The Centre(35)

I wore my favorite turquoise tank top with fitted stripy trousers, and Shiba had on a moss-green velvet dress, her hair in a fishtail braid. Just below her collarbones, hanging from a silver chain around her neck, was a single peacock feather.

“That’s beautiful,” I commented after we hugged hello.

“Thank you. I found it in a park near my house in Delhi last summer.”

“The necklace?”

“The feather.”

It turned out Shiba had made the necklace herself.

“It’s just some beadwork at the top and metal wire. I’ll make you one sometime.”

When Shiba and I had last been together, it had been as supervisor and Learner, but that dynamic had dissolved over the course of our texts and phone calls so that by the time we saw each other at the station, it felt like we were old friends. I suppose, in actual fact, we still knew little of each other. It sometimes felt, though, at least to me, as if everything was known between us and always had been.

We had a coffee near the station before heading off to explore, walking along the cobbled streets of the city’s center, dipping in and out of vintage shops along the way. From one, I bought a mushroom-shaped candle, and she bought a ring with a tiny silver turtle on it. We strolled and browsed and talked, and Shiba told me more about how the Centre had come into being.

She told me her father had met the other founders while he was studying at Oxford—David, a historian from Israel, George, an English biochemist, and Eric, an anthropologist from the States. They’d met at the university chess club. Each of them, she said, was exceptionally clever and hugely ambitious, and it didn’t take long for them to become close. It was the anthropologist, apparently, who first uncovered the heart of the process, and they all developed the idea together from there. Soon after graduation, they’d set up a small institution, at first teaching only Hindi.

“Why Hindi?” I asked.

“They wanted to start with one language, to see if it worked. I guess Hindi was the most convenient at the time. Anyway, it was a very controlled experiment, just a handful of people. Then, slowly, they started expanding into other languages and eventually built the place I manage now.”

The founders had since moved back to their respective home cities. They continued receiving income from the Centre but were, apparently, mostly researching other areas for expansion while leaving the day-to-day operations in Shiba’s hands.

“It can’t be easy doing it on your own,” I said.

“I enjoy it,” she said. “And the truth is, I feel like this is only the beginning. There’s so much more we can do with this knowledge.”

“Yeah?”

“It gives me a profound sense of purpose, this work. What I’m moving toward feels … collective, you know? And crucial.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s what I’m searching for too. Purpose. That’s why I went there in the first place.”

“You think that’s why you were there,” she said. “But you don’t know for sure. Sometimes, our true purpose only becomes apparent later.”

“That’s true,” I replied. “But seriously, it’s impressive that your dad gave you that much responsibility.”

She shook her head.

“He didn’t give me the responsibility. I took it. They would work in total secrecy, those four. Didn’t want the families involved at all. It was always him and the three uncles switching off laptops and lowering their voices when my mom or I entered the room. Honestly, at some point I wondered if they were CIA.”

“Maybe they were.”

“Nah, but it pissed me off, these men in their man cave, working on this supersecret thing. So I started snooping. I put the pieces together that way. Figured it all out.”

“Figured what out?”

“The language school. How they were doing it. Where and when. Then I told my dad that I knew. And, well, I think he was just so impressed that he decided to let me in. And anyway, they wanted to move on with their research, so they needed someone they trusted to take over. Trust is key at the Centre, you see. That’s why we employ so few staff members. They’ve all been there forever. Like a family.”

“And you enjoy living there? The Centre must be your whole life, in a way.”

“It’s not always easy, I can tell you that. Especially at first. At first, oof, I went through a bit of a process, trust me. But then I started feeling like I was part of something bigger, like we could really … change things one day. You’ll see.”

We stopped to eat at an organic vegetarian restaurant called Friendly Bites. There, over chickpea and spinach stew, mushroom lasagna and bullet coffees, we continued talking about our families and our careers until the sun started to set.

“It’s been strange for me,” I said. “This success. Becoming a ‘real’ translator practically overnight.”

“I felt so proud of you when I read Songbird.”

“Thanks, but … it’s different from what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a greater sense of fulfillment? I felt it when I first realized I could speak German. And when I was doing the actual work of the translation too. But everything since has been, I don’t know, deflating.”