Intimacies

The novel delves into the intricacies of personal relationships, the need for authentic connections, and the elusive nature of truth. Intimacy is portrayed as a sophisticated negotiation of desire, vulnerability, and the complications of human connection rather than mere physical or emotional proximity. The narrator’s search for authenticity in her interactions becomes a recurring theme, reflecting her need to form genuine emotional bonds, and this urge conflicts with her natural impulse to keep people at a distance. The narrator’s private thoughts present intimacy as a complex concept that transcends traditional depictions of love to encompass the more deeply psychological and metaphysical relationships that exist. The narrator's various relationships with Jana, Adriaan, and Eline therefore highlight different aspects of her ongoing investigations into the subtle dynamics of intimacy. As the novel progresses, the narrator uses these interactions to examine the risks of vulnerability and emotional entanglement, and she soon learns that emotional closeness comes with the price of increased ambiguity and a barrage of conflicting emotions.

The narrator never explicitly states that she is lonely. However, she does explain that her budding friendship with Jana comes on the heels of her father’s death and her mother’s decision to move away. The stress of these tumultuous life events is compounded by the narrator’s own abrupt move to a foreign country, which leaves her effectively solitary. As the narrator says of Jana, “She entered my life at a moment when I was more than usually susceptible to the promise of intimacy” (2). The negative connotation of the word “susceptible” delineates the narrator’s resistance to opening herself up to connections with other people. Aside from the narrator’s coworkers, Jana is the narrator’s only friend in The Hague, yet the narrator keeps her at an emotional distance, citing their different personalities. During their dinner with Adriaan, the narrator also appears to doubt Jana’s loyalty, creating an entire narrative in which she imagines that Jana is beginning a romance with Adriaan. Similarly, her relationship with Adriaan offers a chance at romantic intimacy, but her description of the relationship reveals her misguided notion of closeness. For example, she states her skewed belief that “the prospect offered by a new relationship [is] the opportunity to be someone other than yourself” (47). This assertion does not account for the inescapable fact that any relationship based on a foundation of authenticity will involve full transparency on both sides, for she finds this to be a frightening and destabilizing prospect. The narrator experiences this discomfort fully when she becomes close to Eline and learns the truth about Anton’s extramarital affair. In this case, the intimacy implied by her knowledge brings her too close to the truth, and in the end, this dynamic ruins her friendship with Eline.

The juxtaposition of the narrator’s struggle with personal relationships alongside her obligation of translating for those implicated in war crimes emphasizes the conflict between the pursuit of human truths and the larger, impersonal goal of legal justice. The narrator's position in the Court immerses her in the language of law and tasks her with conveying truth and emotion across different languages. Yet paradoxically, the idea of truth in the Court proceedings is frequently ambiguous and subjective. The narrator understands the difficulties of communicating truth across languages and cultural barriers in the same way she wrestles with understanding the variations of human nature from person to person.

Finding intimacy with others outside her work proves difficult, yet in the interpreter’s booth, she finds an unexpected intimacy with the strangers whose words she translates. However, her experience of interpreting for the president reveals that her translation work doesn’t aid the Court in pursuing true justice and is just another part of the performance. Instead of exposing the authentic nature of the president, the translation merely adds to his pompous theatrics. This feeling is compounded in the smaller translation sessions with the president’s defense team. As the narrator states, “I was almost never spoken to directly; the only person who bothered to address me at all was the former president […] [T]he entire thing was a paradox, impossible to reconcile” (145). The forced intimacy that she experiences in this setting pushes her to examine the truth of his crimes for herself, and as she withdraws her unwitting intimacy with him, he senses the shift in her perspective and promptly fires her. Realizing the moral ambiguities of her position, she declines the opportunity to take permanent job as an interpreter in the Court. The novel ends with a sense of ambiguity and unresolved tension, and thus, the author deliberately forces the reader to undergo one final act of interpretation and decide whether the protagonist will learn to trust others and accept the inherent risks that intimacy brings, or continue searching for authentic connections while remaining siloed within herself.