Our Summer 2018 issue launched a few days ago and it is filled with gems from around the world. This Translation Tuesday we bring you another fabulous translation from a language and country never before featured on the blog! Translator Mirgul Kali introduces us to the piece:
Kazakh writer Almaz Myrzakhmet’s brilliant prose is often described as detached, but this is the detachment of a sharp and skillful writer confident in his ability to lure an unsuspecting reader into his story and play with their mind. “The Notes of a Writer,” which follows a young author who is anguished by the visions of his own unwritten story, is both a puzzle and a taste of the joys and struggles of the creative process.
The most delightful and challenging moments in translating this short story concern the old Kazakh expressions which refer to images that might not be easily invoked in an English-language reader’s mind. Yet they offer a rare and intimate glimpse into the culture and history of the nomadic people who had for centuries roamed the steppes of Central Asia. The language of the Kazakhs, who bred horses, maintains that misery can be “the size of a long trough,” evoking an image of an old wooden tub filled with putrid water; that the laughter of happy lovers sounds like a “jingle of coins,” perhaps at a lively, colorful market in a town along the Silk Route; and that fear feels like “a snake coiled in your bosom.” You are invited to discover these expressions, scattered like vintage jewels throughout Myrzakhmet’s striking post-modernist story.
The sound of her heels—like a tongue clicking—would begin at the bottom of a staircase, eventually reach the brown door of my rental apartment on the third floor, reverberate weakly and pause. At this point, she would become unusually still as if she was holding her breath and listening. A moment later she should tap the door timidly with the tips of her fingers.
I would open the door immediately. Acting as if she came to her own place, she barely looked at me and walked in, grazing me with her shoulder. The usual moves. Her, glancing over a picture of a bear playing with cubs, listlessly flipping through scribbled pieces of paper on my desk, walking over to a window and looking out—these actions were her daily routine. A bed would squeak as she sat on it. I would lock the door and take a cigarette from the desk.
“Who gave you the right to play with my life?” she would begin indignantly. This was no surprise—not because it happened every day but because it had been written to happen.
Early on, I would come up with different answers to her question—I wished to untangle this knot in her mind; but, as time went on, I realized the futility of my efforts. It was wise to keep quiet. Seeing no sign of empathy in my face, she would become angry and burst into tears. This was also a regular act, and it was important not to pay attention. “Who let you decide the fate of others?” she would say with stifled sobs. “My life belongs to me!” At times, her crying resembled chortling, and she seemed to be laughing at her fate.
“Who do you think you are?”
She would cry, scream, laugh, and cry again. The same thing every day. Yes, this was how I wrote it. It could not have happened any other way. And it was wonderful. I was happy. Cursing me, she repeatedly punched her stomach, where she carried a four or five-month old fetus. Her wide eyes turned red, and she would get closer and scream, “Scoundrel! Brute! Kill me!”
Yes . . .
I did enjoy it.
Those were the good times.
Now I must destroy my manuscript.
* * *
It all began in early summer when I set out to write a short story. The idea of the story had long been at the back of my mind where it sat like stagnant water in an old trough. I began looking around for people who resembled the characters I had in mind. To tell the truth, I searched every nook and cranny to find my male protagonist. I scouted a railway station, walked around markets, and stores; and rode buses all over a city. Once, I came across a young man who looked the part but turned out to have a temper. I was standing at a bus stop near the Swallow cafe when he showed up with a girl on his side. Pleased to have found my man, I admired his figure for a while, then walked quickly past him shoving him with my shoulder. He immediately grabbed me by the collar.
No, Daniyar (my protagonist) would not have acted this way.
Two days later I saw a guy who was looking for a lost umbrella in a park. His looks were acceptable. Unfortunately, his voice was too soft, and he seemed to lack confidence. I approached and challenged him to a fight, but he apologized and, looking downward on account of the lost umbrella, quickly disappeared. Wasn’t cowardice the mother of cruelty? He could turn out to be a cruel man. The character I had in mind was not; he was patient, forgiving, and kind.
Worn out by the fruitless search for the guy, I decided to move on and look for my female prototype. But nothing came of this effort either, and I was not sure if the time was not right or if I was too demanding. I will confess that seeing my characters in the flesh and observing their behavior inspired my writing. Perhaps this is why I also loved clashing with my characters.
