Diego Marani - The Interpreter

There was a mist hanging over the lake on the day she went away for good; it rose slowly from the water like a poisonous breath, and spread over the city, still bathed in the warm twilight. I had just returned from a week of travelling for work, I was dead tired and I knew I had the airport’s smell of sweat and crowds upon me, but I had no desire to go home. Going up the stairs, I found the living room empty; Irene’s furniture had disappeared; all that remained of the sideboard, the empire-style divan, the Louis Philippe table, were darker patches on the parquet. My own things were scattered all around the room on the floor in the places where the furniture containing them had stood; they now struck me as a brutal résumé of my life with Irene, a scant anthology of what remained of so many years together: a guide book, a crystal vase that had been a birthday present, the television, the hatstand, the transistor radio, a few art books, silver frames emptied of their photographs, an old pack of cards, an ashtray and my collection of jazz records. Irene was in the living room, standing in front of the window, smoking a cigarette, with her coat on. Even my footsteps sounded desolate as I entered the empty room. In the half-light, I couldn’t make out her expression. I put on the lights.

‘I’ve put your scientific encyclopaedia in your study,’ was all she said, shielding her eyes from the light, and then she very slowly walked away.

Out of sheer weariness, or perhaps I mean cowardice, I ended up by signing the request for the interpreter’s dismissal; I felt that my superiors wanted the whole thing out of the way. One May morning I found the same old yellowing file on my desk again; handed around from department to department, it had been growing fatter by the week, filling up with all manner of additional documentation and passed from pillar to post. The moment came when all was safely gathered in; now it was up to me to press the button which would clinch matters once and for all; all I had to do was sign my name beneath so many others on the last dog-eared page. I took the top off my fountain pen and gazed pointlessly at the nib; it had been given to me by Irene when I’d been made head of department, and it was when I signed my name in watery blue ink that I thought I had snapped the link between our destinies, his and my own, catapulted two lives out of their orbits, into the dark and empty cosmos which is the dwelling place of things that never happened, of those mistaken paths which God, seeking to escape from his own abominable creation, bethought himself to take and then forswore.

From that day onwards, I had no peace. That man was pursuing me: he went out of his way to bump into me, to catch my attention, even for a moment, and harangue me with his pleas; he would plonk himself down in my secretary’s office and refuse to budge until I’d heard him out, but then of course I’d have to tell him the same old things: that my decision was forced upon me, that everything militated against him. The psychiatrist’s report, and his own behaviour in office, as recorded by Stauber, left no way out. I encouraged him to resign himself, pointed out that he would be well provided for and that now at last he had all the time in the world for his research. But he wouldn’t listen to reason and repeated his entreaty as he always did.

‘Quash the decision! You’re the only one in a position to do so! It’s no skin off your nose!’

After a while, I stopped paying him any attention. When the secretary announced his arrival, I’d leave the office by the other door, but he wouldn’t give up. He carried on hounding me, and wherever I was in the building, I knew that sooner or later I’d see him looming in front of me. It had become an obsession. He’d wait for me as I came out of meetings, follow me down corridors and start calling out my name, elbowing people out of his way to catch up with me. I’d even given up my quiet lunches in the canteen in order to avoid him; I’d get on a tram and go and eat in a bistro frequented by boatmen. He’d send me illegible letters which I usually threw straight into the bin; he’d slip messages under my door. I would even find him waiting for me early in the morning at the closed door of my office or outside the lifts. He would pursue me like a beggar, he’d clutch me by the arm, reiterating his wearisome complaints.

‘You’ve given me a death sentence! This way I’ll really go mad! Don’t you see that they’re fooling you? That it’s nothing but lies?’

Sometimes he would even pretend to be someone else in order to make contact with me; he would telephone my secretary and disguise his voice, hoping not to be recognised. On some mornings I’d find a date pencilled into my diary, some appointment with a representative of the international association of conference interpreters, or with a journalist from some well-known newspaper, and who would I find in front of me but that man, pig-headed and recalcitrant as ever, disguised by a false name. On each occasion, something imperceptibly different about him — a wrinkle, the set of his mouth — prevented me from recognising him straight away; confused and embarrassed, I would hesitate; consumed by doubt, I would stare at the figure approaching my desk, taking stock of its clothes, its shoes, its bearing, trying to discern some sign that would give a clue as to its identity. Was this really the person who figured in my diary? Or was it the interpreter in one of his many disguises? Fearing to offend some innocent in his place, I would lose precious time. Only when we were practically nose to nose would I recognise him: it was that smell that gave him away, that sudden waft of glue and bitter sap. But it was too late now: there he was, sitting in front of me, fiddling with the papers on my desk as though to thrust his way in among the thoughts that were currently on my mind. And there we’d go again, with him imploring me to reinstate him.

‘I need to do simultaneous translation! I need to hear all the languages together! This is the only place where I can do that. Do you see what I’m saying? You’re a good man — let me at least sit in during a conference, I promise not to talk, with the microphone off no one will notice me. Just let me search for the secret language — this is the only place it can be heard! These words are not the rantings of a madman! Just give me a month or two, another two hundred hours of simultaneous translation with five booths, and I’ll give you proof I’m not talking nonsense. That’s where it is — the language mankind has forgotten! Just forget rules and regulations for a moment. Use your head, for God’s sake — you’re still capable of it. Remember that a functionary in an international institution is working for the good of all mankind, and not for some bureaucracy!’

I was beginning to get worried: that man might become dangerous. I even thought of going to the police. Nor could I understand why, of all the people who had signed the request for his dismissal, I was the only one he was so doggedly pursuing: perhaps because I had been the last to sign? Or because I was the only one who would agree to see him?

One evening I came across him in the road, at the gate to the park I walked through on my way home. It was raining heavily; the lights of the cars turning off along the lake were catching the tops of the trees, which were tossing in the wind. I was hesitating as to whether to carry on by foot, and was about to go down the avenue to the tram stop when I heard hurried footsteps between the hedges of the gravel path. Thinking it might be some ne’er-do-well, I went towards the gate and turned round defensively, my umbrella at the ready in the dark. And there he was again, pale, shaking, hollow-eyed, mouth agape. He gestured to me, then set off in the direction of the lake. Some obscure force caused me to follow him, and I walked along beside him in the darkness, punctuated occasionally by a flash of yellow headlight. I peered at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to remember what I could of that ever-changing face. Then, looking around the park with its bluish shadows, I felt a sudden pang of fear. That man was mad, he might attack me, even kill me; yet I walked on by his side. There was some unresolved business between us which I simply had to conclude once and for all, and I felt that now was the time. When we came to the lake he stopped and turned towards me. I took a few steps back from the black water — the rain was still hammering down — and took up a position a few steps away from him. He stayed where he was for a few moments, head bowed, then took his hands out of his pockets and lifted his chin. He made an elaborate and completely senseless movement in the air, and it occurred to me that even his gestures were fatuous, deformed by the power of a will which had gone awry. He spoke in the hoarse, rasping voice of a man who has been shouting for too long.