Chapter 1: The Encounter

We both noticed her at the same instant. As soon as she entered the room.

The 'we' above refers to Cathy, an extremely attractive lady who happens to be my wife, and me, Stan, an incorrigible voyeur. I can't stop myself looking at other women. I try to disguise my interest. I refrain from ogling the object of my attention openly, but Cathy has told me often enough that my intentions are completely transparent. It seems that my attempts at hiding the attraction I feel are utterly fruitless. But this time I wasn't even trying to hide my interest. I was staring open-mouthed at the young woman who had just entered the hotel dining room, when I heard Cathy say, "Isn't she gorgeous?"

I knew I had been caught. Cathy might consider my staring so openly at another woman a sign of disrespect. I turned towards her, ready to apologize. But there wasn't a trace of disapproval on her face. Her look was as lecherous as mine probably had been.

"You?" I said, dumbfounded. "I thought you weren't into women."

"Not into women per se. But this one's special. She makes my head spin. I'm getting wet just looking at her."

Was she mocking me? Was she poking fun at the way men talk when they see an attractive female? I checked her face again. She was serious.

"Let's try to catch her attention," Cathy said.

At this stage, it might be useful to say a few words about myself, and about Cathy, the woman who was sitting next to me.

We have been living together for nine years and got married roughly six months ago. The fact that we decided to get official approval after having lived together for such a long time caught most of our friends by surprise. They would have been even more astonished had they known the reason for our decision.

Our life as a couple was going well. There were the occasional noisy arguments, but they just served to clear the air, and to give us a reason for celebrating our reconciliation. In this respect we weren't any different from the other, married, couples we knew.

There was no pressure on us to get married. Most people didn't even know we weren't, and those who did know didn't see it as a problem. There were the occasional bureaucratic hiccups when I couldn't sign a document on Cathy's behalf and she wasn't able to act for me, but we had learned to live with these little annoyances.

Then, one evening - we were lying in bed, too tired to engage in serious lovemaking, but not tired enough to go straight to sleep - Cathy said, "I think we should get married."

It came like a bolt out of the blue. I wasn't aware of having said or done anything that might make her long for the security of officially recognized matrimony. I wondered what had caused this sudden change of mind.

"What for?" I asked.

"So that I can be unfaithful to you."

I laughed. What a relief! I had feared something more serious. "But you have the right to sleep with anybody you want. We have an open relationship, remember?"

"That's exactly the point. There's no fun in cheating on you if it isn't really cheating."

"Oh, I see. You want me to marry you so you can get more excitement out of fucking someone else?" My reply came out much stronger than I had intended.

"Yes, but it isn't as simple as that. I would feel really rotten, seeing that you yourself have resisted all temptations, even though you're entitled to having a bit on the side. If we were married, we could both have an extramarital fling."

Her certainty that I wasn't fooling around hurt my male pride. "What makes you so sure that I'm not seeing someone else?"

"A woman knows. It's called female sensitivity. I don't need to find lipstick on your collar or smell another woman's perfume to know there's someone else. By the same token, I know that so far you've only been looking."

Now there was something I might feel guilty about: my habit of undressing every female which happens to cross my path with my eyes. I prided myself on having perfected a detached cursory glance which allows me to inspect my target without my interest being noticed. Had my technique failed me? Had Cathy caught on to it? Was she mad at me because I had done it in her presence? Was this the real reason behind her sudden interest in wedlock?

I studied her face to see how deep in trouble I was. But Cathy just smiled at me, a little amused.

"Or did you really believe I hadn't noticed how you ogle every short skirt that passes? Do you think you can fool me when you pretend to read the newspaper or study the wine list while you give them the once-over? Oh, darling! I can read you like an open book. You should see how your eyes beam under your half-closed lids every time one of those bra-less wonders walks by."

I think I actually blushed. I felt embarrassed that my carefully constructed mask had been so ineffective. I stammered something which could be taken as an apology. But Cathy wasn't after an admission of guilt.