By this time, visions of the story, which have been brewing in my mind for the previous six months, not only dominated my dreams but began sneaking into my daily life. They tormented me; I even became convinced that someone was following me lately. I had to sit down to write immediately.
I found a single-bedroom rental apartment. There was a sofa, a plain desk, a narrow bed across the room, and a Cyclops eye of a window, where flowers sat looking out onto the street. Curtains had been taken down to be laundered; in an oblong screen of a broken TV set in the corner I saw a reflection of myself and, for a flicker of a moment—of someone else. I turned around—nobody was there. There was a picture of a bear playing with her cubs on the wall.
This part of the city was unusually quiet. The landlord, an unhurried middle–aged lady, made sure to mention this several times. She walked about explaining things, mentioning other people who had called about renting the apartment and admitting that she let me in because she was intrigued by my profession, then proceeded to reveal with considerable pride and detail the affairs of not only the neighbors but the entire residential area.
“Don’t writers employ souls of innocent people?” she asked before leaving. “Will you let me read your drafts, kid?”
I wanted her to leave; tossing my head, I said, “Sure, sure.” One should never let anyone see the manuscript whose heat has not yet subsided, but I had no time for explanations.
* * *
I doubt that solitude brings wisdom. Solitude is: endless rumination, arguments with oneself, probing and digging into one’s own soul. Sometimes I am afraid to be alone. I feel forced to look at my reflection. In those moments, with all my knowledge of psychology, I can talk myself into opening forbidden doors in the corners of my soul and lose touch with reality.
* * *
Renting apartments to write in peace has been an old habit of mine. When the landlord left, I changed and got to work. First, I needed to rearrange the furniture to create a proper writing space. I cleared the heavy wooden desk of knick-knacks and dragged it with a great clatter to the middle of the room, where a drooping fixture issued a dull light. I turned the desk to face the window and placed a stack of paper, an ashtray, and a couple of pens neatly on top. An old and shabby piece of furniture now looked like a genuine writing desk. I took in the sight, then settled on the sofa and sank into my thoughts. The last few busy days spent preparing for this writing retreat took their toll on me, and, before long, I fell asleep.
In the middle of the night I woke up to a sound of someone crying. A girl sat on the bed near the window, her head down on her knees. The disheveled hair hid her face and spilled down her legs. There were holes in her old dress. I felt that her glance would pierce me if she suddenly lifted her face. Fear, like a snake coiled around my bosom, slowly gripped my body. Pretending to mumble something in sleep, I slowly turned over to face the back of the sofa and froze. I shut my eyes tight and waited for her to come. I imagined her breathing into my ear, blinking her bloodshot eyes, sniffing my hair, and quietly transporting back to the bed once I turned. I did not remember falling back asleep.
I woke up in the morning worried about the events of last night. Did I dream them up? The north-facing window let a pale, depressing light into the room. I lay motionless wondering if the girl was still in the room. I cleared my throat as if to let her know that I was awake, turned slowly around and looked toward the bed. Not a soul. I felt relieved.
I saw the girl twice since then. I could be wrong. If memory serves me right, it happened at the end of the first week at the apartment. I went out for breakfast and forgot to lock the door. When I remembered, I went back. As I was walking up the stairs, I caught a glint of a black eye staring at me through a keyhole. I halted for a second and, acting as if I did not see anything, locked the door and ran. I avoided looking at the keyhole from then on. She could be peeking through.
She was in the middle of a fire when I saw her last.
* * *
The story I had wanted to write was about a girl whose name was Nurgul.
“She was seventeen when she fell for a city guy visiting her village in the summer. When he disappeared, crushing her hopes, she found herself unable to think about the future without anxiety. One night she had a dream in which she was being chased by neighbor’s dogs. They ran after her, growling, blood foaming at their snouts. They were ready to attack when her classmate Daniyar, who happened to be walking by, came to the rescue. Daniyar, the dark, shabbily dressed son of the village shepherd, was mostly ignored by local girls. But after this incident, Nurgul found herself spending evenings with Daniyar at the river outside the village. She took her time to get to know a young man she was in the same class with for ten years. What she discovered in a shepherd’s son was depth, warmth, and kindness that she had not seen in many people before.
