Translator (8 page)

Looking straight at Hanne with hard angry eyes, as if daring her to do something, say something more, the woman spits her gum into a wrapper, clears her throat and begins to sing a song in perfect beautiful German. It's the lullaby her mother sang to her as a child. Hanne can still hear her mother's heels clicking across the wood floor as she came to Hanne's bedroom to tuck her in, smooth down the white quilt, and sing to her. It was the moment Hanne waited for all day. It didn't happen often, her mother too busy. But when it did, her mother's face came so close, wisps of her blond hair tickling Hanne's face, her red-wine breath, her voice, magically beautiful, singing,
Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf. Der Vater Hut't die Schaf. Die Mutter schuttelt's Baumelein, Da fallt herab ein Traumelein. Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf!
Sleep, baby, sleep. Your father tends the sheep. Your mother shakes the branches small, Lovely dreams in showers fall. Sleep, baby, sleep.

Hanne only remembers that verse, and perhaps that was all there was. The song and the presence of her mother swiftly delivered her into the arms of Morpheus, where she was held in the loveliest dreams. For a moment, Hanne closes her eyes, letting the song spill over her. When she opens them, she hardly knows where she is. But this girl—this young woman, with her black hair, her brown eyes faintly slanted, her big feet, reminds Hanne of her daughter. Brigitte, as a teenager.

Hanne tries to make the woman stop, but she keeps singing, her voice flatter, angrier. German, one of Brigitte's first languages. She spoke it with a perfect accent.

When the girl finishes singing, she says, “Here you go, lady.” And as she gives Hanne the balloons, their hands briefly touch. “See ya,” she says, baring her teeth, a streak of red lipstick marring her front tooth. The sarcasm lingers in the air, like a bad smell.

Hanne watches the girl saunter toward the elevator, hips swaying like a pendulum, not bothering to turn around. The farther she walks, the jerkier her gait becomes, as if she's having trouble negotiating high heels on the nubby carpet. Before Hanne can decide what else to do, she is gone. Hanne stands there, nothing in focus, the hallway rug a smear of slate blue. In her mind, she repeats the girl's phrase like an incantation, with the same accent, the same guttural growl, “See ya.”

She looks over at the balloons in her hand and sees a small card attached to the one of the ribbons. Slowly she closes the door, locks it, and opens the card.

Welcome home! Glad you're out of the hospital. Love, Tomas, Anne, Sasha and Irene.

Hanne stands in the front hallway of her apartment and watches her hand release the balloons. They drift up, hit the ceiling, bounce off, then up again, where they stay glued. She slowly makes her way into the living room, as if tangled in a dream.

The wall that is all windows casts the day's light across a large open space, with maple wood floors, a white sofa, two white chairs, and a glass coffee table. Nowhere is there clutter, nothing extra, everything open, bare, pared down. A spaciousness that allows room to think, that was the intention behind the design. She can see it that way, but also another way. It looks uninhabited, an empty room staged with just enough furniture to persuade a prospective buyer to make the purchase. Who lives here?

She stands so close to the big window that her breath fogs a small circle. A handful of miniature people on the sidewalk, someone walking a small skittish dog. Cars and a yellow taxi zoom by. Six hundred souls live on this block, eating, shitting, sleeping, making love, and somewhere in this city a new soul is arriving, another departing. She leans her forehead on the cold glass, humming the German lullaby underneath her breath, wordlessly, until she catches herself doing so and makes herself stop.

Two more days go by and her loneliness has taken on sharp edges. Every sound—the floor creaking, a door closing, laughter drifting up from the street—seems loud and mocking. She waits a day, then breaks down and calls Tomas. She asks if he'd do her a big favor and phone David for her.

“Of course, Mom. How are you?”

“Better.”

“Good. You sound good. Got the balloons?”

“Yes, thank you. And her German was perfect.”

“Glad to hear it worked out.”

Tomas puts her on hold and dials David. She looks down at her nightgown. Lunch time and she still hasn't dressed. Tomas comes back on the line. “He wasn't there. I left him a message to call you.”