"There's nothing wrong with looking at other women. I think it's quite natural. In fact, I take it as a good sign. It shows that you're still very much alive in the libido department. It just annoys me sometimes that you seem to believe I'm so dim that I don't notice.

"To come back to our subject: if we were married, you could stop staring and actually do something with them. Just like I could give in to my secret admirer."

I tried to convince Cathy that I had no desire to sleep around and, even if I did, I couldn't see the logic that I had to get married for this purpose. It seemed to be a typical example of 'female logic'.

Cathy remained adamant, however, and returned to the subject of tying the knot on a few more occasions. In the end, I gave in, and we're now a married couple.

Cathy followed through with her plan of 'being unfaithful' to me. She didn't even wait until the end of the period which 'normal' couples call their honeymoon. But it seems that the experience didn't live up to her expectations.

"You can't judge a book by its cover," she just said when she returned from her escapade.

"Any book I know?" I asked her.

"Yes, you know him, but he's not a close acquaintance. You only meet him occasionally. I'd rather not tell you his name to save both of you embarrassment when you meet again."

I considered it part of my role as newly-wedded liberal husband to encourage her to give it another try.

"People need some time to get to know each other. Very few hit it off on the very first date."

Cathy made a second attempt, but came back just as disappointed as after the first one.

"It looks like I'm stuck in this monogamous relationship with you, darling," she said as she hugged me. She made me feel good about this new married freedom. I believe it has given our lovemaking a new, more intense quality.

The fact that Cathy had carried out her plan without much concern for how I might feel about it encouraged me to pursue my own adventure. There was Julie, a waitress at a restaurant where I stopped occasionally for lunch, who had caught my eye the first time I saw her. I always tried to get a table in her section, and she usually found the time for a little chat. But I had never made a pass at her.

I went to the restaurant and after my meal I asked her as causally as I could manage when her shift ended and if she had anything planned for afterwards. When I suggested we'd take a room at a nearby motel, she accepted as if this was the most natural thing to do. It seems that she had been wondering when I would finally make my move.

The sex with Julie was good, but what pleased me most was the fact that I had been able to 'conquer' her so easily. It gave my ego an enormous boost, particularly because she wanted to see me again.

I now meet Julie every other week for an afternoon at the same motel. It almost seems that she is grateful to me for taking the trouble to meet her, for letting her suck my cock and making her come when I make love to her. What happens in that motel room is honest, wholesome, satisfying sex, but nothing out of the ordinary. It isn't the kind of stuff which I occasionally read about on the internet, with ten-inch cocks, never-ending orgasms and rivers of body fluids.

Cathy knows about my encounters with Julie. The two even met once by accident when I was out shopping with Cathy. Each one knew who the other one was, but they just shook hands and didn't go beyond the small talk which is part of a polite conversation.

Cathy herself has given up any hope that her 'secret admirer' will ever live up to her expectations. And she hasn't made any attempt at finding someone else who might.

There is a certain irony in our situation. Cathy wanted to get married so that she could be 'unfaithful' to me. And now I'm the one who has an extramarital affair. Other men might just say, "Tough. Life's a bitch!" but I can't help feeling a certain amount of guilt about it.

I asked Julie if there wasn't any other man interested in her, someone who might be able to see her more often rather than just one afternoon every other week, but she explained that she considers our arrangement ideal. I was considerate, gentle, virile (I liked that part), discreet, and married to a woman who understood. No other man could offer her all these qualities.

Julie told me that she was living with her sick mother, who was being looked after by a nurse during the day, but in the evening Julie had to take over. Julie never went out in the evening; she couldn't accept the invitations for dinner, to the movies, or other social events which are part of a normal affair. The only time she had available for intimacy were the afternoon hours after she left her job and before she returned to her mother.

After this revelation I found it impossible to drop Julie. I don't exactly love her, but I'm sensitive enough to know that ending our relationship would be a severe blow for her.

