Burley Cross Postbox Theft (14 page)

I miss you, my Blood.

May God keep you.

May God love you.

May God forgive you, and all of us.

Edo

121 Juniper Street
Pevensey Bay
Pevensey
East Sussex

28th January, 2007

Dear Sergeant Everill,

Further to our earlier telephone call (26/01/07), I have enclosed the commissioned copy, finally complete. I’m sorry that it took me longer than I had originally estimated to turn it around, and I hope you’ll forgive the delay. As I said on the phone, I like to think that I provide SOMETHING ABOVE AND BEYOND over and above what might generally be considered ‘a standard translation service’.

You are probably aware of the fact that I have translated some crucial items of evidence for the police on several previous occasions (I believe a translation of mine was critical in the arrest and deportation of a group of Congolese pygmies who were planning an environmental protest against the headquarters of a European multinational mining and logging company, in London, 1998. In 2004, my testimony was considered fundamental to the incarceration of a woman – a former sex-slave with the Hutu militia, no less – who was trying – and with some success! – to run an illegal cleaning company in Stoke).

Perhaps you may find it illuminating if I briefly let you in on a few ‘tricks of the translator’s trade’, so to speak (if you
aren’t
sold on the idea, then feel free to skip the next couple or so pages, recommencing the letter at ‘But enough of my grandstanding…’. I won’t mind in the least).

By and large, a good translator often finds that rather than translating a given manuscript ‘piecemeal’ – or word for word – it’s far more important to try and recreate the general
‘ambience’ of the piece, to let the piece – a letter, in this case – ‘chime within you, like a bell’.

A successful translation doesn’t so much depend on the factual details (i.e. the pitch of the bell, the size of its ringer etc.) as on ‘the rich beauty of the song itself’ (this ‘bell/song’ image is not my own – alas! – but borrowed from my esteemed varsity linguistics tutor, the legendary Dr Rendl Gull PhD, author of the Translator’s ‘Bible’:
The Vagrant Affirmation: Yes! Mais Oui! Da!)
.

Bearing the above in mind, the proficient translator generally seeks – so far as they are able – to mimic the rhythm of the language, its subtle innuendos, its gentle cadences. They hope to recreate a profound and abiding sense of ‘mood’, of ‘atmosphere’.

A translator’s most important duty is to hear the person’s ‘voice’, to absorb it and be true to it. We must be compassionate. We must be flexible. Above all, we must be empathetic.

It’s undoubtedly an art, Detective, since ‘communication’ – in its deepest and most abiding sense – is often embedded in the smallest details: those light brush strokes, those ‘minor notes’ (to extend Dr Gull’s bell/song simile). Translation is – to all intents and purposes – a kind of archaeology. Meaning is buried (preserved and entombed) in a person’s ‘little ticks’, their stylistic ‘nuances’, their quirky mannerisms and idiosyncrasies.

Indeed, one generally finds that a translator’s skill lies as much in making explicit what is
not
being said (and why) as what is being said (right there, on the page, in irreducible ink!).

An almost impossible task you may think, Detective (and you wouldn’t be far wrong), but I still find myself happy – excited, even – to engage with the challenge of it: to pull on my translator’s battle-suit and wrestle with the imponderables, to confront the vagaries of language, head-on, and to try (wherever necessary) to subdue them, to
wrangle
them – as best I can – into a new and more compliant form.

It can be an emotional journey – a
dangerous
journey, at times – full of treacherous by-roads and frustrating cul-de-sacs.

The implications, as I’m sure you can imagine, are often wide-ranging and profound.

The letter you kindly sent me (3/1/07) certainly proved no exception to this rule. I found myself perplexed and confounded – from the very start – by its ‘playful’ tone, its elusive character, its informality of style and heavy reliance upon ‘the vernacular’.

I have naturally endeavoured – so far as is possible – to keep some of these elements in place during my translation, while, at the same time, struggling to dredge a more ‘conventional’ narrative out of the mire.

As always, there’s that niggling disparity a translator always feels between the urge for something to ‘make sense’ (to the average reader), and one’s own deep and abiding drive towards professional veracity (the scrupulous need for accuracy, in other words).

