The Interpreter (5 page)
Authors: Suki Kim
The first time they made love, Damian began with her hands.
I’ve always believed that a woman’s hands should tell me nothing, to keep me from the rest of her, but you, yours surprise me, a sign of temper, tenacity, such long, angry fingers.
He was running his index finger across her face. He was whispering the whole time. He kept talking, not so much to her as to himself, as though it was he who needed convincing.
I would’ve recognized you anywhere, your sad eyes, the ones marked for tragedy, your nose is emotional, the angle tells me so, your forehead is high like mine, you’re ambitious like me, your lips are too small for your face, so imperfect and afraid, you’re a beauty full of holes.
Suzy lay still and watched the peeling of her skin with wonder. She had just turned twenty. It seemed miraculously natural, and Damian the wrong man for the job. Afterward, she shuddered at the possible consequence of this love, if that is what it really was. She was not sure if she was frightened or excited at the prospect. Their lovemaking was an escape. It was passionate certainly, not in the usual lusty way, but with a fierce current of sadness, for they both knew that they would be alone at the end of each other.
People later said that Suzy was the precocious thing who ruined the most celebrated marriage of academia. Damian Brisco, the foremost expert on East Asian art, and his wife, Yuki Tamiko, the renowned translator of the newest edition of
The Tale of Genji
. Some blamed a midlife crisis, how Damian, at forty-nine, seemed to have lost his head over a mere student at the expense of his career, which had been crucial for everyone, including himself and his marriage. The couple had collaborated on many groundbreaking studies. They were the authors of the three volumes of
East Asian Art and Literature
, which was the main text for every university’s Asian-civilization course. Most agreed that their marriage catapulted the field of East Asian studies, which up until their prolific partnership had been in a vacuum. Although it was Yuki Tamiko who held the chair position in the East Asian Department at Columbia University while Damian Brisco took an extended leave to work on the
fourth and final volume of the text, it was clear that any major decision had to pass through both. Their names were forever linked together, always in the context of “edited, researched, compiled, translated, written by Brisco and Tamiko.” Their joint lecture series on “Trekking Buddhist Art Through East Asia” was immensely popular, and their marriage admired by those in the field as the perfect union between East and West.
The Tale of Genji
. Some blamed a midlife crisis, how Damian, at forty-nine, seemed to have lost his head over a mere student at the expense of his career, which had been crucial for everyone, including himself and his marriage. The couple had collaborated on many groundbreaking studies. They were the authors of the three volumes of
East Asian Art and Literature
, which was the main text for every university’s Asian-civilization course. Most agreed that their marriage catapulted the field of East Asian studies, which up until their prolific partnership had been in a vacuum. Although it was Yuki Tamiko who held the chair position in the East Asian Department at Columbia University while Damian Brisco took an extended leave to work on the
fourth and final volume of the text, it was clear that any major decision had to pass through both. Their names were forever linked together, always in the context of “edited, researched, compiled, translated, written by Brisco and Tamiko.” Their joint lecture series on “Trekking Buddhist Art Through East Asia” was immensely popular, and their marriage admired by those in the field as the perfect union between East and West.
But Suzy knew otherwise. She had been one of Professor Tamiko’s advisees since the beginning of her junior year. Yet it was nearly impossible to get Professor Tamiko in person. Twice a semester, Suzy was supposed to meet with her to discuss her impending thesis, but so far, she had been greeted by a different TA each time, someone who seemed merely a few years older than Suzy herself, and rather flustered at having to advise anyone at all when his own dissertation lay forgotten somewhere between the hands of the university’s bureaucratic committees. She saw her in lectures, of course. Postwar Japanese Fiction was one of the few standing-room-only classes on campus, and even though Suzy had actually registered for the class whereas half the attendees seemed to be auditors, she was always stuck at the farthest distance from the podium, on which stood Professor Tamiko, whose profile seemed almost ethereal.
