Katie Kitamura, Intimacies
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The hypnotic quality of Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies comes in part from watching the brackish waters of moral complicity rise around the unnamed narrator, and in part from that narrator’s guarded, mysterious interiority. She leaves out so much in telling the story. Sometimes a book holds back its secrets until late in the story, as part of the narrative tension, but here the restraint is not in the timing of revelations. Those withheld secrets seem to come from Kitamura’s decision about what readers need to know. Or maybe we only learn what the narrator can stand to tell us. Either way, the strategy eliminates so much unnecessary explanation. Questions that come up for me: What is unnecessary? What in a particular novel is necessary and why? How does the strategy of withholding relate to a book’s themes, aesthetic, and project as a whole?
In Intimacies, the narrator leaves an unhappy life in New York and becomes an interpreter for the International Court in The Hague. She winds up translating for a former African president accused of atrocities in an also unnamed country. And dating a man who turns out to be married. In the larger sense, the book interrogates which nations do and don’t get called to account for their crimes (the narrator tells us, for example, about the secret prisons and torture sites in the U.S. hidden behind their sound-proofing). The politics are complicated and stunning. In the narrator’s personal life, as well as her work, she becomes a witness/translator for the reader: the nature of her work influences the book’s narrative strategies.
The protagonist’s observations tend to be in-depth, focused on other characters, and elliptical. In this way, the novel brings to life a central theme of the role of the interpreter as witness: what does it mean to immerse yourself in someone else’s views and words, to be the medium through which they speak?
She’s been seeing Adriaan, a man she doesn’t yet know well, and is probably already in love with him, though she’s not the kind of character who easily admits this to herself, to him, or to us. At a party, an unpleasant stranger, who will later turn out to be a key part of the trial, seems to be trying to wrest her away from Adriaan, in part by telling her that he’s married. She can’t stand the stranger’s company anymore and heads downstairs to Adriaan; the stranger follows them out onto a balcony:
I don’t even know your name, I said to the man, I don’t think you introduced yourself, you said only that you were a friend of Adriaan’s. The man frowned, he had shoved his hands into his pockets when I moved away and now looked even more like a petulant teenager, like someone who had been caught in the act. Adriaan was watching him, he did not say anything and the man did not introduce himself to me either. I was a friend of Gaby’s, the handsome man said at last, Or rather, I was a friend of Gaby’s first.
Adriaan still did not say anything, he was not looking at me, in that moment it was as if I were not present at all, not only to Adriaan but also to the man, who had turned to meet Adriaan’s gaze. The two men stared at each other, I understood then that there was some history of animosity between them, that the man had not approached me for myself, but rather because of my connection to Adriaan. What he perceived that connection to be, I did not know. A friend? Adriaan said, after a considerable pause, Yes, I suppose that is one way of putting it. The man grew flushed beneath his lacquered hair, he looked uneasy, as if he had not expected so direct a response. A long time ago, he said lamely, Gaby and I have known each other since we were children.
You’ve spoken to her lately? Adriaan asked, or at least I thought he asked. It was difficult to tell from his voice whether it was a question or a statement, but in any case I understood that it was a loaded and possibly aggressive thing to say. The man grew even more flushed, he looked over his shoulder and back to the party with longing, he must have been thinking that it had been a mistake to come out onto the balcony. When he joined us he’d had the air of a man who had the upper hand, or believed himself to, but now he simply looked as if he were wondering how quickly he would be able to extricate himself from the situation.
Adriaan now turned to me, Kees is a good friend of my wife’s. That was the first time he had mentioned Gaby, or the fact that he was, that he had been, married. The truth is, he continued, they were lovers before Gaby and I were married, and although that was many years ago they remained very close, very close indeed, during the years of our marriage. I blinked at the phrase very close, very close indeed, the insinuation was crude and out of character. Adriaan continued, I am sure that Kees is in touch with Gaby at this very moment. As for me, I know next to nothing of what she is doing, of what she is thinking, or even exactly where she is.
The lack of quotation marks makes the dialogue seem almost another kind of thinking (as with Rachel Cusk’s and Jessica Au’s narrators). This is a central moment in Intimacies, but the narrator doesn’t insert herself into it and even remarks that she is invisible to both of them (throughout the novel, she accompanies her storytelling with all the thoughts she doesn’t say aloud). Like any professional translator, she’s focused on what is happening, here not only with the words but with the emotional tone, without taking time to interpret or even to understand her own feelings. In almost any novel, a character has to make sense of other characters. In another book, though, a character might jump to conclusions, or wind up connecting their observations to their own past instead of staying fully present, or trying to figure out the mystery of other people.
The interpreter’s feelings come through, even though she doesn’t dwell on them or explain them. In this scene, she’s paying much more attention to what the unpleasant stranger seems to be thinking and feeling than to her own responses to discovering that her lover is married.
The man, who we now know as Kees, says he hasn’t spoken to Gaby “in months, not since she left,” and that all she does is email him occasionally. And the narrator’s interiority continues, still focused not on her own feelings but on what the others are saying and not saying, what lies behind their words.
