Translator (12 page)

By the time Renzo reappears, he's fully recovered his cheerful self. “Here we are,” he says, bringing out bowls of miso and rice and a plate of homemade sushi and sukiyaki.

“This looks lovely.”

After a bottle of sake, Renzo begins to tell her more. She remembers this about Hiro's Japanese friends. So shy and reserved at first, but with a little alcohol they became red-cheeked and loquacious. Moto had a dishonorable thing happen. He lost his job.

“What happened?”

Renzo swallows. “He says he can't act anymore.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.” Renzo tells her Moto's wife left him. “But they were unhappy for a long while. Or so it seemed to me.”

Kobayashi must have met Moto when the marriage was on its last legs, she thinks. And he changed it, so in the novel the wife was dying, which put immense strain on the marriage, versus the slow dying of a marriage from more mundane trivialities. If that was truly what happened to Moto and his wife, Hanne knows that terrain very well.

“What was your brother's wife like?” Hanne is thinking of Aiko and her gloomy moods, the days spent sprawled on the couch in the dark living room.

Renzo hoots. A powerful advertising exec, he says, she had the Viagra account. Did Hanne ever see the Japanese ads on television? The old man sitting at the bar counter, fawned over by beautiful young women. The old man turns to the camera and says “I'm sixty, but I feel like I'm sixteen.” Seven million impotent men in Japan, and she hands them a way to shrug off old age and throw themselves into sexual ecstasy.

Renzo opens a second bottle of sake and tips back a glass. “And now Moto wastes his time doing silly voice-overs for commercials.” That admission seems to take something out of Renzo, because he abruptly falls silent. The room fills with the gurgling from the fish tank.

She stares at him in this strange, suspended moment. With his thin, dry lips and forced cheerfulness, he's as interesting to her as a head of cabbage. When he begins talking again, it is a long rant about how Moto is ruining the family name, ruining his life. Though Renzo was demoted to younger brother in their youth, he is Moto's only remaining relation, and it was to him Moto turned for help, and Renzo has been paying his bills. He let Moto move in with him, but it isn't ideal, not at all.

It does not seem Renzo enjoys the reversal of roles, thinks Hanne.

Renzo runs out of steam. The food is cold, the second bottle of sake almost empty. And Hanne is tired. Renzo pushes himself up from the table. “I apologize again for Moto.” His face quickly brightens. “You must come tomorrow night. I will make sure he is here.”

How he plans to do that, she doesn't ask. “All right. I'd love to.” She offers to call a taxi.

He laughs. “You think I had too much? No, I'm fine.”

As he drives her back to her hotel in Kurashiki, he talks about what he'll make for supper, and she half listens, looking out the window at the pitch black night, the occasional glow of a house light. She's aware of a weight lifting; she wouldn't call it euphoria or even happiness. It is something more subtle, quieter. She feels a forward trajectory again.

The next evening, she takes
a taxi back to their house. This time Renzo is missing. There's a note taped on the door:
Hanne-san, Please come in! I've run to the grocery store. Say hello to Moto!

As she walks down the hallway, she's surprised by the adrenaline rushing through her. What does she think will happen? It's just a first meeting. Yet she also knows that first impression, her sense of him, matters. But it's more than that. She's about to meet the man who gave rise to Jiro. Jiro, for whom she had such deep affection, and who was, frustratingly, the root of the confrontation with Kobayashi.

In the eating room, a muscular man sits hunched in front of the fish tank, watching the goldfish swim aimlessly in circles. He has a formidable head of hair, wavy black with coarse strands of silver, shoulder-length and disheveled. There's a stillness to his being, as if he has been in that position for hours and might stay that way for days. Most striking, on his right cheek, a fiery red birthmark blazes in what looks like the shape of Montana.

“You must be Moto.
Komban wa. Hanne desu.
” Good evening. I'm Hanne.

He doesn't acknowledge her, not even a turn of his head. She's about to speak again, louder, when he sits up and shudders, like a mangy dog freeing itself of water.

What to make of it? Dressed in faded blue jeans with a rip in the knee and a white T-shirt, he's barely made an effort to spruce himself up. Did he forget she was coming? Or maybe he plans on skipping out on dinner again. There's also the rebellion of his hair. From his appearance, he looks like an adolescent revolting against conventions, except he's no teenager. In his fifties, at least. She has never approved of men who circle back on themselves, attempting to relive a perceived glorious youth. Don't they grow bored traveling known, predictable territory—as bored as people are with them?

After a long silence, he grunts something, maybe a word, his voice a laconic rumble, as if used up long ago. Whatever he said, it wasn't a long enough utterance to be an apology for not appearing last night. He has yet to look over; the fish seem to be the most fascinating thing in the room.

He may be an actor, but he's not the least bit charming. He seems to have no need for an audience. Jiro had these moods: withdrawn, even prickly around people, preferring solitude above all else and feeling resentful when disturbed. He could spend hours in his study alone, playing his violin or composing music. He wasn't beyond barking at someone to leave him alone.

