The Interpreter Read online

  ‘Yes, just like the other three! I too am beginning to think that this isn’t some foreign language, just simple madness. It’s rather alarming to think that all the madmen of Siberia have got their eye on my ship!’ Delattre agreed with a worried frown.

  ‘Yet it did seem to me that he responded to your last, er, what shall we call it, contribution – at least after a fashion,’ he went on, clearly alluding to my attack, which he had taken as an attempt at communication.

  ‘No, I don’t think so; I think all I did was to frighten him even more,’ I said, inwardly praying that I wouldn’t be seized by another crisis.

  ‘Why don’t you go to the police?’ I then suggested.

  ‘Are you joking? We wouldn’t be able to weigh anchor for weeks!’

  ‘What do you intend to do with this man?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll leave that to Janos – he dealt with the other three!’ the captain said, pointing towards the sailor who was closing the cabin door.

  I shot Delattre a horrified look, but he burst out laughing.

  ‘Come now, what can you be thinking of? We don’t throw them overboard! There are some nuns nearby who take such people in, and we keep them in business!’ he reassured me cheerily.

  ‘As soon as the sedative has worn off, Janos will put him in the car and take him to the nuns. We’re setting sail tomorrow, so we’re going to have to get rid of him before the day is out,’ he added in a low voice, giving the sailor an expectant look, which was answered with a shake of the head.

  The captain asked me whether I would care for a cup of tea in the control room before I left.

  ‘My dear Stauber, a sailor’s life is a complicated one! Think of us as a piece of France which is plying the high seas, and everything which happens to us, even the most trivial incident, has to be seen in that light; often it’s France herself who goes on the attack. This business will certainly come to the ears of the secret services; indeed I happen to know that the French ambassador has already been alerted. Come to think of it, what are you doing here in Odessa?’ he asked me politely as he refilled my cup.

  ‘Oh, just the usual – updating myself linguistically, attending boring specialist meetings!’ I ad-libbed blithely, sipping my tea and wishing heartily I could be out of there.

  ‘How wonderful to know so many languages and to be able to understand the people you come across! Whereas I’m always cooped up in my cabin, travelling the world without seeing it. Imagine – by now I recognise the ports by the colour of the containers on the wharves! But I won’t bore you with my moaning; I’ll call Janos to take you back to your hotel, you could probably do with some rest.’

  He rose and shook me warmly by the hand.

  ‘One last thing,’ I said before going up on deck. ‘Could I go with your sailor to the convent? You see, if what your stowaway is speaking is indeed a language, I’d be most interested to know more about it; as a professional linguist, I’d like to see these other men who speak it.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Stauber! Indeed, if you do learn something, I too would like to hear about it. Janos will be happy to take you there; he’s not actually one of our sailors – I’d describe him as an invaluable Man Friday whom we happen to have here in Odessa.’ Delattre rose from the table and went off to summon his dogsbody.

  We left the port in complete darkness; the wind had driven off such powdery snow as had remained on the quays, and now there was nothing to lighten the pitch-black of the night. The dark water tugged at the boulders with an oily sucking sound. After driving through the container port and leaving the last cranes behind us, we turned off the main route taken by lorries and drove along a wide dark road which led into the outskirts of the city. Janos stopped in front of a white building with high windows. Stretched out on the back seat, his wrists held firm by lengths of adhesive tape, the stowaway did not utter a word during the entire trip; every so often I would turn around to catch a glimpse of his wild, staring eyes. We lifted him out and walked him into a sumptuous entrance hall smelling of must and urine; the sailor pressed a switch, and two weak bulbs in the wall lit up the gloom, revealing the steps of a wide marble staircase leading up into the darkness, flanked by a blackened balustrade. Beneath it was a wrought-iron gate leading to an inner courtyard. We ventured along an ill-lit portico and came to a sort of porter’s lodge, from which a grey-clad nun emerged and came limping towards us; Janos said something to her, she glanced at me over thick spectacles and gave a suspicious nod. Two other nuns appeared and took charge of the stowaway, freeing his hands and leading him into an adjacent room; Janos and I followed the nun with the glasses. After going back through the stinking hallway, we went up the stairs to the first floor; the nun opened a door with a large key and we were greeted by a powerful stench of stale air and excrement. Beyond the door, without either windows or furniture, lit by a neon strip, was a large room, peopled by some fifteen men, leaning against the walls or stretched out on the floor, their eyes fixed on a large skylight affording a view of a grimy, green-flecked night sky. Their grey uniforms put me in mind of Dr Barnung’s clinic. The nun stopped us in our tracks, gesturing to us not to go any nearer to them; she whispered something to Janos, who translated:

  ‘Soon one of them will start singing!’

