The Settling

The Translator's Silence

Chapter 21: The Settling

Three weeks after Witness 247 finished testifying, on a Saturday morning in late June when the trial was in recess for a procedural week and the booth was dark and the headphones were on their hooks and the microphone was off and the red light was not red but dormant, the particular gray of equipment at rest, Amara ran the Scheveningen beach and discovered that the testimony had not left her.

She had expected it to leave. She had expected the sponge to behave as it had behaved after previous witnesses — the testimony settling over days, the settling gradual, the weight redistributing from the surface to the depth, the surface clearing, the clearing producing a return to the baseline, the baseline the ordinary weight of twelve years and thirty-two trials, the weight permanent but manageable, the weight the professional's burden, the burden the cost of the work, the cost accepted, the acceptance the career. Previous witnesses had settled. Previous testimonies had found their place in the sponge's interior and had released the surface for the next witness, the next testimony, the next translation. The sponge's economy was one of turnover — the surface receiving, the depth storing, the surface clearing, the cycle the mechanism, the mechanism the thing that allowed twelve years of testimony to be held in one body without the body breaking.

But Witness 247 had not settled. Three weeks after the final day, three weeks after the blue head wrap had moved past the booth's glass and through the courtroom door and out of the proceedings, three weeks of recess and silence and no Lingala in the headphones and no testimony to translate — three weeks, and the testimony was still on the surface.

Amara ran. The sand was firm at the waterline, the tide low, the June morning producing the particular light of a Dutch summer, the light arriving early and staying late, the light the opposite of the booth's fluorescent overhead, the light natural, variable, the light casting shadows that moved as she moved, the shadows the proof of a single source, the sun, the source the opposite of the fluorescent tubes' distributed illumination, the distributed light producing no shadows, the no-shadows the booth's condition, the booth a space without direction, without source, without the orientation that natural light provided. She ran in the natural light and she ran in shadows that proved the sun was present and she ran at a pace that was faster than her usual pace, the pace increased because the silence the run was supposed to provide was taking longer to arrive, the silence delayed, the delay the testimony's persistence, the persistence the thing she had not expected.

The waves were to her left. The North Sea was its particular gray — the gray that was always the gray, the gray unchanging through the seasons, the gray the sea's only language, the language monolingual, the language untranslatable because the gray had no equivalent in any other color the way some words had no equivalent in any other language. She ran along the waterline and the waves came and retreated and the rhythm of the waves was a rhythm she had run beside for twelve years and that had always provided the counterpoint to the booth's rhythm, the wave-rhythm the body's rhythm set against the testimony's rhythm, the two rhythms different, the difference the rest, the rest the run's gift.

But the wave-rhythm was not working. The wave-rhythm was not providing the counterpoint. The wave-rhythm was being overridden by another rhythm — the rhythm of Witness 247's Lingala, the cadence of the witness's voice, the particular pacing that the witness had established during four days of testimony, the pacing slow, deliberate, the deliberation the rhythm of a woman measuring her words against what the words were required to carry, the measuring producing a cadence that was unlike any other witness's cadence, the cadence the witness's signature, the signature lodged in Amara's body, the lodging the sponge's persistence.

She ran two miles before the rhythm broke. Two miles of the testimony's cadence superimposed on the waves' cadence, the superimposition the surface's refusal to clear, the refusal the testimony's insistence on remaining present, on remaining accessible, on remaining on the surface where the mind could reach it and where the body could feel it and where the running could not displace it. Two miles. She had never needed two miles before. The baseline — the ordinary post-testimony recovery — required half a mile, a mile at most, the distance the measure of the testimony's grip, the grip released by the body's repetitive motion, the motion loosening the grip the way a hand loosened a cramped muscle, the loosening gradual, the gradual the run's pace, the pace the therapy.

Two miles. Then the rhythm broke. Then the waves reasserted themselves. Then the body's motion became the body's own motion rather than the testimony's echo. She ran the remaining three miles in the silence, the silence the run's purpose, the silence the non-linguistic space, the space where the seven languages were quiet and the sponge rested and the body was a body and not a bridge.

She finished the run at the north end of the beach, near the pier, where the boardwalk began and the restaurants were opening for the summer Saturday and the particular commerce of Scheveningen's seaside life was assembling itself — the chairs arranged on terraces, the menus placed on tables, the waitstaff moving with the unhurried efficiency of people who worked in the tourism industry and whose working rhythm was the rhythm of the customers' leisure rather than the rhythm of the court's schedule. She stood at the waterline and she breathed and the breathing was the body's recovery from the run and the breathing was also the body's recovery from the two miles of testimony-rhythm, the two recoveries simultaneous, the simultaneity the condition.

