She bought it twelve years ago, after her husband moved out of their two-story house and down to Stanford. For convenience, they told each other, but Hanne worried it was more than that. It’s a big apartment, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a study, with plenty of space for her and Brigitte, who was thirteen at the time, and for Tomas when he visited from college.
She offers him a glass of white wine.
He opens his eyes wide in mock surprise. “In the afternoon, my love?”
She leads the way into the bedroom. A man slightly older than her, he knows how to make love to a woman; a man who is receptive and who also initiates, a man who knows what she wants. And if he doesn’t, if for some reason Hanne feels more blunt and fiery, as she does this afternoon, they have enough history that she can tell him.
“You have confined yourself for too long,” he says, stroking her bare thigh and kissing her all over again. “And I’m the lucky beneficiary.”
She smiles. He wasn’t the sole beneficiary. In her imagination, she made love to Jiro. She didn’t intentionally invite him into the bedroom, but if he insisted on a second time, she wouldn’t say no. Of course she knows he’s a character in a book. Still she marvels at how real he’s become for her. Her loyal companion.
“Can you stay for an early supper?” she says.
The usual sigh. The oldest must be picked up from school and then driven to ballet. The youngest needs help with a project for school. “Another time?”
“Yes.”
He’s a good father, attentive, present in their lives. She’d like to see more of him, but she won’t put any demands on him. Not if it takes away from being a father to his children.
In her study, she begins to clean. Into the recycling go her tall towers of paper—the first draft of the translation of Kobayashi’s novel, handwritten on lined paper. The second draft, done on the computer. The third, done to smooth out the transitions and choppy sentences that clunk. The fourth, to fiddle some more with the difficult passages. The tall towers of paper, like a city unto itself, are gone, as if a tornado had swept in and now a wide stretch of polished oak blinks at her, waiting. As always, she keeps the final draft, setting it on the floor beside her desk. Though, really, the story is so tightly woven into her being, she doesn’t need to look at it to remember it. She runs her hands over the desk’s smooth empty surface. She has found no other way to be in the world, only the movement of words from one language to another. She knows most people don’t even think about translation, and when they bother to, they don’t assign it much value: a mechanical process, substituting one word for another, a monkey could do it; worse, a computer. She’s tired of defending it, of explaining that even though she’s tethered to an already-assembled drama, her role is akin to being an author.
Well, now she’s ready to make her own drama. She pulls out her notes on Ono no Komachi. During Japan’s Heian era, 794–1185, in the aristocratic culture of the Heian court, art stood center stage. An unusual time made more so because women, not men, were considered the masters of poetry. Every significant experience was accompanied by a poem, and Ono no Komachi, who lived in the palace in the capital city of Heian-kyo—present-day Kyoto, was one of the best, writing magnificently about love and the transient nature of life, sending poetic jewels to her lovers to coax, excite, or cool passion.
She has no interest in delving into Komachi’s august years. Besides, someone has already done that. She found a Noh play written about the poet. A Buddhist priest takes his young poetry students to a rural area to visit an old woman who is thought to know the secret art of poetry. In this play, Komachi is an old hag, hiding her face under a straw hat. Eventually she reveals that she was once the famous poet who resided behind the imperial palace walls. The final act is the night of Tanabata, the festival celebrating love and poetry. One of the priest’s students performs a ritual dance. Touched by the event, Komachi, in her feeble state, rises and begins to dance on stage.
Her play will be about romance and sexual intrigue. There will be five acts, and it will open at a teahouse. A magnificent old teahouse within walking distance of the imperial palace. She picks up her pen and writes: low-ceilinged, nestled among bamboo, the low tables, tatami mats, the thick green broth, matcha, in a cup so big it must be held with both hands. She is opening with a scene in which Ono no Komachi sends away one lover so as to begin the seduction of another. During the tea ceremony, she slips a poem beneath the new man’s cup. Like ripples in the water, I want to caress you.
She looks at what she’s written so far, but tells herself not to judge it. It’s not fair to face inspection so soon. Just enjoy this making of something from nothing; this soaking in words; this remaking of the world. But she can feel a part of her assess what she’s done and call it not bad. Not bad at all.
