The Interpreter

What it looks like, and what it does

A neat figure in a grey suit with a lanyard of expired passes, standing between two booths. Her mouth moves a half-beat behind the speakers. Two shadows pointing opposite ways. A clipboard holding a form in no known script.

Appears at a crossing when two parties cannot otherwise understand each other. Stands between them. Never sits. Leaves when the last form is stamped.

What is known

First recorded at the Kessin river crossing in 1966. Border officers remember an interpreter provided by no agency. They accepted her because the interviews became easy.

Travellers say she renders their meaning with embarrassing precision, including what they did not want to say. Officers say she translates them too. Both sides leave with a clear understanding and a feeling of having been seen. A man who tried to lie through her was gently and irrevocably honest.

What it can do

• Translates meaning rather than words, between any two parties
• Brings both parties to a full understanding of one another

Where it stops

• Cannot carry a lie; it is rendered as the truth it covers
• Appears only where two sides truly lack a shared language

An encounter

Whitfield interviewed a family who spoke no language he knew. A woman he had not seen arrive stood between them and spoke, and the interview ended in four minutes with everyone in tears. Whitfield could not afterward repeat a word. On the form he had written “understood” in the box for “reason for visit.”

Lamar Whitfield, border officer, Kessin river crossing, Booth 2, A night shift, February

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Fourteen border posts in nine countries report an unrostered interpreter. None has her name.
• rumor: That she has been seen at a peace table, a hospital and a wedding, in each case in the middle.
• interpretation: She may not be translating. She may be the thing both sides were trying to say.

Still unresolved

Her lanyard holds expired passes from forty-one crossings. One bears a photograph of the officer who is reading it.

Where it has been recorded

• The Kessin Crossing (confirmed) — Recorded by Lamar Whitfield, border officer.

Stories about it

• She Will Say What You Mean (Grotesque encounter, 4 min) — At the night counter of the Licensing Office an old net-mender speaks a dialect nobody rostered can answer, and a woman nobody rostered answers it.

Connected entities

• The Understory — Both occupy the gap between two speakers. The Interpreter makes the meaning plain. The Understory makes it comfortable.
• The Bridge at Ketterby — Neither can be lied to. Both stand where two sides meet and make the distance between them true.