Nova objava - 25.03.2020 11:14 translation from English into Montenegrin material

Prevod sa engleskog jezika, 23.03.2020.

Paper Menagerie"

by Ken Liu

1One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom and Dad tried.

Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table.

"Kan, kan," she said, as she pulled a sheet of wrapping paper from on top of the fridge. For years, Mom carefully sliced open the wrappings around Christmas gifts and saved them on top of the fridge in a thick stack.

She set the paper down, plain side facing up, and began to fold it. I stopped crying and watched her, curious.

She turned the paper over and folded it again. She pleated[1], packed, tucked, rolled, and twisted until the paper disappeared between her cupped hands. Then she lifted the folded-up paper packet to her mouth and blew into it, like a balloon.

"Kan," she said. "Laohu." She put her hands down on the table and let go.

A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas trees.

I reached out to Mom's creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced[2] playfully at my finger. "Rawrr-sa," it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers.

I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring.

"Zhe jiao zhezhi," Mom said. This is called origami.

I didn't know this at the time, but Mom's kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.

2 Tiger Bites by Lucia Berlin (Lithub)

The train slowed down outside of El Paso. I didn’t wake my baby, Ben, but carried him out to the vestibule[3] so I could look out. And smell it, the desert. Sage[4], sulphur from the smelter[5], wood fires from Mexican shacks by the Rio Grande. The Holy Land. When I first went there, to live with Mamie and Grandpa during the war, that’s when I first heard about Jesus and Mary and the Bible and sin, so Jerusalem got all mixed up with El Paso’s jagged mountains and deserts. Rushes by the river and huge crucifixes everywhere. Figs and pomegranates[6]. Dark-shawled women with infants and poor gaunt men with sufferer’s, savior’s eyes. And the stars at night were big and bright like in the song, so insistently dazzling it made sense that wise men couldn’t help but follow any one of them and find their way.

My uncle Tyler had cooked up a family reunion for Christmas. For one thing he was hoping my folks and I would make up. I dreaded seeing my parents… they were furious because my husband, Joe, had left me. They had almost died when I got married at seventeen, so my divorce was the last straw. But I couldn’t wait to see my cousin Bella Lynn and my uncle John, who was coming from L.A.

3

 I ran down the stairs and into the parlor where Weylin lay on a sofa, ominously still and silent.

“Do something!” Rufus pleaded. “help him!” His voice sounded as thin and weak as he looked. His sickness had left its marks on him. I wondered how he had gotten downstairs.

Weylin wasn’t breathing, and I couldn’t find a pulse. For a moment, I stared at him, undecided, repelled, not wanting to touch him again, let alone breathe into him. Then quelling disgust, I began mouth to mouth resuscitation and external heart massage – what did they call it? I knew the name, and I’d seen someone doing it on television. Beyond that, I was completely ignorant. I didn’t even know why I was trying to save Weylin. He wasn’t worth it. And I didn’t know if the first aid could do any good in an era when there was no ambulance to call, no one to take over for me even if I somehow got Weylin’s heart going – which I didn’t expect to do.

4

                So on the morning after the funeral, he sent the current overseer[7], a burly [8]man named Evan Fowler, to get me from the cookhouse. Jake Edwards had either quit or been fired sometime during my six-year absence. Fowler came to tell me I was to work in the fields.

                I didn’t believe it, even when the man pushed me out of the cookhouse. I thought he was just another Jake Edwards throwing his weight around. But outside, Rufus stood waiting, watching. I looked at him, then back at Fowler.

                “This the one?” Fowler asked Rufus.

                “That’s her”, said Rufus. And he turned and went back into the main house.

                Stunned,[9] I took the sickle like corn knife Fowler thrust into my hands and let myself be herded out toward the cornfield. Herded. Fowler got his horse and rode a little behind me as I walked. It was a long walk. The cornfield wasn’t where I’d left it. Apparently, even in this time, planters practiced some form of crop rotation. Not that that mattered to me. What in the world could I do in a cornfield?

