The Silence

The Translator's Silence

Chapter 32: The Silence

Monday morning. January. The year had turned. The turning was the calendar's turning, the arbitrary division of time into years, the division human, the division imposed on the continuous flow of days the way language was imposed on the continuous flow of experience — the imposition a structuring, the structuring a making-sense, the making-sense the human project, the project conducted in language and in calendars and in all the other systems that humans built to convert the raw and continuous into the measured and the bounded.

January in The Hague. The coldest month. The air outside Amara's flat was two degrees Celsius, the temperature the temperature of the sea's influence — the North Sea moderating the cold, the sea's temperature warmer than the air's temperature in winter, the sea releasing the heat it had stored in summer, the release the sea's gift to the coast, the gift making the Dutch winter milder than the continental winter, milder but still cold, the cold the January cold, the cold that Amara had lived in for thirteen years.

Thirteen. She had been at the ICC for thirteen years. The Mukiza trial had ended in November. The sentencing had occurred in December — Mukiza sentenced to twenty-five years, the years the court's translation of the verdict into time, the time the punishment, the punishment the court's response to the crime, the response proportional, the proportion the court's judgment, the judgment the final act of the trial that Amara had translated.

Two months had passed since the verdict. Two months of the after. Two months of the silence — the silence between trials, the silence that was not the silence of the run or the silence of the flat or the silence of the deliberation but the silence of the interval, the space between one trial and the next, the space that the ICC's calendar provided for the interpreters to recover, to rest, to prepare for the next case.

In the two months, she had run. She had run every morning on the beach at Scheveningen, the runs shorter now — six miles, five miles, the runs contracting as the trial's weight settled, the weight finding its permanent place in the sponge, the sponge accommodating the weight the way soil accommodated a stone, the stone sinking into the soil, the soil closing around it, the stone becoming part of the ground. The weight was there. The weight was permanent. But the weight was settled, and the settled weight was different from the unsettled weight, the settled weight bearable, the bearable the condition that the between provided.

She had visited Marcus. She had taken the train to Amsterdam, a Saturday in December, and she had visited Marcus in his new apartment — a smaller apartment than the one on the Laan van Meerdervoort, a canal-side apartment in the Jordaan district, the apartment bright, the ceilings high, the canal visible through the window, the canal Amsterdam's particular geography, the water in the city rather than at the city's edge. Marcus was translating menus. He showed her a menu he had translated — a restaurant in the Nine Streets, the menu in Dutch and English and French and German, the four languages of Amsterdam's tourism industry. The menu described dishes — stamppot, bitterballen, haring, the Dutch dishes described in four languages with the precision and the fidelity that Marcus brought to all his translations, the precision the same precision he had brought to the testimony, the fidelity the same fidelity, the skill undiminished, the skill merely redirected, the redirection Marcus's choice, the choice the squeezing of the sponge.

Marcus looked better. Marcus looked lighter. The lightness was visible in his posture, in his face, in the way he moved through the small apartment, the moving easier, the body less compressed. He was drinking less — coffee more than Jenever, the substitution visible in the clear eyes, the steady hands. He said he slept. He said he slept without dreaming, or without dreaming in Serbo-Croatian, which had been his testimony language, his Lingala, the language of his particular burden. The sleep without dreaming was the sponge's release, the sponge lighter, the lighter sponge producing lighter sleep.

He asked about her. She said she was fine. The answer was the same answer she always gave — the two words, the reduction, the compression. But the answer was different now, the answer carrying a different meaning, the meaning closer to the words' surface meaning, the meaning approaching accuracy. She was fine. She was not well — the word "well" implying a completeness, a resolution, that did not describe her condition. But she was fine. Fine was the equilibrium. Fine was the balance between the sponge and the window. Fine was the between.

She had called her mother. She had called on Sundays, as always, the ritual maintained, the Twi flowing between The Hague and Accra, the mother tongue carrying the conversation, the conversation carrying the connection, the connection carrying the love. Her mother asked about the work. Amara said: "The trial is over." Her mother said: "Another one will begin." The sentence was not a question. The sentence was a mother's knowledge of her daughter, the knowledge born of forty-five years of observation, the observation producing a certainty that was not prediction but recognition, the mother recognizing that her daughter would continue the work because the work was her daughter, the work and the daughter inseparable, the between the place where both lived.

