The Translation of Dr Apelles

by David Treuer

  Once, as he tried to imagine Campaspe completely, and could not, he speculated that perhaps we never truly forget anything. We remember each and every thing that ever happens to us, each and every thing that we see. But when so many things, small things, occur that are so much alike, they become like a habit, a norm—so expected and uniform as to lose the distinction of memory. Much like the way a photograph of a forest’s edge in the middle distance won’t make one think of a tree so much as other photographs of trees in the middle distance. And so, this might explain the activity of passion—why one goes to the movies or why ice storms take on so much significance: we seek to create small events by which we mark the big event of life. And this, as he turns the corner to his quieter street, might also explain why Dr Apelles is so unsettled. Until the translation and then—coming from the pages themselves—the ice storm forced him together with Campaspe, he had always surveyed his life from the middle distance. Everything had appeared to him as distinct but remote, with pleasing variations, but seen from so far away as to reduce and obliterate all sense of the individual, the absolute.

  This vantage point had granted him some measure of invisibility at work but it vanished after the ice storm. Mr Bass and Mr Florsheim went so far as to stop the discussion they were having about basketball and nod to him with a strange glint in their eyes. Mrs Millefeuille, with whom he had only the slightest contact as he did not read in the Reading Room, actually said “Hello” as he passed her doorway. It was unheard of.

  In the span of two weeks Ms Manger crept up on him three times. That was more than she had spoken to him in a year. At first he thought he was in trouble. She brought him to her office, and after a little conversation, she evaluated his performance, and then, strangely, asked for his help translating some of the Jesuit Relations that she was using in a conference paper.

  Even Jesus talked to him now. In the mornings, when he gained his station, Jesus would look his way and say “What’s up?” Invariably Dr Apelles, more baffled by Jesus’ greeting than by any of the other changes in the workplace, would say “Hello” as he tilted his head.

  This went on day after day. There was a kind of antagonism attached to Jesus’ greeting. And Dr Apelles could not help but think of smiling assassins in detective novels. It is hard not to worry when you are happy. And Dr Apelles was happy. Since the ice storm his life had grown to include Campaspe.

  It could even be said that they were in a relationship.

  And then there was Campaspe herself. He thought of her constantly. On his walks, on the train, during his researches. And yet, when he took his place beside her at work he would only say “Hello” or “Good Morning.” Campaspe would reply with “Hi” or “How ya doin?”

  Occasionally, when she returned from her lunch break, she would say “Back again” and raise her eyebrows as she said it.

  She and Jesus still bantered over Dr Apelles’ head, still joked about the vicissitudes of work. And all the day long Dr Apelles would, as surreptitiously as he could, glance her way. She sometimes wore a thin white sweater he liked very much with a V-neck and short sleeves, and sometimes, when she bent down to retrieve something on the lower shelves of her station, he got just the briefest glimpse of the crease between her breasts. She wore the sweater often now.

  7

  He had passed the restaurant again. It felt as though he hadn’t eaten there in years. Dr Apelles entered his building, collected his mail, which consisted only of a medium-sized envelope containing an obscure journal on Algonquian linguistics, and took the elevator up up up and was now safely in his apartment.

  He fixed himself a simple dinner of a grilled cheese sandwich—he was accustomed to eating very little. He drank a beer. He tried to read but was too unsettled, and after a few pages he put the journal down. The apartment, though clean and orderly, was filled with things, filled with a life. But tonight it felt like just so much bric-a-brac—like an antique store where everything was for sale and strangers could come traipsing through whenever they wished, but a place that he could not leave.

  Eventually he found himself at the window. It was blackest night, but clear. Voices and the noise of traffic wafted up from far below. The window was closed but, judging from the draft that came in from under the sash, the air outside was crisp and dry, very unlike the night of the storm.

  Dr Apelles closes his eyes at the memory of it. His lips move as though forming the memory for him. There is a confusion in his mind. What exhausting and pleasurable work remembering is! It is almost like creating something new. Suddenly he is there. The rain is coming down. It freezes on the street, melts, and freezes again. Everything on the avenues moves slowly.

  They had taken a cab into the city and the driver, still talking on his phone in Urdu, still calm and driving like a champion only made one stop—Apelles’ apartment. Campaspe stayed there that night.

  Then, there is no sound of the storm deep in his bedroom, but when he closes his eyes he sees power lines groan under the weight of ice like strings waxed into the semblance of candles. Cars glissand into the ditch and are finally at rest. The people on the sidewalk squat as if to sit, and the wind pushes them down the pavement. His shoes and hers guard the front door and lose their crust of slush and ice. Water has soaked into the leather. By morning they will only be damp, cool to the touch. He opens his eyes and sees Campaspe. She might have opened hers at the same time because she is looking at him. She smiles.

  Later, as they were lying side by side, her head propped up by one hand, her curls curling and one breast pooling on the pillow, she said, “You never told me what it was about.”

  “What what’s about?”

  “What you’re working on.”

  “My translation? What my translation is about?”

  “Yes,” she said sleepily in that beautiful way women speak after they’ve made love.

  “I didn’t? Strange.”

  “And?”