  The men had all turned to stare in our direction, silent and motionless. The first one to start was one who had been lying on the ground; he opened his arms and let out a long whistle, then craned his neck and gobbled like a turkey. Everyone else then did the same, in one great burst of whistling, wailing and arm-waving, their eyes wide, their mouths forming little round holes before they began their cry. Then, apart from the odd squawk, they became silent and motionless once more; those who had been lying down lay down again, the others turned their backs on us and ignored us. The nun opened the door and preceded us down the stairs; once in the entrance hall, she again whispered something in Janos’s ear.

  ‘She says two new ones arrived last week, found on the road by lorry drivers. We don’t know where they come from, nor what brings them here; they look Russian, or perhaps Mongolian, but we can’t be sure,’ said the sailor, translating the nun’s words; the nun crossed herself.

  ‘Ask her if I can see the new arrivals.’

  After hearing Janos’s translation the nun nodded and took us back to the porter’s lodge, then to the sickroom where the stowaway from the Saint-Nazaire had been taken, together with two other men lying on camp beds, one of whom was asleep, snoring noisily, his mouth agape, his head done up in a bandage with blood seeping through the gauze. The third man was seated on the edge of his bed with his back to the door, rocking incessantly, his head bowed. I went up to him: amidst the mass of tousled hair I recognised the wrinkled face of none other than Colonel Kwiatkowski. I called him loudly by his name and he stared at me; for a moment I thought he recognised me, but then I realised that his eyes were utterly blank. He half-opened his mouth and uttered a weary moan before returning to his rocking.

  It was pitch dark by the time Janos took me back to the Krasnaya; we made the return trip in complete silence. Finding Kwiatkowski among the whistling madmen had thoroughly shaken me.

  ‘Don’t hesitate to contact me should you need to,’ said the sailor as I was getting out of the car. ‘I’m always at the place where they land timber, wharf thirteen. Just ask for Janos, they all know me.’ I nodded my thanks and stared after the rear lights as the car drove off.

  The hotel porter was dozing in an armchair in the foyer, still dazed with sleep as he came to let me in.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’d like to know whether Mr Gunther Stauber has arrived,’ I asked him while waiting for the lift. Yawning, the porter opened the register and leafed through a couple of pages.

  ‘Yes, he arrived yesterday morning. Would you like me to leave a message?’

  ‘No, no, it doesn’t matter,’ I said hastily, closing the door to the lift.

  That night, although I was dead tired, I could not sleep; now I knew where
the patients referred to isolation therapy in Barnung’s clinic ended up; the thought that that might also have been my final destination sent a shudder down my spine. I did not know that another destiny entirely, a far more subtle doom, was awaiting me far from Odessa. I was beginning to fear that I too had been one of Dr Barnung’s guinea-pigs; I saw now that there was no alter ego to be eradicated from my consciousness, no unconscious understudy for Felix Bellamy to be brought back to life by means of an intensive course in Romanian, of all things. Infected by the interpreter, poisoned by the attentions of a criminal German neurologist, I too had been in danger of ending up as a whistling madman. I decided to return to Munich as soon as possible, to discover what was really going on in Dr Barnung’s clinic, of what monstrous experiment I had been the object; if indeed there was any antidote to the hideous cocktail of mental illnesses which had been implanted in my brain, that was the place to find it. But first I had to find out how Gunther Stauber was involved, and what the head of the German department was doing over two thousand kilometres from his interpreter’s booth.

  It was almost dawn when I at last fell asleep, to be awakened by the sound of the wind against the windowpanes; the sky was aswirl with a jumble of white clouds, and the city below seemed to be carved out of glass. Beyond the inlet, the sea was roiling, white with spray. I looked at the clock and saw that it was late; I threw on my clothes and rushed downstairs. Stauber had already left, but I was told that he was in room 314. At first I thought that I would wait for him in the hotel, but my impatience got the better of me and I went out into the city, in the mad hope of tracking him down. I hailed a taxi and had myself driven to the centre of town, seeking out ministries, museums and monuments, following the few tourists hardy enough to pause to take photographs. I took refuge in a bar to have something to eat, then wandered along the seafront to the ferry port. There, battered by the wind as I idly watched the queue of vehicles moving sluggishly into the hold, my eye was caught by a banner hanging from the facade of a building with large windows: ‘XIVth international congress on cetology’, it proclaimed. The conference centre – why had I not thought of it earlier? I ran up the marble steps and into the foyer. The sight of the standards hanging from their brass poles, of the delegates scurrying to and fro with their briefcases under their arms, the ushers in their grey uniforms with their bundles of leaflets, everything reminded me of my former post, of the dry-as-dust labours to which I had devoted so many years of my life. I looked around for the accreditation desk, then showed my passport to the usher, who looked me up and down suspiciously; he had a vaguely Asiatic air to him – close-cropped hair and narrow eyes, prominent cheekbones. He leafed through a register, said something in a low voice to a colleague, then turned to me.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but your name does not appear to figure on the guest list; in any case, the congress is virtually over, the president is making the closing speech.’

