The Translation of Dr Apelles

by David Treuer

  He really doesn’t know because he has no practice telling the story of his past and as with all fantasies, the past takes practice.

  “I don’t know. One summer my cousin and I made $17.10 collecting worms for bait. We went every day to get them. I often went with a girl who was staying at the resort. Her name was Frances Warcup.”

  “That’s a good name for an Indian. Not like your name.”

  “It is, yes. But she was a white girl. She was Polish and she was from Chicago. But then again, Chicago is an Indian word. From Gaa-zhigaagowanzhiigokaag—the place where there’s lots of skunk tubers. That is, wild onions.”

  “What was she like?”

  “I don’t know. She was very nice.”

  “I mean what was she like to be with?”

  “It was nice, too.”

  Could he say that she was just a white girl, no different from any other, hungry and lonely and orphaned within herself, but that, after all was said and done, it was her and no other who had held his dick in the dusk of the past. She had been the first to hold it, her hand pumping and a look of concentration on her face and her lips pursed tight together. And could he say quick little legs, demanding tongue, tea-rose nipples no bigger than those on a cat, the determined eyes, and the red imprint of pine needles on her knees? So that, later in life when the Indians of his youth were replaced with the white people of his present and he goes to the homes of white people and sees the desperate order of their things, the appearance of wealth, the desperate decorations, the complete absence of smell, none of it can kill that feeling in him created by that girl. And the white people wear the same look that she did, that look of angry innocence, of dirty pride and raw need, but it began with that girl in those woods under that tree all those years ago. It had been special in its own way, she had been special. And none of the jokes about white women or the smell they have can take that away. Or what they finally did. It wasn’t what they did. They all did the same thing. And could he say that even though she was his first she was from then until now a complete mystery to him and that he still wasn’t sure what she was looking for or hoping to find in his painful and raw satisfaction, but no matter because the past had faded and her with it, but the mystery remained. Because of her all women were a mystery.

  Campaspe was no exception. She was a mystery to him and he was to her. But he felt, and this was at the agonized heart of why he was unsure if he should go in the restaurant and why he hadn’t spoken to Zola or Elizabeth much, he felt he was at a disadvantage because he, and all those like him, were measured against the stories that were told about Indians by those who did not know Indians. Not at all like the way men were measured against the stories about men because, for most people, men existed in life not just in stories. And how could he overcome that? What language could he use for himself that had not become part of those stories about his people, the sad ones and the funny ones and the ones about the ways and days of the past. What could he say that would exist on its own, that represented only him and his life?

  Campaspe at least had seen him at work dutifully punching the clock and following RECAP protocol and scanning books, and so for her at least the facts of his existence, the proof of his modern self, were harder to ignore. His hope was that since he knew her from RECAP he was, in the phrase he loathed above all others, between two worlds—the one she was sure to imagine and the one she knew, because it was her world too.

  Campaspe might ask about his life. He grew nervous, and he had never thought of himself as a nervous man. And like all nervous men he was anxious to please, and the desire to please her made him feel trapped. His only way out—he could not talk of the past and he could not talk of the present because that told her very little—was to talk of his work as a translator. He spoke of translating as though it had something to do with his life.

  And so it had become something between them.

  “Can I see it?”

  “I don’t know. No. Maybe.”

  “Shouldn’t we order? Should we get the usual? Two margaritas,” she said to the waitress across the bar.

  “It’s not finished and it’s boring anyway. It’s only interesting to me. I don’t want to bore you with it.”

  “But I want to. I want to hear it.”

  “It seems like we always order the same thing. Just like that first time.”

  “It’s not that I wouldn’t understand it.”

  “No, no. No. It’s a mess is all and I don’t know if you’d even be able to read my handwriting.”

  But it had become a thing for them.

  “Two margaritas.” And to her, “Long day.”

  “How’s the translation? How is it?”

  “Growing. Always growing.”

  But it had become a thing for her.

  “How’s the translation? I’ll get her. Margarita? Two.”

  And so it went. He could not tell her about himself. Not directly. So his translation became the story he told her of himself, as a substitute for the story of his life. And he tried not to get anxious if she asked too many questions or probed too deeply. All the while he thought she was getting what she needed from him, but she was not. He could tell she was not getting all that she needed. He could tell that sometimes she felt that she didn’t know him at all, and since she did not know him or his habits it seemed to her that he could, like a wild animal, do anything or everything and it all would be so unexpected. She longed for safety, and the only thing that could provide it was knowledge of him and his feelings and his past, and these were things he held the tightest. And since he only spoke of the translation and of translating, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that she wanted to read the manuscript and that she was angling to read it whether he would allow her to or not.

