Translator

by Nina Schuyler

  An imperative. She tries to sit up, and when she can’t, attempts to understand why she’s on the floor. This is not where she should be. She knows that. What is she doing here? “She’s bleeding . . . hurt. A woman.” But nothing hurts. Liquid streams from her nose, down her cheek, pools into her ear. The circle of faces still above her. But she can’t right herself. The world is tilting. The man with sideburns is squatting beside her. What does he want? He’s saying something to her. Telling her something, his horrible breath assaulting her. Get back. She can’t get her mouth to shout, Move back! She hunts for that perfect moment again, the water, her children when they were young, Hiro, but it is gone.

  Chapter Three

  When Hanne first opened the door to the new apartment, Brigitte had stood there, glued to the carpet in the dimly lit hallway. Hanne stepped inside and opened the blinds. She liked this apartment, a space with so much light and so high up, as if she were living in a cloud. And it was convenient, within walking distance of Brigitte’s middle school. When Brigitte finally crossed the threshold, she wandered around and around, as if she was lost in an enormous department store and couldn’t find the exit. Boxes were everywhere, nothing unpacked, the furniture huddled in the center of the rooms, waiting to be assigned its rightful place. Brigitte’s footsteps echoed in the emptiness.

  On her fourth lap through the apartment, she stood in the living room, her face crestfallen, and gestured to the wall of window. “The people down there don’t even look real.”

  Hanne got to work, unpacking a box of books. Their old house had been snatched up the first week on the market. Though they weren’t legally separated, Hiro was firmly and happily ensconced in his new apartment, a bike ride away from Stanford. Tomas was away at college, and now Hanne and Brigitte must forge something else.

  “It feels like a hotel. And it’s cold here.” Wrapping her arms around herself, Brigitte said she missed their old house with its big green lawn, the porch swing where she liked to read, the old-fashioned stove, the garden in back, the banister staircase—

  “We have to make it a home,” said Hanne.

  Brigitte’s long black hair hung like two gloomy curtains on either side of her face. “It won’t ever feel right.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” said Hanne, thinking of all the places that as a girl she’d had to call home.

  “Why can’t I live with Dad?”

  Hanne could feel herself becoming impatient. Hiro had said he expected to be too busy with his research to have Brigitte live with him. He’d see Brigitte on weekends and every other Wednesday night for supper. He was on the verge of a major discovery, something that would shake the world of chemistry. For years he’d worked to reach this point.

  “And after I do that, you’ll fall in love with me again,” he said, half kidding, but his eyes looked tired.

  It wasn’t as simple as that. No explosive event, no hair-tearing affair or sudden falling off a cliff out of love, the end was more insidious. By the time Hanne noticed the huge gap between them, it had calcified into something other than a marriage.

  In the beginning, he worked all the time, a brilliant dreamer caught in the dream of a Nobel Prize. Wasn’t that what his professors whispered to him during graduate school? You’re on to something, Hiro. Keep at it. His research had something to do with protein degradation.

  She, too; she wasn’t so naïve as to assign all blame to him. She was caught up in her own dream. In this way, they were very much alike, driven, ambitious, pushing themselves. Before children came along, there was time at the end of the day to find each other again. But the practical took over, with carpools and cooking and cleaning and laundry and carpools and cooking and cleaning and laundry, and when she bothered to look up, he wasn’t there, or only half there, a mist of himself. From that distance, he lost his brilliant sheen for her; as did she for him, she supposes. The absentminded yes or no, trailing off into nothing, their sentences becoming as minimal as their marriage. It was no one’s fault; it was both their faults.

  “You know, your grandmother and your great-grandmother had to endure—” Hanne said to Brigitte.

  “I know. I know.”

  For months and months in Brigitte’s room, there was nothing but a bed and desk, not even a rug on the hardwood floor. She refused to hang anything on the walls. Her bedroom at the old house had contained bits and pieces of the world that, for some reason, caught her eye. On their hikes, Brigitte would pick up pinecones and bits of eggshells and branches shaped like letters, a K, a T, smooth rocks, a papery fragment of a wasp’s nest, a red cellophane candy wrapper. But Brigitte had thrown it all away when they moved and her room remained painfully bare. And her window was always partly open, so on cold days her room was freezing.