It’s a delicate balance, Detective, and quite a hard one to sustain (I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve fallen prey to the nagging anxiety that something might have been ‘missed along the way’ – or Lost in Translation, as I believe the saying goes).

It’s broadly for the above reasons that I have seen fit to ‘interrupt’ the letter’s narrative at certain points (something I am generally loath to do, although I have done it before) with some pithy interjections of my own to illuminate some of the more obscure and intangible elements in the writing (the emergence of an ‘unconscious backstory’, for example, and some other things which, to the untrained eye, might seem utterly unremarkable, but which, to the translator, with their greater expertise in language and its Byzantine psychology, offer invaluable ‘clues’ to the overall meaning/thrust of the piece).

Of course it goes without saying that I am well aware that my role as translator begins – and ends – with the meaning of the printed words on the page (and that’s exactly as it should be). It would be nothing short of a travesty, for example, if I allowed an over-weening inquisitiveness on my part to stand in the way
of the voice of my subject (the integrity of ‘the voice’, as I’ve already stated, is always,
always
paramount).

But enough of my grandstanding! Let’s get down to ‘the brass tacks’ now, shall we? ‘Lokele’s letter’ (as I’m calling it, mentally, given that you have obscured his real name for reasons of confidentiality) is most certainly a linguistic hotchpotch, a puzzle, an intellectual minefield, written in what I like to call a kind of ‘corroded French of the old, Colonial style’. Just to make my job especially difficult, there’s the odd word of Lingala thrown in for good measure (Lingala became the national tongue of – as was then – Zaire – now the Democratic Republic of Congo – about thirty-odd years ago. It was introduced by President Mobutu, aka Joseph Désiré Mobutu, the Father of the Nation).

As you will read (in my occasional parentheses), I believe him to be an African man in his mid-fifties (I enclose these details in the unlikely circumstance that you have yet to identify/apprehend him). He was orphaned as a child and has a brother (to whom the letter is addressed). He is handsome (by his own admission!) and moderately well-educated (by African standards).

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that this complex translation – these few, humble pages which you now hold in your hand – is the result of many, many long days spent poring over mountainous piles of well-thumbed dictionaries, countless hours of intensive research on the internet, a smattering of emails to various obscure parts of the globe, and a desperate, last-minute trip to the Rare Books section of the British Library in London (the cost of travel, and the price of – as it turned out –
two
nights spent at a mid-range hotel, have naturally been included in my bill).

In between there have been interludes of deep soul-searching, numerous bungled attempts, a small period of writer’s block, the acquisition of a new kitten, a thirtieth wedding anniversary party to plan and execute (a roaring success, but with the odd inevitable hiccup – the cake turned up a total of four weeks
early!), countless re-thinks, revisions, re-writings etc.

A good translator rarely feels as though their work is ‘complete’ (I’d be ‘tweaking’ things forever given half a chance!), but now that my job here is, to all intents and purposes, ‘done’, I must confess that I feel a certain amount of pride in what I’ve achieved.

Of course along with the natural ‘high’ one experiences on completing any large and demanding project, there comes the unavoidable ‘low’, i.e. the overwhelming sense of dislocation, the crushing numbness, the physical and mental exhaustion, that is part and parcel of ‘inhabiting’ a character like Lokele’s mind for so long – and intense – a duration (you may laugh at this, Detective, but in some small way I almost feel as if I had become temporarily ‘possessed’ by Lokele’s spirit for a while, although I’m not suggesting that anything remotely ‘paranormal’ took place, nothing tangible, anyway. Or even, God forbid, that Lokele might have passed from his current, earthly incarnation to – as they say – ‘a better place’).

It’s a difficult process to describe (still more difficult to understand, I don’t doubt!), but the exercise of translating this letter feels loosely comparable to the act of thrashing my way into the heart of a tropical jungle and somehow – quite miraculously – conniving to fashion a small garden (fourteen feet by fourteen feet, approximately) in its dense and heaving midst.

I have brought order where once there was chaos. I have dug borders, grown a lawn – even plumbed in a small fountain (atop of which a charming stone cherub dribbles water from an upturned bowl). I have planted lavender and begonias where before there was only an inhospitable tangle of weed, thorns and wild grasses.