A chill runs through her along with a vision of her future—more of the same bleak silence. But she won't perish from that.

“Is there anyone else I can call?”

She asks him to call the publisher and find out what's happening with the translation. He calls her back ten minutes later. Kobayashi hasn't gotten back to the publisher. They aren't sure what's going on.

“Do you want me to fly out again?” he says.

She can hear a hint of reluctance in his voice. “I'm fine. I've got plenty to do.” An entire closet of old clothes to sort through. She'll start her spring cleaning early.

The next day, when the unbearable silence bears down on her, when the highlight of her day is riding the elevator to the lobby to check her mailbox, which is empty, when David sends an e-mail apologizing, he's been stuck at home with two sick kids and now he's come down with something, she calls the Japanese Ministry of Culture. She knows it's short notice, but if it's at all possible, if they still have room, she'd like to be on their panel of speakers for the conference she'd turned down earlier. Her schedule now allows it. “It sounds so interesting,” she says, hoping her tone isn't too eager.

“One moment please,” says the woman on the phone.

Hanne refrains from pleading.

The woman says, in fact, they just had a cancellation. One of the speakers has a family emergency in London. Hanne has to stop herself from shouting with delight. The Ministry will secure her airfare, accommodations, and meals, as well as an honorarium.

“The Ministry is quite honored to have you attend,” she says. “We are so happy.”

“I'm so happy,” says Hanne, reveling in the sound of her own voice. She asks about the weather and nearby restaurants within walking distance of the hotel. And shopping. What boutiques and specialty shops would she recommend? “I'm so looking forward to this.”

“You are located in a very exciting area of Tokyo.”

“Oh? Tell me.” She just wants the woman to keep talking.

The woman rattles off some names, then says she'll send a packet of information in the mail.

“Wonderful,” says Hanne, gobbling up everything the woman says. She keeps the woman on the phone a bit longer, asking how many attendees will be at the conference, from what countries, and a sample of the topics that will be discussed. Finally the woman apologies, but says she must go. A million things to attend to before the conference.

“Of course. Can you tell me if Mr. Yukio Kobayashi will be there?”

“He will, indeed.”

“Good. Wonderful.”

She looks forward to meeting him. Though he grumbled about the early chapters, after he reads the entire manuscript, he'll see she worked hard and gave him a beautiful translation, virtually guaranteeing him an English audience for his novel and all his future work. She imagines him asking her how she did it. What's her secret? Maybe he'll take her out for a celebratory drink or dinner. He'll set his glass down and wait. She'll tell him she's never understood a character as well as she did Jiro. It was uncanny. The longer she read, the more Jiro seemed to stand in her presence and speak to her directly. When she finished, she felt she had an intimate recognition of him. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. Like an old married couple. She's certain he'll request her to translate his next book. When a writer finds a translator who understands his work, it's like finding gold. And after all she's been through, she'd welcome the praise.

“I strongly advise against it,” says her doctor. The Japanese medical student is on another line, interpreting. “If something happens to you, you're at the mercy of the Japanese medical system. It's not bad, but I won't be there to help you.”

As she circles through the rooms of her apartment, her legs restless, she says she appreciates his candor, but she's sure she'll be fine.

“I can't say how it will or won't affect your condition. I just don't know. You could be taking a huge risk, but then again, it might be fine.”

That's how she sees it too. How different is that from staying put? She loops twice around the living room.

“Let me be clear: I'm not giving my consent. But I can't stop you.”

Her son is not so wishy-washy. “Don't go.”

She pulls her suitcase from under the bed. “I'm an adult—”

“That's not what I mean. You don't have your languages back, which means something is still not right.”

She doesn't want to bother him with her money concerns. “I'm looking forward to this trip. I haven't been there in years.”

“I'll visit again. We'll take a trip together. Napa. We'll go drink wine.”

He doesn't have time, she knows. “No, you're busy.”