It was true that she was beautiful. Yuki Tamiko was stunning. At forty-nine, she had retained much of the delicate-boned, high-cheeked, ultra-slender, and immensely haughty girl whom Damian Brisco had met at Harvard when they were both freshmen. The coy-girl beauty might have long passed the woman, but there was something regal in its place, something strikingly soft and compassionate and yet impenetrable, edged by the vastness of her knowledge as she stood before the hundreds of eager minds and recited lines from Mishima’s
The Sea of Fertility
as though Western scholars had done the most unthinkable injustice by declaring
Ulysses
the ultimate fiction when the real thing
lay shrouded in this Japanese tetralogy, which cast its spell over everyone in the auditorium while she, Yuki Tamiko, towered from her highest ground, suddenly demure and fiercely competent. Everyone was at her mercy. The boys looked up at her with awe and admiration—Yuki Tamiko was not the sort of woman one dared to have a crush on—and the girls marked her every word in their spiral notebooks in red ink with double exclamation points, as though everything would be different now that they knew what they had not realized merely fifty minutes ago, when their literary scope lacked the passionate breadth of that remarkable woman up on the podium. Suzy, however, remained untouched. The lecture was perfect, and Professor Tamiko’s seductive banter mesmerizing, but Suzy felt somehow left out. There was a twinge of coldness that Suzy sensed in the older woman’s face, guarded by the finest words of Japanese literature. Suzy felt claustrophobic and was struck by a distinct desire to get up and walk out. It was during one of these rash walkouts that she saw Damian for the first time.
The Sea of Fertility
as though Western scholars had done the most unthinkable injustice by declaring
Ulysses
the ultimate fiction when the real thing
lay shrouded in this Japanese tetralogy, which cast its spell over everyone in the auditorium while she, Yuki Tamiko, towered from her highest ground, suddenly demure and fiercely competent. Everyone was at her mercy. The boys looked up at her with awe and admiration—Yuki Tamiko was not the sort of woman one dared to have a crush on—and the girls marked her every word in their spiral notebooks in red ink with double exclamation points, as though everything would be different now that they knew what they had not realized merely fifty minutes ago, when their literary scope lacked the passionate breadth of that remarkable woman up on the podium. Suzy, however, remained untouched. The lecture was perfect, and Professor Tamiko’s seductive banter mesmerizing, but Suzy felt somehow left out. There was a twinge of coldness that Suzy sensed in the older woman’s face, guarded by the finest words of Japanese literature. Suzy felt claustrophobic and was struck by a distinct desire to get up and walk out. It was during one of these rash walkouts that she saw Damian for the first time.
She had slipped out the door and skipped down the steps facing Dodge Hall when she sensed that she was not alone, that another person had just taken the same steps and was walking behind her. Resisting the temptation to turn around and look, Suzy kept on walking. It must have been April. The first two weeks of April were always deadly. Finals were just on the way, the summer was around the corner, and a strange mix of excitement and panic spread through the campus as students crammed for exams. It had rained for a week straight, and the afternoon looked unnaturally bright. And it was during these nervous hours that Suzy, instead of returning to her dorm room, turned right onto Amsterdam Avenue. Now a few more people were on the street, mostly campus people still, but a bit older, because beyond the actual gates of the campus, yet still within the ten-block radius of 116th Street, most passersby were graduate
students or school employees or faculty family. All seemed to be hurrying, although it was Friday afternoon, and the rain had finally ceased. Suzy ambled with not much feeling at all, or with so much feeling that she felt breathless. This extreme ennui came upon her with no warning, a dark hand moving onto her heart. Sometimes she would suddenly get up and leave, even though Professor Tamiko’s lecture was faultless and there was no reason for such an impatient exit.
students or school employees or faculty family. All seemed to be hurrying, although it was Friday afternoon, and the rain had finally ceased. Suzy ambled with not much feeling at all, or with so much feeling that she felt breathless. This extreme ennui came upon her with no warning, a dark hand moving onto her heart. Sometimes she would suddenly get up and leave, even though Professor Tamiko’s lecture was faultless and there was no reason for such an impatient exit.
