The Interpreter Read online

  It didn’t take me long to realise what had happened. I was ill, I could no longer hide the fact. The illness that had found its home within me was a parasite, a sort of fungus, an unthinking worm, made up of merciless cells which would devour me if I did not have some recourse to action. But was it not already too late? After much hesitation, remembering the psychiatric report attached to his medical notes, I decided to go to the archives and look for the file on the interpreter. I wanted to track down the specialist who had diagnosed his illness and put myself in his hands – before it was too late, for me as well. On the last page of the file I found the name and address of Dr Herbert Barnung, a German expert who had done years of research into language disorders.

  I left for Munich one muggy day in late summer. The airport was extremely quiet; the girls at the cash desks in the duty-free shops were twirling around on their stools, underemployed, shoes off, scratching one heel with the big toe of the other foot, and inspecting their nails. In the corridors leading to the flight decks, the only sound was the customs men’s radios crackling behind the plate glass of their cabins. Once I’d boarded the plane, the mood seemed to be one of intense expectation: peering at the faces of the other passengers, absorbed in their newspapers, I had the impression that we were all going to see Dr Barnung. His consulting room turned out to be in the new part of the city, at the edge of extensive woods and lawns dotted with flowerbeds. What I particularly remember of that warm and sunny afternoon is the outline of a cat crouching on the sill behind the tinted glass of a window giving onto the garden, the long shadows cast on the wall by the seats in the waiting room, the old magazines on the table and Dr Barnung himself, thin and pale in his white gown, coming towards me and holding out his hand, yet at the same time somewhat forbidding, with the spare look of a military man used to a frugal life style. He had hard features, prominent cheekbones, a high, freckled forehead; behind his clear blue eyes I sensed the shadow of distant trouble, the force of an iron will. His consulting room had heavy wooden panelling and dark, heavy furnishings; on the walls, in ornamental metal frames, were large prints of birds of prey. Clasping his long white hands together and rubbing them along the table, he listened attentively to my tale of woe. When I embarked on the unlikely story of the interpreter and his secret language, contrary to my expectations, he neither interrupted me nor seemed to become impatient. He read carefully through the pages on which I had written out the meaningless words that punctuated my nightmares, pausing for thought, knitting his thick reddish eyebrows; at times he would glance up from his reading and scan my face with an impassive look. I was not to have long to describe my problems, however, because I soon found myself beginning to stammer out my gibberish in front of him as well; my tongue became glued to my palate, and when at last I managed to loosen it from the grip of the cramp that had mysteriously assailed it, I found my throat seizing up, driving out the air I was vainly drawing in from my lungs in my efforts to articulate my words, yet turning them into nothing more than warbling babble. Alarmed, Dr Barnung put a finger to his lips, then appeared to smile, perhaps the smug smile of a professional who has identified the problem. He wrote some notes in minuscule handwriting, glancing up occasionally in fascination to observe the spasmodic contractions of my face as he did so. But when at last he spoke, his expression was impenetrable and his voice grave.

  ‘Do you have difficulty in focusing on what you’re looking at? Do you sometimes suddenly find yourself right up against things which seconds before had seemed far away?’

  ‘I don’t know. But my vision does cloud over, and I do have long periods of distraction which I can’t then reconstruct.’

  ‘What is your mother tongue?’

  ‘French.’

  ‘Are other languages spoken in your family?’

  ‘My paternal grandparents were German, but I never knew them.’

  ‘Did your father speak German with you?’

  ‘Not often. He never taught it to me. He used German mainly when it was something serious, or to tell me off. I understood it, but I couldn’t speak it.’

  ‘Did you answer your father back when he scolded you in German?’

  ‘No. I never answered back. Indeed, it was to let me know that I mustn’t answer back that he spoke to me in German.’

  ‘Did your mother speak any language apart from French?’

  ‘She too could understand German, but she didn’t speak it.’

  ‘Not even with your father?’

  ‘No.’

  Dr Barnung nodded, pursed his lips and pushed away the paper with his tiny writing. Clasping his hands again, he put his elbows on the table.

  ‘Mr Bellamy, in all probability, what you are suffering from is a serious linguistic disassociation. We’ll need to have other sessions to sort the matter completely, possibly using hypnosis, but it seems clear to me that a split between French and German has opened up in your unconscious: between the language you habitually spoke, and the one associated with serious occasions, and no answering back. This dichotomy has caused a disturbance which you have hitherto managed to keep under control, but, for some unknown reason, something has occurred which has upset your delicate psychic balance. Your mind can no longer tolerate this disconnection and is expressing its suffering by emitting incoherent sounds; it must have sensed that the root of the problem lies in your relationship with your parents. At one time such psychoses could only be tackled with the brutal chemistry of psychiatry, or with the slow and complex processes of psychoanalysis. In our clinic, we have developed forms of therapy which are less disruptive and more decisive, thanks to which you will not have to delve into your unconscious in search of painful buried memories. All that you will need to do to cure your disease is to monitor the tracks which French and German have traced in your mind, widening them where they have become constricted and stemming them in the places where they overflow. With the help of the sophisticated technique of linguistic hypnosis we use in this institute, you have excellent chances of recovery. Sometimes just a few weeks’ therapy is enough to relieve the symptoms, but for a lasting recovery more time is needed. You will have to be with us for some time, and submit yourself to our cure willingly and constructively if you truly want to get better.’

