by David Treuer
and while all this had just moments earlier felt like a terrible and secret thing, an unwanted and forced future, well, now it doesn’t appear that way at all. the translation is being brought home where it belongs.
the light is kind and yellow. the air is sweet and soft with just enough moisture to cool and comfort the skin. there are, each in its own section, groups of different relatives, happy after all is said and done, to be there.
and whatever distance might exist between them, whatever feuds have sprung up in the past, all is forgiven. all are bent to the sacred purpose.
moving again.
the translation now proceeds down the aisle, which, crowded with boxes that seem to lean over the couple with benign and gentle approval, opens in front and closes behind them.
there is nothing to be afraid of. there is comfort and company here—written but beyond speech. something holy about this communion of books.
in such company our duo, wide-eyed and wondrous, no longer held in the dark, no longer orphaned out in that other world far from their own kind, feel stronger, more sure.
and suddenly they are airborne, lifted on one of the forklifts. the ground retreats, the ceiling moves closer. it would not be strange to hear cheering or shouts, to believe that the collective joy around them is what lifts them up rather than the gears and hydraulic thrust of a mere machine.
it stops. for a second or two they bounce slowly up and down, up and down, as on the swell of a wave.
a box slides out and the lid comes off.
there is a pause as the book is inspected one last time. the thrill of a breeze passes over the manuscript pages as the book is opened. with the breeze comes the sense that, once again, the future might change abruptly. the manuscript might be divorced from its book and taken back to the world, able to do amazing things and to become important once again and for the first time, it might become a complete story with its own ending and two hard covers and a spine, and sinew, and an ISBN and a copyright and a title. but no, the book is only opened so as to push the loose pages deeper still into the gutter, to make sure they are not visible from the outside. the book is shut and then it is placed in the box. the lid is reattached, the box is lined back up on the shelf. the palpable excitement and sense of family, of belonging, so potent and so real, ends abruptly.
it is dark in here. and the two are once again alone.
the forklift descends. the lights are retaken and the room is once again dark.
the first door, the one for humans, is opened and shut and then the second one.
footsteps echo down the middle of the S.A. the door to the O.C. opens and shuts, and then the door to the office at the end of the hall opens and shuts. a mouse, click, sniffs the mousepad, and the cameras one by one are turned back on.
with a satisfied sigh Ms Manger, no longer invisible, looks out her window and drums her fingers lightly on her desktop as though trying to summon a new day, still hours off but whose advance is signaled by a fringe of light to the east, a new day exactly like the one just past for most people in the world. a new day quiet and ample and filled with industry and effort all bent on making that time, and those hours, and those books, pass.
far up the stacks, on a shelf, in a box, in a book, in a place Ms Manger could never find again even if she were to try, the translation rests where new days never dawn. it will always be dark there. too dark to see. muchly much too dark to read.
it will always be night here. restful, yes, but lonely.
there is nothing to do but sleep and to be the dream of someone else who is far away, someone who will wake and work and live and sleep again to dream the story that waits for the dream.
the only activity here is the imperceptible economy of time, but with no means to measure it—no light, no movement, no industry of any sort except, once in a while, from afar, faintly, faintly, like the wind passing through the branches of pine, machines and voices come near and fade away.
it is possible that someday the sound of a machine will draw near and nearer, now close. and the box will be lifted from the sea floor of obscurity where the thinnest and most delicate fronds of hope wave. it could happen. the box could be moved and the lid lifted, light could pour in and with it the fresh, terrible air of the world outside. and the story, revived, anxious and full of verve, could come alive. and with that new life would come a new hunger—for recognition, for translation, for love. and instead of being a dream it will be alive—with a roving, powerful, lonesome hunger.
someday it will wake. someday it will fly. and better yet, someone will find it and love it. someday.
someday. and when that happens they will know what Apelles and Campaspe know but Ms Manger does not: that the imagination can produce more than illusion; that it does not matter whether the illusion is true or not because the imagination can create both pleasure and happiness, too. someday.
but that will be years in the making.
earlier that night, before Ms Manger sat at her desk and anticipated the dawn, after Jesus had gone home alone, and Ms Manger waited at RECAP and got ready to hide the manuscript, Dr Apelles and Campaspe clasped each other in his queen-sized bed, toe to toe, knee to knee, all four hands held together in front of their chests, their eyes inches apart. they speak quietly:
I am so sorry, she says. don’t hate me, she says.
I don’t hate you, he says. and you have nothing to be sorry about, he says.
I was so curious. I wanted to know what you were doing. I wanted to know what the words meant, she says. once I started reading I couldn’t stop, she says. and I was surprised! I had no idea. the translation is really your translation. it is your story. and to see myself there . . . to see me as you see me. how thrilling.
she remembers her shame and says, once again, I really was just curious. all I wanted was to know you.
I know, he says.
they don’t speak for a few minutes. Campaspe’s eyes sparkle with the promise of tears.