  For all that he was happy. That was the biggest surprise of all. He was happy in the morning when he sighed his morning sigh whether she was with him or not. She was not. What that sigh meant was different now. It was a sigh of both contentment and expectation. He was happy when he saw her at her workstation or when they surprised each other at their lockers, stowing their things away at the same time. He was happy when out of the corner of his eye he caught a little habit of hers. He was happy when he glimpsed her body in the white sweater. And most of all, he was happy to think ahead and imagine them together in his queen-sized bed. He felt that it was only between those covers that their story was in any way readable. It was in that bed most of their conversations took place, and where he told her his translation. These discoveries were linked to their nakedness and became extensions of it because there he could be just the body she was feeling, the dick she was holding or sucking, and he did not feel so much like a paradox or a problem and he did not feel the need to speak about himself because his pleasure was the one thing in his life that was beyond language. His translation became even more his translation, and it began to include her—all of it held between the soft cover of his sheets.

  She seemed happy, too. But then again, she was beautiful and beautiful people often confuse happiness with fun and fun often results from a combination of things—the place, food, a prevailing mood—not necessarily from the other person, not necessarily from him. And beauty can also be like something you wear to hide what is really underneath, and even though beautiful people might seem happy you rarely hear stories about their happiness.

  All the same, she seemed happy in his arms. And even if she faked her moans and managed to fake the trembling of her crossed, uncrossed, crossed, and finally released legs and the wetness there and her delicious scent and the blush of her cheeks, she must want to be happy and to make him happy, otherwise there was no reason for acting.

  But she did have a way. And she did have a look, a curious dissatisfied look that appeared more and more often.

  He had first seen this look when he told her about the translation, but did not tell her enough or as much a
s she wanted to know.

  Apelles remembers the first time he saw that look. They had just finished having sex. She had come and so had he.

  “Is the translation just one story, or is it one big story with lots of others inside of it? I like those the best.”

  Apelles had the condom in his hands, and he was tying it off so it wouldn’t spill.

  “Oh. A bit of both. One main story. The main story and others that grow here and there from it. Like nodes. Like lymph nodes.”

  He set the tied-off condom under the bed so no one would step on it.

  “But what’s it about?”

  “I’ve already told you. I’ve told you that.”

  “Not really. You know what I mean. What does it say? What does it all mean?”

  “That’s hard to say until you’re finished.”

  This seemed to upset her.

  “You can know what something is before it ends. A lot of things. Like relationships.”

  And he still hesitated. She turned her head and though she was interested in what he said she seemed to have gone far away.

  There was the same look on her face more these days. And she had it even when they weren’t speaking and they might still be making love or perhaps his penis was only crouching inside her and she would turn her head away and would not look at him.

  At these times she seemed happy and hollow and hollowly is how she sounded when he spoke to her then, and it took her some time to answer as though reading the echo but not the utterance. There was some part of her that remained unsatisfied.

  When he was at work these thoughts were even more present. The two lovers had not changed how they interacted at RECAP. They still did not speak directly to each other when they were at their stations. They did not eat together or hold hands or wink or brush past the other or steal moments—at the copier, in the shelves where the extra boxes were kept, at their lockers, or in the Reading Room—for themselves. But something had changed and their coworkers had registered that change, and they might be telling themselves and one another their own stories about his affair with Campaspe.

  Jesus, for one, was different. He was a big man, much bigger than Dr Apelles, and he was quiet, always listening to his iPod, and the way he nodded to what must have been the beat was suspicious. It is difficult to trust big men, especially the quiet ones. They seem to have no choice in what direction they turn, and if he were to get angry he would have to follow his anger through to the end. He had always been this way.

  He had paid more attention to Dr Apelles even before the ice storm. Since then he had gone so far as to try and talk to Dr Apelles.

  “You ever hear of Big Head Todd?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t think so. No.”

  Dr Apelles was suddenly nervous. His skin felt flushed. It seemed as though there was no right answer to the question. “What about Kinky? Ever hear of them?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Jesus seemed offended and challenged by Dr Apelles’ ignorance.

  “You should. You should listen to both of them.”

  Dr Apelles hadn’t known Jesus was talking about music bands, but Jesus hadn’t appeared interested in really educating Apelles. He was gathering information. He was learning something.

  And Dr Apelles was reminded why he didn’t like having conversations. Conversations were something you could lose. Something could be lost. Even when they weren’t speaking, when they were working at their stations, he thought he could feel Jesus’ eyes on him, watching him, and moving past him to Campaspe and then back to Dr Apelles. It surprised Dr Apelles to realize that Jesus was jealous. Of course he was. He wanted Campaspe for himself.

  He had asked her out once, and they had gone to Margarita Bella’s long before the ice storm. Dr Apelles preferred not to imagine Jesus and Campaspe at what he considered his place. Thinking about them there did nothing to comfort him and made him angry, and he felt out of sorts when he thought about it. It wasn’t that Jesus had done anything. He did only what he could and only what you’d expect.