My feeling of unease towards Cathy made me once suggest that she might want to join Julie and me for a threesome. This wouldn't exactly satisfy her desire to be unfaithful to me, but it would be a new experience for all of us. Cathy told me categorically that she wasn't into women, and that was the end of the conversation as far as she was concerned.

I accepted her refusal. After all, I wouldn't have warmed to the suggestion to go to bed with Cathy and another man. That idea was a definite turn-off.

We also briefly considered the possibility of partner swapping. We would have to find a like-minded couple we would feel physically attracted to and then satisfy our curiosity with our respective counterpart in separate bedrooms. But we didn't know any couple which was into swinging, and we didn't want to risk embarrassing ourselves by asking people who weren't as open-minded as we are. Answering advertisements or placing our own ad also seemed a bit risky - you never know what kind of weirdoes might turn up.

In the end, we realized that our curiosity was not strong enough to overcome our fears and we settled for being a conventional couple in which the husband has 'a bit on the side'.

The subject of our attention was still standing near the door, looking across the dining room. At first it seemed that she was looking for someone she expected to be among the guests. But soon it became clear that she was trying to decide where to sit.

She was an exceptionally beautiful woman, just past the stage when I might have referred to her as a girl. She had a face like a saint and a body that could only have been designed by the devil. The narrow, white dress which outlined her slender body looked elegant and sexy at the same time. Her face showed those delightful features which are the result of mixing Asian and European blood. Her hair was pitch-black with a silky shine, completely straight, resting on her shoulders like a thick veil.

Cathy and I weren't the only people who had noticed her arrival. It seemed that everybody in the dining room was looking at her - except for a few who were too busy with their food to lift their heads. She was one of the last people to arrive and all tables were already occupied by at least one person.

Some of the men who were sitting by themselves waved to her, inviting her to join them. There was a group of three men, gesticulating frantically, offering her the one remaining place at their table. Cathy decided to enter the competition. She stood up and waved to the young woman.

As the young woman looked towards us, I gave her a big smile which was meant to be reassuring, but I have no idea what it looked like. My heart almost missed a beat when she turned in our direction and came towards our table. There was a grace and elegance in the way she moved which made me think of a cat. She walked with determination but without hurry, certain to catch her prey in the end.

The stranger shook hands with Cathy. "Hi, my name is Helen Joe. Thanks for letting me join you at your table."

Helen Joe? That name was familiar. But the person I associated with that name - although I had never seen any pictures of her - had to be much, much older. And because of this the question whether the Helen Joe I was familiar with might or might not be good looking had never crossed my mind. Was this stranger just a namesake of the Helen Joe?

My doubt must have been visible on my face, because, when the young woman turned to me and shook my hand, she said, "Yes, I am the Helen Joe."

Helen Joe was a controversial figure in the world of literary translators. She specialized in modern classics. But she didn't just translate those books word for word or sentence for sentence. She rewrote them in the target language. She changed the setting and the characters into something which readers in the target region would be familiar with. Her version of 'The Old Man and the Sea' was set in some village in South East Asia and was populated by Vietnamese (or was it Thai?) fishermen.

This is where the controversy arose. While many of her colleagues approved of her approach and praised her work as an authentic reproduction of the original story, a significant minority argued that changing the setting was going beyond the freedom of a translator.

While I was still wrestling with the idea that this beautiful creature was Helen Joe, she had taken a closer look at us and noticed the 'Guest' badges hanging around our necks.

"I see you are guests," Helen said, "does that mean you aren't members of ALT?"

ALT, the Association of Literary Translators, was the organization behind the event which had brought all these people, including us, into the dining room of a hotel in downtown Boston. We were attending the opening dinner of the annual meeting.

