Interpreters

by Sue Eckstein

  My mother keeps in touch by postcard, even though she’s got a laptop and is very comfortable with modern communications technology. Whenever Max or I visit her, she is pleased to see us but seems quite relieved when it’s time for us to go and she can revert to her solitary life. She appears to be on nodding terms with her neighbours, but we are never introduced. The one person whose company she seems to really enjoy, whom she doesn’t seem at all keen to get rid of, is Susanna. It was Susanna who once told me that she and her grandmother had bumped into a gentleman in the entrance hall of the apartment in Paris who addressed my mother as Mrs Evans and made some allusion to her former career in the Foreign Office. In Prague, it appeared that my mother was a retired headmistress from Hampshire. When I told Max, he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  My mother always hated her birthdays and would usually be out of contact as the date approached, so Max and I were surprised when she wrote us identical postcards informing us that she would be celebrating her birthday in Berlin and was then going to spend a few weeks walking. There was a particular forest route she wanted to retrace. Susanna had kindly agreed to accompany her.

  ‘Retrace? I didn’t know she’d ever been to Germany,’ I said to Max on the phone. ‘And why Berlin of all places, for her birthday?’

  ‘Why not? It’s supposed to be quite an amazing city these days. I read a really interesting article about the new Reichstag. I’d love to go.’

  ‘But since when has she “celebrated” a birthday? She could barely tolerate all the birthdays we spent with her.’

  ‘I know! Remember the miserable fortieth?’

  ‘I’ve tried to eradicate it from my memory. And what forest route? How far can an eighty-three-year-old walk, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I imagine that this eighty-three-year-old can walk a pretty long way. Probably further than Susanna.’

  ‘And why did Mum invite Susanna along and not us?

  ‘Maybe she wanted an interpreter? Susanna’s German’s pretty fluent.’

  ‘And walking’s never exactly been her thing. Either of their things. And why didn’t Susanna tell me she was going? It must all have been arranged when I last spoke to her. When she rang me about that article.’

  ‘After all these years, you’re still asking questions that you’re never going to get any answers to. Stop wondering and come and spend a few days with me. With me and Max-son-of-Max. Mikey’s back inside. Come on, Julia. I really want to see you.’

  So that’s what my mother is doing now. Walking through the forests of Germany with my daughter as I sit here in Farrer & Farrer, looking at a small box on the solicitor’s desk.

  ‘So sorry to have kept you,’ says Nigel Blenkinsop, coming into the room clutching a few sheets of paper. ‘So, I’ll just need a couple of signatures. Here… and here… and here. Lovely. Thanks. That all seems to be in order. Perhaps we’ll meet again some time,’ he says without a lot of conviction.

  He shakes my hand and passes me the box. It isn’t heavy – about the weight of a couple of hardback books. The receptionist is standing at the front door, a bunch of keys in her hands. Very slowly – so that she can be sure that I realise that the office is now closed and she has had to stay late on a Friday evening – she unlocks the door.

  I get into the car. I look at the package. It’s addressed to the two of us, to Max and me. I wonder for a moment whether to wait until I get to Max’s house before I open it, then I break the seal and pull off the string and brown paper. Inside the cardboard box is a set of cassettes. They are numbered one to sixteen, but, apart from that, there is nothing to suggest what they contain. I pick out the first one and insert it into the cassette player. Then I start the ignition, press play and set off.

  I

  (LONG SILENCE)

  So?

  So what?

  Shall we begin?

  Begin where?

  Anywhere you like.

  Is that all you’re going to say?

  For now.

  And is that supposed to be helpful?

  I hope so.

  I don’t know where to begin.

  You’ll know. Just take your time.

  You would say that. Time is money. Isn’t that the expression?

  Just take your time.

  (SILENCE)

  I don’t know where to begin. You’ll have to give me some kind of clue. Some idea. Or is that against the rules?

  There aren’t those sorts of rules.

  That’s what you say.

  Well, what about beginning with a memory? Your earliest memory, perhaps.

  What are you expecting? Me floating about in the womb? The swish of warm amniotic fluid? The reassuring sound of my mother’s heartbeat? The feeling of utter calm before the storm of birth? Isn’t that the kind of thing you people are interested in? Or some kind of strange recurring dream in which I kill my mother and sleep with my father?

  I don’t think we need be that ambitious.

  Do you think this is funny?

  Not at all. Do you?

  Acknowledgements

  Interpreters was inspired by a journey I made to Germany for the eightieth birthday celebrations of an old family friend. On returning to England, I knew I wanted to write about the experience of being a middle-class child of immigrant parents and the degree to which we are defined by, and interpret, our upbringing. Above all, I wanted to explore the changing experience of childhood – particularly a 1970s childhood, when children were largely excluded from the complexities of adult life and when there was no sense of entitlement to an explanation of, or information about, their parents’ lives. I wanted, too, to better understand the experience of growing up so close to the Second World War, to recognise the wish of many people to place a distance between their present and that particular element of their pasts. And to explore the ambiguities of young, ordinary people who grew up in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s feeling, decades later, a requirement upon them to share in an experience of collective shame.