Of course it can’t be all romance, sex, and seduction. Someone must get hurt and it will be Ono no Komachi. Looming is her great fall. The final act will be her expulsion from the court. No one ever learned why, exactly, she was thrown out, so Hanne will have to make it up. Literary license.
Something shatters outside. She looks up. Her gaze lands on her blackboard. It’s still jam-packed with Japanese sentences from Kobayashi’s novel. She grabs an eraser and begins to wipe it clean, chalk dust floating in the air, making her cough. She’s about to erase the last bit of it, but stops. That line that bothered her, she fretted over it, rewrote and rewrote. What you once loved lies there, inert, sucked of all its juices because you forgot it.
She stares at the sentences. It was supposedly Jiro’s interior monologue, lamenting that he had sent his wife away, and, as Hanne saw it, chastising himself far too harshly. She didn’t want to include it. Haven’t you gone through enough, dear Jiro? But it stayed in the novel as it was, despite her personal objections.
The next day, Hanne has been working all morning, but the play is going nowhere. She can’t seem to enter the mindset of a twenty-year-old beauty. There are festivals, ceremonies, parties with their gossip, and a new lover who secretly slipped a poem into Komachi’s obi. And now she must compose the right response. Should she further ignite his passion? Prolong the courtship? Or snub him outright? Hanne yawns. Really, she doesn’t care what Komachi decides. It’s just frivolous escapism. She pushes aside her notebook and opens a book of Komachi’s poetry.
Hana no iro faturi ni keri na itadura ni
Hanne translates: Color of the flower has already faded away.
Or she could translate it: Cherry blossoms pale after long rain.
Or, The flowers withered/ Their color faded away.
Or, Flowers fading. In the long rain of regret.
She moves on to the next verse, then the next. When she sets her notebook aside, she glances at the final version of the Kobayashi translation. She wishes she had just received it and was only now beginning. She opens it to a random page: Aiko liked to soak in the tub for hours. Jiro told her he sometimes stood at the door and listened. When she stirred, he could hear the water slosh against the porcelain, and it reminded him of their sunny days by the sea. He went on, describing the lull of the waves, the heat of the white sand, and how she said the sun warmed her cold bones. What he didn’t say is that he’d been listening with a certain rising panic, waiting for the water to splash so he knew she was still among the living.
What a good man, Jiro, thinks Hanne. And how exhausting, those hours of vigilance, attentiveness, and care. She sighs. There’s nothing more to be done. Kobayashi is probably reading it right now. It’s only a matter of time before he signs off and the book is published. She sighs again. She’s in that amorphous in-between time, in between major projects. Yes, she wanted to write her own drama, but her original vision isn’t right. Maybe a walk will stir up a new story.
Hanne grabs her heavy coat and a scarf. Outside, she’s assaulted by noise—screeches, horns, engines, sirens—and people and taxis and cars and more people. Forms whiz by. All morning she’s been in an isolation tank with sca
nt sensory stimulation—and now a barrage. Suddenly a loud, prolonged sound of the emergency warning system test for earthquakes charges the air—which means it is Tuesday noon.
She’s never out at this hour. On the days she teaches Japanese, she’s in the classroom. On the days she doesn’t teach, she rises early and goes for a long walk, then hurries home and gets to work. As she heads down the sidewalk, Hanne sees herself, a woman in a blue swing coat, her eyes watering, the rims pinkish red from the constant cold wind. In the distance is the white dome of City Hall. She didn’t intend to head this way, the opposite direction of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it’s been years since she’s been inside, where she and Hiro were married. A civil ceremony, one is conducted every half hour. It wasn’t the least bit romantic, but it was cheap and quick, and they didn’t need anything more because they dwelled in a bubble of passion.
