The Deliberation

The Translator's Silence

Chapter 27: The Deliberation

There was nothing to translate. For the first time in seven months, the booth was dark. The microphone was off. The headphones were on their hooks. The courtroom below was empty — not the emptiness of a recess, which was temporary and bounded, the emptiness lasting ninety minutes or two hours before the proceedings resumed and the courtroom filled and the interpreters returned. This emptiness was indefinite. The judges were deliberating. The deliberation occurred behind closed doors, in the judges' chambers, in a room that Amara had never entered and would never enter, the room the judges' private space, the space where the three judges — Okonjo, Herrera, Tanaka — reviewed the evidence and discussed the testimony and applied the law and formed the judgment that would become the verdict.

The deliberation could last days or weeks or months. The court did not announce the duration. The court announced only that the deliberation had begun and that the verdict would be delivered on a date to be determined. The indeterminacy was the court's prerogative, the prerogative of judicial independence, the independence requiring that the judges deliberate without pressure, without deadline, without the particular constraint that a schedule imposed on thought, the thought requiring as much time as it required, the time unknown in advance because the complexity of the thought was unknown in advance, the complexity a function of the evidence and the law and the particular difficulty of determining whether a man was guilty of crimes against humanity based on testimony that had been spoken in one language and heard in another and recorded in a third.

Amara was on leave. The ICC granted interpreters leave during deliberation periods — the leave not a vacation but a professional hiatus, the hiatus the court's recognition that the interpreter's work was done, that the translation was complete, that the bridge had carried everything it would carry and that the bridge-builder needed rest. The leave was paid. The leave was expected. The leave was the rotation extended — the thirty-minute rotation extended to days, to weeks, the rest not thirty minutes in the booth with the headphones off but days in the flat with the booth empty.

The silence was enormous.

The silence was not the silence of the run, which was the silence of the body in motion, the silence active, the silence the body's language replacing the mind's language. The silence of the deliberation was the silence of cessation, the silence of the work stopping, the silence that came after the last word was translated and no more words were expected, the silence the space that the testimony had occupied now vacated, the space empty, the emptiness the shape of the testimony's absence, the absence shaped like the testimony, the way a hole was shaped like the thing that had filled it.

Amara felt the silence the way she felt the cold of the North Sea when she waded in — not immediately but gradually, the silence entering her body in stages, the first stage a relief (the work was over, the headphones were off, the microphone was dormant), the second stage a discomfort (the absence of work was an absence of structure, the structure the scaffolding of her days, the scaffolding removed, the days unsupported), the third stage something deeper, something she did not have a word for in any of her seven languages, something that was not relief and not discomfort but a kind of vertigo, the vertigo of a person who has been carrying a weight and who sets the weight down and who feels not lighter but unbalanced, the carrying having become the balance, the weight the counterweight, the removing of the weight the removing of the equilibrium.

She went to the beach. She went on Monday, the first day of the leave, the first day without the booth. She went at 6 AM, the usual time, the time inscribed in the circadian architecture. She descended the stairs from the boulevard to the sand. She stood at the water line. She began to run.

She ran north. The beach was empty — October, early morning, the beach populated in summer by tourists and in winter by no one, the emptiness the season's gift, the gift the solitude, the solitude the thing Amara sought on the beach, the solitude the running's companion.

She ran and the running was the same running — the same feet on the same sand, the same breath in the same lungs, the same North Sea to the left, the same gray, always the same gray. But the running felt different. The running felt different because the purpose of the running had changed. During the trial, the running was the silence between the languages — the non-linguistic space, the body's work replacing the mind's work, the running the rest from the booth. But now, with the booth empty and the trial in deliberation and the silence not the silence between sessions but the silence after testimony, the running was not rest from work but work of its own, the running the only work available, the body's work the only work when the mind's work had ceased.

She ran longer. She ran past the Kurhaus, past the pier, past the lifeguard stations that were closed for the winter, past the point where she usually turned. She ran farther north, toward Wassenaar, toward the dunes, toward the stretch of coast that she had not run before because the distance had always been too far, the turnaround point set by the need to return in time for the tram, in time for the ICC, in time for the booth. But the tram was not waiting. The ICC was not waiting. The booth was not waiting. Nothing was waiting except the silence, and the silence was patient, and the patience gave Amara the license to run as far as her body would carry her.

She ran eight miles. Then she ran ten. The ten miles were the farthest she had ever run on the beach, the distance a number she registered with the particular attention of a person who measured things, who counted things, the counting the booth's habit, the habit of measuring pauses and durations and the particular quantities that the testimony produced.

