greatest pleasure in each other’s company.

  Bimaadiz would tell Eta where he had seen some rich fox runs and so, on his advice, Eta would hang her snares there to catch them. For her part, upon seeing moose tracks around an isolated slough, she would inform Bimaadiz and, sure enough, a few days later he would have killed a fat cow and a tender calf, enough to feed to the whole village for a week. They were such good friends that he would save the tongue for her and her parents. And having caught a fawn in one her snares, she tanned the hide and sewed it into a bandolier bag for Bimaadiz to keep his shells and food in. When she was sick, he would check her traps for her, and she would kill some game for him when he had other chores to do around Agencytown and could not get out into the woods.

  But they were children after all, and so their activities weren’t always so serious. As a joke she made a doll out of marsh grass (having no cornhusks at that season to make a proper doll). She used the guard hairs from a fisher for the doll’s braids, and the broken trigger from a steel trap was used to represent his gun. All in all it was a good likeness of Bimaadiz. Seeing some deer tracks she set the doll on the trail where she knew Bimaadiz would find it. Bimaadiz also made trinkets for his friend—toy snares only big enough for mice and hoops made from willow twigs for stretching them. This continued—their ideal friendship, their ideal life, until the spirits conspired to make things more difficult for the two.

  Dr Apelles looks back down at the manuscript.

  The bell will sound at any moment now. His translation has lodged itself deep in his consciousness. It, and another significant question, continue to plague him. But now, it is no accident, his thoughts turn to the library—not this one, not the archive—in which he works.

  It is universally acknowledged that—in addition to the history of Charlemagne and of the printing press and also in addition to narratives told to us by a friend detailing the dreams of other friends of his whom we do not know—the description of a person’s typical day at work is among the most boring kind of story in existence. However, since Dr Apelles’ vacation in the country of his imagination, governed in part by the itinerary of the manuscript, which, it must be said,
is also impossibly linked to his daily work, we must follow him to work and hear out the story of his days.

  The bell will ring soon.

  It should be said that the archive to which he goes every other Friday is, strictly speaking, not a library, and neither is the building in which he works the other nine days out of the fortnight. Those days, the nine days (not counting holidays and weekends) out of fourteen that form the architecture of his life if not the action (though this will change), are spent at RECAP, which, as we have said, is a library but also is not a library. Since, if it isn’t apparent yet, RECAP is a place where books are captured, tagged, and then withheld from—not released into—the general population of other books; where, to put it another way, books are forced into a system designed to keep track of how they are forgotten; that is, designed to give structure and meaning to ignorance and anonymity; to create a special place for books that haven’t been read or if they have, not often enough; all of this is to say that, contrary to what we have come to expect from stories such as this—the forgotten or unknown or undervalued or obsolete significance of Dr Apelles’ works and days—the dusty corners of his life, if his life were a house (and if it were we would expect to find it represented by, signified by, a single dusty houseplant, an umbrella, or a shoe tree at best, and an empty flower pot, a persistent water ring on the floor, and a broken bit of string, at worst), is where we should begin looking at the no longer dreary dream of Dr Apelles’ days.