5

                Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery. It spoiled them for field work. The Methodist minister said it made them disobedient, made them want more than the Lord intended them to have. Another man said educating slaves was illegal. When Rufus replied that he had checked and that it wasn’t illegal in Maryland, the man said it should have been. Talk. Rufus shrugged it off without ever saying how much of it he believed. It was enough that he sided with me, and my school continued. I got the feeling that Alice was keeping him happy – and maybe finally enjoying herself a little in the process. I guessed from what she had told me that this was what was frightening her so, driving her away from plantation, causing her to lash out at me. She was trying to deal with guilt of her own.

                But she was waiting and using some discretion. I relaxed, spent my spare moments trying to think of a way to get home.

PROLOGUE

I said this over and over until the vague police shapes let me

alone, until I awoke to find Kevin sitting, dozing beside my bed. I

wondered briefly how long he had been there, but it didn’t matter.

The important thing was that he was there. I slept again, relieved.

Finally, I awoke feeling able to talk to him coherently and under¬

stand what he said. I was almost comfortable except for the strange

throbbing of my arm. Of where my arm had been. I moved my head,

tried to look at the empty place. . .the stump.

Then Kevin was standing over me, his hands on my face turning my

head toward him.

He didn’t say anything. After a moment, he sat down again, took

my hand, and held it.

I felt as though I could have lifted my other hand and touched

him. I felt as though I had another hand. I tried again to look, and

this time he let me. Somehow, I had to see to be able to accept what

I knew was so.

After a moment, I lay back against the pillow and closed my eyes.

“Above the elbow,” I said.

“They had to.”

“I know. I’m just trying to get used to it.” I opened my eyes and

looked at him. Then I remembered my earlier visitors. “Have I got¬

ten you into trouble?”

“Me?”

“The police were here. They thought you had done this to me.”

“Oh, that. They were sheriff’s deputies. The neighbors called them

when you started to scream. They questioned me, detained me for a

while—that’s what they call it!—but you convinced them that they

might as well let me go.”

“Good. I told them it was an accident. My fault.”

“There’s no way a thing like that could be your fault”

“That’s debatable. But it certainly wasn’t your fault. Are you still

in trouble?”

“I don’t think so. They’re sure I did it, but there were no

witnesses, and you won’t co-operate. Also, I don’t think they can

figure out how I could have hurt you ... in the way you were hurt.”

I closed my eyes again remembering the way I had been hurt-

remembering the pain.

“Are you all right?” Kevin asked.

“Yes. Tell me what you told the police.”

PROLOGUE

11

“The truth.” He toyed with my hand for a moment silently. 1

looked at him, found him watching me.

“If you told those deputies the truth,” I said softly, “you’d still be

locked up—in a mental hospital.”

He smiled. “I told as much of the truth as I could. I said I was in

the bedroom when I heard you scream. I ran to the living room to

see what was wrong, and I found you struggling to free your arm

from what seemed to be a hole in the wall. I went to help you. That

was when I realized your arm wasn’t just stuck, but that, somehow,

it had been crushed right into the wall.”

“Not exactly crushed.”

“I know. But that seemed to be a good word to use on them—to

show my ignorance. It wasn’t all that inaccurate either. Then they

wanted me to tell them how such a thing could happen. I said I

didn’t know . . . kept telling them I didn’t know. And heaven help

me, Dana, I don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” I whispered. “Neither do I.”

[1] fold into pleats:"she was absently pleating her skirt between her fingers"

[2] of an animal or bird of prey) spring or swoop suddenly so as to catch prey:"as he watched, a mink pounced on the vole"

[3] An antechamber, hall, or lobby next to the outer door of a building.

[4] an aromatic plant whose greyish-green leaves are used as a culinary herb, native to southern Europe and the Mediterranean.  zalfija

[5] an installation or factory for smelting a metal - topionica

[6] a spherical fruit with a tough golden-orange outer skin and sweet red gelatinous flesh containing many seeds.nar

[7] a person who supervises others, especially workers.

[8] (of a person) large and strong; heavily built.

[9] so shocked that one is temporarily unable to react; astonished.

"a silent, stunned crowd"