Welcome to my garden, Detective. Take your time, look around… relax. I do hope you enjoy your visit here…

Sincerely Yours,
Rosannah Strum-Tadcastle

********
*** **** ****
****** ****,
********.

20/12/06

Dearest *******,

[I’m guessing this deleted word is ‘brother’ because it is seven letters long and the suspect ‘Lokele’ addresses his brother throughout the unfolding text – he also refers to him as the ‘second-born’, i.e. a
younger
brother, in other words.]

My, how time flies! It’s Christmas, once again, and I thought I should drop you a quick line (is it me, or doesn’t it seem to come around that little bit sooner every year?!).
Do
find it in your heart to forgive me my awful French…

[From this we can deduce that ‘Lokele’ has been away from his place of birth for many years.]

… and my terrible handwriting, there’s a good chap.

[Possibly ‘Lokele’ has ‘the shakes’ because he is a drug addict, or else an alcoholic – he refers to ‘toasting’ his brother on several occasions. Perhaps he is under some kind of unendurable pressure connected to the crime he is being investigated for – gold, diamond or uranium smuggling naturally spring to mind, since these are all activities that are virtually endemic in the place of his birth – the Democratic Republic of Congo
.

Other possibilities are that he has sustained a hand injury through carving wood – a so-called ‘hobby’ of his – or even as a result of some other, rather more ‘nefarious’ activities – who am I to judge?! Finally, of course, ‘Lokele’ might spend much of his time working – as we all do, nowadays – on a keyboard, so his handwriting skills may have deteriorated as a consequence.]

I was only thinking about you the other day – pondering those many, colourful, childhood experiences we shared together in Leopoldville at the Catholic Orphanage…

[Ah! Leopoldville, now Kinshasa! The name was changed in the late 1960s. This small slip tells us that the writer of the letter – i.e. the suspect – is a man who was probably a boy in the late fifties, early sixties – a detail I made passing reference to in my notes, above.]

What japes! What high jinks! Hard times but good times, eh? Not all of them a barrel of laughs, by any means, but when we had fun,
what
fun we had! The trees we climbed! The music lessons we enjoyed! The delicious fruit we devoured!

[If this cunning monster’s barrister harps on in court about his ‘difficult childhood’ to try and get the ‘sympathy vote’, nip it in the bud, Detective, pronto!]

I recall how proficient you were as a student of the recorder – but how irritating it could sometimes be to hear you practise the same refrain over and over. I often wonder whether you made a career of it. You were certainly talented enough!

[My younger daughter is a dab hand at the flute – she recently passed grade 5 – and I’m exceedingly proud of her achievements, but when I hear her tooting away at her scales some mornings the hair on the back of my neck stands on end! I can’t help it! It’s just instinctive! I sometimes wish she’d taken up the oboe, or something with more of a ‘bass’ sound.]

If only we hadn’t lost contact! It tears me up inside to think about it, it really does, but I suppose life has a cruel habit of sending us these little challenges, and, at the end of the day, it’s not so much about the challenge itself, but how we chose to rise to it, eh?

[This is so true, Detective – and a keystone philosophy of my own, as it happens.]

Let us lift a metaphorical glass to our mutual good health, old boy!

[I
say
metaphorical, but…!]

Well, I suppose it’s about time I filled you in on some of what I’ve been up to over the past few months…

[Hmmn. Very useful…
]

It’s been a dreadfully wet year…

[True. We can certainly trust the accuracy of ‘Lokele’s’ grasp on the facts. He isn’t a raving lunatic, or so far ‘gone’ on ‘junk’ that he is incapable of coherent thought. This may be an essential detail to share with the criminal psychologist if an assessment of his mental status is pending. It may also be something a judge might be interested in if sentencing is imminent.]

We barely had any summer to speak of, and while it was – I must confess – rather maddening (to say the least!), on the upside, the lawns in ****** have never looked better.

[The lawns… This is a complete shot in the dark, but I’m guessing ‘Lokele’ dwells in suburban anonymity, somewhere.]