They met during her last semester of graduate school at Columbia. She was studying at the library, and at some point she looked up and saw a Japanese man sitting across from her, the desk light dancing in his thick glasses. His round face, the stubble encircling his soft, gentle lips. His eyes were playful, full of delight. He dressed well, with a blue-and-white striped suit coat, a white shirt, and no tie. That first electric charge when their hands brushed, reaching for the same book, the title of which she can’t recall. “Sumimasen,” he said. She told him in his language that she, too, was sorry, but not that sorry. It was completely out of character, and she was about to apologize again, earnestly, but his face lit up with the most glorious smile, a smile just for her.
He was a chemist, in the United States on a full scholarship. He also spoke fluent French and loved Japanese literature and poetry.
“I can help you with your Japanese,” he said, reaching over and touching her hair. That first gesture, so full of impulsive desire.
They ended up at a hotel that first night. But he wasn’t wealthy and neither was she, and they both had dorm rooms and roommates, so their spot became the library basement, beneath the stairwell, a hidden storage room. No sign on the door, the room was musty and stuffed with discarded old chairs and tables covered in white sheets. At the level of the sidewalk, a dirty window let in murky light. They could hear footsteps above them and muffled voices, as if the world existed above their heads and they’d sunk, with all the other forgotten things, underwater.
Though the door locked from the inside, they couldn’t be sure no one possessed a key, so they rarely exchanged words, rarely made a sound. There was that, the thrill of possibly getting caught. But also him, his hunger for her, the way he tasted her. And more surprising, her hunger for him. She didn’t know she had that inside, a consuming craving that once sated needed only moments to reignite. As the hour of their meeting approached, her entire body quivered with anticipation, as if every cell yearned for his body.
Two lives, for months she led two lives, a studious, driven student, and in the dingy storage room, stretched out on the table, his hands and mouth electrifying her, she became something she’d never been before.
Those early months of the courtship, he fervently pursued her, writing her a steady stream of haiku. She’d reach into her drawer and find one. Or open the refrigerator or a cupboard. Once she found one in her shoe. For the longest time, she carried one in her purse, Water in the brook/No chill in the soft spring air/ Time to wet our feet, along with a pair of his thin black socks. She loved him, and even if that love eventually faded, it never disappeared completely. Brigitte was wrong when she accused Hanne of never loving him, not loving anyone.
Now she climbs the stairs to the second floor, where they were married. It’s as she remembered. Sunlight streams in through the large windows, onto the white marble floors, and the light bounces up, illuminating the white walls and ceiling. If such a thing as heaven exists, she thinks it should be like this–so light, so airy, except for the muffled sound of a man shouting, bringing her quickly back to earth. She opens a big wooden door and there he is, a short, squat man shaped like a bowling ball, bellowing into a microphone. Though she’d prefer a quieter place, rows of wooden pews are nearly empty, inviting her to rest her sore feet.
In the front of the room, eleven men and women sit in a half circle, each with his or her own microphone, waiting for the squat man to end his tirade. City officials of some kind. She doesn’t follow local politics, nor does she intend to now. She has a bench to herself, she’s only one of a handful of people in the audience. Three appear homeless, with reddened, weathered skin, torn clothing, and rumpled bags of belongings beside them. One is stretched out on the bench, sleeping, his boots unlaced, his socks covered in dirt. Another sits, his chin on his chest, eyes closed. He could be twenty, he could be sixty.
Within minutes she picks up the thrust of the man’s argument. He’s engaged in a debate about whether to pass a resolution urging the city to condemn the actions of Norway, which killed four whales, despite a global moratorium and protests. Apparently, the outer fat of the minke whale is a delicacy in Japan, where it is eaten raw.
It seems there’s no getting away from Japan, and it’s a short leap in her mind from Japan to Jiro. He liked to imagine what music would go best with whatever was going on. She remembers him saying Every situation, every person has a melody playing, even if you can’t hear it.
“If we pass this, we’re jeopardizing our city’s reputation of tolerance,” says a pock-faced official.
“If we sit here and do nothing, we are condoning it,” argues another. “Each member of the Board of Supervisors knows we are a city that takes a stand. And this is an easy one: we are not a city that supports killing whales.”
