The translated letter

For the exhibition I translated my father's letters. In the language in which he wrote, the word I rendered as “home” could mean the house one had left, the people waiting in it, or the place to which one owed a return. English would not let me leave all three doors open in a sentence that short. The curator asked me to remove my footnotes. “We want his voice,” she said, “not an explanation of it.” I understood. In the display case, my notes occupied more space than his letter. But without them, the English sounded like a man who had already chosen where he belonged. My father had spent his last years postponing that choice with remarkable industry. I tried “family”. It made him affectionate and less lonely. I tried “country”. It made him solemn and less particular. Finally I put back “home”, and a short note saying that this was a choice. At the opening, a visitor told me the letter spoke for itself. I thanked her. Then I returned to the case and found, with an unreasonable relief, a small reflection of my own face in the glass.