  I glanced up at the doctor incredulously. For a moment I thought that I had fallen victim to an elaborate hoax. Perhaps our conversation had been a sort of dress rehearsal to which he had to subject unknown patients who turned up in his clinic in order to distinguish mythomaniacs from those who were really ill. I smiled awkwardly, to show him that I had seen through his ruse and that we could now proceed to the real interview. But that chill stare, the marble coldness of that angular body, which seemed to spread to every object in the room, made me realise that Dr Barnung was not joking, that he had never joked in his whole life, that for him every form of existence was a kind of madness to be cured. I would have liked to laugh in his face, to have accused him of being a charlatan and run out into the sunlight, away from that airless room. But deep down I felt that the doctor was right, that there was indeed something hanging open and unstitched within me; weakened by that invisible haemorrhage, my mind was becoming dimmer, spinning out of my control, slowly dissolving, making me easy prey to the other beings who now lived within me.

  ‘And what do your cures consist of?’ I asked meekly, a large knot forming in my chest.

  ‘Of language courses, Mr Bellamy. You see, for us each language has its own therapeutic value; we make the most of all its virtues. For curing the most extreme pathologies, we do not flinch from recourse to using the rarest and most difficult of all. Of course, the point of departure is always the patient’s mother tongue. Something that might be of benefit to a Chinese person might do you irrevocable psychic harm but have no effect at all upon a speaker of Bantu. So here in this clinic the patients are rigorously subdivided into separate linguistic departments. There can be nothing more harmful, at this stage in the cure, than exposing a patient to a lang
uage to which he is unsuited.’

  ‘And what is the language for me?’

  ‘The right language is determined by the pathology, but it may change as the cure proceeds, depending on the degree and speed of the recovery. In your case, what I’d suggest first is an intensive course of Romanian. You see, French and German are similar in the way they view reality, but in essence they are profoundly different. Latin and Germanic languages have something in common; they may influence one another and, with time, even understand each other, but they cannot mix. Romanian on the other hand is a happy synthesis between Slav and Latin; in Romanian, all that is rational about Rome, mingled with Mediterranean ebullience, becomes fused with irrational Slav passion and melts into the yearning melancholy of the steppe. Association with this balanced medley of language and spirit will do you good; it will help to heal the wound you currently feel throbbing in your mind. The healing process will take place unconsciously. By sinking deep into the meanders of your brain, the learning of this new language will make good the damage. Alongside the Romanian cure, however, I’d also suggest protracted German therapy, partly because for us German is a bit like aspirin, it’s good for everything: it clarifies thought processes, stiffens resolve and lays feelings bare. In your case, it is also one of the branches of your mind which you must rediscover and learn to live with: there is an atrophied residue of German within you which is clinging on to life, but which might also end up by obstructing your psychic development. I feel I must warn you that complications could arise. Disturbed by a sudden feeling of estrangement, at first your ego might take refuge in French and refuse to emerge from it, and then shock therapy would be required. We would have to subject you to a deeply alienating and, how can I put it, exotic linguistic soaking, with some sessions of Tungusic and Inuit to lure your ego out and oblige it to face up to the trauma it is suffering. Occasionally we might even have to have recourse to dead languages: the primitive structure of languages such as Matagalpa and Tuscarora can sometimes jolt the worn mechanisms of modern languages back into action, affording the mind the possibility of a fresh start. Therapeutically speaking, such steps are the equivalent of electric shock treatment. Don’t worry, though, we resort to such methods only in extreme cases.’

  In the glancing light, Dr Barnung’s face was a red eyeless mask; he was moving his mouth in an unnatural fashion and to me his voice sounded distorted, like the sound of a radio whose batteries are running down. There was a pause; he moved away from the window and into the bluish half-light.

  ‘What would happen if I didn’t undertake a cure? I mean, what risks do I run if I leave it to my mind to find its way on its own?’

  I was having trouble breathing, seized as I was with a sense of powerlessness which almost prevented me from inwardly expressing any astonishment at the doctor’s bizarre theories.