  ‘Never mind. I’d like you to register me and provide me with earphones for the simultaneous translation. You can see from my passport that I used to work as a high-ranking functionary for an international organisation,’ was my firm but calm reply.

  The usher balanced his cigarette on the edge of a brimming ashtray and looked enquiringly at his colleague, who shrugged his shoulders, taking refuge behind his computer screen. Blowing the smoke out through his nostrils, the usher made an impatient gesture, but then took my passport and copied the details into a register. He took a blue folder from a cardboard box and thrust it in my direction, together with a map of the city, a pass, a set of headphones for the simultaneous translation and a form for me to sign. I thanked him curtly, deposited my coat in the cloakroom and walked towards the red velvet curtain behind which lay the conference hall, which turned out to be full of bald heads listening to the president’s speech. Standing on the stage, in front of a gigantic image of a nineteenth-century print of a whale hunt, a small bespectacled man was waving his arms and reading from a hefty tome. I sat down in the first free place I could find and, feigning interest, placed the blue folder on the little table attached to the arm of my seat and opened it up. In fact, of course, what really interested me was the simultaneous translation; I had seen the booths as I came in, high up at the back of the hall; I put on the headphones and began to twiddle the knob carefully until I hit upon the German translation, and heard Stauber’s voice.

  I leapt to my feet: so it really was him. I slipped through the hall, my eyes glued to the booth window. Despite the glass, I could make out the ruddy face of the head of department, who clearly recognised me and pulled back in alarm. Headphones still clamped to my ears, I rushed from the auditorium, jostling angry scientists who were taking notes with their expensive pens. When I reached the foyer, I looked for the entrance to the booths, but my way was blocked by a wooden screen; the place was too crowded for me to climb over it without being noticed, so I went towards the main entrance, hoping to find another route. At the end of a long red cordon, two guards bristling with serious-looking holsters and radio receivers were patrolling the passageway leading to the offices and the booths. I waved my pass casually in the direction of the less daunting-looking of the two, but he directed me firmly but politely back to the accreditation desk, where I once again came eyeball to eyeball with the Asiatic-looking usher; pretending I’d made a mistake, I muttered an apology and went back towards the conference hall. I still had the headphones on, and Stauber’s voice was ringing in my ears; he was talking about increased protection for sperm whales, of the strange habits of Boreal whales, of the impossibility of pinpointing the areas occupied by the white whale during the winter season, and of their mass destruction by the Inuit, who are gluttons for their skin, which they eat raw. But I could tell from the strained tone that his mind was on other things; he was shouting rather than talking, breaking off in mid-sentence and repeating the same word several times over. I imagined him up there in his booth, running his eye anxiously over the seats in the auditorium to see where I had got to; he had a lot of explaining to do. I paced up and down in front of the red curtain, uncertain how to proceed. I felt a sudden prickle of sweat break out all over my body, my mouth was dry and my tongue felt furry; seized with a spell of dizziness, I was forced to lean against the wall. I could feel one of my convulsions welling up in my chest; I tried to hold it back by breathing heavily, but already the first whistling sounds were escaping from my pursed mouth. My legs were trembling, my vision was becoming blurred; losing my step, I bumped into a group of people standing around the bar, one of whom helped me back onto my feet. I thanked them, shook myself free of their steadying hands, rushed to the cloakroom, collected my coat and ran out of the building, only to find myself pursued by the usher, demanding the headphones which I had forgotten to return. But while he was tugging me by the arm and calling the guards for help, I was already blurting out mangled, senseless words; grinding my teeth in an effort to contain myself, I fixed him with an angry, frightened glare, trying to shake off his hand. I pulled off the headphones and threw them towards him, running down the steps as I did so; at last he loosened his grip and bent down to pick them up. He watched me as I ran away, then went off again up the steps, shivering and turning up his collar, accompanied by the two nervous-looking guards who were already prattling into their radios.

