Translator

by Nina Schuyler

  “How are you feeling?” he says.

  On the yellow blouse that she wore last night, she sees a big stain near the collar. What is it? Soy sauce? Red wine? “Fine.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “With friends.” She pauses. “I met Kobayashi at the conference. There was a bit of a confrontation.” She tells him what happened.

  “What’s going to happen to your translation? Have you heard from the publisher?”

  She’s surprised that she hadn’t even thought about it. “I’m sure it’s all a big misunderstanding. Kobayashi was drunk. He misread a passage and since we were both at the conference, it was convenient to complain to me.” She stops herself from saying, and convenient to publicly humiliate me.

  She steps into the bathroom, takes off her blouse, and tries to scrub out the stain.

  “Some Japanese newspaper is probably going to write about it,” he says. “If Kobayashi hasn’t already spoken to your publisher, they’ll soon find out they have an unhappy author on their hands. This doesn’t sound good to me. Where are you again? Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine. Perfectly fine.” She tells him where she is. “I thought I’d meet this man, Moto. Judge for myself.”

  “Why? What does it matter?”

  “Moto is here and I want to see, to explore for myself what kind of man he is. Though I know what I’ll find, what I’m already finding. That he’s Jiro. The Jiro that I translated.”

  “Who’s Jiro? What are you talking about? Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “And I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not just a matter of pride, Tomas, it’s my work. It’s everything. It’s what I do. Who I am.”

  She hears Morsel scratching at the door.

  “Is it safe? I mean, is this man, Moto, safe?”

  The stain appears permanent. Since she has no other clothes, she will have to wear a stained blouse that is now wet. “Of course.” He’s also exasperating, she thinks, and intriguing and handsome, just as she knew he’d be.

  “I think you should head back to San Francisco and check in with your doctor.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Not just yet.”

  “This could jeopardize your health.”

  “It won’t. Besides, this won’t take long,” she says.

  Tomas sighs again. The wind picks up and the branches from a nearby boxwood whack the window. Outside, the sky is doing a changing-of-the-guard, with the last bit of murk leaving and now there is steel gray. He tells her he’s heard nothing from Brigitte. “I wish I’d never gotten that call about her being in the hospital. It’s agonizing to hear that and then nothing. But,” he says, “you know all about this.”

  Even before the long silence of six years, Hanne endured days of silence. On the weekends, she was off doing some sort of church-related thing. On the weekdays after school, Brigitte would return to the apartment and immediately head to her bedroom and shut the door. Hanne would set aside her work and stand outside Brigitte’s door, debating whether to knock. The couple of times she did, Brigitte was sitting on her bed, knees drawn up to her chest, arms folded. She said she was studying. But often there were no books in sight. The way she looked at Hanne, those sad eyes. Hanne could see Brigitte was trying to hold back the tears. She learned that if she asked Brigitte too many questions, her daughter said nothing; if she was quiet, her daughter might speak. A sort of game, Hanne thought. When Brigitte was little, they played actual games, crossword puzzles, Scrabble, dominoes, cards; and now it was playing a game that involved guessing all the rules. Hanne missed the days when Brigitte was little, always asking “Why?” Eyes shining with curiosity.

  She once overheard her teenage daughter tell someone on the phone, “This is where my mother lives. I don’t really live anywhere. I don’t have a real home anymore.”

  At dinner, Hanne said she expected more from Brigitte. That she’d given up far too easily. “If it doesn’t feel like a home, change it so it is.”

  “I haven’t given up. It’s just the way it is,” said Brigitte. “It’s the way it feels to me.” And she stretched out the word “feels” as if it were a foreign word that Hanne didn’t understand.

  Hanne let the implicit jab go. She suggested Brigitte try harder. “If you quit, you have only yourself to blame.”

  “That’s always your answer. What if I told you it’s not a home because Dad isn’t living here? How can I change that?”

  Now Hanne says to Tomas, “When she’s ready to call you, she will. That’s the way it works.”

  When she heads to the main house again, she sees the warm glow of a light on in the kitchen. Renzo is in the eating room, reading the newspaper. “Good morning,” he says, setting down the paper.