And now Monday morning. January. A new trial.

She woke at 5:30. The body knew the time. She lay in bed for three minutes. She lay in the dark. The dark was the January dark, the deep dark, the dark that lasted until eight-thirty, the sun reluctant, the light slow, the morning arriving in the increments that northern latitude required.

She rose. She dressed in running clothes. She left the flat. She descended the stairs. She walked to the boulevard. She descended the stairs to the beach. She stood on the sand.

The North Sea was gray. The gray was the same gray. The January gray was the March gray was the November gray, the gray the constant, the gray the sea's identity, the gray the one thing that did not change in translation, the gray the universal.

She ran. She ran north. Five miles. The run was the run — the feet on the sand, the breath in the lungs, the silence between the languages. The run was the rest. The rest was the preparation.

She returned. She showered. She dressed — dark trousers, a blouse, flat shoes. She ate breakfast — mango from the Indonesian market, yogurt, toast. She drank rooibos tea. She packed her satchel — thermos, notebook, pens. No laminated witness list — the witness list for the new trial had not yet been distributed. The new trial was beginning today. The first session. The reading of the charges. The beginning.

She left the flat. She walked to the tram stop. She waited. The tram arrived. She boarded. She sat by the window. The tram moved through The Hague. The city was the same city — the same buildings, the same streets, the same flat landscape, the same gray sky. The city was the city of international justice. The city was the city of the booth.

She arrived at the ICC. She showed her badge. She walked through the lobby — the flags, the marble, the institutional grandeur. She walked the corridor — the gray carpet, the fluorescent lights, the numbered doors. She walked past Marcus's old office. The door was open. A new interpreter occupied the office — a young woman, Francophone, recently hired, the office furnished with new books and new files, the office the same office but different, the occupant different, the difference the only change, the corridor otherwise unchanged.

She reached Booth 3. English. She opened the door. She entered. The door clicked behind her.

The booth. The same booth. The left chair. The console. The microphone. The one-way glass. The view of the courtroom below — the judges' bench, the prosecution table, the defense table, the witness box, the dock, the gallery. The same courtroom. A different case.

The new case was different. A different accused — not Mukiza, who was in the detention unit serving his sentence, but a different person, a different name, a different country, a different conflict. The charges were different — different articles, different acts, different villages, different victims. The languages were different — the new trial involved witnesses who spoke Kirundi and Kinyarwanda and French, the languages of a different region, a different history, a different set of testimonies that would require a different set of translations.

But the booth was the same. The chair was the same. The headphones were the same headphones, hanging on the same hooks, waiting for the same ears. The microphone was the same microphone, mounted on the same console, connected to the same audio system, feeding the same English channel, the channel that carried the interpreter's voice to the headphones of everyone in the courtroom who had selected English.

Amara sat in the left chair. She sat the way she had always sat — the body settling into the chair's specific geometry, the specific angle, the specific distance to the console, the body remembering the chair the way the body remembered all the things it had done repeatedly for thirteen years.

She poured rooibos tea from her thermos into the thermos cap. She drank. The tea was warm. The warmth was the warmth of thirteen years of mornings in the booth, thirteen years of thermos caps, thirteen years of the particular ritual of drinking tea before the microphone went live.

Through the glass, the courtroom was filling. New lawyers — a new prosecution team, a new defense team, new faces at the tables, new suits, new binders, new laptops. New gallery — different family members, different faces, different headphones on different heads, the headphones the same model, the faces different. A new accused would be brought through the side door. New security officers would escort the new accused to the dock. The new accused would sit and put on headphones and select a channel and wait.

And new witnesses would come. New witnesses would enter through the witness's door and sit in the witness box and put on headphones and adjust the microphone and begin to speak. New witnesses would describe new events in new languages, and the new languages would enter Amara's headphones and the translations would form in Amara's mind and the translations would exit Amara's mouth and the translations would enter the English channel and the English would arrive in the headphones of the court.

New words. New testimony. New carrying.

The courtroom filled. The judges entered — different judges, a different chamber, different robes on different bodies. The courtroom rose. The courtroom sat.