She closes her eyes. It isn’t long before the city officials become nothing but voices, voices that have vacated their mortal bodies and now swirl in the ether. On and on about the resolution, dead whales, live whales, dollars lost, dollars gained. She no longer feels her body with its aching legs and a thudding heart from the climb up the stairs. She is just a disembodied and blissfully emptied mind. Suspended in this slumberous state, she lets herself enjoy a voice that must have roots in England with its soft “ah,” and rich vocabulary; to hear “labile” in a public forum, who would have thought!
Something tickles her hand. She opens her eyes. A young woman in a pin-striped suit is handing her an agenda. They are only on item two and there are twenty-four items on the list. Street repair, menu labeling at chain restaurants, road closures, a resolution urging people not to buy eggs produced by caged hens. Everything must be debated, dissected, interpreted.
She buttons her coat and steps into the hallway, where a throng of people, a hundred or more, have gathered, and they all seem to be heading in the same direction as she, toward the marble staircase down to the lobby. Where did all these people come from? There’s no defining characteristic—young, old, she hears Mandarin, English, Cantonese, French, Thai, and someone with an Australian accent—perhaps a tour of the building? Or another meeting just adjourned? She’s never liked crowds and considers waiting for the great mass to descend ahead of her. But she’s had enough and wants to head home. Perhaps now she’ll find some spark in her young Komachi.
She enters the flock. People are ahead of her, beside her, behind her, pressing in, the space between her and another almost nonexistent. The crowd is dense, streaming along, taking her with it. She feels claustrophobic, the air is suffocating and hot, the same air everyone else is breathing, inhaling, exhaling. If she could, she’d back up and remove herself from this mob. She remembers that Jiro hated crowds, too. It was one reason he didn’t visit his wife in the hospital as often as he planned; it took four different subways, all of them jammed with people. And now that line that bothered her comes back. What you once loved lies there, inert, sucked of all its juices because you forgot it. He didn’t forget her. That wasn’t it at all, despite what his lack of visiting and new love affair might have indicated. How could Kobayashi have written that? It seems an instance, one among many,
in which the author didn’t really know his character. Authorial intrusion, she thinks it’s called. She’s imagining Jiro jammed in one of the Japanese subways, bodies pressed against him, elbows digging into his ribs, as she takes another step down the stairs, but her foot finds no purchase. Only air.
And now she is falling. A young woman turns, her eyes wide, mouth open, “Oh!” someone cries out, and the sound echoes off the walls. A pink shirt flits by, a shiny black purse, other heads turn, a pair of brown sandals, gray gum stuck on a stair, Catch yourself, one arm in front of her, her hand, she recognizes her long fingers. It’s the only thing in front of her, how can that be? And people parting like the Red Sea, clearing the way for her to crash cleanly and fully. Yes, let the middle-aged fall. It’s her hand that breaks the fall, and her forehead, as it slams into the white marble edge of a step.
Could this be it? Surrounded by gawking strangers, her corpse at the bottom of public stairs on public display? Her life doesn’t pass in front of her, instead, she’s firmly grounded in this moment, the shrieking, shouting, the hardness of the marble steps smashing into her arms, her hips, her nose, the taste of blood—she’s still tethered to this life—and now she recalls a warm summer afternoon in the community pool, Hiro looking at her, smiling, as if he’d never seen anything so beautiful, with both children clinging to her shapely mother body, still heavy from pregnancy, her son’s arms wrapped around her neck, and she’s breathing his sugary breath, and her infant daughter in her arms, babbling something softly, patting the water, smiling at Hanne, her big toothless grin. A perfect moment. She wishes she could stay in this memory forever.
Hanne is stretched out on her back. Faces hover in a circle above her. A boy with big blue eyes. A woman whose front teeth rest on her lower lip. An old Chinese woman wearing all gray, her face expressionless, as if she’s seen this before, and much worse. Suddenly a man’s face zooms toward her. Beads of sweat on his upper lip. Dark sideburns. Dark nose hairs. His eyes are close-set, unnervingly so. “Don’t move,” he says, his breath reeking of garlic and cigarette smoke.
Translator Page 3
