Intimacies

“I’d begun to think the docile surface of the city concealed a more complex and contradictory nature.”

The complexity of The Hague becomes a metaphor for the narrator and for the entire narrative as the book explores the layers that exist within everything in life. The Hague maintains a façade of orderliness and control, yet the narrator senses a sinister undercurrent in the city. In the same way, every person she meets appears to be concealing something just below the surface.

“[T]here were great chasms beneath words, between two or sometimes more languages, that could open up without warning. As interpreters it was our job to throw down planks across these gaps.”

The figurative language in this passage compares the act of interpretation to sealing up cracks or building bridges. The narrator understands that her job isn’t just to translate one language to another, for she must also make sure to preserve as much meaning as possible is preserved in the translation: a job as tricky and potentially dangerous as laying planks across a chasm.

“It was easy to forget that The Hague was situated on the North Sea, in so many ways it was a city that seemed to face inward, its back turned against the open water.”

This is one of two references in the text to turning inward to avoid facing reality or the truth. Ironically, the city is highly insular despite its status as the seat of a world court that tries accused persons from around the world. The city’s interior-facing nature mimics the narrator's own approach to life, as most of the narrative takes place inside her head, and she tends to turn inward instead of reaching out.

“[H]e looked not like a virile man in the prime of his life but rather like a juvenile and inexperienced teenaged boy who had not yet learned how to manage his appearance.”

The narrator’s first impression of Kees is that he is immature and ridiculous, but her initial judgment fails to discern the deeper and more dangerous subtleties to his personality. This moment therefore contrasts significantly with her later meeting with him at the Court. Her judgments of him underscore the motif of appearance versus reality that the novel explores.

“[I]t was like being embraced by a squid or an octopus, a cephalopod of some kind.”

The narrator’s awkward conversation with Kees moves from uncomfortable to invasive as he lewdly grasps her around the waist, a nonconsensual disregard for her personal space. The use of figurative language conveys the narrator’s discomfort with the situation, comparing the feel of his grasp to being squeezed by tentacles, and this image vividly conveys the predatory intent of his action.

“That comfort was alien to me, we had moved so frequently when I was young that there was no one place I would think of as my childhood home, we were mostly arriving and leaving, those years were all motion.”

A recurring theme within the novel is the quest for a place to call home, and this issue gains particular prominence when the narrator struggles to understand the connection that Adriaan has to his apartment, contrasting it with her own highly transient lifestyle. The narrator’s struggle to find a place to call home has become a search for her own authentic identity, and for a time, she misplaces her identity in his home and his life.

“[A]t some point he had crossed a boundary and his personhood had been hollowed out.”

Translating for the Court brings the narrator into close proximity with evil for the first time in her life. As she listens to the crimes of the accused, she comes to grips with what it takes for a person to commit such atrocities, and she comes to the inevitable conclusion that they have surrendered their very humanity. 

“You spend your days looking over your shoulder, your understanding of the world is changed, you see it as a brittle place, full of hostility.”

The narrator experiences several destabilizing events, including the death of her father and an international move, yet the news of the mugging in Jana’s neighborhood causes her deep anxiety. Describing the world as “brittle” and “hostile” reveals her bleak outlook on life and conveys her fragile emotional state as she assimilates into a new city and a challenging career and tries to rebuild her life.

“She spoke as if home ownership had transformed her completely, as if she’d been buried in the battlements of her apartment, her life ossified.”

Jana sees her apartment purchase as a great personal success, and the use of figurative language in this passage conveys her attachment to the home and emphasizes that it has become a part of her identity. However, just as the narrator cannot understand Adriaan’s connection to his apartment, she also fails to understand Jana’s love for her home, having never experienced a deep connection to a place. 

“Every certainty can give way without notice.”

This ominous statement foreshadows the narrator’s issues with her relationship and her career, as everything in The Hague feels tenuous, impermanent, and fragile. The narrator’s experiences teach her that life can change in a moment, and nothing—neither happiness or comfort—is ever guaranteed.

“Alone, the quiet had a different meaning, forlorn and almost burdensome.”

Personifying the silence makes it feel more present and affecting, and the narrator experiences a profound sense of loneliness after Adriaan leaves. While she explores what it means to be home, the narrator learns that being in a house doesn’t necessarily equate to feeling at home if the people who provide her with a sense of stability are absent.

“I felt an attachment I had sought but not previously felt; it was as if an anchor had been dropped.”

Seeing the city from a different angle in Adriaan’s neighborhood changes how the narrator feels about The Hague. By using a simile to compare the moment to a dropping anchor, the narrator conveys that she is developing an attachment to the city, or at least to Adriaan, and is considering staying there.