She reached a point on the beach where the dunes rose higher and the beach narrowed and the sand became softer, looser, the footing uncertain. She stopped. She stood at the water line. She breathed. The breathing was heavy — the lungs working, the heart working, the body's machinery engaged in the processing of oxygen and the clearing of carbon dioxide, the processing the body's translation, the conversion of air into energy, the conversion automatic, mechanical, the mechanism functioning without the mind's instruction.

She stood and she looked at the sea. The sea was gray. The gray was the same gray. But the gray seemed different now — seemed emptier, seemed less like a resting color and more like an absence of color, the gray not neutral but vacant, the vacancy the sea's version of the booth's emptiness, the gray the color of the deliberation, the color of waiting, the color of the space between the testimony and the verdict.

She turned. She ran south. The return was slower — the body tired, the legs heavy, the ten miles outbound demanding a cost that the return collected, the collection the particular exhaustion of long-distance running, the exhaustion not sudden but progressive, the muscles depleting their glycogen, the joints absorbing their impacts, the body's resources diminishing with each mile.

She returned to Scheveningen. She climbed the stairs from the beach to the boulevard. She walked to her flat. She showered. She dressed. She stood in the flat.

The flat was quiet. The flat was the silence. The flat was the space where the silence lived during the deliberation, the space that was usually occupied only in the evenings and the weekends and that was now occupied all day, the occupation continuous, the continuity unfamiliar, the unfamiliarity the vertigo.

She did not know what to do. The not-knowing was new — she had always known what to do because the work told her what to do, the work structuring her days, the work providing the purpose that the days required. Wake at 5:30. Run. Shower. Dress. Tram. ICC. Booth. Headphones. Translate. The sequence was the day's structure, the structure the day's meaning, the meaning the work. Without the work, the sequence was truncated — wake, run, shower, dress — and then nothing, and the nothing was the space where the testimony had been, the space now empty, the emptiness the silence's shape.

She tried to read. She sat on the sofa with a book — a novel, a Dutch novel by a writer she had read before, a writer whose prose she admired for its precision and its quietness, the prose the written equivalent of the booth's neutrality, the prose neutral without being empty, the prose carrying content without advertising the carrying. She read ten pages and then she set the book down because the reading was not working, the reading not providing the occupation the mind sought, the mind seeking not fiction but something else, the something else unnamed.

She tried to walk. She walked through The Hague — through the Scheveningen neighborhood, along the boulevard, past the Kurhaus, past the Peace Palace, through the Binnenhof, the old government buildings at the city's center, the buildings where the Dutch parliament met and where the Dutch prime minister worked, the buildings the physical expression of Dutch governance, the governance orderly, methodical, the governance Dutch. She walked for hours. She walked without destination, the walking aimless, the aimlessness the condition of the deliberation, the deliberation having removed the aim, the aim having been the trial, the trial now in the judges' hands.

She walked past a Congolese restaurant — not Chez Mama Bolingo, but a different one, farther from her flat, a restaurant she had not visited. Music played from inside. The music was in Lingala. The music was Congolese rumba — guitars, drums, voices singing in Lingala, the Lingala of music, the Lingala of joy and rhythm and the particular energy of Congolese popular music, which was the sound of Kinshasa's nightlife and which had spread across Africa and to every city where Congolese people lived.

Amara heard the Lingala. She waited for the flinch. The flinch did not come.

She stood on the sidewalk and she listened to the music and the flinch did not come. The absence of the flinch was surprising — the flinch had been present for weeks, the involuntary contraction that the sound of Lingala produced, the body treating the language as a threat, the threat conditioned by the testimony. But now, standing on the sidewalk, hearing the Lingala of music rather than the Lingala of testimony, the flinch did not come, and the not-coming was a signal, a communication from the body to the mind, the body communicating that something had changed, that the association between the language and the horror was not permanent, that the association was the trial's product and that the trial was in deliberation and that the deliberation was a pause and that the pause was allowing the association to loosen, the Lingala separating from the testimony, the language beginning to exist again as language rather than as vehicle, the vehicle releasing its cargo.

She stood and she listened. The music was beautiful. The music was the Lingala she had learned in Kinshasa — the Lingala of evenings, of bars, of the city's particular joy, the joy that existed alongside the suffering and that did not negate the suffering but coexisted with it, the joy and the suffering two qualities of the same people, the same language, the same country, the two coexisting the way the two coexisted everywhere, the coexistence the human condition.

She listened for five minutes. Then she walked on. She walked home. She entered her flat. She sat on the sofa. The flat was quiet.

The next day she ran again. Eight miles. The day after, nine. The running was filling the space the trial had occupied, the running expanding into the vacancy, the body's work substituting for the mind's work, the substitution imperfect but functional.

