Translator Read Online Free PDF

looks up. Her gaze lands on her blackboard. It’s still jam-packed with Japanese sentences from Kobayashi’s novel. She grabs an eraser and begins to wipe it clean, chalk dust floating in the air, making her cough. She’s about to erase the last bit of it, but stops. That line that bothered her, she fretted over it, rewrote and rewrote. What you once loved lies there, inert, sucked of all its juices because you forgot it.
    She stares at the sentences. It was supposedly Jiro’s interior monologue, lamenting that he had sent his wife away, and, as Hanne saw it, chastising himself far too harshly. She didn’t want to include it. Haven’t you gone through enough, dear Jiro? But it stayed in the novel as it was, despite her personal objections.
    The next day, Hanne has been working all morning, but the play is going nowhere. She can’t seem to enter the mindset of a twenty-year-old beauty. There are festivals, ceremonies, parties with their gossip, and a new lover who secretly slipped a poem into Komachi’s obi. And now she must compose the right response. Should she further ignite his passion? Prolong the courtship? Or snub him outright? Hanne yawns. Really, she doesn’t care what Komachi decides. It’s just frivolous escapism. She pushes aside her notebook and opens a book of Komachi’s poetry.
    Hana no iro faturi ni keri na itadura ni
    Hanne translates: Color of the flower has already faded away.
    Or she could translate it: Cherry blossoms pale after long rain .
    Or, The flowers withered/ Their color faded away.
    Or, Flowers fading. In the long rain of regret.
    She moves on to the next verse, then the next. When she sets her notebook aside, she glances at the final version of the Kobayashi translation. She wishes she had just received it and was only now beginning. She opens it to a random page: Aiko liked to soak in the tub for hours. Jiro told her he sometimes stood at the door and listened. When she stirred, he could hear the water slosh against the porcelain, and it reminded him of their sunny days by the sea. He went on, describing the lull of the waves, the heat of the white sand, and how she said the sun warmed her cold bones. What he didn’t say is that he’d been listening with a certain rising panic, waiting for the water to splash so he knew she was still among the living.
    What a good man, Jiro, thinks Hanne. And how exhausting, those hours of vigilance, attentiveness, and care. She sighs. There’s nothing more to be done. Kobayashi is probably reading it right now. It’s only a matter of time before he signs off and the book is published. She sighs again. She’s in that amorphous in-between time, in between major projects. Yes, she wanted to write her own drama, but her original vision isn’t right. Maybe a walk will stir up a new story.
    Hanne grabs her heavy coat and a scarf. Outside, she’s assaulted by noise—screeches, horns, engines, sirens—and people and taxis and cars and more people. Forms whiz by. All morning she’s been in an isolation tank with scant sensory stimulation—and now a barrage. Suddenly a loud, prolonged sound of the emergency warning system test for earthquakes charges the air—which means it is Tuesday noon.
    She’s never out at this hour. On the days she teaches Japanese, she’s in the classroom. On the days she doesn’t teach, she rises early and goes for a long walk, then hurries home and gets to work. As she heads down the sidewalk, Hanne sees herself, a woman in a blue swing coat, her eyes watering, the rims pinkish red from the constant cold wind. In the distance is the white dome of City Hall. She didn’t intend to head this way, the opposite direction of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it’s been years since she’s been inside, where she and Hiro were married. A civil ceremony, one is conducted every half hour. It wasn’t the least bit romantic, but it was cheap and