Katie Kitamura - A Separation

Whether he was guilty or innocent, I knew that he sat in front of us in an agony of anticipation, which he was struggling to conceal, he had hopes for the future, or rather a single hope, which might yet prove foolish. But it was closer than ever before, just within his grasp, a fact of which he could not help but be aware, and so he sat in the car, trying to maintain an appropriately funereal air—after all, there was a grown man crying in the backseat—while a symphony of excitement welled inside him. He reached back with a tissue, which I accepted in silence and passed to Mark, he blew his nose into the paper and said, to me, to Stefano, Thank you.

Ileft Mark to tell Isabella. He went up the stairs very slowly—if he went slowly enough then perhaps he would never arrive at the top, never have to confront his wife—it was clear he dreaded telling Isabella about the investigation, or rather the lack of it, the whole thing already dead in the water, that he was fearful of her response, there would be a scene, hysterics, she would not take the news lying down. She would upbraid Mark, the nearest and most obvious target, insisting that he go further into the matter (Lady Macbeth, chastising her lord), and yet Mark had said, There’s nothing to be done, and I believed him.

But had everything been done, truly everything? Inside my room, I hesitated and then picked up the telephone and dialed the police station. I was put through to the police chief at once—I did not identify myself on the telephone, there was no need, they knew who I was, there were not so many Americans here—and he answered with a wary, Yes? I told him that I had a piece of information, that might or might not be relevant, but given that they were looking for a woman, the signs of an affair, or had been—

Yes?

He was growing impatient. I opened my mouth but did not speak. Yes? he said again. Abruptly, I told him that Christopher had been seen in Cape Tenaro with another woman. Perhaps my voice caught, or I sounded ashamed. He asked me why I did not tell him earlier, and I said that I hadn’t wanted to tell him in front of Christopher’s father, He has illusions about his son that should be preserved, illusions that I no longer have, and the police chief was silent for a moment and then said, I see.

But do not worry, he continued, we know about this woman, it was a casual friendship, he left her behind in Cape Tenaro, where she remained. There is no husband, no brother or father, and the woman herself has a perfect alibi, another man.

I was silent. The police were more competent than they pretended, which made the case more and not less hopeless—there were fewer unexplored avenues or possible solutions—but what had unnerved me was the sudden disclosure of information about the woman, another lover of Christopher’s, until that moment entirely abstract but now on the precipice of becoming concrete. I only had to ask and I would know more about her, perhaps even her name, already I knew that she was unmarried, without a father or brother, that she lived in Cape Tenaro and was promiscuous, at least by certain standards.

A crime of passion is something you read about in books. And although your husband—the police chief paused—seems to have involved himself with the local population, I do not think this is anything other than what it appears.

There were others, I said.

There was a long pause.

Yes, he said at last. But I can only repeat: I do not think this is anything other than what it appears.

I hung up shortly after. A red light pulsed as soon as I put the receiver down. I picked up the receiver again, there was a message from Yvan, I would need to call him back. I dialed his number, he answered at once.

What is happening? I’ve left three messages for you.

I’m sorry.

Is everything okay?

Yes. Isabella and Mark are here, there has been a lot to do.

Of course.

I think we’ll be coming back soon.

What about the investigation?

They don’t expect to find the killer.

How so?

They have no leads. No suspects, no real evidence—the police chief more or less told us that the investigation was stalled, he told us that we should not get our hopes up.

Yvan did not say anything and I continued, In some ways it would be easier, if there was no known killer, if Christopher had been a victim of circumstance only. If we could say instead, it’s the fault of the situation.

I paused, but Yvan was silent.

Are you still there? I asked uneasily.

Yes, he said. I’m still here.

Okay.

Go on.

There’s nothing more to say.

What will you do?

That’s not up to me, I don’t think.

You’re his widow, Yvan said. You’re his wife.

I was silent.

You haven’t told them, have you?

How could I?

Will you? Is it even important anymore?

I don’t know.

Legally you are his wife.

Legally, according to one set of laws, but according to another—

What other?

I mean our own internal laws, we try to do what is right.

And according to those laws—

I let Isabella and Mark decide. Although I do so without letting them suspect that I am anything other than Christopher’s wife, his widow.

Because they would be hurt.

Because I—because we—can allow them that much, surely. They have certain illusions that I think they should be permitted to preserve—I used that phrase again—so many having been stripped from them, for example the illusion that as a parent, you do not have to bury your child.

Is this about Christopher?

I don’t understand.

I mean is this for Christopher’s sake, not Isabella and Mark’s, is all this for Christopher? He paused. Christopher is dead, the bonds of the promise you made to him no longer hold.

I was silent. Outside, a group of men sat in one of the tavernas, facing toward the sea. It must have been later than I thought, the sun was beginning to dip down toward the water and the men were drinking, perhaps they had been drinking for a while. They were far away, too far to make out their features—anyway it was unlikely that I would recognize them, I had seen no more than a handful of people in the village, I was still a stranger here. But I could hear the sound of the laughter, they were obviously having a good time.

Are you there?

Yes, I said.

He was right, of course. In Colonel Chabert , Balzac’s story of a husband returned from the dead—a work I had once translated, although not with particular success, I had not been able to find the correct register for capturing the peculiar density of Balzac’s prose, I generally translate contemporary fiction, which is an entirely different affair—the colonel of the title is presumed dead in the Napoleonic Wars. His wife promptly remarries, she believes legitimately, becoming the Countess Ferraud. Then the colonel returns, effectively from the dead, derailing her life completely, and that is where the narrative begins.

Although the story favors the colonel—the countess is the villain of the story, insofar as there is one, she is portrayed as callow, manipulative and superficial—as I worked on the translation, I found myself increasingly sympathetic to the countess, to the extent that I began to wonder if this feeling showed in the translation, if I had weighted the words without realizing it. Of course, this sympathy might not have been so errant, it might have been Balzac’s intention, the very effect he wished to cause in the reader: after all, what a terrible fate, to be faithless, to commit bigamy without being aware of it, it was all in the text itself.

Perhaps because of this concern—one that is in the end a question of fidelity, translators are always worried about being faithful to the original , an impossible task because there are multiple and often contradictory ways of being faithful, there is literal fidelity and there is in the spirit of , a phrase without concrete meaning—I thought about Chabert now. In this case it was not the unexpected arrival of the husband but his unexpected departure that led to a crisis of faith, death rather than life causing the return of the undesired relationship, the reopening of what was once thought closed.