Adriaan stared at him a moment before turning back to me. The two of them were on the phone together almost every night, he continued relentlessly. He was now almost loquacious, he spoke to me as if I were familiar with all the details of his marriage when in reality he had told me nothing, not until that moment, not the fact that he had a wife, not even the fact that he had children. I understood well enough that Adriaan was not speaking to me but to Kees, that I was only the medium through which his all statements were passing, and similarly I understood that my presence must have been what allowed Adriaan to speak so directly to Kees, it was as if he were saying things he had wished to say for many years but had been unable to, perhaps restrained by the basic courtesies of marriage, his respect for the long-standing friendship between his wife and this man.
In the next few paragraphs, Kees explains himself. Our protagonist keeps her focus on the conversation. Still nothing of her own feelings or of what this means to her. She’s listening to and interpreting the expressions, gestures, tone, and what they might mean for the men. The language is transparent. The long sentences, adding one thought to another without really qualifying or second guessing or undercutting the earlier thoughts, gives the prose a beautiful lethargy, as if she’s floating along, hypnotized, even as she’s observing so acutely: “He was now almost loquacious, he spoke to me as if I were familiar with all the details of his marriage when in reality he had told me nothing, not until that moment, not the fact that he had a wife, not even the fact that he had children.”
Kees says “weakly” that he was “simply a confidant” and that Gaby called him at all hours. The narrator speculates “…probably Kees had been a frequent dinner guest at their household, back when it had been a household, the couple’s regular bachelor friend.” Kees says that “Gaby was never very sensitive,” complains again about her the length and frequency of her calls, and adds, “Of course, Gaby was very used to people listening to her, whatever her faults, you must admit that she was—or rather she is, because it is not as if she has died, she is still with us—a fascinating woman.”
Gaby has always been herself, Adriaan said irritably. Kees stared at him for a moment and then nodded, obviously on this point there could be no disagreement. He then excused himself, there seemed to be nothing else to say. Adriaan gave him a curt nod as he smoked another cigarette. We left the party shortly after. You would not necessarily think it, Adriaan said as we walked to his car, but Kees is a very successful defense lawyer, one of the best in the country.
I said that I could see that, he had the moral flexibility that I thought was surely common to many defense lawyers. Adriaan shook his head. In the end, I am not so sure it has to do with moral flexibility, he said, certainly less than appears at first glance. Everyone deserves fair legal representation, even the most depraved criminal, even someone who has performed unspeakable crimes, the kind of acts that defy the imagination, the mere description of which would make most of us cover our ears and turn away. The defense lawyer does not have recourse to such cowardice, he or she must not only listen to but carefully study the record of these acts, he or she must inhabit and inhale their atmosphere. The very thing that the rest of us are unable to endure is the very thing inside of which the defense lawyer must live.
He frowned. And yet, Kees is petty and essentially frivolous as a person, it is one of those paradoxes of personality or nature. I nodded, and we walked in silence for a time. When we reached his car, I stopped and turned to face him. The street was empty and the rain had cleared. You’re married, I said.
Yes, he said at once. But I don’t know for how much longer. Is that okay?
The words themselves were simple to the point of being blunt, but they were also words that did not try to deflect or avoid. I could have walked away then, and chosen not to involve myself any further. But I was disarmed by his honesty, by the simple question that was so difficult to answer. The appearance of simplicity is not the same thing as simplicity itself, even then I was aware of this. As if conscious of my hesitation, he took my hand and brought it to his lips and kissed the palm and fingers. I shivered at the touch of his mouth on my skin. He opened the door to the car and I got in.
She says no more than “You’re married.” No accusations, no scene, no questions. And his equally restrained, mysterious response seems to be promising a future with her, though without actually saying so. No explanations, no history. Still, she’s disarmed and hesitating.
The conversation about the law and what each person deserves could feel very expository, but in this tense situation where we are waiting for them to talk to each other, it could potentially be a kind of subtext, that statement that everyone deserves fair representation. It both touches on her job and the moral ambiguities there, which we are also caught up in, and maybe substitutes for him pleading for himself.
In an interview, Kitamura talks about performance in Intimacies:
“In this novel, the primary arena of performance is the courtroom, which is so obviously a space of theater and projection. But as you note, it extends through to her private life. Most of the characters are performing in one sense or another. I think the question the narrator faces is how this has resulted in a kind of erasure. She’s spoken the words of other people for so long that when it comes time to speak for herself, it’s difficult.”
Because of these great stretches of summarized dialogue, the performance she describes feels more like dance theater than a play. Most of the drama happens in subtext. No great secrets are being hidden from characters or reader, and yet there’s so much that neither the narrator or readers know, and so much that will only ever be revealed through hints and subterranean conversations or observations of other people and other situations that resonate with but don’t directly illuminate the story.
This scene could have been more like a play, directly dramatizing its large and potentially life-changing conflicts. But here, as in much of the book, the narrator is observing more than deciding, not delving explicitly into the emotional dilemmas over the relationship and her job. The tension is a Hamlet sort of tension, though without all the stabbing and poisoning. Her actions show her feelings: she probably feels how most of us would feel in this situation, and yet she gets into the car.