  So many times Hanne stood at the doorway of her cold bedroom, staring at the blankness, restraining herself from hanging something—anything on the walls. Or she’d wake on a Saturday, thinking she’d take Brigitte shopping. Let her pick out things—anything. But so many times she’d wake to find Brigitte gone. Out for a walk, she’d say when she returned late afternoon. She liked to walk the city to get a sense of things. Or she rode the bus to watch people or the sunrise at Ocean Beach. The light is different at the beach, Brigitte would say. She wanted to be able to look at the horizon, to feel the expanse of the world. They’d argue about it; a young girl out alone, you’re not safe, Hanne scolded. But it never did any good. Never stopped Brigitte.

  A year later on a warm Saturday afternoon, Hanne drove down to Stanford to deliver Hiro a box of his dusty books. She was hoping to have a serious talk about their marriage. Was there any chance at patching it back together? She missed him. He’d been the great love of her life. She kept turning to tell him something, consult with him, seek his counsel and was startled he wasn’t there. He knew her best. Hardest were the nights, to sleep without his steady, patient breathing. But there would be no talk. She found him dead on his kitchen floor. He’d been chopping an onion when he had a heart attack.

  “He never should have moved out,” cried Brigitte. “If he was living with us, we would have found him and saved him.”

  Who knew if that was true? When Hanne found him, the coroner said he’d been dead at least twelve hours.

  Brigitte had been struggling in school, and was soon failing nearly every subject. The news didn’t come from Brigitte, who had turned herself into a private world of one. The principal called. He recommended counseling or therapy. And how would Hanne pay for that? Hiro might have been brilliant at chemistry, but he was lousy with finances. And Hanne wasn’t much better. If Brigitte’s grades didn’t improve, the principal was afraid he’d have to expel her. Might drugs be involved? Had Hanne seen any signs?

  Signs? With Hiro gone, Hanne had taken on more work to pay the bills, including Tomas’s and Brigitte’s tuitions. She supposed Brigitte complained of being tired all the time. In the morning, it was hard to get her out of bed for school. When she finally did rise, she pulled on whatever clothes were lying on the floor. She rarely brushed her hair, and her skin took on a waxy look, probably from not being washed enough. But the signs Hanne saw were the dark pouches under her own eyes, the sag to her cheeks, her dull, lifeless skin. Working all the time, when she came home, she barely had enough energy to eat before she fell asleep. Only to wake up and do the whole thing over the next day. Driving to work one morning, Hanne fell asleep at the wheel, ran off the road and plunged into a ditch. Luckily she didn’t hit anyone. She escaped with only a cut to her forehead from the steering wheel.

  One afternoon she came home from work early to find music blaring, and Brigitte draped around an older boy. They were swaying in the living room, and Brigitte was wearing one of Hanne’s thin, strapless party dresses, a plunge in the front, revealing only the possibility of womanliness. In bare feet, her toenails painted blue, her not-yet-woman body was pressed against that young man, a sly look in his eye and a flare to his jaw. He looked sixteen, dressed in raggedy
blue jeans, his hair gelled and standing straight up, like an electric fence.

  Hanne watched him finger a curl in Brigitte’s hair, before sauntering out the door.

  It seemed it was only a couple months later, and there was another young man, this one slightly older, already a smoky creature. Hanne could see on his old jeans pocket the faded outline of a pack of cigarettes. That time Brigitte stormed out with him. She came back the next day, her clothes smelling of cigarette smoke and alcohol, a tattoo on her left arm of Munch’s Der Schrei Der Natur, The Scream of Nature.

  Brigitte stood there, hands on her hips. “Why are you looking at me like that? It’s all meaningless. I’ve heard you say that before. Don’t deny it.”

  Hanne saw another tattoo on the tender inside of her daughter’s wrist: I wonder why it hurts to live.

