Translator Read Free Page B

joy into Jiro’s life. Or is he playing a lament to finally shutting the door on Aiko?
    She translates the line: The room seems to throb. But she makes a note to come back to this section because she’s not entirely satisfied with how it reads.
    After he finishes playing, he eats a quick breakfast and heads to his car. He’ll be early to rehearsal. When was the last time that happened? Perhaps Fumio will be there and they can practice together. Or Chikako, the flutist. Chikako, tall and lanky, with the sexy mole at the corner of her upper lip.
    Chopin’s lyrical precision winds its way into Hanne’s consciousness. For a moment she closes her eyes and listens. How can anything be so beautiful? This, she reminds herself, is what her translation should rise to. It must sing the human condition.
    She works steadily, carefully. Translation is an art, she’s said countless times, requiring all the skill of a writer and then some, because the story, written in one language, one as different as Japanese, must be made as meaningful in another language. It is no small undertaking: each human language maps the world differently. Each language fosters a different way of thinking. She’s always told herself that in between her paid translation projects, she’ll begin work on something of her own. In the past few years, she’s toyed with the idea of writing something about the ninth-century Japanese poet Ono no Komachi. At first she had thought she’d translate Komachi’s poems from Japanese to English, but too many people already have come before her: all her poems have been unearthed and translated. She is, in fact, relieved. What she really wants to write is a play. She is enamored not only of the written but also the spoken word, and a play, her play, will allow her to work in both forms. Besides, the spoken word affects her differently than the written. Days after seeing a play, lines from the performance still bounce around in her head. It’s as if her brain recorded the play and watches it again and again.
    Indeed Chikako is there. They talk. Jiro tells her what happened, and she displays the requisite amount of sympathy, assuring him he did the right thing. For years she watched her mother care for her grandmother and by the end of her life, her mother was bone tired. The prolonging of one life drastically depleted the other. Symphony rehearsal goes extremely well and Jiro is congratulated by his fellow violinists for mastering so quickly a difficult section.
    Then Kobayashi writes: Jiro wa isoide uchi e kaeri, toko ni tsuku. He hurries home and goes to bed. He is not fleeing or running away from anything. Jiro is not shirking responsibilities. He is weary from an eventful day. She translates it: He heads home and goes to bed.
    But then she stumbles: He weeps uncontrollably.
    Hanne looks up as if a stranger has just entered the room. Even in the darkest moments of caring for his wife, as her condition deteriorated, Jiro displayed the fine qualities of composure and restraint. It’s out of character. And it isn’t at all believable. After a long string of dismal months, he finally and most deservedly had an extraordinary day. Why cry now?
    For a solid year, ever since Aiko confined herself to the darkened house, limiting herself to the bed or the overstuffed armchair, occasionally shuffling through the house, he has shopped for groceries, picked up the dry-cleaning, cleaned, and, when he could, left the symphony early to cook dinner, though she rarely ate more than a couple of bites. Thank god they didn’t have children, thinks Hanne, or he’d have had to assume the child-rearing as well. Upon the advice of one of her doctors, who said she suffered from a weak kidney, Jiro spent money he didn’t have on a vacation to Hawaii, hoping a change of scenery might help. Her trip in the car was the result of three weeks of coaxing by her newest doctor—let her drive and