  During the years that I have spent thinking about the ethical issues inherent in writing memoir and autobiography, while working on a PhD in creative writing at the University of Sussex, I have come to share something of Lily Briscoe’s belief, in To the Lighthouse, that we can never really know the truth about anyone or any event, that ‘this making up scenes about them, is what we call “knowing” people, “thinking” of them, “being fond” of them! Not a word of it [is] true…’. Increasingly I have come to believe that if one can never really know the truth, even about those closest to us, it would be more ethical, even more ‘true’, to fictionalise whatever truths we think we know.

  In Interpreters, I have attempted to retain the emotional core of my childhood and a few key facts. I am indebted to my indomitable grandmother’s memoirs of her years in Turkey, on which I have drawn quite heavily. Beyond this, Interpreters is a work of fiction. But there are some emotional truths within that fiction. Like Julia, I wish I had known my father better and for longer. Max was inspired by the very precious relationship I have with my two brothers (neither of whom is a free-spirited, blond-haired Steiner school teacher, artist or foster-carer). Julia’s mother is a product of my imagination but very much inspired by the love, respect and gratitude I feel for my own mother.

  I am grateful to my husband, Alastair, and my children, Anna and Sebastian, for their unstinting love and support. Bobbie Farsides and Bruce Young were hugely encouraging at the start of my writing career and continue to be so. Many thanks, too, for their support and encouragement in so very many ways, to Lee-Anne Mason, Kate Whyman, Martha Leyton, Martin Shovel, Sarah Mistry, Paul Keyte, Margaretta Jolly and Sue Roe. I am indebted to Candida Lacey and to Vicky Blunden, Linda McQueen and all at Myriad Editions for their support, belief and editorial suggestions. I am grateful, too, to my colleagues and students at Brighton and Sussex Medical School for the most stimulating and enjoyable ‘day job’ anyone could wish for. And thanks to Arts Council England for th
e Grant for the Arts that bought me some writing time in the tranquil silence of St Cuthman’s Retreat Centre.

  As heard on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour

  If you liked Interpreters, you might

  like Sue Eckstein’s critically acclaimed

  début novel The Cloths of Heaven.

  For an exclusive extract, read on…

  Daniel squeezed his way along the narrow paths of the market, his face brushing against the warm round backs of babies tied tightly to the women who strolled between the stalls, balancing containers of cooking oil, or flimsy red and white striped plastic bags of vegetables, on their heads. He breathed in the milky, tinny smell of the sleeping babies, the odour of rotting cabbage and kola nut spittle mingled with smoked fish and musty rice.

  ‘Come here, sir – nice things.’

  ‘Bananas – very cheap – come, come.’

  ‘Any pens? Any bonbons?’

  ‘New videos, no pirates, come, buy.’

  ‘Give me one lamasi…’

  The shouts of traders competing for business, the sound of raised voices bargaining over clusters of misshapen tomatoes, the music of Bob Marley and Salif Keita blaring from the cassette-copying booths fought for space in the hot dry air. As Daniel took off his sunglasses to wipe his face, the market exploded into colour. Gleaming aluminium cooking pots and gaudy Chinese enamelware flashed in the sun, piles of aubergines glowed in a purple haze, pyramids of tinned tomato paste glinted. The cloth of the women’s robes and headdresses dazzled him.

  He found himself walking to the edge of the market, towards the fetid canal which flowed, sluggishly, to the port. Here the rickety kiosks selling batteries, cigarettes, and sticks of white bread gave way to larger shops, cloth warehouses and wholesalers. The vast concrete buildings stretched back from the litter-strewn, potholed pavements.

  Daniel stopped outside the largest cloth shop, hesitated for a moment, then ducked under the raised grille and went in. He blinked, unable to make out anything until his eyes became accustomed to the dark interior. Fans turned above the high wooden shelves and ankle-height platforms that held the cloth. Motes of dust danced in the few rays of sun that had penetrated the half-closed shutters. The floor was concrete; bare light bulbs hung from the high ceiling. There was a tall wooden desk and chair in the corner, of the kind favoured by Dickensian bookkeepers. On top of the desk he noticed a calculator, a pile of receipts on a spike, and a novel spread face down, bursting from its spine.

  He walked along the aisles, trailing his fingers across the bolts of cloth. As he did so, he could feel the textures in his teeth and on his tongue: the smooth damasks, the fuzzy appliqués, the stiff nets, the deep mauve gauze dotted with pink felt, the gold-embossed rayon trickling strands of silver thread, the lemon polyester with its universe of sparkling orange stars.