  ‘Linguistic confusion, followed soon after by mental confusion. That is what awaits you if you take no action. You have come to me today with a wound too deep to heal by itself; if you ignore it, it will become infected and contaminate the healthy tissues too. Mental wounds do not produce blood or scabs or pus; the pain they cause is invisible and unbearable. Faced with such suffering, your brain will lock itself away in the only place of refuge left to it: in madness.’

  Spoken at the fateful hour of sunset, those words frightened me but at the same time reassured me. I knew at last that I was indeed ill. In my heart I felt my resolve stiffening; I would follow the doctor’s advice to the letter. My cure would be a sort of purge: I would be cleansed of all the evil that had been building up within me and I would also be cured of the poisonous memory of Irene.

  Dr Barnung was looking at me in silence; I could hardly make out his expression, the room had grown so dim.

  ‘I realise that you must find what I have told you deeply puzzling. I suggest that you take time to think things over, go home and let a few days pass. In the meantime, I’ll be happy to give you any clarifications you may feel you need. Don’t hesitate to phone me if you want to. It is vital that patients have complete faith in the therapy we offer them, and also that they do exactly what we tell them when they have agreed to go ahead. It is crucial that it should be you who makes the decision, that you do indeed truly want to be cured and that you are completely happy to have put yourself into our hands.’

  The first thing that came into my mind, as I listened to him, was that the interpreter too must be suffering from my own disease. The idea that we unknowingly shared the same fate made me suddenly feel like a brother to him. I asked the doctor whether he had attended that very clinic.

  ‘I remember that patient – he suffered serious linguistic dissociation. Such pathologies are not uncommon among interpreters. Professional ethics prevent me from saying more, but your colleague refused to submit himself to my attentions, clinging to crack-brained theories which were simply further confirmation of his illness. I don’t know what happened to him in the end.’ There was a brief silence. An evening mist was gathering over the lawns outside the window. Dr Barnung was standing in front of me, thoughtfully rubbing his hands. I heard a brief rustling sound – the fabric of his stiff white coat – and the sound of rubber soles creaking over the parquet. Then the door opened suddenly, flooding the dim room with electric light from the waiting room.

  Leaving Dr Barnung’s language clinic, I found myself obsessed by the thought of the interpreter. I became more or less convinced that the disease from which I was suffering was a form of infectious madness, an illness that was endemic among interpreters, a lethal strain which would reshape and transform itself like influenza among the Chinese. Lacking sufficient linguistic defences, suffering from poor German and protected only by my French, I must have caught it from that man who was himself infected by a verminous pullulation of foreign languages. Unprotected by the antibodies of a thousand other grammars, for me such a disease might have effects that would be devastating. I started picturing linguistic infections and epidemics; my mouth felt like a breeding ground for germs. I looked at the people in the airport waiting room who were speaking foreign languages as though they were so many spreaders of the plague. And now I understood how the interpreter must have suffered when he saw his life crumbling under the blows dealt him by that wily illness, which was destroying the most precious part of him, the well-honed instrument of his profession. He had tried to explain the phenomenon to himself as best he could, dreaming up far-fetched theories, seeking senseless explanations which had inevitably ended up disconcerting and infuriating his superiors. Loneliness and fear had done the rest. I began to feel a desire to track him down, to apologise to him and make up for the harm I had unintentionally caused him by offering my help. I had become like him: we were dogged by the same ill luck. But, by persuading him to put himself in Dr Barnung’s hands, I could still rescue him from the abyss of madness. In my dreams, as the cure progressed, I imagined a rare and open friendship growing up between us, nourished by gratitude, a lasting closeness which had no need of the complex underpinnings of love. My redeeming of that luckless man would be my own redemption. But perhaps, at the same time, I realised that, by now, his company alone could afford me some relief, that his was the only presence I could still bear to have beside me.

  In the weeks that followed, I too was obliged to give up work. The personnel department sent me before a medical tribunal, which coldly noted my impairment and left me no alternative. My heart strangely light, I saw documents piling up on my desk containing the same time-worn phrases as those which Stauber had drawn up in connection with the interpreter, but this time no one objected to signing them. Within a few days I had received notification of my dismissal for health reasons; my colleagues shot me sombre glances in the corridors and my secretary would lower her voice on the phone when I went into the office. Suddenly I no longer had anything to do; the pages of my diary remained blank and I spent my days in a state of suspended animation. My superiors summoned me to hear a farewell speech and receive an a
ward, but I neither answered their invitation nor attended the event. For once, Irene would have been proud of me. I received a letter from the administration requiring me to remove my personal effects from my desk and cupboard by five o’clock in the afternoon of Wednesday 23rd September at the latest, to return my identity badge to the Security Office and to take the parking permit off my windscreen. Felix Bellamy, grade one international functionary, destined for a brilliant career, had been wiped off the map.