Along Amsterdam Avenue there were two usual stops for wandering, restless undergraduates—St. John the Divine and the Hungarian Pastry Shop. The former was more a construction site than a cathedral, under renovation for as long as anyone could remember. Although it was one of the largest cathedrals in the world, its imperfection, Suzy thought, was really what soothed and attracted visitors. There was something oddly comforting about a cathedral whose façade was forever being repainted or repositioned. She liked sitting on a pew while listening to the usual banging of hammers and drills coming through the stained-glass windows. She hoped that the cathedral would never get done, that it would always remain half finished with steel wires sticking out. God had problems too, Suzy thought, and his cavernous sanctuary was a mess. God belonged more in the café across the street. It was the typical underground hangout often found in college neighborhoods, where goateed boys and handknit-sweatered girls sipped their refills of double Hungarian, which was a shot of espresso with a squirt of amaretto, and discussed the usual suspects—Derrida, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, even Said—although for a break they might bring up Woody Allen, whose latest film had been shot in this very café only a few weeks ago; they agreed that it sounded rather dull—a middle-aged professor falling for one of his students—so typical, so jaded, so hopelessly redundant that they all got tired of talking about it, and the conversation shifted right back to Derrida.
But Suzy entered neither that day. She was about to, and then something stopped her. She had climbed the steps to St. John the Divine when she became aware of the man next to her. He had been walking behind her; although she could not see his face, she knew he was there all along. And then, suddenly, he was on her right, almost directly parallel, facing the entrance of the cathedral. The entrance was wide enough for two people to pass without having to impose on each other, and she feared it was an aggressive gesture from a stranger who seemed to have followed her all the way from the lecture. She was cornered, and was left with no choice but to turn and face him.
His eyes are unhappy
—that was her first thought. Deep, penetrating blue eyes that did not appear exactly hard, but somehow absent, even heartless. The rest of him she noticed much later: that he was considerably older, stood quite a bit taller than her five-foot-five frame, had a faint dimple on his left cheek that seemed out of place, and a face marked by permanent stubble that would graze against her thighs when finally opening her up into complete honesty. But in that initial second when she saw him standing so near that she could almost feel his fine-lined, insistent fingers on her, she thought,
I must seem so terribly young
.
—that was her first thought. Deep, penetrating blue eyes that did not appear exactly hard, but somehow absent, even heartless. The rest of him she noticed much later: that he was considerably older, stood quite a bit taller than her five-foot-five frame, had a faint dimple on his left cheek that seemed out of place, and a face marked by permanent stubble that would graze against her thighs when finally opening her up into complete honesty. But in that initial second when she saw him standing so near that she could almost feel his fine-lined, insistent fingers on her, she thought,
I must seem so terribly young
.
Certainly an odd reaction to a stranger, as he was to her then, an older man, neither particularly handsome nor striking, a passerby possibly her father’s age, although her father always seemed older than those around him, whose conviction was the absolute law by which everyone must abide, because he was the sort of man no one in the family disobeyed. But when Suzy saw Damian that first time, she felt hopelessly young, almost silly, naked, as though she knew that he could see through her own flaring vulnerability as she stood there in her brown suede jacket and faded Levi’s, looking so lovely and tortured the way nineteen-year-olds can look on wet April days, staring up at this older man who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
In fact, Suzy had never really known men. The boys around her age never showed much interest in her. It did not help that her father forbade dating. “School dances? Whatever for? Schools are not for dancing around!” In Korea, he said, girls did not frolic like these American ones. In Korea, he said again, girls stayed clean, as girls should. Under Dad’s “Korean girl” rules, nothing was allowed: no lipstick, no eye shadow, no hair dye, no perm, no perfume, no miniskirts, no cigarettes, and absolutely no boys, especially American boys. The family’s frequent moving seemed to guarantee all that. The girls never stayed in one school long enough to develop a crush. No time to get attached to sinful American habits, Dad used to say. Suzy thought he was justifying all the years of moving his family around. He might have even been trying to blame them. There never was a doubt that, when the time was right, Suzy and Grace would marry decent Korean men. Once, during a drive to a church on Sunday, they nearly hit a puppy, a curious mix of terrier and chow. It looked strange as it whimpered away, a hybrid with pointy ears and a moon face. Dad declared, laughing, “See what happens when you mix blood? Even dogs turn out a mess, stupid and ugly!”