She'll let Moto have his privacy. She steps into the kitchen and suddenly the room is tilting, sloping downward. Her hip smacks into the counter. A delayed aftershock from her fall down the stairs? A clot in her brain? She hears a high-pitched ringing in her ears. Not exhaustion, she can't remember when she slept as deeply as she did last night.

She looks out the window to steady herself. Water from last night's rain has pooled in the leaves. In the back yard, a large, twisted apple tree reaches its spindly, leafless branches in every direction. Large lumps line its trunk, as if something lives inside it and is trying to punch its way out. It probably hasn't ever been sprayed for bugs or pruned. Each year the old tree must meet spring with a flourish of flowers, only to have the birds and a frenzy of bugs devour its fruit. What a waste.

A chill jerks her shoulders. The house is cold, and the sole source of warmth is where Moto is sitting, the heater beneath the table. When she turns, she's startled to find Moto standing in the kitchen. She didn't even hear him cross the cold floorboards. He's a handsome man, compact, not an ounce of extra fat. When he walks to the sink, he moves without bobbing his head, as if he's wafting on a breeze.

She tries again. “Your brother Renzo invited me—”

He fills a glass of water from the faucet. She watches his Adam's apple dance as he drinks until the glass is empty. A water droplet glimmers on his cheek. She can see his birthmark more clearly now. It's changed to a softer red, or is it the lighting, she can't tell. Stretching from the outside corner of his right eye down to the tip of his nose, it distracts from his deepset eyes, unusual for a Japanese face, a face that is unreadable, an expressionless mask, like the Noh masks he wears on stage—or used to wear.

“Hello,” he says.

His first clearly articulated word, and it's almost civil. But it's not just the word her attention veers to, it's the sound, a deep timbre emanating not from his chest, but lower, his belly. And from that one sound a whole series of sounds runs through her, as if he's not just one man but many—shouts of anger and joy, cries of ecstasy, moans and laughter. How did he do that?

“It's a lovely house,” she stammers. “Post and beam, with paper walls that move. A constantly changing house,” why doesn't she stop rambling, “you can have a wall or not.”

He wipes his lips.

“You're a Noh actor?”

“Was.”

“Yes, I heard. I'm sorry. It must be difficult.”

He looks at her. “
Shikata ga nai
,” he says. It can't be helped.

It's a fairly common Japanese expression. When she was shopping in Tokyo for her granddaughters, Hanne heard a woman in the check-out line utter this phrase as she relented and bought her crying child a bag of candy. The woman said it whimsically, a meaningless bit of verbiage. Moto's tone, on the other hand, held more gravity. It reminds her how Jiro must have sounded after he called the doctor and turned over the care for his wife. An acceptance of a bad situation and the need to move on.

It's this attitude that she found so appealing and admirable about Jiro: faced with the demise of his marriage, he exuded from his constitution a steady fortitude and resilience to march onward. In her opinion, his response was not heartless at all. In fact, she'd argue that it's one of the more admirable traits a human can have. Not selfishly mired in a haze of self-absorption or pity, a person with this quality is responsible, full of integrity, available to others. To carry on. It's a courageous act to move on from an unexpected, unfortunate event. And look at Moto: except for his hair, Moto hasn't let himself go. He is a physically fit man, and he holds down a job, though it may not be the kind of work that Renzo approves of. At least he's carrying on. Bravo. Bravo for him.

“You seem to have the right attitude about all this,” she says, not bothering to conceal her praise.

Then he is right beside her, his long fingers approaching her face, his breathing near her ear, steady, loud, low. And now he's so close she sees the filigree of intricate red veins that make up his birthmark. She freezes. What is he doing? From her shoulder, he plucks a single strand of her newly blackened hair and holds it in front of him as if it's the most enchanting thing he's ever seen. He twists it this way and that before he lets it go. They watch it slowly fall. And it keeps falling, it's taking forever to fall, as if he has thrown it into a world where time operates differently, if at all. Her strand of hair is still falling through space when the front door opens. The loud creak of the door hinges breaks the spell, then Renzo's chipper voice. Her first thought: Why did he have to come back? The black hair lies on the wood floor, a scribbled pencil mark on an otherwise pristine canvas.

Renzo comes into the kitchen and stops. “Well, finally. You meet Moto.”

Now that they are standing side by side, she can see the resemblance. The same coarse hair, though Renzo keeps his cut short; the same broad forehead; they are almost the same height, though Moto is slightly taller; but Renzo, with his hunched shoulders, concave chest and baggy trousers, looks almost malnourished and dried out, while Moto has the build and stance of a young athlete, ready to tackle someone.

Renzo wants to know where Moto was last night. Renzo turns to Hanne. “He didn't come home until 2:00
a.m.
”

“Something came up,” says Moto. “But we're all here now.”

“You haven't served our guest a drink,” says Renzo. Hanne is a distinguished translator of Japanese literature, says Renzo, giving the Western world the best of Japanese writing. “And here you are, treating her so poorly.”

Hanne senses she's caught in a longstanding feud. “Oh, I'm fine.”