  With her grueling work schedule, Hanne could only do so much for her daughter. Hanne located a boarding school, the Dover Academy, in Connecticut. It specialized in languages and had a rigid discipline policy: no alcohol, no drugs, the administration conducted periodic room checks and random urine tests and provided counseling. Homework done on time, lights out by 10:00 p.m. It was the right thing for Hanne to do. Brigitte was very bright, but she needed help, much more than Hanne could give her, to guide her through this rough patch. Hanne used the money from the sale of Hiro’s apartment, took out a second mortgage, and paid the first year’s tuition. What she’d do after that, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She’d save her daughter somehow.

  To pay for the steep fees, Hanne took on more work. She landed a prominent job translating a new Japanese author. Her translation was highly praised, which led to more work. She taught ten Japanese language classes a week. She buried herself in work.

  Brigitte eventually settled in at the school, and Hanne didn’t receive any calls of complaints, no threats of expulsion. When Thanksgiving arrived, Brigitte said she wanted to go home with one of her new friends. Her friend lived an hour away.

  Hanne was pleased her daughter had so quickly made a friend. “Well, then Christmas,” said Hanne.

  When Christmas arrived, Brigitte said she wanted to stay for the winter interim session. Ice skating, skiing, and Mandarin. Hanne didn’t even have to pay. Brigitte had applied for a scholarship and got it. You’re considered a parent suffering from financial hardship, she told Hanne. Hanne sensed it would make no difference if she protested. Brigitte wasn’t coming home.

  Hanne flew to Connecticut for a visit in January, but school was in session, so she barely got to see Brigitte. And when she took Brigitte out to dinner, Brigitte invited two other girls to accompany her. Hanne’s questions were answered with one-word responses or silence. At dinner, the three girls ordered the most expensive thing on the menu—lobster—and spent the rest of the evening whispering and giggling to each other, as if Hanne did not exist. When Hanne touched her arm, Brigitte moved it away. At least Brigitte seemed happy otherwise, if not with her.

  During the summer, Brigitte told her she got a job at the summer camp at her school teaching basic Mandarin and Japanese. Later Hanne found out this wasn’t true. She worked in the cafeteria serving food and had acquired a boyfriend. Hanne eventually stopped asking Brigitte to come to San Francisco for her holidays.

  Then it seemed Brigitte was off to Dartmouth. Her third year, she took a leave of absence, supposedly to do volunteer work, building homes for Eastern Europeans. The next thing she heard, Brigitte had left the organization, dropped out of school, and joined some religious group.

  Brigitte made contact with Tomas and told him where she was. At the time, Brigitte hadn’t invoked her demand for confidentiality. That was to come later. After dragging the information out of Tomas, Hanne flew to France, then drove to Cologne, to an old monastery owned by a group sometimes called the Higher Beings, other times Higher Thought. Hanne came on the pretext of delivering boxes full of Brigitte’s things.

  “Brigitte doesn’t care about objects,” said a dumpy woman in a flowered dress who helped run the spiritual group. “They hold no meaning for her. Things,” the woman said, not bothering to conceal her disdain, “are not of any concern to her. Or to us.”

  As for seeing her daughter, that was impossible; Brigitte, who’d changed her name to Nivedita, was on retreat. For how long? Possibly years.

  Chapter Four

  “Ready for a little ride?” A different man, this one cleanly shaven, with breath of peppermint, crouches beside her.

  The question seems profound. A ride? To where? How to answer? Words are flying around in Hanne’s head. Iie, Nan desu ka? Abscheulich, wutend sein, informaste a los vecinos? Roto. La maleta esta cerrada y no la puedo abrir.

  A thick hand slides beneath her head, back, legs, something hard against her spine. It seems no answer is required, she is moving sideways, effortlessly, traveling fast, and now she’s sinking onto something downy soft. Thankfully, the circle of gawkers vanishes. Flat on her back, she stares at the ceiling, a world of white swirls, like cloud sculptures, no, not sculptures, not at all, a word, a word fixes upon her. She makes out the letter “H,” then “O,” “W,” slowly it comes to her. “However” written in puffy letters on the ceiling. What does it mean? But then the letters scatter and it’s again nothing but meaningless swirls of mist.