“The thought was disquieting—that our identities should be so mutable, and therefore the course of our lives.”

Revising her initial impression of Kees and realizing that he is actually a high-powered defense attorney at the Court unsettles the narrator’s thinking, and she finds herself marveling at the truth that her sense of a person’s identity can change so quickly. Though she dislikes Kees, this feeling mimics her unsteadiness as she wrestles with her own identity and struggles to claim a stable place in the world.

“His manner was calm and even subdued, and yet I was certain he was aware of how the energy of the Court bent in his direction, toward the black hole of his personality.”

Comparing the deposed president’s personality to a black hole insinuates that he uses manipulation and fear to metaphorically absorb and devour anyone who comes close to him. The narrator notes his effect on everyone in the court, but ironically, she does not yet realize that the same thing is also happening to her. This moment foreshadows the increasingly unhealthy effect on the narrator as she is repeatedly forced into close proximity with this man and unwillingly experiences a sense of intimacy with him by interpreting his words.

“Kees was in a position of considerable power.”

This moment recalls the narrator’s first problematic interaction with Kees at the museum. Despite his adolescent behavior in that moment, Kees was in a controlling position physically as he groped her, and he also wielded emotional power over her by revealing knowledge about Adriaan’s personal life that she didn’t have. Now, in the courtroom, Kees has taken on new levels of social and interpersonal power, for he holds an advantageous position as a distinguished defense attorney, and his connection to her could prove to be a professional conflict of interest.

“I had felt the shape and meaning of his absence begin to change.”

The sensory language of this quote conveys the emotional and physical effect of Adriaan’s continued absence and silence, essentially giving a sense of tangibility to an intangible thought. The narrator feels his absence so keenly that it has a structure and a being, intensifying her pain and loneliness and exacerbating her anxieties over her future.

“[Leyster] was one of the first women in the Guild, and she achieved some renown during her lifetime. But after her death many of her paintings were misattributed, it was only at the end of the nineteenth century that the error was corrected.”

The idea of disappearing is a motif in the novel as the narrator sometimes feels that she is being blurred out or erased by herself or others. The protagonist’s experience parallels Leyster’s, and Jana’s description articulates the plight of so many females in history who have been wiped from the historical record or forced to assume a male pseudonym in order to gain recognition for their art, their scientific discovery, or their research.

“It means something, to face inward, to turn your back on the storm brewing outside.”

In this passage, Eline describes the Dutch people’s blatant disregard for their imperialistic crimes during the 19th century and brings attention to this ironic juxtaposition with the creation of beautiful art. This comment reinforces the narrator’s earlier assertion that The Hague represents an inward-facing society.

“I was a woman waiting for a lover, dressed in obscene lingerie, body arrayed on the bed in a pose of hopeful seduction.”

By describing her hope for Adriaan’s return with a tone of deep derision, the protagonist articulates her growing conviction that living in Adriaan’s apartment alone is beginning to feel like a farce. The dramatic yet slightly comical imagery is meant to convey the narrator’s shame over being so desperate for Adriaan to come back and give her the love and attention that she craves. Her scornful self-description stands as the precise opposite of who she wants to be.

“[F]or days the silence from Lisbon occupied me, like a fog in the brain.”

After coolly dismissing Adriaan’s lack of communication, the narrator must admit to herself that she does care for him, and she openly acknowledges that his continued silence is painful and cruel. The image of fog is symbolic of her lingering confusion and disorientation, and his abandonment of her clouds her thoughts with a constant stream of assessments and reassessments. 

“And he truly didn’t care in the least what was inside them, a kind of Jay Gatsby if you see what I mean.”

The author uses a literary allusion to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal work, The Great Gatsby. In the novel, the obscenely wealthy Jay Gatsby throws an extravagant party, and a character called Owl Eyes notes ironically that his books are real; he previously assumed that they would be fake, just like their owner. In this passage, Anton compares the interior designer’s request for fancy books to Jay Gatsby’s decadent book collection, creating a metaphor for his friends’ absurd attempt to appear sophisticatedly wealthy.

“She spoke with great deliberation, so that each word was like a link in a chain and the entire thing held fast, even as it moved across languages.”

Unlike her other translation work, the narrator finds translating for the young witness of genocide to be seamless, not requiring the “planks” to which she’d previously referred. The figurative language expresses the power of the witness’s testimony, which transcends language in its authenticity and intensity. 

“I saw uncertainty spread through the building blooming like mold.”

The vivid sensory language in this quote conveys the contagious nature of the uneasiness that permeates the Court after the judge dismisses the trial and frees the deposed president. Having already been embroiled in the controversy, the Court’s failure to successfully convict the guilty president casts the international court in a deeply unfavorable light.