  He became aware of the hum of a computer and looked up. At the far end of the shop was a glass-fronted gallery. A window had been slid open and he could hear the high-pitched whine of a fax machine. He could just make out the dark head of someone sitting in front of the computer.

  He walked back along the first aisle, then stopped suddenly by one of the thick concrete columns. She was sitting at the high wooden desk, bent over the book. He wondered how she had got there without his noticing. It was the closest he had been to her. Daniel could see traces of perspiration on her forehead. From time to time, she raised a hand to push her damp hair from her face. She was wearing a simple black cotton dress. Her thin arms were bare.

  ‘Rachel!’

  She held her place in the book with a finger and looked up at the gallery.

  Daniel felt his palms prick with sweat. Rachel. Surely that couldn’t just be another of those coincidences?

  ‘Rachel. Did you hear me? Has that consignment from China arrived?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’m going out for a while. Deal with it when it comes, will you?’

  She turned back to her book without replying.

  A short, dark, immaculately dressed man walked down the wooden stairs from the gallery. He stopped by the desk, gripped her arm with one hand and turned her face to his with the other. He kissed her slowly on the lips, then let her go.

  ‘Faysal and Suhad are coming for dinner, darling. Please be ready,’ he called behind him as he left.

  She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, then flicked through the book until she found her place.

  Daniel hesitated a moment, then went up to the desk. He could see the imprint of the man’s fingers on her arm. He took a deep breath.

  ‘You like Mervyn Peake, then?’

  She looked up and stared at him impassively for a few seconds before returning to the book.

  ‘I loved the first two Gormenghast books…’

  Daniel stopped, unnerved by the lack of response. He felt himself blush. He could kick himself. Not only did he do a good line in wincing and looking away, he could come up with a damn fine irrelevant question.

  ‘I’ve seen you a few times, here in the shop.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, without lifting her eyes from the book.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m –’

  ‘Do you want to buy some cloth?’ She shut the book and stared at him.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Do you want to buy some cloth? If not, I suggest –’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Daniel scanned the rows, his eyes frantic. ‘Some of the – the damask – that bright pink. The one with the fuchsia pattern in it. Three metres.’

  She walked to the bolt of cloth with an elegant weariness, leaving her leather sandals under the desk.

  He watched her as she dragged the bolt on to a long wooden table, measured it with a wooden ruler, snipped it with a pair of large black scissors, and then ripped the piece from the bolt. She folded the cloth, wrapped it in paper, tied the parcel with string, and handed it to him.

  ‘That’s forty lamasi. Thanks. Any more? You’re obviously quite a connoisseur. What about the crimson and purple nylon over there? Or the pure cotton with repeating images of Pope John Paul II?’

  Her voice was icily polite.

  ‘No. Thanks. This is fine. I’m sorry to have –’

  ‘The Virgin Mary on best quality polyester?’ She pulled out length after length of cloth. ‘We’ve got the Wailers around here somewhere, too. On rayon.’

  ‘No. This is great. Look, if I’ve –’

  ‘Ethnic African batik? Freshly imported from the Netherlands.’

  ‘No, really. This is just what I wanted.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘No. You’re right. I just wondered who you are.’

  ‘Who I am?’

  ‘And what you’re doing here.’

  ‘What does it look like?’ She returned to her chair and opened the book again.

  ‘And I wanted to see if you were all right.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘After last night.’

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were greyish-green, he noticed.

  ‘I saw you and – and him,’ Daniel nodded up at the gallery, ‘on the coast road. Last night. I just wondered –’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Rachel flatly. She took a deep breath. ‘But thanks for asking.’

  ‘That’s OK. It’s just that things seemed, sort of, well, difficult. Look, I’ll give you my card. Perhaps you’d give me a ring some time. If I can do anything.’

  She looked at the card. ‘Yes. Thanks. I may do that. Some time.’

  ‘Well, thanks for this,’ said Daniel, as he picked up his parcel. ‘Goodbye.’

  He walked back out into the street and watched Rachel for a moment through the grille. He saw her look at the card again, then slowly rip it up and let the tiny pieces flutter to the floor.

  About the Author

  Sue Eckstein’s first novel The Cloths of Heaven was published in 2009 and dramatised for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour in 2010. Her plays include The Tuesday Group, first p
erformed in London in 2003, as well as Kaffir Lilies, Laura and Old School Ties, all for Radio 4.

  Copyright

  First published in 2011

  This ebook edition published in 2011

  by Myriad Editions

  59 Lansdowne Place

  Brighton BN3 1FL

  www.MyriadEditions.com

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Sue Eckstein 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978–0–9567926–6–2

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