  “Hang on.”

  Another imperative, this one comes with a lilt and she relaxes into it. She’s moving, not sideways, but up, soaring above the ground, as if flying. But what if she falls again? Despite the new rush of panic, there’s nothing she can do about it. She’s tumbled into a place where she has no agency. She can’t move a muscle, trigger a nerve ending, or spark a synapse to make a decision and then carry it out. In this new place, everything just occurs. She’s certain something bad will happen; but hasn’t it already?

  Someone’s warm breath is near her ear. The scent of peppermint. Peppermint Man is nearby. A splash of cold air strikes her face, her lungs, the squeal of a car tire, shrieks, laughter, a man’s voice shouting something about broken. “A broken window!” Everything about her body seems to have departed, except her hearing, which has become excruciatingly acute. Noises are loud, deafening. She wants to press her hands to her ears, but she has no sense of her hands. Or her legs or feet or any part of her body. Where is her body? She can’t lift her head to see it. Though she still has thoughts—her hearing and her thinking remain, as if her mind has been severed from her body. If that’s the result of what’s happened (what has happened?), well, what good has her body been, anyway? A vessel intent on aging, demanding pills to quell anxiety and insomnia, pills to level out cholesterol and high blood pressure, eventually rushing to its demise. More liquid streams down her face.

  Hundreds of clouds overhead, the cold wind must have torn the sky apart. If she could move her mouth—Where? Doko? Donde? Wohin? A grinding, then another, a pause before she places it—rusty doors opening, the light is dimming, the gray disappears. White overhead. She stops moving. Bam, bam, two doors shutting, the outside world muffled. Her mind is working so slowly, as if each thought, each word must pass through a solid wall. She knows where she is, but can’t think of the word. Peppermint Man climbs in with her, smiling. A chipped front tooth. She hears someone else enter, huff, the sound of springs squeaking, the slam of a door. What is the name of the thing she’s in?

  A siren blares. Something bad has happened. To her! She remembers the circle of faces, the boy’s eyes, people ogling. The warm liquid on her face.

  Peppermint Man stands and pulls a dark blue blanket from the shelf. He wraps it around her, carefully tucking it around her shoulders, the sides of her, her feet. His skin is tan, the kind of tan young people wear, and he’s bare-armed, revealing strapping muscles. Probably a job requirement, along with the bright smile. “You doing all right?” he says.

  Okay, I think. She does not know if she said these words out loud.

  There’s an ease about him, about her situation. What is her situation? She’s
beginning to feel the first stirrings of a horrible headache right above her eyes. The bridge of her nose aches. Her eyelids feel heavy, her lower lip trembles and droops. He opens a cabinet, unwraps a cloth, and wipes her face. “Clean you up a bit. How about it?” His voice is low but riding alongside, that light inflection, as if none of this is truly happening—the blood on the cloth, a lot of blood. From her? When she closes her eyes, he grabs her forearm. “Oh, no you don’t. No sleeping on my watch.”

  He wraps a cloth sleeve around her arm and pumps it up. The red needle on the dial jags higher. Somewhere in her brain, she knows the name of the device he’s using, knows what he’s doing. The needle falls, stutters, falls again. He rips the sleeve off, writes something down, then snaps off the overhead light. “All done.”

  Indeed, something is done, and to the dull drone of the car—is it a car?—she sinks into murkiness, her eyelids hovering half-mast. That lullaby, she tries to conjure it up, the one her mother used to lull her to sleep, but just as it rises, other words swoop in: ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;/ All mimsy were the borogoves,/And the mome raths outgrabe. She memorized Jabberwocky when she was a girl and went around her small town—where did they live?—repeating it to the confusion of everyone. Calls from neighbors, “Has your daughter gone mad?” Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

  From somewhere far away, she hears someone talking. The tan man says something, but the words enter her brain like drips. “Why don’t you—” but she loses the rest. The place where they lived, she remembers old buildings, blackish green moss on white, bone-white, church bells chiming, a funny echo afterward. Switzerland. They lived in Switzerland. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!/Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun/ The frumious Bandersnatch!