“You mustn't be mean to our guest,” says Renzo. Though he's trying to be playful now, there's still an edge to Renzo's voice. “That's what my mother always said to Moto. Remember how you'd whine about the other schoolboys and their dull minds, their dull lives? Only if someone had a limitless capacity for tragedy or comedy or passion would you befriend him.”

Moto leans his back against the counter, his arms crossed, his expression not giving anything away.

“You might have judged me wrong, Moto,” says Hanne, smiling, trying to lighten the mood. “Maybe I have limitless capacities.”

Magically, Moto's whole face fans out, as if something has finally unclenched and is bursting open. In his new leonine splendor, he lets out a loud, deep belly laugh. There is his warmth, his charm. That smile, that laugh, he keeps it hidden, she thinks, until it is earned.

The dinner isn't spectacular; what is spectacular is the amount of sake consumed by Moto. No longer taciturn, Moto has opinions about everything—cars, photography, suicide, rice growing, boredom—one opinion is as good as another, and he won't be pinned to any of them because, moments later, he contradicts himself. It's as if he isn't listening to anything he says or simply doesn't care. An illogical force of verbal nonsense. Hanne can barely believe this is the same monosyllabic man she first encountered at the fish tank.

“Japan has never truly opened up its doors to foreigners,” he says, opening another bottle of sake. “Its true heart can't be known by a foreigner.”

Is he taunting her? “What is its true heart?” she says.

Before she can stop him, he refills her glass, then his. Wagging his finger at her, he gives her a great big smile. “You might speak perfect Japanese, my dear, but you won't ever understand Japan.”

“Try me.”

“It takes more than perfect Japanese to understand.”

“Aren't you judging me a bit early?”

“Surprise! It has no heart,” he says, laughing loudly. “Nothing in the center.”

“Oh, come now,” says Renzo, who's sitting at the head of the table.

“A beautiful heart right here.” Moto pounds his chest with his fist. “We Japanese got a bad reputation. The truth is we are passionate, as passionate as the Italians.” His face is flushed, his birthmark is blazing deep scarlet, as if the alcohol has lit a fire inside. “No. Wait a minute. A heart split into thousands of pieces. An ugly shattered mess.” He tips back another drink. “Watch out! This fractured heart can change in an instant because nothing holds it together. It can turn into a clod of dirt. A wild river. A manga figure.”

“And that's a heart?” she says.

“No,” he says, sticking out his lower lip, pretending to pout. “Too bad. There is no heart. Empty. Vacant. Nothing. It fills with water after each rain.”

“This is a very good meal,” says Renzo, the little muscles flinching along the line of his jaw.

A futile attempt at changing the subject, thinks Hanne. Was Jiro ever this drunk? There was that month when Jiro went to a karaoke bar every night after work. That one night, he drank so much whiskey, he ended up singing the Eagles'
Heartache Tonight
at least twenty times, hogging the microphone. The owner of the bar came out and barked at him to sit down and give someone else a goddamn turn.

Moto leans toward her until he is about seven centimeters from her face. His pupils are huge and he seems to be studying her face, as if he sees something that doesn't belong there. Or something he's never seen before. The moment stretches out until it becomes embarrassing. What? Is there food on her face?

She takes a napkin and wipes her chin.

“Moto marinated the salmon,” says Renzo. “Everything Moto makes is a marvel to me.”

“Noh is the purest expression of the Japanese soul,” says Moto, his eyes a little out of focus.

“Finally,” says Renzo. “Let's hear the sensei talk about something he knows.”

“You've probably never heard of the founder of Noh,” says Moto to Hanne. Then he turns to his brother. “Don't call me sensei. Zeami is the sensei. He figured out a way to produce the essence of Japan, Japan's heart, the deep reality of all things.”

“The deep reality of all things,” she says. “That's pretty vague.”

Renzo tells her Noh means the perfect art or accomplishment. “Usually the plays involve the main character returning in ghost form to revisit a significant event in his or her life—”

“I don't care about any of that,” says Moto, waving his hands in the air, as if clearing it of a stink.

Maybe she's had a lot to drink too, because she asks directly: “Is that why you can't perform anymore? You're no longer in touch with this so-called reality?”

“The stage is a place of shared mortality,” says Moto, ignoring her. “The superb Noh actor creates this space because theater is about the moment, an intense moment that's gone in an instant.”

“So you and your audience must live and die together?” says Hanne.

“Yes! A million times. You probably don't believe in life after death. Neither do I. But guess what? On stage, it happens.”

“Well, I guess I'll have to forgo a Noh play because I like being alive,” she says.

He puts down his glass and stares at her. “Do you? Do you?”

What does he mean by that?

“Noh demands a great deal from both the actor and the audience, more than any other art form,” he says, balancing a chopstick on the end of a finger. “To experience it fully, the audience must undergo a blossoming, an upheaval, a complete collapse of reality. That's what the good actor experiences on stage. But for a foreigner,” he says, shaking his head, letting the chopstick fall, “impossible. Someone like you will sit there baffled, muttering, what the hell is going on? Or fall asleep.” He pretends to snore, then looks directly at her. “Especially a woman.”