She walked home. She walked the boulevard that ran along the coast from Scheveningen beach to her street, the boulevard a transition from the beach's openness to the residential streets' enclosure, the transition the walk's function, the walk converting the body from running to walking to standing to sitting, the conversion the decompression, the decompression the body's return to the ordinary.

She showered. She dressed. She made rooibos tea. She stood at the kitchen window with the tea warming her hands and she looked at the North Sea, which was visible from the window as a gray line between the buildings across the street, the line the sea's presence in her daily view, the presence constant, the constancy the one thing that did not change in her landscape.

And she heard Witness 247's voice.

Not literally. She did not hear the voice the way she heard it in the headphones, did not hear the Lingala syllables, did not hear the particular timbre of the witness's speaking voice with its lower register and its careful articulation. She heard the voice the way one heard a song that would not leave the mind — the voice present not as sound but as pattern, the pattern the cadence, the cadence the rhythm that the two miles of running had temporarily displaced and that was now returning, the returning the evidence that the displacement was temporary and the cadence was persistent and the sponge's surface had not cleared.

She heard: the river. Not the word for the river but the memory of translating the word for the river, the Lingala noun entering her headphones and the English noun exiting her mouth and the translation carrying the river from the witness's memory to the court's record, the river flowing through Amara's body the way the actual river flowed through the village, the flowing the thing the translation had accomplished and the thing the translation had deposited, the deposit still present, the river still flowing through the sponge three weeks after the translation was completed.

She set the tea down. She walked to the hallway. She put on her shoes. She left the flat.

She did not decide to leave. The leaving was the body's decision — the body refusing to stand at the window with the voice in the mind, the body choosing motion over stillness, the body's choice the instinct of a person whose professional life was conducted in stillness, in the booth's immobility, the body in the chair, the feet on the floor, the hands on the console, the stillness the booth's requirement, and the body outside the booth choosing the opposite, choosing to move, to walk, to place one foot in front of the other on the streets of Scheveningen and to let the motion do what the running had done temporarily and what the standing at the window could not do at all.

She walked. She walked the residential streets with their brick facades and their window boxes and their parked bicycles, the streets of Scheveningen in the summer morning light, the light falling between the buildings and reaching the pavement in strips, the strips the light's translation of the architecture into shadow and illumination.

She walked to the market on the Keizerstraat. The Saturday market. The market she visited weekly for the mangoes and the spices and the products she used for the cooking that was one of her few non-linguistic activities, the cooking engaging the senses the booth did not engage, the cooking the body's rest through a different kind of labor.

She entered the market. She selected tomatoes. She selected onions. She moved through the market's narrow aisles with the particular navigation of a regular customer, the navigation automatic, the body knowing the market's layout the way it knew the booth's layout, the knowledge spatial, physical, the knowledge in the muscles rather than the mind.

And from the back of the market, through the doorway that led to the storage area, a voice spoke in Lingala.

The voice belonged to the same man — the Congolese man who worked in the storage area, who spoke to his colleague in the language they shared, the language of Kinshasa, the language of home. He was speaking about produce. He was speaking about a shipment of plantains. The Lingala was the Lingala of commerce, of labor, of the ordinary exchange between two people performing the ordinary work of a market on a Saturday morning. The Lingala was not testimony. The Lingala was not the witness's voice. The Lingala was a different voice speaking a different content in a shared language.

But the body did not distinguish. The body heard Lingala and the body responded the way it had responded in the same market weeks ago — the flinch, the contraction, the shoulders drawing inward, the chest tightening. The flinch that she had reported to Dr. Brandt. The flinch that was the sponge's reflex, the sponge hearing the language that carried the testimony and responding to the language regardless of the content, the response the body's conditioning, the conditioning produced by four days of direct translation, four days of Lingala-to-English without relay, four days of the witness's voice entering Amara's ears without mediation, the four days sufficient to condition the body, the conditioning the sponge's persistence, the persistence the thing that had not resolved in three weeks.

She stood in the market aisle holding the tomatoes and the onions and she waited for the flinch to pass. The flinch passed. It passed in four seconds, five. The passing was the body's recovery, the recovery fast, the recovery faster than it had been weeks ago when the flinch was new and the recovery took longer, the duration the measure of the conditioning's intensity, the intensity diminishing over time, the diminishing the evidence that the sponge was settling, was processing, was doing the work that the sponge did — the slow conversion of the surface material to the depth material, the conversion gradual, the gradual the sponge's pace, the pace slow, slower than she wanted, slower than the three weeks suggested was reasonable.