She visited Marcus. Not on Wednesday — on a Thursday, the schedule disrupted by the deliberation, the disruption freeing both of them from the Wednesday ritual, the freedom producing a different kind of visit, a visit without the ritual's structure, a visit that was just two people sitting in a room.

Marcus was in his apartment. He was not drinking Jenever. He was drinking coffee. The coffee was surprising — Marcus drinking coffee instead of Jenever was a change, a small change, the kind of change that could mean nothing or could mean everything, the meaning unclear, the meaning the kind of thing that an interpreter might spend a career trying to translate, the meaning existing in the space between the act and the intention.

He looked different. He looked rested — or not rested exactly, but lighter, the particular weight that Marcus carried seeming reduced, the reduction visible in his posture, in the way he sat in his armchair, the sitting easier, the body less compressed, the spine less rigid.

He said he was thinking about leaving. He said it without preamble, the way he had said "you are not a window" — the sentence arriving without warning, the sentence carrying its weight in its directness.

Amara looked at him. She waited. The waiting was her tool, the waiting she had learned from Dr. Brandt, the waiting that created space for the speaker to continue.

Marcus said he had been thinking about it for a year. He said the deliberation had made the thinking clearer — the deliberation a pause, the pause allowing him to step back from the work and see the work from a distance, and from a distance the work looked different, the work's shape visible in a way that it was not visible from inside. He said the shape was the shape of enough. Thirty-seven trials. He had translated enough.

He said: "The sponge is full, Amara."

The sentence was the metaphor's conclusion, the metaphor reaching its end, the sponge having absorbed everything it could absorb and the absorption now complete, the complete-ness the signal that the work was over, that the career had reached its natural limit, the limit not imposed by age or by policy but by capacity, the capacity exhausted.

Amara listened. She listened to Marcus describe his future — Amsterdam, he said, or perhaps Utrecht. Translation work, but different translation work. Commercial translation. Legal documents, contracts, corporate communications. The translation of things that did not keep him awake, the translation of things that the sponge could hold without heaviness, the translation of neutral content, content without marrow, content that was bone only, bone without the living tissue inside.

She listened and she thought about the sponge. She thought about Marcus's sponge and her sponge and whether the two sponges were the same size, the same capacity, the same material, or whether they were different, the way Marcus and Amara were different, the way thirty-seven trials and thirty-two trials were different, the difference a number that represented a weight that could not be quantified by numbers alone, the weight individual, personal, the weight a function not just of the number of trials but of the specific testimonies within the trials, the specific words, the specific pauses, the specific three sentences and five-minute silences and untranslatable words.

She did not ask Marcus not to leave. She did not ask because the asking would have been selfish, would have been the request of a person who needed the other person's presence more than the other person needed to go, and the need was real but the need was hers, and Marcus's need was to leave, and his need was his, and the two needs existed in the between, in the space between the staying and the going.

They sat in Marcus's apartment. They drank coffee. They did not discuss the trial. They did not discuss the deliberation. They discussed Marcus's apartment — the books, the furniture, the twenty-two years of accumulation, the accumulation that Marcus would sort and pack and move or discard. They discussed the logistics of leaving — the practical details, the lease termination, the moving company, the forwarding address, the particular machinery of departure.

The discussion was practical, concrete, the discussion about objects and schedules and the mundane architecture of a life in transition. The discussion was the opposite of the testimony — the testimony about horror and grief and the untranslatable, the discussion about boxes and trucks and postal codes. And the oppositeness was a relief, a small relief, the relief of the mundane, the mundane the thing the sponge could hold without weight, the mundane the rest.

Amara left Marcus's apartment. She walked to the tram stop. She went home. She sat in her flat. The deliberation continued. The silence continued. The waiting continued.

She waited. She waited the way the gallery waited — without agency, without influence, without the ability to affect the outcome, the outcome in the judges' hands, the hands deliberating, the deliberation the conversion of evidence into judgment, the conversion conducted by three minds behind closed doors, the conversion the last translation, the final crossing.

She waited and the waiting was the silence. And the silence was enormous. And the enormousness was the shape of everything the testimony had filled — the booth and the headphones and the microphone and the bridge and the seven months and the fourteen witnesses and the closing arguments and the neutrality and the fiction and the sponge.

The shape of the silence was the shape of the work. The silence was the work's negative, the work's absence, the work's impression left in the air after the work was done. And the impression was enormous because the work was enormous, and the work's enormousness was visible only now, in the silence, in the deliberation, in the waiting.

She waited. The North Sea was gray. The deliberation continued. The silence held.