  “It’s,” he paused and drummed his fingers on his chest. “It’s,” he said as though making up his mind. “It’s, it’s a love story.”

  Campaspe grinned and twined her fingers with his. “Good! Those are my favorite kind!”

  But before that. She is on top of him and she is riding him. Both of their eyes are open with wonder. She puts her hands on his chest. Her shoulders hunch and her breasts are forced together. She bares her neck, and in the low light he thinks he can see a freckle or two at the crease. Then he closes his eyes and as he does he is still reading there, where flesh meets flesh, the hidden marks. And even then, while she is on top of him, right before his closed eyes, and her pubic hair is brushing his own almost hairless groin, and right then after so long, after waiting so long for this or something like it, he sees the translation, the meaning available only to him, vulnerable only to him, in a language belonging only to him. The pages flutter. Outside the storm is still enjoying itself. Inside the storm is raging. The pages flip and fan and flutter. And it seems to him that her breasts, as they part and rise, are like the pages of a mysterious and delicate book. I’ve been waiting to read you, he whispers.

  Hush. She smiles.

  His eyes are open. He reads with his hands and his eyes—the arch of her neck, the sweat that shines on her temples, the small movements of her fingers as they steady the turf of his chest, the dark heat of her groin, and her thighs too, and all of her. And what a story it is to read. What a pleasure. Page after page after page.

  ~ Book III ~

  1. As it was spring, the fish were spawning on the sand bars that rose up out of the big lake, and yet more fish were crawling up the river to thrash at the foot of the rapids. The cold grip of winter had been released, and everyone was fishing and getting ready for planting. Long nets woven with twine made from the fibers of stinging nettle were taken out and repaired. The nets were stretched around the docks of Agencytown like streamers. The old women who had spen
t the winter rolling the nettle fibers into twine between their hands and ankles so often that they had calluses running up their calves from the constant rolling now had reason to be happy—as a result of their labor fresh fish would soon be boiling away in large kettles. These old women sang and laughed as they repaired the old nets and stretched the new ones. The men collected spruce root and set great pots of pitch to boil in order to fix the canoes and make them watertight, while others, not so interested in fishing, plowed the small fields next to town and hoed the central garden in preparation for planting. Others set their grindstones in their yards and merrily sharpened their tools in anticipation of the warm work of spring.

  There was much to do, and Bimaadiz and Eta each helped out where they could. Bimaadiz, being young and almost fearless, dove to the bottom of the lake with a rope tied around his waist to where the birch-bark canoes had been sunk in order that they not freeze and break apart above ground. Once he located them, he attached the rope and returned to the surface, and the canoes were raised amid much cheering. The women and girls fixing nets on shore whistled and shouted when Bimaadiz, wearing only his trousers, emerged from the lake—beads of water running off his brown, muscled back. One of them even kissed him, which he enjoyed but which annoyed Eta.

  As for Eta, once the nets were put out and the fish started coming in, she put her knife to use. Great smoky fires of punky aspen had been started under the ironwood drying racks, and Eta gutted and split the fish and handed them up to the other women who hung them on the racks. With the fires going and the canoe-loads of fish arriving, the festivities lasted long into the night. The men played the moccasin game and bagese and the women stoked the fires. The men, surrounded by onlookers and baskets of dried fish, teased and fought one another for the right to hand this or that choice delicacy to Eta on the chance their hands might touch hers. One moccasin-game man put his arm around her waist and said he would ante up his horses and his dogs—all of them—and when he doubled his possessions, he would ask for her hand in marriage. Eta blushed with delight but Bimaadiz did not like it at all.

  After a few days of this Bimaadiz and Eta both grew weary of all the activity and longed for the quiet of the bush, for the solitary pursuits of hunting and trapping though the season was over. On the pretext of hunting a fawn or two for their skins, they left the village and retreated into the woods.

  2. As soon as they left Agencytown behind they began to feel better—neither one continued to dwell on the uncomfortable thought that the other liked the attention they had received in town. They headed in the direction of Eta’s trapping grounds and hadn’t gotten far, just an hour or so up the trail, when they saw an old man moving toward them, hobbling down the trail. They didn’t often meet someone on the trail, especially someone they didn’t know. But it was spring, and at this time many people left their deepwoods homes to receive their annuities at the Agency, to reprovision and then to head back out to their quiet habitations. This man was very old and moved very slowly. Instead of one walking stick he used two, one in each hand, and he had a great bundle tied up in trade cloth that he balanced on his bent back. Bimaadiz and Eta did not know how good his eyesight was or his hearing, and not wishing to startle the man, they began talking loudly. When he drew near, Bimaadiz and Eta stepped off the trail to give him room to pass.

  “Hello, Kiiwenz,” said Bimaadiz in a friendly tone.

  He was young enough to like older people because he could see no connection between himself and them—they were not, in his imagination, what he would become. They were something wholly different, not connected to him at all. And Bimaadiz was not so old as to want to despise or ridicule them out of fear that he would soon join them as they tottered around, barely able to stand. He was fond of old people and wanted to show his respect.