“The time went on, and one day they were seen lying in the field carpeted with white flowers, looking up at the sky and daydreaming. Daniyar told Nurgul that he had been in love with her for a long time. They drew close to each other and kissed, caressed by the soft glow of the breaking dawn. Nurgul fell in love with Daniyar that morning. Holding him tight, she listened to her heart that was rearing like a wild horse. ‘Daniyar, I was blind—I did not see that love was so close; I looked for it in faraway places. . .’ she was to cry out when her mother woke her up. This is only a dream, she thought, her heart still pounding. Trying to brush the dream aside, she gathered her books and headed to school. She was still walking along a thin line between dreams and reality when the neighbor’s dogs appeared out of nowhere. The frightened girl ran as fast as she could, with the furious animals behind her. One of the dogs leaped, knocking Nurgul down. It growled, looming over her with its paws on her chest, then let out a sudden whimper and collapsed. The girl choked through her sobs until the thick haze came over her eyes. When she came to her senses, she found Daniyar at her side. ‘Sweetheart, please don’t cry, don’t cry, my saffron. . .’ Nurgul sobbed and pushed herself closer to him. It was as if she knew that she would find solace in his arms. As he wiped her tears, she whispered, ‘Daniyar, please protect me! I dreamed about you. I fell in love with you in my dream!’
‘Why are you crying in your sleep? Get up and go to school! How many times do I have to tell you?’ her mother was yelling. Was she dreaming again?”
At this point I were to attempt a mental ambush on a reader’s mind. Should be an exceptional story.
“Once again, the bewildered girl made her way towards the school. No, she did not encounter the neighbor’s dogs this time. She safely reached the school. Feeling awkward and anxious, she avoided meeting Daniyar’s eyes. She was unsure—no, fearful, of finding her newly blossoming affection to be a dream inside another dream; memories of the delightful nights with Daniyar enveloped her like soft breeze and swayed the silk veil of her emotion behind which the loneliness was hiding. She saw Daniyar with different eyes now. Today’s dream gave Nurgul hope, softening her heart that had already experienced the treachery of love. She kept returning to the sweet memories of her dates with Daniyar. She discovered that an unpretentious, reserved shepherd’s son possessed the most important and cherished human qualities. Indeed, happiness could be discovered on a nearby school bench. She approached him at the first school dance party. The strange feeling that had been born in a dream filled her entire body and brightened the world around her. She whispered to herself again and again that this was not a dream, this was her destiny. After the party, she told Daniyar that she was afraid of darkness and asked him to take her home. That night Daniyar confessed his love for her. And what an impressive confession it was—coming from a bookish young man who had read many romantic novels. When two soulmates found each other, a small new world—like a star in the sky—was born. Their nights brought passionate embraces, and dawns forced difficult partings. After graduation, they moved to the city of Karaganda; one of them was going to work and another—go to school.”
I had to stop when I got to this part.
Earlier, when I was writing about the first meeting of the lovers, I became aware of the voices of a young man and a woman outside the window. When I paused and listened, they immediately stopped talking. As soon as I went back to work whispers and murmur resumed.
The next day, I wrote about Nurgul and Daniyar being childish and playing silly games during their happiest moments. The two strangers turned up near my window again, and I heard the soft jingle of their laughter as they fooled around.
I spent the following day working on a part in which the city guy reaches out to Nurgul, and she and Daniyar have a fight. Oddly, the two strangers argued right outside my apartment that day.
That was when I figured it out. Those two were my protagonists. Should I interfere? I wanted to mess with them. What if I arranged a meeting between the city boy and Daniyar?
It was dangerous yet exciting to play with my own characters. I continued the story:
“The next day Daniyar received a letter. It advised him to come to a designated place at a certain time if he wished to have his girlfriend and her unborn baby safe. Daniyar did not know who the sender was, but he sensed that this was a setup. Add to this the fact that he was not quite sure how and when he arrived into this world; for a moment he entertained an idea of being a pawn in someone else’s game. He thought, ‘If things are what I think they are, my thoughts are being written down on paper at this very moment. This means that I don’t own my thoughts. . .’”
