.:. Another Likely Story

One of my favorite web publications is Words Without Borders, which focuses on short stories translated into English and describes itself as "the online magazine for international literature." I have a difficult time describing why I love translation, but even if you don't care for the art and craft, it's still important as a way of understanding other people, other cultures, other ways of thinking.  Stories that could only have arisen out of other lives, but remind us that we're all living.

My favorite story from the current issue is God's Obituary, by Fernando Paiva, translated by Brent Alan James. It's a simultaneously thoughtful and satirical take on humans "playing God," focusing on a(n athiest!) biologist who is nicknamed "God" after developing some amazing advances in genetic engineering. An excerpt:

In a bombastic interview with Today Science four years ago, God publicly recognized the error of having created genetic architecture, even with the ethical principles that might keep it under control. “It was naïveté on my part to believe that human beings would be capable of adhering to some limit. Controlling the creation is easy. Difficult is controlling the creator,” he lamented.

The rest of the story can be read here.

Other favorites include this hilarious and blackly humorous story, Spaniards Lost in America by Carlos Franz, in which an unknown and penniless Spanish man dies in a foreign country, and his countrymen are called upon to pay for a proper burial. They refuse, and complications ensue, full of hilarity and black humor.  Translated by Marian Schwartz.

Barrales junior left for the cemetery. In the dusty administrative office of the necropolis—besieged by nameless mausoleums, crooked crucifixes, washed-out tombstones—he was taking account of plots and holes in the ground. Visiting them and testing them out, he asked after the minimum dimensions for a man's corpse, checking to see if the cheapest available ditch, one reserved for a five-year stint, could be rented for six months, since his compatriots' donations could only cover that long. This last part, though, he didn't say (he didn't have to since at this point half the city was saying as much anyway).

Read the rest here.

And this one touches the heart, especially at its frosty, dreamy end: None of Your Business by Natalia Klyuchareva. This is a story of the son of two alcoholics who tries to help his parents, and when that fails, takes things into his own hands with drastic results.  A harsh yet beautiful story, like a frozen winter landscape.  Translated by Jonathan Blitzer.

He heaved a sigh from a crushing emotion he couldn't name. He felt as if he were running through a magical forest with silver trees. And he tried as hard as he could to believe in it. But the pitiful little bell cried straight to his heart, not letting him forget that it was never to be.

Behind him the snow creaked guiltily, and reflected in the window was his mother's face.

"You want a tree?" tight drunken tears gurgled in her throat. "We'll buy one. Tomorrow."

Yurka squeezed his eyes shut, clenched, and with a final incredible effort—believed.

"Just like this?" he clarified, hiding in his scarf from the maternal reek.

"I promise," she lied, and turning away she shed silent tears.

The rest can be read here.

I've posted a translation, by yours truly, of a humorous short story by Sanmao (三毛), a famous Taiwanese writer (links go to English/Chinese biographies).  She lived an exciting life, albeit one that ended in tragedy, and she wrote about a lot of it in clear, clever prose.  This short story, "The Chinese Restaurant In The Middle Of The Desert," comes from a time that she was living with her husband, Jose, in what is now the Western Sahara.  An excerpt:

The first course I made was chicken soup with vermicelli. Whenever Jose came home he'd always yell "get something going, I'm starving!" In the end, the sole result of his years of devotion was a daily demand for food without even a glance towards his beloved spouse -- though this did mean that I didn't need to trouble myself over any possible loss of looks after matrimony. Anyway, as I was saying, the first thing I made was chicken vermicelli soup. He drank some and said, "Huh, what is this? Chinese noodles?"

"Would your mother-in-law mail noodles from so far away? Of course not."

"What is it? Give me some more, it's great."

I picked some up with chopsticks. "This here is called 'rain.'"

"Rain?" He looked at me blankly.

Like I said, my philosophy is to pretty much do as I like in marriage, so I just said whatever inspired me and came to mind. "See, these are formed from the first rains in spring that fall in the high mountaintops and freeze there. People who live there pick the rain and carry it down the mountains in bundles and trade it for rice wine. It's not that easy to buy, you know!"

Jose stared at me blankly some more. Then he peered at me, then at the "rain," and said, "Do you take me for an idiot?"

I kept my face blank. "Do you want some more or not?"

"Yes I do, you goddamn liar."

Since then he's eaten quite a bit of "rain," and I still think he has no idea what it is. Sometimes I ponder to myself that Jose is kind of dumb, and that does make me a bit sad.

You can read the rest of "The Chinese Restaurant In The Middle Of The Desert" (2300 words) here.  If you catch any mistakes or have any comments, please feel free to comment and let me know.  Thank you for reading!