Cathy and I aren't translators. I don't think either of us has the patience for such a task. But we have compiled a dictionary of colloquial phrases, expressions and figurative speech which many translators found useful in their work. The secretary of ALT had repeatedly invited us to their annual get-together to give a talk about our dictionary. But as all the meetings so far had taken place in faraway cities we hadn't considered it worth our while to travel so far just for a short talk.

This year, the conference took place just half an hour's drive from our home. We could no longer refuse and had come downtown for the opening dinner. Our talk was scheduled for the second day of the conference.

The conversation at our table was mainly between the two women, with me throwing in the occasional comment. Seeing that Cathy had openly expressed a sexual interest in the young woman, I was surprised that she didn't try to steer the conversation topic towards sex. Or maybe there was this 'female sensitivity' thing going on between the two. Maybe they were aware of the sexual desire without having to talk about it.

Instead, the conversation focused largely on the translation of literary works, in particular Helen Joe's approach to this.

It was a pleasure to listen to this intelligent and attractive woman talk about herself and her work. When she spoke, it seemed that she formed each sentence in her head, then scrutinized it, and only when she was satisfied that it was perfect, did she release it. She spoke English without any foreign accent, but I was able to detected a slight Australian twang in her pronunciation.

Helen Joe had been born in Vietnam, the child of a French father and a Vietnamese mother. She spoke both these languages fluently. While she was still quite young, her parents moved to Australia, where she picked up English as her third language. Later, when she discovered that she had a talent for languages, she also taught herself Mandarin and spent some time in Hong Kong and Shanghai. She translates mainly from her western to her eastern languages.

She explained that Mandarin and many other Asian languages were logographic in nature which added to the challenge of translating texts written in a character-based language.

"The symbols which make up such languages cannot be compared with letters or even words of western languages. The concept of representing objects, actions and ideas is so radically different that only a rewrite will do justice to a work of literature."

She talked about how she had visited Florida and Cuba, the places which had inspired Hemingway when he wrote 'The old Man and the Sea'. Florida had changed a lot since then. At the time the book was written there probably weren't as many retired business executives in the whole country as there are now in Florida alone. But the atmosphere in Cuba was still very much how it was described in the book.

Helen had lived among the fishermen, shared their food and listened to their stories. Then she had moved to Vietnam and looked for a place which could be an Asian counterpart to the Cuban fishing village. There she had once again lived with the simple people, learned about their way of life and their way of expressing themselves. And eventually she had created the Vietnamese version of Hemingway's story.

"I wrote the story in my language the way Hemingway would have written it if he had lived in my country," she said.

She had a plan to do the same thing with 'Cannery Row'. On her way from Australia to the East coast, she had stopped in California and visited Monterey. But instead of Lee Chong's grocery store she had found expensive boutiques. The places where Mack and the boys used to hang out had been turned into tourist attractions. The smell of fish-meal no longer permeated the air.

As I heard her talk about the various projects she had already conducted, and realized that her method of reliving a book before translating it took a lot longer than a traditional translation, I wondered how old she might be - my initial estimate had obviously been too low.

Helen interrupted herself in mid-sentence, turned to me, said, "I'm twenty-seven," and then continued where she had left off. That was already the second time she had answered a question I hadn't even put in words. Was this mind-reading, ESP or some eastern magic?

"The way I translate requires extreme sensitivity, not only to the meaning of each word used, but to the atmosphere the author creates, the images he evokes. I don't translate the words but the atmosphere, the images. It seems that I have developed this sensitivity to the point where I can tell what people want to say without them actually saying it.

"Often, it simply means knowing what that kind of person would want to say in a particular situation. And then there is the non-verbal communication. A change in facial expression, a raised finger, a pause before pronouncing a word, a different intonation - all these things communicate meaning to me. Sometimes I catch myself answering people's questions before they had a chance to ask them."

She'd just done it again! She had just answered my question about mind-reading which I had only formulated in my head but never spoken. This woman was amazing! Cathy had told me she could read me like an open book, but Helen seemed to be able to read the text and the footnotes at the same time.