WEBVTT

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So maybe I'll just
read, I don't know,

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one or two more sections
from winter and then one

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last section.

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Maybe the last Chen section.

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So Chen has gone through
the Mayan, and Egyptian,

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and Chinese underworld.

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And now he's back home.

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And that's all you need to know.

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And then there are
translator notes here.

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25.

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"Later that night,
Chen woke from a dream

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about something or other,
threw aside the blankets,

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and sat up on the
edge of the bed.

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His wife murmured into her
pillow, then went quiet.

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Fumbling in the dark,
the assistant magistrate

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pulled on his
slippers and stepped

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into the cold courtyard.

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Somebody, maybe a drunkard,
maybe a night watchman,

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probably both, urinated
noisily against the outer wall.

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Half submerged in the
fish pond, a golden frog

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belted out his low refrain.

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Me.

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Me.

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Me.

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Me.

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Pausing under the sky well, Chen
bowed wearily to the Milky Way.

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Silver River in Mandarin,
trans, the Crane's Way in Erzya,

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trans, the way with
the shadow in Bengali,

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trans, Winter Street
in Swedish, trans,

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the Straw Road in
Turkish, trans,

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the Straw Thief
in Kurdish, trans,

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the Slave Road in Romanian,
trans, slow motion in Sanskrit,

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trans, Lakta Vojo
in Esperanto, trans.

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Chen pulled closed the door to
the study softly behind him.

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By the glow of a lit wick,
he retrieved the underworld's

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scroll from his writing desk.

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Yawning, he settled down to
begin work on his translation.

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At first, it was
mostly guesswork,

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piecing together a
name here and there.

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Carlos Borjas, Yulean Kun,
Akhenaten, Tomas Alopez Expata.

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They didn't exactly speak for
themselves, Chen had to admit.

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So he began to fill in
the blanks between names

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with his otherworldly travels.

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He added questions
without answers.

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He even invented new
characters from whole cloth.

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Sometimes, he inserted
a translator's note

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just for the hell of it.

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He could edit them out later.

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It was all bound for
the fire regardless.

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Time in, trans.

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Unminded, a storm was
forming beyond the horizon.

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Chen could feel
it in his sockets.

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A chronotope was
assembling itself too

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with unsung Jesuit sinologists
and extra-large mass graves,

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and transnational market
driven technological economies.

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For now, Chen focused on
his take home assignment.

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Maybe he would read it
to his daughter someday.

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She always needed
a story to sleep.

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Good night, daddy.

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Trans.

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A little blood never
bothered her anyway.

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Good night, love.

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Trans.

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In this manner, Chen
worked through the night.

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He wanted to end the
beginning by daybreak.

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The dead kept him company.

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So did the unborn.

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Now and then, he
looked out the window

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to see if the stars
were still there."

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I'll stop there.

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Thanks.

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