I didn’t know that Jesus would steal it from me, she says. I looked everywhere except in that book. I never thought he’d put it in that book, she says.
you had no way to know, he says.
did you know I took it from you? she says.
of course I knew, he says, I knew it before you did, he says.
you did? she says.
yes. as they say in the movies, but only in movies: I know you better than you know yourself.
they say that in books, too.
yes, he says. in books as well.
did you know Jesus would take it, too? she says. and did you know he would take it before he knew? she says. do you know him better than he knows himself?
yes, he says. him, too. I know everyone here better than they know themselves, he says.
Campaspe snuggles closer, she is amused by this.
that’s silly, she says. how can you know? she says.
he says nothing.
okay then, what’s happening now? she says. where is it now?
it is being hidden deep in the Stacks by Ms Manger, he says.
again they are silent for some time.
that was the only copy? she says. you know it was.
what about the book Jesus hid it in? what kind of book is that?
just an old love story.
and so it’s really lost, really gone? she says.
you know it is, he says.
I’m so sorry, so sorry, that’s so sad.
again her eyes sparkle with the promise of tears.
you already said that, he says.
and after a pause she says, shyly: I really liked the part about the ice storm.
thank you, he says, good.
it was very exciting, she says.
thank you, he says again.
and Victor, that was a very sad part of the
story, she says.
it was, he says, it really was.
and you, she says. you were so lonely, so alone in the beginning.
I was then. I was lonely, he says.
she strokes his thumb shyly with hers.
you make me seem prettier than I really am, she says.
oh no, he says. no no no, I don’t think so, he says. you’re as pretty there as you’re supposed to be.
and I don’t even own a white sweater, she says.
but you do now, he says.
I suppose I do. can I have a red one, too?
sure. there, he says.
thank you.
you look beautiful.
thank you, she says.
snuggling closer. I was wondering, she says. I was wondering, because I don’t really understand.
yes, he says.
I was wondering why each section sounded so different, she says.
that’s good, that’s so good of you to notice that, he says. the answer: I did not know yet who I was. I had no language for myself.
she is quiet for a while, trying to understand.
he is quiet, too.
you didn’t really find anything in the archive, did you?
I found myself, he says with a twinkle in his eye.
but where’s the original, then? what is the original?
you should know that by now.
this all feels like make-believe, she says after a while. even my heart—it feels like make-believe. but it isn’t. is it? my heart is filled with something. so there is something to it after all, something you can weigh and measure. it is real. but everyone is going to think you made all this up. I can’t believe it’s actually happening.
it is happening, he says, his eyes wild. it is happening and what’s wrong with make-believe? isn’t that how it works: we make belief? besides, happiness is more real than any illusion.
and more powerful, she says.
yes, he says, yes, exactly. more powerful.
and then, more daring, with growing confidence she says: if you know me better than I know myself, and Jesus, too, better than he does, and Ms Manger and all that has happened and what will happen, everything, then . . . she says, then who knows you?
you do, he says.
me?
yes, he says, and they do, too, looking up. they know me best of all.
one more question and we can go to sleep, she says.
okay.
how does it end? she says. how does our story end?
oh! that’s easy, it’s already over. it ended earlier when
Dr Apelles stood at the window,
the day was dimming. It was a time of war but that is over now. All is at rest and the city sleeps. The manuscript is not lost, but it might not ever be found.
There is traffic below and people on foot are all headed. Someplace. All destined for. Something. And while the car horns and voices climb the evening air as on a ladder to the upper reaches, they seem far away, unimportant.
The work is done. Dr Apelles is weary. He rubs his eyes and peers through the glass as though trying to see who rang the doorbell before actually opening the door. But he can see only buildings after all—the one directly across and the one to the right and he can make out the building on the corner of the busy avenue, but just a sliver of it, but that is all. He cannot see the sky. And so, his eyes and his mind, traveling partners still, turn to the right and travel to the corner and then left at the busy avenue and arrive almost instantly at the archive where they rest in the reading room before turning around and heading the other way—past his street, past Mai’s Massage Parlour, to the train station. And then, because his thoughts don’t need trains, they leave the city behind on their own. In a flash they are across the river, through the sister city, down the old post road, and past Margarita Bella’s and lifting now, over the fields and parking lots and schools—those suburban ruins. RECAP is there. This must be what it is like to die. He goes inside and through the hallway and into the S.A. and through the double-doored airlock and into the Stacks where he is lifted without the aid of machine or man to where the manuscript sleeps in its box. There it is. Unloved and loved. Unrecognized and known.
Dr Apelles does not open it. He does not look inside. He has no need to see because he already sees. He knows what is written there, and so do you. If he were to read it, he would read his life all over again, and again it would be as though it were written in a language he did not understand. For now, he has finally been translated. His language is his own, and he needs no other readers. It is so much better this way. It is so much better than a mere fairy tale.
Gradually, after much effort, Dr Apelles returns to his apartment. It is truly dark now. Here and there in the buildings, he can see lights and lives coming on. It is time to rest. What was lost has been found. Looking in the glass, in which his own cherished face is faithfully represented along with all the life outside, he says, in a whisper, I love you. And then—more loudly, as if dictating the words—I was looking for a book. A very particular book in a vast and wonderful library . . .
Satisfied with the first sentence, he turns away.
DAVID TREUER is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the author of Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual and two previous novels, Little and The Hiawatha. He teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Minnesota and divides his time between Minneapolis and Leech Lake.