She paid for the tomatoes and the onions. She left the market. She walked home.

She did not cook. She set the vegetables on the counter and she stood in the flat and she thought about the persistence. She thought about why Witness 247's testimony was not settling the way previous testimonies had settled, why the surface was not clearing, why three weeks of recess — three weeks without the booth, without the headphones, without the Lingala — had not been sufficient to restore the baseline.

She thought about the directness — the direct translation, Lingala to English without relay, without the buffer of another interpreter between the witness's voice and Amara's ears. The directness was the difference. The directness had made the entering complete. The completeness was the sponge's saturation. The saturation was the persistence.

On Monday she returned to the ICC. The recess was ongoing but the building was open and the interpreters had administrative days scheduled — filing, training, the particular bureaucracy of the interpretation department. She arrived at eight-thirty. She walked the corridors. She took the elevator to the second floor. She walked to the booth.

The booth was dark. The lights were off. The equipment was in standby mode — the console's indicators dark, the headphones on their hooks, the microphone off, the red light not red. The one-way glass looked onto an empty courtroom — the courtroom configured for proceedings but not in session, the judges' bench empty, the dock empty, the witness box empty, the gallery empty, the emptiness the recess's physical expression, the expression the absence of all the bodies that the proceedings assembled.

She entered the booth. She sat in the left chair. She did not turn on the lights. She sat in the dark booth and she looked through the glass at the empty courtroom and she felt the booth's particular enclosure, the enclosure that was her professional environment, the environment that she entered five days a week during the trial and that she had entered for twelve years across thirty-two trials and that was, in its enclosure and its glass and its equipment, the space where the sponge was most fully the sponge, the space where the absorption happened, the space where the testimony entered and the translation exited and the residue remained.

The booth was quiet. The quiet was total — not the quiet of the run, which was a quiet with waves and wind and the body's breathing, and not the quiet of the flat, which was a quiet with the refrigerator's hum and the street's traffic and the particular ambient sound of a residential flat in Scheveningen. The booth's quiet was engineered, designed, the soundproofing the booth's architecture, the architecture producing a silence that was not natural but constructed, the construction serving the translation by eliminating the extraneous, the extraneous everything that was not the testimony, the elimination producing a space in which the testimony was the only sound and the interpreter was the only audience and the translation was the only activity.

She sat in the engineered silence and she waited. She did not know what she was waiting for. She sat in the chair where she had sat during Witness 247's four days of testimony and she looked at the empty witness box where the witness had sat and she felt the booth's enclosure and the silence and the particular quality of sitting in the space where the work happened while the work was not happening, the not-happening the recess, the recess the interval, the interval the gap between the testimony that had been given and the testimony that would be given when the trial resumed.

The gap. She sat in the gap. The gap was the space between witnesses, the space between testimonies, the space where the sponge was supposed to process what it had received and prepare for what it would receive next. The gap was the processing time. The gap was the settling.

She sat in the booth for forty minutes. She sat without headphones, without the microphone, without the red light, without any of the equipment that made the booth functional. She sat in the booth as a body in a space, the body occupying the space the way the body had occupied the space during the testimony, the occupation the same, the activity different — during the testimony, the body translated; during the gap, the body sat.

And in the sitting, something moved. Something shifted in the sponge — not a settling exactly, not the testimony sinking from the surface to the depth, but a rearrangement, the testimony moving within the sponge the way furniture moved within a room during a rearrangement, the pieces finding new positions, the positions producing a new configuration, the configuration not the baseline and not the saturation but something between, something that was the testimony's accommodation, the sponge accommodating the testimony the way a house accommodated a new piece of furniture, the accommodation not the disappearance of the furniture but the integration of the furniture into the space, the furniture becoming part of the space rather than an addition to the space.

Witness 247's testimony was becoming part of Amara's sponge. Not settling into the depth. Not disappearing. Becoming part. The becoming was different from the settling — the settling was the departure of the testimony from the surface, the testimony leaving the accessible and entering the stored; the becoming was the testimony's integration into the surface, the testimony remaining accessible but no longer disruptive, the disruption resolved not by the testimony's departure but by the sponge's expansion, the sponge expanding to hold the testimony without the testimony displacing everything else, the expansion the sponge's response to the testimony's persistence, the persistence the sponge's signal that this testimony could not be settled the way previous testimonies had been settled, that this testimony required a different accommodation.

