Suki Kim - The Interpreter

What’s in that water?

Except the ashes of her parents, the tears of the woman who died childless, the blood of the man who’d chased the wrong girl.

Before boarding the train, Suzy made two phone calls.

Open the letter , she asked point-blank. I don’t give a shit about your loyalty crap. Open the goddamn letter before I throw you out of my parents’ house.

A will , whispered Maria Sutpen. It’s a will, in case she doesn’t come back. A will leaving everything to my little Grace, except for a title to a store, a Korean market; it says you’ll know what to do with it.

Now the real question. What happened in that class? You never learned how to swim. What about Grace, what happened to Grace?

Grace? No, not Grace. Grace passed with flying colors. She even cocaptained the swim team. She could swim through any waters.

There is no such thing as an accident.

Grace must have suspected him all along. She must have known that he would do anything to save her. She must have prayed never to find out. Except DJ must have crawled back somehow, must have confessed to her at the parking lot of Fort Lee High School. She would never have let him get away with it. She would never have forgiven him. Since when does a good Korean girl marry the one who’s shot her parents, even if it had all been for her? Love? Bury him in the same water, that would be Grace’s revenge. Never messy. No evidence. Not a chance of suspicion. She would’ve fooled them all. Fuck KK boys. Fuck grocers who hated her parents. Fuck INS. Fuck the Bronx DA. And most of all, fuck Detective Lester.

Only Suzy would be spared. The silent witness. The bouquet of white irises. A title to a Korean market—what’s she supposed to do with that? Give it to Kim Yong Su as an apology? A piece of the American Dream? A family heirloom? What the hell’s an interpreter if she can’t even interpret her own sister?

Tell us, Suzy!

Stop lying, Suzy!

Dear Suzy, my only family, this is your dream come true!

The pastel house by the shore. The sunlit faces of her parents. Not guilty, never guilty, never having crossed the line between what is family and what is not, what is right and what is deadly wrong, what is Korea and what is not home. The line was always there. The line had been marked from the beginning, tightly woven around the two girls who couldn’t find their way no matter how they tried, how hard they studied, how many boys they seduced, how many husbands they stole, which god they worshipped, unless their parents went away, unless their parents sailed a boat never to return, unless their parents drove to work one morning and never came back.

In the phone booth at Penn Station, Suzy made the final call, relieved that it was only the machine at the other end.

Detective Lester, this is Suzy Park. I know who killed my parents. I know it was the Korean grocers; a group of them had sent the gang that morning. I’ve got their names. Start with Kim Yong Su, and he’ll tell you the rest.

Outside is no longer the city. No more Bronx, no more Queens, not even downtown Manhattan. The swaying is kind to her heart, to its beats of one, two, back to one. The sun is setting. The night is surging. The train is carrying her far, far away. At the end will be the lighthouse. At the end will be a new country.

She could swim through any waters.

Leaning back, Suzy closes her eyes. There is enough time until the arrival. Plenty for sleep. Soon it will be tomorrow. The end of Suzy’s birthday. One more day until Grace’s. For now, they will remain the same. Two girls with no parents, such fine American beauties.

“Few writers chronicle the Korean-American experience, and even fewer are as talented as Kim… A good eye for detail, an excellent prose style, and the ability to create compelling characters… luminous… hypnotic… an intriguing, tortured portrait of a second-generation Korean-American by a promising young writer.”

“Kim zeroes in on the debilitating tensions of interpreting between languages, countries, childhood and adulthood, lies and secrets, sex and hurt, anger and love.”

“Utterly absorbing… stylish and elegant psychological mystery.”

“Kim is a precise, patient observer…. A sleek, nearly hypnotic glimpse into the world of a Korean family ruptured in translation to America.”

“Riveting… No mere whodunit, Kim’s debut also examines the myth of the ‘model minority’ and what it’s like to live in cultural limbo.”

“Kim has come up with one of the most original and disturbing motives for murder that this reader has ever encountered. It brings into play loyalty, cultural differences, and the sometimes lonely existence of our nation’s many immigrants.”

“Outstanding… Most admirably, Kim avoids identity politics entirely. She is not interested in ghettoizing her protagonist. Suzy is a character first, a representation of human psychology, one that Kim has studied too carefully to label simply as Korean, or Depressed.”

“ The Interpreter is a melancholy study of a young Korean-American woman’s alienation from both her Asian roots and her American environment. It’s also a murder mystery. That Kim makes these two aspects of the novel work together suggests that she’s a writer to keep an eye on.”

—San Jose Mercury News

“Amazing… The author’s a master tease, surrendering details so slowly that you’ll find yourself in such a frenzy to get to the next chapter that you’ll skim the one you’re on.”

“In Suzy Park, Kim has fashioned a moody, memorable misfit who both captures our heart and twists our guts in one of the new year’s more complex and rewarding novels.”

“To readers of this compelling, cryptic novel—[Kim’s heroine] Suzy is a gorgeous enigma, simultaneously sophisticated and naïve, corrupt and pure.”

“Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, the novel grippingly explores damaging trade-offs made by people desperate to survive in a strange new place… The Interpreter opens out into vistas of human complexity that will captivate readers from any culture.”

MY GRATITUDE to Suzanne Gluck and John Glusman. Thanks to my first readers: David France, Lisa Hamilton, Sean Kim, Kathryn Maris, Dara Mayers, and Amy Peterson. And to my sister, Sunny Kim, whose painting graces the cover.

THE INTERPRETER. Copyright © 2003 by Suki Kim. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Designed by Abby Kagan

eISBN 9781429923781

First eBook Edition : April 2011

Kim, Suki, 1970–

The interpreter / Suki Kim.

p. cm.

ISBN: 0-312-42224-5

1. Korean Americans—Fiction. 2. Women interpreters—Fiction. 3. Parents—Death—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3611.I457 158 2003