  I took refuge on a landing-stage from which I had a view of the esplanade in front of the conference centre; I sat down in the cold on a mooring post, still breathing deeply in my attempt to ward off the attack. I had fallen over several times during my flight, tearing my trousers and grazing one of my hands on the gravel. I paused there for a moment, with the snow and the fine sand blowing into my eyes. Hugging my coat around me in an effort to keep warm, I kept an eye on the tinted windows beyond the black creek, and when I saw the first figures coming down the steps and onto the esplanade, where a row of taxis was waiting for them, I stood up wearily, walked back towards a corner of the conference centre and positioned myself behind the
hull of an upturned boat that had been pulled clear of the waterline; from where I stood I could distinguish the faces of the people who were emerging from the building. What I was seeking among the crowd who were shaking each other’s hands and talking into their mobile phones, eyes on the middle distance, was Stauber’s ruddy face, his short steps and awkward gait; but the esplanade was emptying out, and there was no sign of anyone who looked like him. The last taxis were driving off, as were the last minibuses with the insignia of the various grand hotels; lights were going off in the foyer. I approached the building cautiously. Hugging the wall, I went back up the steps and slipped inside, pushing at the first door I came upon. I heard voices from inside the hall, some clattering and clanking, the echo of empty rooms. I hid between the pots of ornamental plants. A workman was pushing a trolley across the foyer, laden with assorted equipment; porters were shuttling to and fro, carrying piles of folders and files; behind his desk, the Asiatic-looking usher was putting the earphones back into their cases. Quaking with apprehension, I slipped past the screen previously manned by the two guards and went up the stairs to the interpreters’ booths; clinging to the balustrade, dragging my aching leg, I proceeded to the corridor, lit now only by a few dim security lights. Above the window to each booth was a sheet of paper with the name of the language the interpreter had been translating from; I walked along the corridor until I came to the door to the German booth, noting that it was very slightly ajar. I stopped, took a deep breath and listened hard, but all I could hear was the hum of a distant vacuum cleaner. In the auditorium behind me workmen were folding up the velvet curtains and loading them onto a trolley. I approached the door with extreme caution, doing my best to avoid making the boards creak. I leaned against the wall and turned the handle, pushing against it with my shoulder, but it held firm; I peered in through the spy-hole, but could see nothing. I tried the door again with all my force, and this time it gave way; I stumbled in and fell upon something soft. In such faint light as penetrated through the tinted glass I recognised Stauber, lying on his back beside me; two fingers of one hand were caught in the lead of the microphone he still had twisted around his neck; his other hand was clutching the leg of a chair. Empty and rheumy, his half-closed eyes wore a surprised expression. Floundering wildly, I edged away from the body, drew myself up to a sitting position and leaned against the wall, panting heavily. The floor was scattered with papers, pencils and tattered dictionaries, clear evidence of a recent struggle. As I attempted to get to my feet, I noticed a sheet of paper protruding from Stauber’s jacket pocket; I pulled it out and held it up to the light. The list! The interpreter’s list, yet again, but this time printed on art paper, with no crossings-out. Beside the city of Tallinn, an unsteady hand had added four strange names: Kim, Kaina, Leda and Ferdinand, this latter underlined. Scarcely had I recovered from this barrage of unexpected events than I heard the sound of steps in the corridor. Someone was coming, and they were coming fast; I glimpsed their shadow on the glass of the next-door booth. I heard the swish of fabric and the quick, laboured breathing of someone who has been running, then smelled the bitter smell of untreated wood mingling with the pungent scent of heated resin; it filled my nostrils, entered my brain, triggering off a rush of sights and memories. It was him, the interpreter, right there, outside the door! He had killed Stauber and now he was coming to kill me! I thrust the sheet of paper into my pocket, jumped over the upturned chair and pulled the door open, shifting the corpse as I did so in order to get out. But the man I found before me was the Asiatic-looking usher, who jumped back in fright on seeing me and flattened himself against the wall. As soon as he recognised me, though, he seemed to recover himself, but when he saw Stauber’s corpse he grabbed me by the lapels and let out a shriek. I tried to struggle clear, but the man had strong fingers, and all that I managed to do was to pull myself round with my back against the wall and push my aggressor towards the door of the booth. I could already hear the thump of the guards’ boots on the stairs. I let myself fall heavily to the ground, taking the usher with me, then thrust him in the direction of the half-open door of the booth, where he encountered Stauber’s lifeless arm. That caused him to loosen his grip; he crawled through the door into the booth, colliding with the chair, which then lodged itself in the door. I beat a hasty retreat, continuing down the corridor, to find, to my relief, that there was also a staircase at the other end; once down it, I hid myself among the ornamental plants which the workmen had assembled in front of the large windows, then rolled across the floor as quietly as I could until I found myself by one of the main doors. Looking up, I saw the two guards peering anxiously over the balustrade, seeking me out among the hopeless jumble of curtains, plants and crates scattered throughout the foyer. I waited until they had gone down the corridor to rescue the usher, then pushed open the main door and slipped out. There was one single taxi left on the esplanade; the driver had left the engine running to keep warm and was leafing through a newspaper, the air thick with smoke. I leapt aboard and shouted to him to drive as fast as he could to the timber wharf, number thirteen.