  “Good morning.”

  “I guess we all got carried away last night,” he says. “I apologize for Moto’s behavior.”

  “Oh, don’t. I enjoyed him. I really did. I’m usually the one who instigates the verbal sparring. It was nice to have someone else do it for a change.”

  He pours her coffee. “Well, you’re a rare one, then. Say, if you’re not in a rush to get back home, why don’t you stay a while? We’d love to have you.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden.”

  “You’re not a burden.” Since he’s retired, he loves having company and entertaining. What better way to spend one’s time? Over the years, because of Moto’s position, whenever Moto came to town, Renzo would host a dinner party. That’s why they had built the cottage—to house visitors.

  “It’s so kind of you,” she says. “Maybe a couple more days.” But she won’t stay on without paying him something.

  “You can stay as long as you like. And there’s no need for payment.”

  “It’s so beautiful here. I didn’t know Japan still retained some of its natural beauty.” She means it. She thought she could never live in the country, too slow, too boring, but this place reminds her of her childhood years in Switzerland, so much space saturated emerald green and burnt umber. The hills lined with pines and dense conifers. If she had had good years of childhood, it was in Switzerland, where she and her mother spent hours together. Her mother would wake up and ask “What should we do today?” Together they’d hike the hills and mountains, traveling through clouds of flower scents. Now Hanne says she might go for a walk. “Is Moto still sleeping?”

  Renzo smiles. “He’s a man who loves to dream. Nothing can wake him when he’s dreaming. He dreams even when he’s awake. When we were boys, after school we’d play for hours in this very back yard. He’d make up entirely different worlds.” A jungle, the moon, they scavenged for berries or fought off demons and ghosts. For hours, they were dogs, cheetahs, birds, warriors, never small boys with mud on their scraped knees, never something as ordinary as that. “I couldn’t come up with half of what he did.”

  “You mean he has an active imagination.”

  “No, I mean dream. You know how a dream can feel real, as real as reality. He has this way of making his dream real for you. It’s like entering another world.”

  She’s sure Renzo is exaggerating. He is enamored of his brother despite the strained interaction she saw last night. Regardless, Hanne never had that deep capacity for dreaming or imagining. The closest she came was setting out alone in the forests, listening to birds and trying to identify them from their songs and calls. Tomas wasn’t inclined that way either, but Brigitte spent hours inventing with her best friend, Maria. Maria, who moved from Russia and was placed in Brigitte’s third grade class. Maria and Brigitte. They looked alike with their black hair in braids and pale skin and bright red lips. Hanne heard them more than once whisper in their knot of intimacy that they could be twins. Separated at birth and thank goodness they found each other.

  Nearly every night, they called each other to decide what to wear to school. Brigitte insisted that Hanne buy her a pair of shiny black Mary Jane shoes just like Maria’s. Bright pink headbands pulled th
eir hair from their faces. They read the same books, watched the same movies, they refined the art of common interests. It reminded Hanne of the girl world that had remained closed to her growing up. She was happy for Brigitte, pleased she had gained entry. And she approved of Maria, who was articulate and looked you right in the eye when she spoke.

  After school, Maria came over and they did their homework together at the kitchen table. Then they’d spend hours in Brigitte’s room, in their tent, a card table covered with an old plaid blanket, and pretended to be characters from a book. Hanne bought Brigitte costumes—a green elf outfit, a pink tutu, a red boa, a big felt hat. Hanne overheard them talking about magic and spells and how to defeat an evil wizard who lived at the top of the mountain. “You have a wonderful mind,” she’d tell Brigitte later. And Brigitte would look at Hanne, puzzled. It just came naturally to her; there was no need to marvel.

  Hanne once heard Brigitte tell Maria that her father used to be in the circus. An expert trapeze artist who traveled to Russia and met Maria’s mother. “That’s how we are twins,” said Brigitte, “my father is also yours.”

  “You shouldn’t lie to your friends,” Hanne said later.

  “I was just pretending.”

  “It didn’t sound that way to me.”