What would he do? I waited, and Daniyar showed up the next evening at a small open field that was visible from my window; early in the morning he met his death at the hands of the city guy.
Nurgul turned out to be tougher than I had anticipated. She had found my letter to Daniyar, and she kept showing up at the field for almost two weeks. She would stay there until dawn, day after day. One day she came to my apartment.
“Please, sit down,” I said.
“What do you watch me all night for?”
“I am a writer. I am writing this story . . . Do you think I am watching you?” There was nothing I could say in my defense. It suddenly occurred to me how nice it was to have a third person in the room.
“Is this what you are doing—writing about what would happen to us?”
“What happens to you is inscribed on the al-Lawhu’l-Mahfuz tablet, and the most I could do is replicate it… Do you think I could rewrite it?” I knew that answering a question with a question would further complicate our communication.
“You could have saved him, couldn’t you?”
“Isn’t it death that grants eternity to life?” I said uncertainly.
“You killed Daniyar, didn’t you?”
“But did Daniyar exist? The question is whether all of it was a dream. Or was it real?” I could not answer my own questions. Nurgul was beautiful, more beautiful than what I wrote and thought her to be. I did not give her beauty justice. Does it mean that my characters are not simply the fruit of my imagination?
“It is true that I have been watching you,” I returned to the beginning of the conversation. “I did not plan it to end this way. But I made you up. How did you find me?”
“Then can you undo what happened?”
“I would not have been able to save Daniyar; he chose his own end.” I remembered how the city boy and his friends were beating Daniyar.
“Please do not mention death.”
“I killed Daniyar.”
“Tell me that all this is a dream! Please wake me up!”
She began sobbing. I suddenly felt dazed by this tangle of questions and answers. I found myself writing when I heard the door slammed shut behind Nurgul.
She came back every day. She yelled and screamed. I wrote.
My writing did not go well that summer. Or rather, Nurgul and I failed to write together. I tried different scenarios, but she was not satisfied with them, and I could not accept her version of the events. She asked me to write impossible things, and I could not do that. Readers would not believe me. All the while I entertained myself by placing my female character into challenging situations and observing her reactions. Her stubbornness, fleeting emotions, and sudden decisions amused me.
One day after dinner, I walked leisurely up the stairs wondering if I would see a black eye in the keyhole and found the apartment door open. I immediately thought of my manuscript and ran in, almost stumbling on a chair lying in the hall. Nurgul hung herself on the chandelier. She swayed back and forth. It was as if the ghost girl was pushing her like a swing before I showed up.
I did not touch her. What if she was not real? On top of the manuscript drafts on the writing desk I found a piece of paper on which someone had written, “Wake up.” Nurgul could not have written this; she was only a character in my story. Then who was it?
Ah, what a loss! Her tears and screams used to bring me joy and satisfaction. It probably was the ghost girl’s writing. I would have to teach her a lesson.
I threw the mattresses, pillows, and paper on top of the writing desk, lit the pile and left the apartment. As I was running down the stairs, I sensed the girl standing at the door and watching me. I did not look back.
At the bus stop I turned around to look at the burning apartment on the third floor—the flames, roaring out of the window, revealed an image of the girl. She shrieked in despair as fire sputtered out of her mouth.
Almaz Myrzakhmet is a recipient of several literary awards for emerging writers in Kazakhstan. He studied Psychology and Kazakh Language and Literature at the Karaganda State University where he is currently an associate professor of Kazakh Literature. The author of two books published in Kazakhstan, he has recently become a member of the prestigious Writers’ Union of Kazakhstan. He serves as a Senior Editor of the literary and cultural magazine Kasym. “The Notes of a Writer” is an opening piece from his debut collection of short stories Ханшайым published in 2013.
Mirgul Kali is a native of Kazakhstan who moved to San Francisco Bay Area in 2005. Mirgul’s venture into literary translation began in 2016 when she translated Kazakh folk tales and songs for the Silk Road House, a local non-profit organization that promotes awareness of the cultures of Central Asia and Caucasus. Her first translation—of one of Almaz Myrzakhmet’s short stories—appeared in Tupelo Quarterly this year.
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