The Translator by John Crowley Page B

grilles and taillights.
    He was reading a bound periodical, Life or Look or Colliers. He turned another page: a story of sea rescue; a mom and her new refrigerator; a bottle of Scotch. Don’t spill a drop, that’s Old Smuggler. Was he practicing his colloquial English, learning to be an American?
    She walked back down the stacks and came out behind the row of tables where he sat, careful to stay just barely in motion, and not stare, so that no student in his line of sight would puzzle at her, and awaken his notice. He turned the page again.
    Kit had sometimes thought heaven would be like the reading of an endless, or eternal, big slick magazine. Always interesting and unde-manding, a new page to be turned whenever boredom threatened, to reveal something welcomed and unexpected: new things to desire, but not seriously; new beautiful movie stars or homes you might be or live in; moving stories of children far away, of dangers or bad weather, but not where you were; always more silly or witty ads and clear-eyed people looking right at you and brief cute anecdotes, no end to it ever.
    Happiness.
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    It was as though he were feeling or thinking just that: feeling what she felt, looking at the same magazine she had looked at five years ago, the cars and dresses by now already replaced by different ones. Maybe it was she he was trying to understand.
    She actually laughed to think this stupid thought, and he looked up and saw her.
    “Hi,” she said or whispered, still laughing a little.
    “Miss . . . Malone,” he said.
    “Kit.”
    “Kyt.” He folded his hands in his lap. She had to lean close to him so that their talk wouldn’t disturb others. “I do not need to ask why you are here. To read books. Poetry.”
    “No,” she said. “Actually.”
    “Not I either,” he said. He folded shut the huge book, big as a Guten-berg Bible, with a smack that caused heads around the great room to lift and look. “Enough,” he said. “Time for tea, and a smoke. Yes?”
    It seemed like an invitation. He took his overcoat from the back of the chair, and his case, and went out and down the stairs, she following his long stride.
    “So why were you looking at them, those old magazines?” she asked. “Why do they interest you?”
    He shrugged, which didn’t seem to suggest he didn’t know. “To live in any world—in any country—you must know the dreams.”
    “Not everybody dreams of a new refrigerator.”
    “I think in this way,” he said. “Here as in Soviet Union you are promised a better future. Have always been promised. A bright future.
    After a time this future grows old, and has no power to come about. Yet promise is not forgotten. Stalin famously said long ago: Life is getting better, more cheerful. Then came purges, then fear, then war.”
    The library was closing. They went out under the rotunda with the last stragglers and into the night, which seemed warmer than it ought to be, a sudden warmth, a promise.
    “So promises are not fulfilled,” he said. “But they remain, they can

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    be found. And there remains caught in them the happiness they promised. This precious thing.”
    Happiness. She was silent beside him, her feet falling alongside his, knowing she hadn’t understood.
    “So,” he said, as though he had made himself clear. He had stopped beneath a tall lamp by the path, and drew out a cigarette and lit it with a wooden match. She caught a whiff of its odor, mingled with March night air. He had not bade her good night, so she walked beside him when he set off again.
    “Tea,” he said. “Now I think this place just down there, where once we talked, has just closed for the night. We have been long at our stud-ies. We will go to All-Night Cafeteria, I think its name is. Down and left and further down.”
    She skipped to keep up with his long stride. She thought how easily she could take his arm to keep up; or she could put her hand in his, though her