She understood this in the booth. She understood it not as a thought formulated in words but as a sensation in the body, the sensation the particular sensation of something fitting, of something finding its place, of the internal architecture adjusting to hold what it had received. The sensation was the booth's gift — the booth providing the space where the accommodation could happen, the space where the testimony had been received and where the testimony's integration could occur, the space the testimony's home, the home the booth.

She stood. She left the booth. She walked the corridor. She took the elevator to the ground floor. She walked to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was mostly empty — a few administrators, a security officer, the cafeteria staff. She bought rooibos tea. She sat at a table by the window that overlooked the courtyard, the same table where she had sat during countless recesses, the table her table in the way that the left chair was her chair, the territorial claim not formal but habitual, the habit the body's assertion of place in an institutional space.

She drank the tea. She looked at the courtyard. The trees were green — the full green of late June, the green the trees' summer language, the language seasonal, the language that the trees spoke for three months before the Dutch autumn translated the green into brown and the brown into the bare branches of winter.

She thought about the witness. She thought about where the witness was now — in the village, probably, in the village that was the site, the village that was the place where the violence had occurred and the place where the witness had returned after the testimony, the witness returning to the geography of the testimony, the geography the witness's daily landscape, the landscape containing the river and the church and the place where the ditch had been and the place where the bodies had been and the years since, the years lived in the geography of the worst thing, the geography the witness's home.

The witness was carrying. The witness was carrying what the witness had always carried — the grief of remaining, the untranslatable word, the weight that the testimony had not removed but had only described, the description not a cure, the description the witness's own words: "The speaking does not change what happened. But the speaking means someone has heard."

Someone had heard. Amara had heard. Amara had heard first — had heard before the English channel delivered the translation to the judges, before the French relay delivered the translation to Mukiza. Amara had been the first ear. And three weeks later, the hearing was still in her body, was still on the sponge's surface, was still producing the two-mile rhythm and the market flinch and the voice at the kitchen window.

The hearing had a weight. The first hearing had a particular weight — the weight of being the first body to receive the testimony, the weight of the unmediated reception, the weight of the direct translation. And the weight was not settling because the weight was not meant to settle, was not meant to sink to the depth and be stored and be replaced by the next weight. The weight was meant to stay. The weight was meant to be carried. The weight was meant to become part of the sponge's surface, part of the interpreter's permanent equipment, alongside the seven languages and the trained neutrality and the knowledge of the booth's console and the rhythm of the thirty-minute rotation.

Witness 247's testimony was becoming part of Amara's equipment. The testimony was becoming one of the things the interpreter carried into the booth, one of the things the interpreter brought to the work, one of the things that made the interpreter the interpreter. The testimony was not a burden to be shed. The testimony was a knowledge to be held.

She finished the tea. She stood. She carried the cup to the counter. She walked to the exit. She walked into the June air.

The air was warm. The air was the Dutch summer air, warm without being hot, the warmth temperate, the warmth the country's character expressed as weather.

She walked to the tram stop. She waited. The tram came. She boarded. She sat. She looked out the window. The Hague passed — the government buildings, the embassy row, the residential streets, the city that was the city of international justice and the city of Amara's daily life, the two cities the same city.

The tram carried her home. She entered the flat. She stood at the window. The North Sea was its gray line between the buildings.

Three weeks after Witness 247 finished testifying, Amara stood at her window and she understood that the testimony would not settle the way previous testimonies had settled. The testimony would remain. The testimony would become part of the surface. The sponge would expand to hold it. The expansion would change the sponge — would make the sponge larger, heavier, more capacious, the sponge growing with what it held, the growth the sponge's response to the testimony's persistence, the growth the evidence that the sponge was alive, was adaptive, was not a fixed container but a living tissue that grew to accommodate what it received.

And the silence — the translator's silence, the silence that held the testimony and the settling and the persistence and the accommodation — the silence grew too. The silence expanded with the sponge. The silence became larger, more capacious, the silence holding more, the holding the silence's function, the function the same function it had always performed but performed now with a greater capacity, a greater depth, the depth the testimony's gift, the gift unwanted but received, the gift the witness's final contribution to the interpreter who had translated her words.

The settling was not a departure. The settling was an arrival. The testimony had arrived and the testimony would stay and the staying was the new condition and the condition was the silence and the silence held.