Diego Marani - The Interpreter

‘Yes, he arrived yesterday morning. Would you like me to leave a message?’

‘No, no, it doesn’t matter,’ I said hastily, closing the door to the lift.

That night, although I was dead tired, I could not sleep; now I knew where the patients referred to isolation therapy in Barnung’s clinic ended up; the thought that that might also have been my final destination sent a shudder down my spine. I did not know that another destiny entirely, a far more subtle doom, was awaiting me far from Odessa. I was beginning to fear that I too had been one of Dr Barnung’s guinea-pigs; I saw now that there was no alter ego to be eradicated from my consciousness, no unconscious understudy for Felix Bellamy to be brought back to life by means of an intensive course in Romanian, of all things. Infected by the interpreter, poisoned by the attentions of a criminal German neurologist, I too had been in danger of ending up as a whistling madman. I decided to return to Munich as soon as possible, to discover what was really going on in Dr Barnung’s clinic, of what monstrous experiment I had been the object; if indeed there was any antidote to the hideous cocktail of mental illnesses which had been implanted in my brain, that was the place to find it. But first I had to find out how Gunther Stauber was involved, and what the head of the German department was doing over two thousand kilometres from his interpreter’s booth.

It was almost dawn when I at last fell asleep, to be awakened by the sound of the wind against the windowpanes; the sky was aswirl with a jumble of white clouds, and the city below seemed to be carved out of glass. Beyond the inlet, the sea was roiling, white with spray. I looked at the clock and saw that it was late; I threw on my clothes and rushed downstairs. Stauber had already left, but I was told that he was in room 314. At first I thought that I would wait for him in the hotel, but my impatience got the better of me and I went out into the city, in the mad hope of tracking him down. I hailed a taxi and had myself driven to the centre of town, seeking out ministries, museums and monuments, following the few tourists hardy enough to pause to take photographs. I took refuge in a bar to have something to eat, then wandered along the seafront to the ferry port. There, battered by the wind as I idly watched the queue of vehicles moving sluggishly into the hold, my eye was caught by a banner hanging from the facade of a building with large windows: ‘XIVth international congress on cetology’, it proclaimed. The conference centre — why had I not thought of it earlier? I ran up the marble steps and into the foyer. The sight of the standards hanging from their brass poles, of the delegates scurrying to and fro with their briefcases under their arms, the ushers in their grey uniforms with their bundles of leaflets, everything reminded me of my former post, of the dry-as-dust labours to which I had devoted so many years of my life. I looked around for the accreditation desk, then showed my passport to the usher, who looked me up and down suspiciously; he had a vaguely Asiatic air to him — close-cropped hair and narrow eyes, prominent cheekbones. He leafed through a register, said something in a low voice to a colleague, then turned to me.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but your name does not appear to figure on the guest list; in any case, the congress is virtually over, the president is making the closing speech.’

‘Never mind. I’d like you to register me and provide me with earphones for the simultaneous translation. You can see from my passport that I used to work as a high-ranking functionary for an international organisation,’ was my firm but calm reply.

The usher balanced his cigarette on the edge of a brimming ashtray and looked enquiringly at his colleague, who shrugged his shoulders, taking refuge behind his computer screen. Blowing the smoke out through his nostrils, the usher made an impatient gesture, but then took my passport and copied the details into a register. He took a blue folder from a cardboard box and thrust it in my direction, together with a map of the city, a pass, a set of headphones for the simultaneous translation and a form for me to sign. I thanked him curtly, deposited my coat in the cloakroom and walked towards the red velvet curtain behind which lay the conference hall, which turned out to be full of bald heads listening to the president’s speech. Standing on the stage, in front of a gigantic image of a nineteenth-century print of a whale hunt, a small bespectacled man was waving his arms and reading from a hefty tome. I sat down in the first free place I could find and, feigning interest, placed the blue folder on the little table attached to the arm of my seat and opened it up. In fact, of course, what really interested me was the simultaneous translation; I had seen the booths as I came in, high up at the back of the hall; I put on the headphones and began to twiddle the knob carefully until I hit upon the German translation, and heard Stauber’s voice.

I leapt to my feet: so it really was him. I slipped through the hall, my eyes glued to the booth window. Despite the glass, I could make out the ruddy face of the head of department, who clearly recognised me and pulled back in alarm. Headphones still clamped to my ears, I rushed from the auditorium, jostling angry scientists who were taking notes with their expensive pens. When I reached the foyer, I looked for the entrance to the booths, but my way was blocked by a wooden screen; the place was too crowded for me to climb over it without being noticed, so I went towards the main entrance, hoping to find another route. At the end of a long red cordon, two guards bristling with serious-looking holsters and radio receivers were patrolling the passageway leading to the offices and the booths. I waved my pass casually in the direction of the less daunting-looking of the two, but he directed me firmly but politely back to the accreditation desk, where I once again came eyeball to eyeball with the Asiatic-looking usher; pretending I’d made a mistake, I muttered an apology and went back towards the conference hall. I still had the headphones on, and Stauber’s voice was ringing in my ears; he was talking about increased protection for sperm whales, of the strange habits of Boreal whales, of the impossibility of pinpointing the areas occupied by the white whale during the winter season, and of their mass destruction by the Inuit, who are gluttons for their skin, which they eat raw. But I could tell from the strained tone that his mind was on other things; he was shouting rather than talking, breaking off in mid-sentence and repeating the same word several times over. I imagined him up there in his booth, running his eye anxiously over the seats in the auditorium to see where I had got to; he had a lot of explaining to do. I paced up and down in front of the red curtain, uncertain how to proceed. I felt a sudden prickle of sweat break out all over my body, my mouth was dry and my tongue felt furry; seized with a spell of dizziness, I was forced to lean against the wall. I could feel one of my convulsions welling up in my chest; I tried to hold it back by breathing heavily, but already the first whistling sounds were escaping from my pursed mouth. My legs were trembling, my vision was becoming blurred; losing my step, I bumped into a group of people standing around the bar, one of whom helped me back onto my feet. I thanked them, shook myself free of their steadying hands, rushed to the cloakroom, collected my coat and ran out of the building, only to find myself pursued by the usher, demanding the headphones which I had forgotten to return. But while he was tugging me by the arm and calling the guards for help, I was already blurting out mangled, senseless words; grinding my teeth in an effort to contain myself, I fixed him with an angry, frightened glare, trying to shake off his hand. I pulled off the headphones and threw them towards him, running down the steps as I did so; at last he loosened his grip and bent down to pick them up. He watched me as I ran away, then went off again up the steps, shivering and turning up his collar, accompanied by the two nervous-looking guards who were already prattling into their radios.