In this week’s Translation Tuesday, novelist Jin Yucheng captures memories of Suzhou in this haunting excerpt from “A Cold Season.” Jin’s Proustian narrator evokes scenes which portend his sense of misplacement: buildings are ragged shades of decay; pedestrians roam silently like spirits; a young man appears pallid and skeletal as he laments his lost love, whose beauty is described as “bleak.” The only breaks in the town’s somber quiet are the omnipresent folksongs which seem to follow the narrator. Jin is a virtuoso of temporality and consciousness; here he slows down and speeds up the narrative via exquisite sensory detail. “Back then,” the narrator begins, though the recalled images of gloom are obfuscated by time and the town’s cold rain.
Back then, I could still sit by the bank all day, watching boats, looking at the town’s bridges. There were shops on both banks, the narrow streets boarded on top with awnings to protect them from the rain and sun. During the rainy season the buildings were ragged and gloomy, the color of mildew and decay. Pedestrians passed each other in a breathless, soundless silence, as intangible as spirits. It was a mournful scene. If you pushed open the window casements, inlaid with shell, you could hear the plaintive sound of girls singing folktales alongside the pluck of silken strings, filling the town with their poetry. Only in the pitch dark nights, by the lights from between the green plastered walls, could you see the fishing lights far off on the lake. READ MORE…
