So maybe I'll just read, I don't know,
one or two more sections from winter and then one
last section.
Maybe the last Chen section.
So Chen has gone through the Mayan, and Egyptian,
and Chinese underworld.
And now he's back home.
And that's all you need to know.
And then there are translator notes here.
25.
"Later that night, Chen woke from a dream
about something or other, threw aside the blankets,
and sat up on the edge of the bed.
His wife murmured into her pillow, then went quiet.
Fumbling in the dark, the assistant magistrate
pulled on his slippers and stepped
into the cold courtyard.
Somebody, maybe a drunkard, maybe a night watchman,
probably both, urinated noisily against the outer wall.
Half submerged in the fish pond, a golden frog
belted out his low refrain.
Me.
Pausing under the sky well, Chen bowed wearily to the Milky Way.
Silver River in Mandarin, trans, the Crane's Way in Erzya,
trans, the way with the shadow in Bengali,
trans, Winter Street in Swedish, trans,
the Straw Road in Turkish, trans,
the Straw Thief in Kurdish, trans,
the Slave Road in Romanian, trans, slow motion in Sanskrit,
trans, Lakta Vojo in Esperanto, trans.
Chen pulled closed the door to the study softly behind him.
By the glow of a lit wick, he retrieved the underworld's
scroll from his writing desk.
Yawning, he settled down to begin work on his translation.
At first, it was mostly guesswork,
piecing together a name here and there.
Carlos Borjas, Yulean Kun, Akhenaten, Tomas Alopez Expata.
They didn't exactly speak for themselves, Chen had to admit.
So he began to fill in the blanks between names
with his otherworldly travels.
He added questions without answers.
He even invented new characters from whole cloth.
Sometimes, he inserted a translator's note
just for the hell of it.
He could edit them out later.
It was all bound for the fire regardless.
Time in, trans.
Unminded, a storm was forming beyond the horizon.
Chen could feel it in his sockets.
A chronotope was assembling itself too
with unsung Jesuit sinologists and extra-large mass graves,
and transnational market driven technological economies.
For now, Chen focused on his take home assignment.
Maybe he would read it to his daughter someday.
She always needed a story to sleep.
Good night, daddy.
Trans.
A little blood never bothered her anyway.
Good night, love.
Trans.
In this manner, Chen worked through the night.
He wanted to end the beginning by daybreak.
The dead kept him company.
So did the unborn.
Now and then, he looked out the window
to see if the stars were still there."
I'll stop there.
Thanks.