Faith, Untranslated

The shade grew with the sun. Under the big thick leaves, it became something solid. The line between insistent energy and gentle dark turned bold. I lay with her on the grass, exhausted. Dry tears hung in my eyes like long evaporated dew. She held my hand, squeezing it tight. We didn't want to look at the sun. We didn't want to move into the shade. We wanted to be free.

She still wore a sweater, despite the heat. It had been cold that morning. But the bright afternoon sun had burned away the fragile cool. We had lingered until the hours and clouds had dissipated. I asked her If she was hot. She nodded, but she didn't take off her sweater. It was purple, light, made from a jersey fabric; not entirely a burden. It was less heavy than the head I lay on her chest. 

“Get up!” She commanded. I lifted my head startled. “We are going to the ocean.” I rose to my feet, following her.    

At the ocean, the wind blew away all but the brightness. The edge smelled like salt and mugwort, like scraggly beautiful things that cling to cliffs. We sat, clutching each other, our feet hanging over the sea. “I want to jump.” She stated. 

“You would die.”

“Yes.” I felt the soft polyester of her sweater between my fingers. I hardened my grip. She lay back, getting her sweater dusty. I saw her eyes rise to the sky, to beyond it. They stayed there for longer than they should have. “It would have been a glorious moment.” 

“But only a moment.” I muttered. Once again, I put my head on her chest. I could feel my heaviness. “Let’s get ice cream.”

“Is the ocean not cold enough for you?” She looked over the edge. Her voice was a little bitter, like the edge, like the salty sea wind.   

“We can’t eat the ocean.” She started to cry. Her face sparkled with tears. I was jealous. I wiped them away. “We need ice cream.” 

“Cardamom and strawberry?” 

“Of course. Would you like to share? Or should we each get our own?” 

“I don’t know.” 

We walked back through the dusty forest, our white shoes coated with small pieces of dead earth that together layered like days became thick. Our feet were encumbered by both the sun and the shade. They were tangled in the pattern of the shadows. I stopped only for a few blackberries. She stopped for none. My berries tasted watery. I could only feel the seeds: lumpy and hard. 

I took small half-bites of my ice cream. It melted before I could finish it. We sat on a bench, a little apart. The bench looked out on the domesticated sea. We watched the boats move through it. I waited in silence for a while, then fidgeted. “Why did you want to kill yourself?” 

“I didn't want to kill myself. I wanted to fly. In falling, I would have been beautiful.”

“In living you are beautiful.” I said magnanimously. She laughed. I squirmed, looking at my feet. “It would have… ended.”

“Yes. Isn't that the point?”

“But I thought you said you didn't want to die.”

She hugged me. “I don’t.”  

That night we lay beside each other. We were coiled around an emotion that was almost passionate, that was almost sadness. I watched her as she watched the ceiling. Her shiny hair was splayed on the pillow. I tried to follow each strand, but as the hairs approached their roots they righted themselves. They joined each other, becoming ceaseless, whole and un-followable. I pulled the comforter up to my cheeks and tried to sleep. 

She left quietly before I awoke. The blankets on her side of the bed were cool and tidy. That morning I finished writing an essay on the effect of translation on faith. As I ate a late breakfast of fruit and bread, I wondered where she was. Her internship, I guessed. She moved, while I wrote. That afternoon she returned to our apartment for lunch. Her face was flushed with excitement. She was talking about a new case they were going to tackle. It was her prosecutor face. 

“Winning is going to be very satisfying.” she declared. 

“You haven't won yet. It sounds to me like the other side has the stronger case.” 

“But we will. We are going to destroy them.” 

“Are they deserving of destruction?” I asked. 

“That doesn’t matter.” 

I steered her to the table, guiding her into a chair. “Yes, it does.” 

“No it doesn't!” I sighed. “What matters is winning.”  

“Why do you want to be a lawyer?”

“To make money?” I shook my head.    

“To win?” She smirked. I shook my head. She looked down at her hands, inhaling. “To fight.” 

“To fight what?”

“Just to fight.”

“You have to be fighting against something. It can be abstract.”  

“I am sorry, but I don’t know.” 

“Are you fighting for something, at least?” I prompted.

“You want me to say my conscience.” She grumbled.  

“Yes!”

She smiled. “I don’t need to fight for my conscience. I have you: my ubiquitous moral compass.” She took my hand, pulling me out onto the deck. She peered over the railing, gazing over the city. “What do you think his name is?” She pointed to a blurry man whose only distinguishable feature was a large, odd-looking hat. 

“I wouldn't know.” 

“I think it’s Fred.”

Not knowing what to say, I ask. “Would you like to read my essay?” 

“Bring it to me. I am staying on the deck.”  

I re-entered the apartment. I grabbed the hard copy of my essay, which I had left resting on our bed. Meandering slowly back to the deck, I read over the introductory paragraph. It didn't make as much sense as I remembered. As I traced the words with my mouth, I wondered why I had even bothered trying to fit passion into a framework. I stared at my title. The effect of translation on faith. I chastised myself: passion transcends translation. It must. I took a few laps around the kitchen. By the time I reached the deck, I was questioning whether there was a god. 

She stood there waiting for me, watching the people below. She held out her hand for my essay. I gave it to her, biting my lip. She leaned against the railing as she scanned the page. She flipped to the next page. “Could you grab me some coffee?” I walked back to the kitchen. “Can you get me one of the scones as well?” she called. I poured her a mug of cold coffee and placed one of the scones we had bought a few days before on a plate. She took a sip of the coffee. “This is nicely argued.” She read aloud: “Faith is more than simply an intense belief, it is the belief in a narrative. And narratives, unlike singular tangible concepts, are dependent on context. To understand a narrative, we have to understand the relationships between its components. Relationships, because they depend on a complex web of associations, are especially vulnerable to the warping powers of translation.” She paused, then read on. I could feel myself trembling, knowing what came next. “In some ways, faith can be distilled into the expectation of eventual completion. Like when you read a book, knowing it will end. You know, or at least you hope, you will be satisfied. But satisfaction is a delicate thing. It is reliant on relationships it’s built upon; it’s reliant on our very notion of wholeness. There is nothing more fragile than something that's perfect. ” She stopped. Then, oblivious to my discomfort, she dispensed with her advice.``This is good. But I still don't understand why faith is a narrative. You need to justify that claim.” She pointed to the hatted human below. “I have faith that man’s name is Fred. How is that a narrative? How does that come to some form of completion?”

“If you really had faith that his name is Fred, then you would have chosen the name Fred because you associate it with a character, with a story. Faith is something that carries you. If you interacted with Fred down there, you would be influenced by the story Fred carries as a name rather than simply the sounds that comprise the name. ”

“What if I had jumped? Wouldn't that be the ultimate act of faith: committing myself so fully to an ending. But that’s not a story, it's an act.” She said it so casually, through a mouthful of scone.

“It would be the ending of the narrative you had faith in.”     

“But what if I insist it was random? Just a sudden thrill of certainty: no reason or rhyme.”

“Then I would call it passion.”

She leaned forward, kissing me. Passionately. “Is there really any difference?” As her lips tore down my straw man, I felt as fragile as something perfect. 

The next day we went back to the ocean. We held hands, standing on the edge. Tall and proud, together we faced the sea. We saw how beautiful it was. It saw how beautiful we were. I had faith it did. We walked away, kicking up dust as we went.