Suki Kim - The Interpreter

“She wasn’t there. She’s gone off to get married, supposedly.”

“And you don’t believe that anyone would want to marry her?” Jen is being cynical. It is a sign that something is definitely wrong.

“I don’t know what I believe. I haven’t seen her in five years. More like ten, if you count those years she was at Smith and I… took off. Ten years, then—I guess people must change a lot, no?” Opening the lid, Suzy blows on the coffee once before taking a sip. The hot liquid trickles down her throat, warming the inside. The park is a good place at this time of the day. The late-autumn sun is setting.

“Have we changed in ten years? Am I different now than I was in college?” Jen asks without taking her eyes off the pigeons.

“No, I guess not, because you still can’t hide anything. What’s the matter?”

“Is it that obvious?” Jen gives up pretending. “Nothing too serious. Just a job thing.” Jen smiles, trying to appear nonchalant. Suzy remains quiet. This job means a lot to Jen. Suzy knows from having worked there herself, although for just a few months.

“There have been reports about me. The insider report, because only the insider could know the stuff, even though they’re a bunch of silly lies really. How I purposefully leaked the Baryshinikov feature to the Sunday Times . How I’ve been assigning articles to one particular writer since his wild book party last April. How I’ve been ripping off the story ideas from freelancers. They all sound just absurd enough to get me weird looks. I don’t know who’s making these up, but I don’t like it. It makes me feel… trapped.” Jen pauses, taking a sip of her coffee. “I mean, the magazine world isn’t innocent. Editors fuck writers, and writers fuck their subjects. That’s the way mass journalism works. But these rumors about me, I’m not sure. Actual e-mails were sent to the editor-in-chief’s private address, although no one knows from whom. At least that’s what I was told by my assistant, who’s up on office gossip. Who knows, maybe everyone knows who it is and is not telling me. Maybe no one’s telling me the truth. Sure, someone could be jealous, someone could want me out.” Jen turns to Suzy with a tight smile. “But I’m no longer sure who’s on my side.”

Whose side is she on?

When Mr. Lee testified that her parents’ death was not random, that someone must have had a reason to plan and execute the killing, she did not doubt him. When he claimed that half the Korean community didn’t mourn their deaths, it did not surprise her. When he swore that her father had had it coming to him, she did not defend her father. Instead, she sought out Kim Yong Su, as if to confirm her suspicion.

“Funny how life turned out much simpler than it promised to be in college,” says Jen, smoothing the wrinkled end of the white silk scarf which wraps around her neck a few times to drape down to her lap. It is a dramatic sort of look, not quite Jen’s style. Suzy wonders if that is why she suddenly noticed Jen’s beauty, not because of the scarf itself, but because of such a subtle change, which seems no longer so subtle. “It was never about Faulkner or Joyce or even Derrida or whatever they jammed into our brains for four years. What a superb con job, feeding us a fantasy for our hundred thousand dollars’ tuition! Literature and semantics don’t make us cry. It all comes down to such basic fights, like holding on to a job despite an infantile enemy, sucking up to the editor-in-chief for a higher profile. The survival has nothing to do with your brain. It’s about who has the thicker skin. It’s about shedding all the ethics and righteousness that we learned in college. It’s about the resilience of your needs and fulfilling them even if it costs all your moral conviction.

“You might’ve been smarter after all, Suzy. To cut out when you did, when you followed your asshole Damian to the ends of the earth. At least you stuck to your heart. You did what you wanted to do, no matter how you reproached yourself afterward. Who’s to say what’s right and wrong? Who’s to say the right path is so right after all?”

Suzy stops biting the rim of the paper cup and stares at Jen. It is unlike Jen to be so filled with doubt. Jen has always been confident, and right. She has always been the image of what Suzy was not, what Suzy could never be—the ultimate emblem of the American dream. It was Jen who begged her to stay when Suzy packed her bag in her senior year. “This isn’t love,” Jen repeated with unflinching certainty. “You don’t love him; love shouldn’t make you run.” Four years later, when the escapade with Damian was over, it was also Jen who took her in without asking any question. She cleared her study so that Suzy could sleep through those unfathomable weeks following her parents’ murder. Jen always knew exactly what to do. It is not fair, Suzy thinks, for Jen to retreat like this suddenly. It is not fair for Jen to break down before her.

What do you want after all, do you want me to tell you?

Damian had struck the right chord. The impossibility of desire might have been at the core of their union. The escape with Damian, why did it happen? Did he manipulate her into their reckless affair, as Professor Tamiko had once suggested? Did he claim nineteen-year-old Suzy in order to punish his wife, whom he failed to love? Would he have wanted her still had she not been Asian, so much younger than Yuki Tamiko, and definitely less fierce? What Suzy had wanted in return is still not clear. Neither an act of courage nor mindless passion. In fact, it was very mindful, each step measured. It had to be Damian. It could only have been Damian. No one would have claimed her with such absolute disregard.

“But I had no choice.” Suzy is not sure how to continue this, how to explain the inevitability of the past. “The difference between you and me is that you’ve always been on the right side. You say that you’re not sure anymore. But you are. Because you’re outraged still. Because you’re sad, not for fear of losing your job but for its injustice. You search for explanation. You won’t give up until you find the way. You have the eye to discern what is good and what isn’t. You can point a finger and tell me where and when and why. You’re confident in that knowledge. You’re secure. No one can take that away from you.” Suzy draws a quick breath and glances at Jen, who is quietly listening. Jen has one thing Suzy could never have: a sense of entitlement, the certainty of belonging. It was not a quality Suzy could learn to adopt, or even pretend to assume. Jen belonged, Suzy didn’t. It was as simple as that. If Suzy had resented Jen for it, she would have hated herself, because it was easier to blame the one who lacked. And such resentment would have been so lonely that Suzy could not have borne it. Jen, Suzy knows, would understand this.

“Me, I’m not sure if I ever had it in me. For a long time, for as far back as I can remember, something was amiss, something fundamental. It’s as if I’ve never had a home, as if I’ve never known what it is to have faith, as if I was never taught what’s right from wrong, or if I was, then somehow the difference didn’t matter. Why is it that I never felt guilty toward Professor Tamiko? Or Michael’s wife? Why did I choose Michael? Why did I run with Damian? Why did I run from my parents?”

She did not mean to bring up her parents. Kim Yong Su. His dead wife out in Montauk. Her poor, sad parents. Missing Grace.

Jen stares at Suzy, meeting her eyes for the first time. She is about to say something, but she looks away instead at the empty green patch of grass where pigeons had flocked only minutes ago. The late-autumn breeze is sharper now. The bare branches have formed hard shadows. The lamps along the fenced path appear bright, giving off a warm glow when everything else is shutting down. Finally, without turning her face, Jen asks, “Do you still hate your parents, Suzy?”