Grace somehow managed to sneak around with boys behind Dad’s back. She would make up excuses about the yearbook committee or student-council meetings and tumble in long after the nine o’clock curfew, and Suzy knew where she had been just by looking at her rumpled skirt and tangled hair. Grace had always been the daring one until she found God and moved to New Jersey. Suzy, on the other hand, never even kissed a boy until her freshman year in college, when she moved out of her parents’ house into the dorm. His name was Brad. Suzy never even knew his last name. He was her first roommate Liz’s boyfriend and stayed over every weekend; each time Suzy turned to the wall to sleep, she would hear moans and giggles from the other
bed. Then, one day, Suzy came back from class and found him waiting for Liz. It was awkward to be puttering about with him sitting on Liz’s bed. The silence hung heavy as Suzy sat facing the desk, still feeling his eyes on her. It was when she decided that she’d had enough and began gathering her books that she felt his hands on her shoulders. He said nothing at all, and Suzy just froze. He slowly turned her around and kissed her without hesitation, not the sweet and soft kind, but the forceful probing of a tongue that was confident and mechanical. Then he walked away from her and lit a cigarette and asked when Liz was coming back. “Any minute now,” Suzy answered without looking at him, and threw the books in her bag and walked out. He never kissed her again, and Liz never knew.
bed. Then, one day, Suzy came back from class and found him waiting for Liz. It was awkward to be puttering about with him sitting on Liz’s bed. The silence hung heavy as Suzy sat facing the desk, still feeling his eyes on her. It was when she decided that she’d had enough and began gathering her books that she felt his hands on her shoulders. He said nothing at all, and Suzy just froze. He slowly turned her around and kissed her without hesitation, not the sweet and soft kind, but the forceful probing of a tongue that was confident and mechanical. Then he walked away from her and lit a cigarette and asked when Liz was coming back. “Any minute now,” Suzy answered without looking at him, and threw the books in her bag and walked out. He never kissed her again, and Liz never knew.
Later, Suzy would recall that first kiss as if it were an omen.
What was it about her that marked her as the other woman? What did he see?
What was it about her that marked her as the other woman? What did he see?
What Suzy never forgot was the smell. It was a sick smell, like something dying almost, like instant powdered milk, nondairy creamer, the milky-baby smell but fake. It leaped into her throat and would not wash away, no matter how fiercely she rinsed her mouth afterward. Each time she kissed boys after that, she looked for the smell. She pretended to kiss them and looked for the smell. Sometimes she would sniff the awful smell and would push the boy away violently and never speak to him afterward. But when the smell wasn’t there, she would be curiously disappointed. It was as if nothing quite erased the initial shock of being kissed by someone who was not hers, a kiss that was stolen, claimed from her flippantly, a kiss so abrasively illicit that she seemed to deserve it, as though she was not worth much to begin with. It stuck with her, the shame, the smell, and came back at odd moments, such as when she stood on the steps of St. John the Divine and saw in the older man’s eyes a clear reflection of herself, terribly young and terribly dissatisfied.
Damian would later confess that he had indeed followed her from the lecture hall. What made him do it? He would never say. He might have been bored, or simply tempted by a young woman who seemed as unmoved as he was by his wife’s lecture, or, more likely, he really had nowhere he wanted to be on that afternoon. Perhaps he wanted Yuki Tamiko to notice him following the girl; that Suzy reminded him of Yuki at nineteen was a minor detail he would have preferred not to see. But he did follow her, which was embarrassingly impulsive for someone so much older and supposedly more sensible. He followed her all the way down the College Walk and along Amsterdam Avenue, to stand before her finally with an awkward smile, which only accentuated his lone dimple, and seemed to her somehow heart-breakingly sad. His stare did not waver, and she stared back, because she thought it might make her appear less young. Finally, one of them burst out laughing—Suzy is not sure which—and soon both were laughing like kids who had cut class and gotten away with it.
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