  The old man stopped and looked closely at Bimaadiz and Eta. His eyes were clear and focused. He had no difficulty seeing them. Since he stopped, Bimaadiz and Eta asked him if he would like some smoked trout and a drink of fresh water. He said yes and the youngsters helped him set down his bundle, which he then sat on as though it were a chair or a stool. His hair was white and wispy, and they could see his brown scalp showing underneath. His hands were creased and callused, but clean, and when he took the fish from Eta’s outstretched hand, his hand did not shake or tremble.

  “Yes, that’s what everyone calls me now,” he said after he thumbed off a chunk of good clean trout from the tines of the trout’s rib cage. It took Bimaadiz and Eta a second to realize that the old man was referring to Bimaadiz’s greeting, a delayed response; as though he could only now answer them after he had been given something.

  “No one calls me by my real name anymore,” he continued. He grew silent for a while as he savored a mouthful of the smoked trout. He smiled.

  “I haven’t tasted salt for many years now, and it is a real pleasure. My wife has been dead for longer than we were together. My children have spread out across the land. But since I live quietly—collecting downed timber for wood instead of chopping at the trees, finding the food that grows wild like mushrooms, rice, leeks and parsnips—life comes to me and I no longer have to chase it. Deer walk up to my lodge and kneel down, I don’t even have to shoot them, I can use my knife. Ducks dance into my lodge and around the fire, and all I have to do is wring their necks and pile them next to the door. All in all, I have everything I need. But salt is a pleasure.”

  Bimaadiz and Eta smiled, each thinking that the old man was more fond of the stories he told than of the truth. But they were at their ease, and the old man’s lies did no harm. The old man continued.

  “But when I left my lodge this morning, I thought I saw a wolf standing in my garden. When I tried to shoot it (as an old man I need thicker fur than what the rabbits give me), it disappeared. Instead, in its place, I saw a maple tree even though maples don’t grow where I live. When I lowered the gun and stared at the tree, instead of a tree I saw a fox. I raised the gun again (as an old man I need softer fur than what the beavers give me), and when I sighted down the barrel, instead of a fox in my sights I saw a chickadee. I began to feel frustrated. All this raising and lowering of the rifle made me tired and annoyed, and so I used the only weapon we old people really possess, my voice. ’If you have something to say or something to show me, then do it,’ I said. ’If you’re here to play tricks on me then play them. I need to go to the Agency for my annuity and though it might not look like it, I am in a hurry.’

  “And then I heard a voice, sometimes close, and at other times far off, calling from between the trees.

  “’I have watched you for a long time, Kiiwenz,’ the voice said. ’I was the one who made you and your wife fall in love. I was the one who made your children possible. You have me to thank for your life.’

  “I kept the gun ready in case I had a shot—when something like that happens you shoot when you can because if the voice is that of some powerful being then your bullets won’t harm it. But if your shot hits its mark, then you can either eat or wear whatever dies in the leaves. I kept the gun ready, and the One-Whose-Name-We-Don’t-Say (because as it turns out that’s who it was) must have seen my thumb on the hammer because he laughed and this time the sound, his laughter, came right out of the barrel of my gun. “You won’t be able to shoot me,’ he said. ’You couldn’t catch me with a bullet nor could you run me down even if you were young, and you were fast once if I remember. And why would you want to shoot me? I took care of you once, and now I need to take care of others.’

  “That’s what he said, and he was right. I had won many races when I was a young man, no one could catch me. I wanted to ask him more—but he was gone. And now I see the two of you along the trail.”

  Bimaadiz and Eta were amused by the old man’s stories and didn’t believe anything he said, such things only happen in stories, not in life. But they didn’t want to mock him by laughing, such behavior is not becoming. So Bimaadiz
asked, “Who was he? Where is he from? What can he do?”

  “Who is he? He-Whose-Name-We-Don’t-Say, that’s who he is. But you can also call him Zaagichigewinini, because that’s what he does, and he can do much more than that, though there is nothing greater than that when you think about it. He can take any shape—birds, wolves—he can even look like an old man. Like me. He is older than the earth and older than all the animals and all the spirits that inhabit it. And watch out if he takes an interest in you. Because he is interested only in seeing what will happen, not in a happy outcome.”

  The man paused, and as he relished the point of his story so he relished the point of the smoked trout in his hands by breaking off the sweet, firm, boneless flesh near its tail.

  “I remember when he took an interest in me. I was young, like you. I had met my wife, but she was not yet my wife. He shot me with zaagi’idiwin. It was terrible. I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and thought only of the girl I had met. I neglected my traps. My shots flew wide of the mark. I forgot where I’d hung my snares. I could think only of her, and it was ruining my life.”

  This caught Bimaadiz and Eta’s attention. He had described exactly what they were feeling.

  “What did you do?” they asked in unison.

  “There is only one thing you can do,” the old man said sadly. “You must kiss, and embrace, and lie down together naked. It’s the only remedy. You’ll see. Once you do that you’ll feel much better, it really is wonderful medicine.”

  The old man looked up at the sun, and, strangely, did not squint against its power.

  “I am off to the Agency.”

  And without waiting he shouldered his bundle, picked up his walking sticks, and set off down the trail.