Suki Kim - The Interpreter

Through the metal window-guards is the rain, the relentless rain. And the red tip of the cigarette.

One day, if you find yourself alone, will you remember that I am too? Because you and I, we’re like twins.

“MEET ME BY SUNFLOWERS.”

A thirtieth birthday, suicide to spend it alone, Caleb insisted. “It’ll be tattooed on your calendar, like the stupid sweet sixteen or the last date of your virginity!” Suzy had been inclined to stay home. She could not get out of bed. A celebration seemed impossible.

November 24th. The day after Thanksgiving. The Metropolitan Museum seems even more crowded than usual. It’s been years since she was here last. The Met had always been Damian’s territory. He had been a consultant for its East Asian Wing. He would come here whenever the mood struck, would retreat into one of its myriad rooms and disappear from Suzy. She would never accompany him. This was the world he kept separate from her.

She did not mind. He had thrown away everything for her, she thought. It seemed enough that they were together. It seemed enough to know that he would be with her from now on. She had jumped at the chance to play his young bride. She sat patiently and waited for him all day. She cooked elaborate Korean dishes. She threw on skimpy red lace and moaned harder each time she felt his attention drifting. Yet, once the initial shock of their escapade wore out, interminable silence hung in its place. Four years. It took her parents’ murder. It took their death for the two of them to finally give up.

Damian contacted her just once after she moved out. It came during the second year of her living alone. “Suzy, enough,” he commanded quietly into the machine. She did not pick up the phone. “Isn’t this what you wanted after all, to be free?” He had no doubt that she would come back to him in time. He knew that she had nothing else. And she would have if she could. She wanted to, more than anything in the world. But on nights when she cried in her sleep, on mornings when she woke missing his arms around her, she heard gunshots, the tumultuous explosion of two exact shots.

Now the police have behind bars suspects who might have pulled the trigger, who might have wanted to pull the trigger, who might be filling in for the real murderer.

The guard points to the second floor. European Paintings. It’s the nineteenth century she is looking for. Past the Grand Staircase, buried among the glorious pastels of Cézanne, Renoir, Seurat, Monet, are van Gogh’s mad strokes against the wall. From the crowd gathering in front, it is easy to spot Sunflower s.

“Hey, birthday girl, you look not a day older than twenty-five!” Caleb exclaims from the wooden bench in the middle of the room. Twenty-five, Suzy’s age when she first met him.

“Hi, how was home?” Suzy slides by his side, kissing him once.

“Rick told me we’re finished if I ever bring him home again.”

“Oh no, was it that bad?”

“Brutal. The funny thing is, they actually liked him. My mom even went on to say that she thought he was prettier than Boy George. It was Rick who couldn’t stand her. He said that she reminded him of Sally Jesse Raphael. I guess it was the glasses.”

Suzy smiles, picturing Caleb’s mother with her oversized red plastic frames.

“I had to rush back anyway to get ready for the opening. The artist is the newest British import. The next generation of the Sensation kids. He gobbles up classics and whips out blasphemous installations. A mannequin replica of one of Ingres’s ladies that slowly turns into Princess Diana puking. A Botticelli painting where all the boys are sucking the Pope’s dick. This time he’s on to Sunflowers .” Caleb turns to Suzy, rolling his eyes. “Personally, I don’t see the appeal. I’m so bored by blasphemy.”

Van Gogh’s sunflowers look almost morbid. Not the usual perky, happy yellow faces, but a close-up of two withering heads, as if in torment. Beautiful, yet haunting. The madman’s last reach for the sun.

“In Chelsea, no one gives a shit about the real thing. Everyone’s just dying to know what new offense is about to be committed against the masterpiece. Except Vincent practically invented blasphemy. Look at his strokes, look how he twisted Impressionism senseless!” Glancing at the group of Japanese couples who are now following their tour guide to the next painting, Caleb continues, “In college, I was the only art major totally obsessed with Vincent. Everyone thought I was so passé. You fall in love with van Gogh, you study him in Painting 101, you copy Starry Night for your first assignment, but you don’t obsess over him. While they all moved on to Mondrian, Beuys, Duchamp, I stuck loyal. Even now, Starry Night blows my mind. His cypresses make me weep. I used to read his letters every night before going to bed.”

Suzy is suddenly struck by the image of the sky-blue bowling jacket Caleb always wore when they lived together. It had “Vince” stitched above its right pocket. She had assumed that it belonged to a former boyfriend. Strange how long it takes to know a person. Yet somehow reassuring that a person could have so many secrets.

“His letters? So that’s what you were doing when you used to keep your lights on until dawn?” Suzy asks, half laughing.

“No, honey, I did other things too.” Caleb winks before continuing. “But I used to read his letters religiously. They’re painful. He was so damn alone. He wrote to his brother Theo almost every day. He told him every single detail of his life, down to the exact color of the sunset he’d seen that evening, the price of the paper he was writing on, the angle of his fingers gripping the pen. He was so needy. He begged women for love. He latched on to Gauguin for friendship. He threw himself into a painting frenzy. He even turned to God.”

“God?”

“Vincent covered the whole nine yards. Studied theology, did the Evangelical bit, taught the Bible. But he didn’t quite make it. He didn’t fit. His loneliness was too deep, it really couldn’t be helped.”

So alone, so incredibly, desperately alone.

Something begins to break down inside Suzy. Something she has known almost from the beginning.

“Why was he so lonely?”

But the answer is there already. They are like twins. Suzy and Grace.

“Who knows? He was mad for sure. But there were other things, like his family, for example. His parents, his uncles, his siblings, including Theo. They sheltered him. They found him jobs, paid his rent, sent him paper and brushes. They had a strong hold on him, and Vincent was dependent and hated himself for it, although his family was by no means at the core of his problems.”

“Then why write to Theo?”

“That’s what makes those letters so fascinating. He felt suffocated by his family’s love, and yet he couldn’t help being a part of it. He choked Theo with his daily reports. There was a certain boundary he never learned. The suffocation he felt might’ve had something to do with it. No boundary with anything, with his family, with himself, even with something as common as sunflowers. Look at how he paints nature! His flowers are unique because there’s absolutely no distance from the artist. For him, they’re all the same, the self-portrait, the local postman, the sunflower. It’s fun for us to sit back and analyze them, but for Vincent it must’ve been hell. You can only drive yourself crazy if you have no distance from the world.”

Her face feels cold, as cold as her right hand against her cheek now, the curled fingers, the hollow of her palm. It is not clear which part emanates the chill, the hand or the face. It is the chill inside breaking loose. It is impossible to recall how long it’s been there, this knowledge, this anger.