  “Maybe you weren’t listening right,” said Brigitte, her voice soft.

  “If people can’t take you for your word, you’re not worth much.”

  After that, Brigitte closed her bedroom door and Hanne couldn’t hear a thing. She regrets that now. She wishes she had picked a different time, a different way to teach Brigitte about the power of words. How flimsy they can be, how indelible.

  Renzo is still talking about Moto. How those long afternoons spent in the back yard conjuring up different worlds were perfect preparation for his life as an actor. “To become anyone—a man, a woman, a young girl, a dying old man, a ghost.”

  “You think that helped him?”

  “I do. Absolutely.” Then he says “Except he can’t seem to do that now.”

  Late morning, when Moto still hasn’t woken, Hanne heads outside for a walk. Fog has rolled in, and it looks as if the sky has inverted and she’s among the clouds, unable to see anything but shadowy shapes. Even the sounds of cars, birds, the occasional barking dog are slightly distorted.

  She hopes by the time she returns to the house, Moto will have risen and be eating. Jiro rarely deviated from his ritual of white rice and a bowl of miso soup, with bits of tofu floating in it. Black coffee, the newspaper—sports page first, then the front page—and when his wife was still living with him, he’d kiss her on the cheek, a quick “See you soon,” before heading off to the symphony. What will Moto’s routine be?

  Indeed, Moto has risen, and he’s not alone. As Jiro found himself many mornings after his wife was gone, Hanne returns to find Moto sitting at the table with a sylph. Smooth-skinned, her long black hair coiled at her neck, she is demure in a way that seems purposely designed to seduce. Petite, she is caught between adolescence and womanhood, but to Hanne all the Japanese women look this way, even the so-called chubby ones.

  Moto introduces her to Midori, a fellow voice actor.

  Here, she thinks, is Moto’s Chikako. “A pleasure,” says Hanne, bowing slightly.

  Hanne feels Midori size her up as women do, a quick inventory of features, redeeming and otherwise, and then dismiss her.

  “Didn’t you do a commercial recently?” says Renzo.

  “Bubble bath,” she says, smiling proudly.

  Midori and Moto sit side by side, the young woman nearly nestled into his arm. Like a child seeking warmth or comfort from her daddy. She supposes every country has the phenomenon of a sugar daddy.

  Though Midori’s sugar daddy looks pretty worse for the wear. His face is puffy from last night’s drinking, and strands of his hair are floating out to the side, charged with static electricity, a salt-and-pepper dandelion puff.

  “Moto taught me everything I know about my voice,” she says, her tone flirtatious, her smile beamed on Moto. She wears a tight white top. She must be the owner of the white high heels in the front foyer. And maybe the green pantsuit in the guest cottage closet. The room smells of her jasmine perfume. Her only flaw is a slight droop of her lower lip, as if she’s contemplating a pout but can’t quite make up her mind.

  “How long have you known Moto?” says Hanne, taking a seat.

  “About five years,” she says.

  Well, that fits. Jiro had known Chikako for years. She imagines Kobayashi sitting right here, perhaps in her spot, watching, his blood pressure rising as he felt the making of a scene. Or was this the spark for the novel itself? These two, nuzzling and groping. And in his mind, he’s busy scribbling notes for his novel. Midori, meaning green, thinks Hanne, young to the world, fresh, a fresh start. Is Midori the reason for the marriage’s demise? The seductress, whose beauty and poise—the droop of the lip can easily be overlooked. Of course last night Moto wasn’t swept up in the moment dancing with Hanne; in his drunken stupor, he was pining for his lovely Midori, distraught that this lovely wasn’t the one in his arms.

  “I’m sure you were talented before you met Moto,” says Renzo, sitting at the head of the table.

  What is she? Twenty? Or slightly younger than Jiro’s paramour? Why isn’t she thrilled at finding another similarity between her Jiro and Moto? Certainly this reveals something about Moto’s character: that after his marriage, he is soon in the embrace of another. Because Moto, once the inventive boy inventing worlds in the back yard, has chosen such a fatigued narrative. Both Jiro and Moto using youth to plunge themselves back into life. At least Chikako was a talented musician with a promising career. This Midori seems a bit of a bimbo. Hanne stifles a sigh.

