The Interpreter (2 page)

One evening during that dismal spring, catching me looking sadly out of the window at my blighted tulips, Irene had come up to me and put her arms around my waist. ‘Your roses will make up for them!' she whispered in my ear. I smiled at those words of consolation, but instead of joy, what I felt within me was the cold breath of an unknown fear. A touch of lassitude had crept into her voice, a resigned wariness. At that same moment a brief, light shower of rain spattered the gardens, and an unexpected shaft of sunlight turned the thousand drops upon the window panes an orange-yellow. For some time – as the blue night fell upon the rain-soaked city and entered our friendly house, swelling the shadows and blurring our faces – I held her in my arms.

Over those days – now splintered into a thousand fragments – I was beginning my new job as head of the interpreters' department. It was a world I hardly knew, quite different from that of the administrative duties I'd previously carried out. Geographically, the offices of the conference section of the international body for which I was now working were in something of a backwater, housed in a green suburbia of neat modern roads, in a spacious park, so that my little white building at the end of an avenue of maples looked like a clinic, a sanatorium housing the sufferers from some rare but not dangerous disease. And, truth to tell, working among interpreters, I did indeed feel that I was dealing with ‘sufferers', beset by some mysterious unease. Their troubles usually took the form of a garrulous euphoria, but also sometimes that of a scabby touchiness, like an internal itch that could never be assuaged. Without knowing any of them personally, I had learned to distinguish them from among the anonymous crowd of functionaries. In the canteen, in the bar, in the local restaurants, in the entrance halls of our various offices, they formed small groups of wildly gesticulating, wild-eyed individuals, endlessly prattling, leaping from one language to another like acrobats, sometimes prone to fitful movements, reminiscent of those made for no apparent reason by a fish or bird. They did not seem to engage in conversations, I didn't feel that they listened to one another. Their talk had an overenthusiastic quality about it, like that of witch doctors who are using the word to keep themselves in a state of trance. I came to see that they had a horror of silence; they seemed to stiffen in alarm whenever they sensed that it was about to descend upon them. They fended it off with an animal instinct, clustering in noisy packs. Even when meetings went on until late at night, and in the breaks when I would come upon them at the counter in the bar, bleary-eyed and drowsy, there was always one who would carry on gabbling, keeping the fire of the word alive so as to ferry his companions out of that cold and silent hour. The others would listen to him trustingly, abandoning themselves to his voice as though to a life-saving raft.

In my heart of hearts, I've always had trouble with polyglots. Above all, because those who vaunt a knowledge of many languages have always struck me as show-offs. No human being can really be capable of speaking the tongues of so many others equally well; anyone venturing to do so is embarking on an unhealthy exercise which can only lead to mental instability. The only foreign language known to me is an inadequate and obsolete German, acquired willy-nilly at grammar school. My father's mother tongue has never put down roots in me; if I can still drag up some stilted phrases, this is not because I practise it or take care to keep myself updated in this tongue that I find so antipathetic, but simply because – behind the hazy memory of rules learned off by heart, like answers at a catechism class – I can still hear my father reproving me in his own exasperated German. I hear my teacher imperiously summoning me to the blackboard for questioning, browbeating me, ordering me to speak German, as a soldier might be ordered out of a trench to go on the attack. It matters little that the threat has passed; the fear remains; only such fear could induce a man to leave his own mind unguarded to pursue words that are not his. Languages are like toothbrushes: the only one you should put into your mouth is your own. It's a question of hygiene, of good manners; it's dangerous to let yourself be contaminated by the germs of another tongue. What do we know about what might be unleashed when they slip into the delicate vessels of our brain, when they mingle with our most ancient juices and generate some hybrid that God never intended? The germs of European diseases did for the American Indians. Similarly, a foreign language injected into our mind brings with it the taint of unknown sounds, a vision of worlds that are incomprehensible to us – the lure of other truths and a devilish desire to know them.

That was why I was alarmed by the swarm of ranters I was now being called upon to manage. They were people who challenged God, who, out of sheer devilry and vanity, would lean forward to peer into the abyss of madness. They struck me as circus performers, shifty, dishonest quick-change artists, mental stuntmen, who at any moment might put a foot wrong and take a serious fall. In truth, if I had agreed to go and run the interpreters' department, it was simply because I felt I should do my superiors' bidding. None of my colleagues wanted that thankless task, no one wanted anything to do with that horde of touchy, lying prima donnas. But I, with the vague promise of some more prestigious future post, had allowed myself to be persuaded. I hadn't managed to say no. Even Irene said I was a fool. She accused me of going to the office as to a barracks, of performing my job like some blinkered soldier, who carries out the most fatuous corvée without batting an eyelid. She was right. I wore my grey functionary's suit like a uniform; I was proud of my soldierly career as an anonymous executive. In my Spartan office, amidst the metal furniture and two-tone filing cabinets, I felt safe from the capricious world outside. I was fond of my office and its shabby furnishings; what I liked about it was that it had no history, no character, it was not even mine. It could be taken apart and put up again in a thousand other places without ever absorbing anything of the humanity amidst which it stood: the complete opposite of Irene's furniture – laden with suffering, blackened by time and shot through with dead voices which, on certain nights, I felt I could hear emanating from the wood and peopling the house with ghosts, with lost souls, forever held back by time's stealthy undertow. Whereas, in my own office, nothing ever happened which wasn't caused by me. Everything had its routine, everything was governed by iron rules which protected me from the humiliation of doubt. Safe in my glass barracks, I commanded a gigantic army, with rows of string-bound files in place of tanks, and reams of paper doing duty for bombs, capable of destroying men and things in total silence. I did not know that what would be destroyed – by the few fussy, handwritten lines on a piece of lined paper referred to as Report 99/5162, which I found on my desk that windy March morning – would be me.