  Jesus wasn’t the only one who acted differently. Ms Manger did, too. He should have known that when she approached him about the Jesuit Relations she was after more than just his expertise. She was—and everyone knew this—a lonely woman, and lonely people are dangerous. They always respond and act with their loneliness in mind. It governs everything they do. Dr Apelles saw her more and more when he didn’t expect to see her. Not just at the Monday meetings. He saw her when he put his things in his locker, and he saw her on his way to the S.A. She walked by his station frequently and stopped to talk to him about whatever topic was interesting to her, understood by him, incomprehensible to everyone else. She seemed to want to form a club that included only him, with her as acting president. Dr Apelles realized with dismay that she had taken an interest in him. And that is exactly what she said whenever he spoke, no matter the subject. “How interesting,” she would say. “How very interesting.”

  The other workers looked at him as he passed. They nodded as they passed him. More and more they looked him in the eye. He thought that once he was out of earshot they talked about him.

  This was a disaster. Dr Apelles was not interested in being interesting. He did not want to be noticed. This must be what it’s like to be famous. To be famous was to be known and discussed beyond your inner circle, though Dr Apelles’ inner circle included only himself. But it was the same. He felt scanned, read, and consumed, and he had no control over how they read him or what they told themselves about him. They could be saying anything. They probably were saying anything.

  Dr Apelles knew enough to know that what he was experiencing was not unusual. What those people saw or intuited was nothing more than a workplace romance. Workplace romances are the same the world over with the same possible outcomes. They live happily ever after. They don’t. He gets his heart broken. She gets her heart broken. He is a womanizer. She is a slut. The only difference between a workplace romance and other romances is that it is staged for the enjoyment or interest of the rest of those who work in that place.

  Dr Apelles felt defenseless. Defenseless because he had no language for his present self, no Indians do. It’s the past that through long practice is fluent. He had never turned his life into material, always in relation to, always in conversation with, always gauged by, what everyone thought they knew about Indians. He had always been too self-conscious to exhibit his origins; to have his Indian past speak for and take the place of his personality. His father had been the same way. They would be selling balsam boughs or winter fish and someone else would talk about how good a trapper he was: Why just last week I trapped eight mink and a bobcat. Apelles’ father said he was impressed and he said congratulations. What he didn’t say was that back at the house they had twenty beaver pelts stretched and fleshed and ten otters on boards.

  Maybe because they are so unself-conscious, Indian writers are very popular with audiences. They read from their work and when it comes time for the question-and-answer portion, the questions brush by the work on their way to the author, like eligible women at a ball stalking the richest man in the nicest suit. The writers are only too glad to tell anecdotes or give the audience small cultural pearls. Dr Apelles remembers going to one such reading. He had been given the book by the publisher so he could proof the Anishinaabe language that the writer used and did not translate. He had been very impressed. The writer was delicate and judicious and obviously very fluent. So he went to the reading, which he enjoyed but does not remember. When it came time for the question-and-answer, the writer, who was very light skinned, must have felt compelled to prove he was Indian because he admonished the crowd, postured, and then trotted out his “rez” stories. Dr Apelles was terribly embarrassed.

  Fin
ally, Dr Apelles decides not to go into the restaurant. It hardly seems like his place any longer. It is a pleasingly lighted, friendly place. He can see Zola at the hostess stand. Farther back, moving behind the clustered heads of the customers at the bar, Elizabeth is making drinks. It has been his place just as Mai’s has been his place. In these places he had been free not to speak. Free, almost, to be someone else by pretending to be no one. The translation and Campaspe have brought great happiness and satisfaction and they force him to be singular and unique and though it was good, it is also terrifying. He has to admit that he had been for many years a coward.

  Dr Apelles forces himself to move on from the restaurant. If he stays any longer someone inside will notice and he will have that discomfort to add to the growing list. He moves on. It is growing dark and the foot traffic on the sidewalk has increased.

  It is a strange fact, a strange thing altogether strange. He could never have imagined it all those years ago, just as he could never have foreseen all these recent changes weeks before. A life, and this made him smile, just like any other.

  He looks at the sky. It is the same sky as before, just darker. Some of the side streets are shuttered by the tall buildings.

  It is not his past that haunts him. It was complete and finite and beautiful in its own way. And it was only much later, in college, that he had realized, and this had come as a shock, that his past was unique to him. Not everyone had the same thoughts or knew the same things or the same kinds of people. It wasn’t a profound realization, but it had marked a shift in him. He began to think comparatively. And though he hadn’t done it much lately, he had trained himself not to, it had begun a process of looking back. A process of evaluating his life by looking back. Campaspe and the translation have forced him to do it again. So it wasn’t that his past haunts him. He haunts his past. He presses against it. He dips into it. He pushes his way back there. Unbidden. Unasked. And mercifully unnoticed by his former self.