Amara put on her headphones. She adjusted them — the cups against the ears, the seal, the sound of the courtroom's audio system entering her ears, the sound the ambient sound of a courtroom about to begin proceedings, the rustle and murmur and the particular pre-session tension that every courtroom contained.

She pressed the microphone button. The red light came on. The microphone was live.

She was the voice again. She was the bridge again. She was the window and the sponge and the between. She was the translator.

The presiding judge spoke. The judge spoke in French. The French entered Amara's headphones. The French was new French — new accent, new cadence, the French of a different judge, a different person, a different legal mind. But the French was French, and French was one of her seven languages, and the language was ready, the architecture activated, the room in the seven-room house open and lit and waiting.

The judge announced the case. The case number. The name of the accused. The charges. The articles of the Rome Statute. The language of the law.

Amara translated. She heard the French and she spoke the English and the two languages operated simultaneously in her mind, the hearing and the speaking fused into the single act of interpretation, the act she had performed for thirteen years, the act that was her skill and her burden and her purpose.

The first witness was called. The witness entered the courtroom through the witness's door. The witness was a man — tall, thin, wearing a white shirt buttoned to the collar. The witness sat in the witness box. The witness put on headphones. The witness adjusted the microphone.

The witness spoke. The witness spoke in a language Amara spoke. The words entered her ears. The words traveled through the auditory nerve to the brain. The brain processed the words. The translation formed.

She opened her mouth. She spoke. The English exited her mouth and entered the microphone and traveled through the audio system and entered the headphones of the court. The English arrived. The bridge was open. The words crossed.

The testimony began again.

And between the words — between the witness's language and the court's language, between the horror and the record, between the speaking and the hearing — there was the translator's silence. The silence that Amara carried. The silence that held everything the translation carried and everything the translation could not carry. The silence that was not empty but full. The silence that was the cost of the bridge and the condition of the bridge, the cost and the condition the same thing, the silence making the bridge possible by holding what the bridge could not carry, the silence the reservoir, the silence the sponge, the silence the space where the testimony lived after the testimony was translated, the space that was the between, the space that was Amara's home.

The silence that held the Mukiza trial and the thirty-two trials before it and the trial beginning now and the trials that would follow. The silence that held the fourteen witnesses and the witnesses who would come. The silence that held the three sentences and the five-minute pause and the untranslatable word and the forty minutes in the ditch and the prayer and the boy and the clearing and the bodies and the burning and the verdict and the word — guilty — and the eighth language and the grief of remaining.

The silence that held Marcus's departure and her mother's naming and Dr. Brandt's listening and Witness 247's walk past the glass and Mukiza's glance in the corridor and the woman in the green dress and the gallery and the headphones and the relay and the direct translation and the seven languages and the one silence.

The silence that was not the absence of sound but the presence of carrying. The silence that was the translator's work — not the visible work of the translation, which the court heard, which the record preserved, which the headphones delivered, but the invisible work of the carrying, which no one heard, which no record preserved, which no headphones delivered, the carrying conducted in the eighth language, the language without words, the language of the between.

The silence. The translator's silence. The silence that made the bridge possible. The silence that was the bridge's cost. The silence that was full.

The witness spoke. Amara translated. The bridge was open. The words crossed. The testimony flowed from one language to another, from one side of the bridge to the other, the flow continuous, the flow the work, the work the purpose.

And in the space between the languages — in the space between the witness's words and the court's words, in the space where the translation happened and where the translator lived — the silence held. The silence held everything. The silence held the weight and the carrying and the sponge and the window and the fiction and the truth and the between and the remaining and the grief and the running and the North Sea and the gray and the tea and the booth and the glass and the microphone and the headphones and the red light and the voice.

The silence held Amara. And Amara held the silence. And the holding was the work. And the work continued.

Monday morning. A new trial. A new testimony. A new translation.

The bridge was open. The words crossed. The silence held.

The translator spoke. And between the words, the translator was silent. And the silence was full. And the fullness was the cost. And the cost was the bridge. And the bridge was necessary. And the necessity was the work. And the work was Amara's. And Amara was the silence.

The silence. The translator's silence.

Full. Unending. Hers.