  Midori whispers something in his ear and she laughs, or rather giggles, covering her mouth.

  Moto puts his head in his hands. “Not so loud. My lousy head.”

  “Moto is the great Noh actor,” says Midori. “He’s had such great training with his voice, and I’ve had none.” And now she yields to her drooping lip and pouts. It’s a tremendous pout, the lower lip extended in such a way that she manages to convey sex appeal. Out of curiosity, Midori had recently gone to a Noh production by Moto’s old theater group. “Moto’s replacement is no good. Another ten or twenty years, then maybe. What can I do to get you back to the theater?”

  Hanne imagines a whole host of things. All of which involve her creamy, smooth skin.

  “When I’m ready,” says Moto, “I’ll be ready.”

  “Which says nothing,” says Renzo.

  “That’s right,” says Moto.

  Midori laughs.

  “I say a lot of things that amount to nothing,” says Moto.

  “You’re stubborn,” says Hanne.

  “No,” says Moto.

  “Though you can be,” says Midori.

  “I can be a lot of things,” says Moto.

  Hanne sits up. She’s heard that sentence before. Right after Chikako complained that her kitchen sink was leaking, and she’d have to call a plumber but didn’t have the money, and why did she have to deal with this now? Jiro said he’d fix it. In response to Chikako’s surprised “You can?” Jiro smiled, “I can be a lot of things.” After that, he grabbed her and kissed her cheek, her neck, and whispered that he loved her, as he slowly unbuttoned her dress.

  And, as she anticipated, Moto leans over and kisses Midori on the cheek. He places both hands on the table and, groaning and grimacing, heaves himself up, as if he were made of solid brick. “I’ve got to eat something,” he says. “Then I’m heading back to bed. See you all later.” He winks at Midori. A signal for her to join him?

  A moment later, Hanne hears the hiss and spit of eggs cooking in a frying pan.

  Midori laughs. “He’s in bad shape.”

  “You must be very pleased about this toothpaste opportunity,” says Renzo.

  Midori goes on, how this is likely to lead to many o
ther things, great things, ideally a movie, but she’d settle right now for an acting job on a TV drama. She’s auditioning for a couple. She’d love to be on the program “Long Vacation,” or “I Want to Be In Love.” She’d accept any role, anything—the wife whose husband is cheating on her, the woman who is sick with some terrible disease and will, by the end of the season, die.

  Hanne excuses herself, blaming it on jet lag, and says she needs to lie down.

  “Hey,” Moto calls out as she passes through the kitchen. “Aren’t you coming in here to help me cook breakfast?”

  “Looks like you’ve got it all under control.”

  “Here.” He hands her a glass. “Bloody Mary. It’s supposed to help.”

  “Thank you.” When’s the last time she had a drink in the morning? She takes a sip and hands it back to him.

  He smiles, crossing his arms in front of him. “Sorry. You’ll need to drink more than that.”

  “You’re a bad influence. Last night, and now this.” She hears herself. Is she flirting with him?

  He grins. “Good. I mean, I’m glad I’m a bad influence. I’m determined to make your visit memorable.”

  And is he flirting with her? But there is Midori calling for him. Hanne takes her drink, gives him a little wave, and heads out to the cottage. She sits at the bare desk and stares at the dog sleeping outside in the grass. So long ago, it seems, she was fretting over words, dry, dried up, drying. What she’s feeling is relatively new: that most of her life is behind her, no longer ahead of her. Unlike Midori, she doesn’t have a thousand options, a huge expanse of possibilities. It’s called getting older, she says to herself, and she doesn’t particularly like it.

  She has a vague sense that this feeling also has to do with her encounter with Kobayashi. It’s one thing to see his name on a piece of paper; it’s quite another to see him in the flesh. She can picture him now. His hunched, bony shoulders, his dark eyes, his frown, smell his whiskey breath, feel his fury. A human being who thinks she sabotaged his art. I am ashamed.