When she stares at her clothes hanging in the closet, her gaze lands on the boxes pushed to the far back corner, boxes of Brigitte's things. In one is a teddy bear with a loose felt eye. And a sweater she knitted for Brigitte, soft pink with milky white buttons. Brigitte picked out the yarn, and it took Hanne months to finish, unraveling row after row, knitting it again to make it perfect. She can still see Brigitte heading to kindergarten in that sweater buttoned to her neck. Her kindergarten teacher. What was her name? Mrs. Lapensko? Lapensker? A horrible woman. Hanne had fretted that Brigitte would be too bored. What would she do when the others were stumbling over the alphabet? Slowly spitting out the simplest of words? Brigitte already knew how to read—and not just in English. Hanne wanted Brigitte to skip a grade, but the school advised her to wait and see.

Not long into the school year, Brigitte's kindergarten teacher called Hanne and asked her to come in for a parent conference.

Hiro couldn't make it, she can't remember why, so Hanne showed up the next morning. Bright gold stars made out of construction paper decorated one entire wall. The letters of the alphabet were stapled around the perimeter, along with the numbers, 1 to 10, and self-portraits done with tempera paint hung above the blackboard. As Hanne took a seat across from the teacher's desk, she tried to spot Brigitte's.

The teacher said Brigitte was clearly bright, but too easily distracted; and during individual study times, she had trouble focusing. And she was always interrupting her classmates.

That was it? Hanne was relieved. “She's bored.”

The teacher was probably in her mid-fifties and couldn't curb her sing-song voice intended to motivate, discipline, and guide five- and six-year-olds. She'd dyed her shoulder-length hair dark earthy brown, but near the temples the gray refused to be stamped out. “May I ask, are there problems at home?”

In an even tone, Hanne said that Brigitte had a stable, happy household with a loving father and mother. Who was this woman to pry? What gave her the right?

The teacher opened her mouth, as if she were about to ask another question. When she finally spoke, she said Brigitte never raised her hand. “It's strange. I know she knows the right answer. Maybe she's shy or she's afraid she'll say the wrong answer. Or maybe no one at home listens to her, so she thinks why bother.”

What a thing to say!

“But that's not the biggest problem.”

At least once a day, Brigitte wept—a girl who refused to sit beside her or play with her at recess; a toy she wanted, but was too late to retrieve from the box; a reprimand not to talk while the teacher was talking. Any failure went terribly deep, too deep. She falls apart. “I was hoping I could enlist your help.”

“Once a day? Really?” Hanne couldn't keep the surprise and alarm from her voice. In the early weeks of school, Brigitte had cried in the car on the way home. Something about a girl who didn't want to play with her at recess. Hanne had a long talk with Brigitte, how, of course, these things hurt, but tomorrow was a different day, and she could make it better. Brigitte should find someone else to play with. “Don't bother with this girl who refuses your company,” Hanne told Brigitte. “She doesn't sound like a very nice girl.” How could she put this delicately? “Some girls are not worth the trouble.” Brigitte nodded and dried her tears, and after that, Hanne never heard another word about it. Or any of the other things the teacher had mentioned.

Hanne finally spotted Brigitte's self-portrait. She'd painted herself wearing her pink sweater and a big red bow in her hair. A huge face but with a tiny body, as if the latter were an afterthought, squeezed in at the request of a teacher. Her eyes were slanted lines, her mouth wavy, not a smile, but not quite a frown either. To Hanne she looked hesitant to join the fracas of accompanying faces, her so-called peers.

At home, the teacher advised, Hanne shouldn't reward this infantile behavior. When Brigitte cried, Hanne should minimize the event. “Or don't even acknowledge her. Ignore her, the crying jags. The tantrums. Just go about your business as if nothing is happening. She will learn that this kind of behavior is not rewarded.”

“I don't reward that kind of behavior,” said Hanne, not restraining the fury in her voice. “Did you know my daughter speaks four languages? She comes from a very intelligent, hard-working household. At home, she basks in so much attention, and she never cries. She's happy. You've never seen a happier child.”

Surely the woman was exaggerating about crying bouts once a day. And if Brigitte occasionally broke down and cried, it had to be out of boredom.

The teacher sighed. “I've been teaching kindergarten for sixteen years. I've seen a lot of children.”