Gunther Stauber was a ruddy-faced German with thinning straw-coloured hair. Huddled awkwardly on the armchair in front of my desk because of his girth, he kept crossing and uncrossing his legs, his shirt billowing out at every laboured breath. He tried to offset the massiveness of his frame with an attempt at military bearing which, rather than rendering him more authoritative, in fact made him look like a lion-tamer. He looked on impatiently, waiting for me to take my eyes off the hefty bundle of papers the secretary had laid out for me on the table.

‘As you well know, ours is an arduous task. For eight hours a day we spin our brains around as though in a blender. We grind the words of one language down into a fine paste so as to refashion them into those of another, and each word that enters our ears sooner or later will have to issue from our mouths. In the evening, as we leave our booths, it takes a bit of time for our brains to slow down to a normal speed; we need to shut down the machine, take everything to pieces, clean the machinery and let it rest, oiling the screws. But with age, and professional wear and tear, sometimes some people just can't turn off the engine, so the brain carries on idling. The pieces get worn out, the spools overheat and the mouth spits out not real words, but everything that has got caught up in the gears – remains, dross, the residue of speech. Ultimately, the blade is blunted; it no longer cuts. It baulks at the harder words, beheading them without properly grinding them. They go into the machine and come out mutilated, distorted, but not translated. They are unrecognisable. This is what has happened to our colleague.'

Instinctively, I raised my hands to rub them over my temples; I suddenly had the unpleasant feeling that I too had something electric running around in my cranium.

‘But don't you think your colleague just needs a bit of a break?' I objected cautiously. Stauber sniffed disdainfully and stiffened on his seat.

‘He's had a bit of a break, as you put it, on more than one occasion. It's all there in the file – three long periods of leave for health purposes. In fact, his psychiatrist insisted on it.'

He sounded irritated, as though these were things he'd already said a hundred times.

‘Do you really think his behaviour is unacceptable? After all, he's still a pro. Very well trained, and highly experienced. Can't we just wait? And, in the meantime, head him off to less important meetings, where he can do less harm? Some debate at a seminar, nothing technical and not many languages involved?' was my next suggestion.

‘Less important meetings? Impossible! What with his grade, if we don't send him to ministerial meetings he hits the roof! Prickly as a pear, that's what he is. He'll never admit that he's ill, and he certainly won't agree to being considered a category two interpreter! If I assign him to meetings where there are fewer than five languages involved, he goes ballistic. He starts writing me notes saying that his abilities are going to waste, and has them sent to all the directors-general! More to the point, our department's good name is at stake. When an interpreter starts raving into the microphone, no matter how insignificant the meeting, people get to hear of it. The delegates complain. We receive written protests from ambassadors. We can't afford to wait. Even his colleagues can't take much more!'

Stauber was becoming increasingly indignant. Now he straightened up and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. I stood up and walked towards the window. A stiff breeze was causing the clouds to fray and leave icy trails behind them in the sky. Splashes of yellowish sunlight suddenly fell over the room; without warming them, they gave things a dusty, transient look. They lit up the photo of Irene in its silver frame on the desk. The trams were glittering in the roads below; slowly, laboriously, the city was coming back to life.

‘I imagine you know this colleague well. He too is German; he must be about your age. From the records, I see that you were both taken on in the same year. Tell me a bit about his private life. Slip-ups and all. You must know a thing or two. What was he like as a young man? Even he must have been a bit more easygoing in his youth! He can't always have been so disturbed. I see from his file that he never married, but he might have had girlfriends, and he must have had a family and friends. Apart from languages, he must have had other interests. I don't know, some hobby or other. Sport, perhaps?' My thoughts turned with relief to my tulips and roses; they were surely a fig leaf against madness. Stauber heard me out, though he was clearly dying to interrupt.

‘Sport, hobbies, friends – forget it! He's always been just as he is today. He arrived here twenty years ago with that same wooden look on his face, eyes glazed over with that same anguish, glaring with that same steely determination – to do what, I've no idea. He had something of the spy about him, of the hired assassin. But then at least he didn't make mistakes. His simultaneous translations were like radio bulletins; his voice was harsh, almost threatening, demanding attention. I remember that some delegates were in awe of him; they'd listen to him through the headphones and then crane their necks to look into the booths, wondering who it was who was speaking in such severe, commanding tones. You're right, he is German, but his family isn't from Germany; I think they're from some Balkan country. He doesn't drive, he doesn't smoke, and all he drinks is water. He spends his holidays travelling the world, doing language courses; he's lived alone in the same furnished flat for twenty years. No one knows much about him; he hasn't any friends – well, certainly not at work. He always has lunch in the canteen, alone, reading the paper, in a different language each day, and I know that he always has supper in a restaurant near his flat, at seven on the dot. It's by my bus stop, and when I come home late I see him sitting at his usual place in front of a glass of water, lost in thought, with some strange paper spread out before him. On a few occasions I've bumped into him in town of an evening, together with a woman, though never the same one. Although…'