by Rich Horton
Solmaz sidestepped an overly eager trash robot chasing a shred of paper. “Inconclusive. I’ll need to read all the scans again—but overall? My guess is it may not be a great benefit on the larger scale. That’s just my instinct. Disorientation in the early hours of the first day, followed by a morbid melancholy, indications of destabilization—even what I would call an almost entirely new personality emerging. And very quickly. I think there’s a chance the benefit could cause violent reactions, cascading events it would be difficult to control. But the subject is sub-optimal: background is institutional, and she’s barely socialized. I wouldn’t have chosen her.”
“I suppose not, but then wouldn’t many of the beneficiaries of this benefit also not be optimal?”
“Well, that’s the rub. We’ll continue the study, but this first case makes me doubt this benefit is a benefit at all. It could be a liability for the Protectorate.”
“Ah, well. Geçmiş olsun. Let it be in the past.”
• • •
A few days later, Feride wakes up in a gauzy haze—a haze accentuated by the evening sunlight pouring through the curtains of the hospital suite. It is a strong light, red-gold, made stronger by its reflection off the mirrored buildings and the pavement soaked by a day of rain. She is brittle, foggy, her senses diffracting off sore spots, aches coming alive. The sagging jellyfish of intravenous drips surround her, the evening light refracted through their liquids, striping and pooling across the white bedsheets. The darkness grows in the room as the day dies, and the diodes light the ward in its strange, undersea green.
For a moment, she is Fahri. But when she looks at her bruised hands, they are not her own. Where are the thick, knuckly fingers she had? The black dusting of mid-digital hair? Already a life—her own, not quite her own—is fading: looking out at the port from the cafomat, Melek’s fingers in her hair, searching for a wound, a sparrow with an artificial foot, candles in the rusting iron church. She cries for a time, quietly. She is the only attendee at Fahri’s funeral: a brother of her own creation, a second self, a figment.
An hour after she wakes up, a young nurse comes in and has her blink permission to access her vitals.
“I’m not going to say you are out of danger yet,” he says, “But we’ve turned a corner. We’re glad to see you back in the world.” As he takes down one of her IV drips, he half-sings:
Birds turn their backs on their nests.
Some day you will forget me, too . . .
“You were here when they admitted me,” Feride said. “You sang that song. That old folk song. A friend of mine would sing it, sometimes. Suat. In the garden where I worked.”
“It’s been stuck in my head for months, but all I can remember is four lines of it.”
Surprised at the strength of her own voice, despite her tube-scratched throat, her dry mouth, Feride sings the next verse of the song:
Roads are far away
My mad heart cries out
Life goes on, just goes . . .
One day you will forget me, too.
From the doorway, standing there in her scrubs the color of a faded key-lime pie, Melek finishes the song:
This longing has turned to mourning
My summers and springs turned to winter
My life has passed in vain
One day you will forget me, too.
“Ah,” the young nurse says, walking out. “Here’s your benefactor.”
“Benefactor?”
Melek settles herself into the bedside chair. Feride realizes this is the first time she has ever seen Melek with her own eyes. But Melek is the same: mischief in her lively eyebrows, a chipped front tooth, one eye slightly larger, and greener, than the other. She says: “I thought I glimpsed something—a return. It’s hard to explain. I could see something had changed. There was someone there . . . someone trying to surface. I thought a few days might be enough to see you through.”
“But the expense. It must have been . . . I remember struggling to pay . . . it’s thousands of lira a day . . . you can’t possibly afford . . . ”
“Hush.” Melek presses a finger to Feride’s lips. “It’s my choice to make, Fahri. And where else would I find such a hero? And who would I go on my five-minute dates with? Are you trying to make me drink my coffee alone?”
The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations
by Minsoo Kang
The Grand Philosopher Ancient Leaf once expounded that a man who kills another out of passion or greed is condemned as a murderer, and one who kills ten people is reviled as a maniac, but one who causes the death of hundreds of thousands in pursuit of personal glory is often revered as a great personage. The Grand Historian Silver Mirror utilized the quote in describing the senseless nature of the Wars of the Four Princes and the Six Grand Lords, how the acts of all the kings, ministers, and generals throughout the long conflict achieved nothing in the end. The cycle of events from unity to disunity to chaos, then chaos back to disunity and finally to a new unity, only resulted in countless cities, towns, and villages falling into ruin. And the corpses of ambitious leaders, obedient soldiers, and powerless civilians lay in numbers like grains of sand upon a blood-soaked shore. Silver Mirror opined that a country that has reached the age of wisdom would stop building monuments to the warmongers of its history, but rather erect them for its peacemakers, those who saved lives by preventing the course of events from descending into a time of sword and fire.
One could point to such a monument that actually exists, namely the great mural painting known as “Peace of Five Peaks Island,” which can be found on the southwestern side of the Phoenix Tower in West Capital of the Empire of the Grand Circle. When General Heavenly Whirlwind brought down the Radiant dynasty to ascend the throne as the first emperor of the Pure dynasty, he justified his coup by claiming, based on specious evidence including forged clan records, to be a descendant of the imperial family of the previous Primal dynasty. By asserting that the founders of the Radiant illegitimately usurped the authority of his ancestors, he portrayed himself as an avenger who was reclaiming what was rightfully his. He then moved the center of the Grand Circle to West Capital not only to force the surviving members of the Radiant aristocracy to abandon their feudal lands in the east but also to establish a historical connection between the Primal and the Pure. He also summoned the best artists of the realm to decorate the walls of the rebuilt imperial palace with pictures in the grand proto-elaboratist style depicting the glories of the Primal dynasty. Most of them portray scenes of military victory, including the unnecessary, unjustifiable, and unrighteous slaughter of the pacific people of the southeast plains, which is falsely pictured as a defensive action against bloodthirsty barbarians.
“Peace of Five Peak Island” is a remarkable exception in that it celebrates the avoidance of what was certain to be a devastating war that would have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. It depicts the meeting of the Sixth Emperor of the Primal dynasty and the warlord of South Ocean known as the Great Sea Dragon, on a hill that is magnificently illuminated by an auspicious sun at midday. The Lord of the Grand Circle is in his gold and yellow splendor, surrounded by ministers in red robes and high hats, while the Master of the Endless
Waves is in full armor and flanked by his sea lords. The former is grand and haughty and the latter is sturdy and proud, but they face each other with respect as they are there to establish peace rather than to challenge each other to war. Once they finish exchanging formal greetings, they will enter a splendid pavilion of many colors, pictured at some distance behind them, where they will sit and share precious liquor while their ministers and generals finalize the treaty between the empire and the fleet. On the far right side of the picture, a flock of seagulls dance above a luminous sea, as if in joy over the event.
The achievement of peace on Five Peaks Island has baffled historians for centuries as a miraculous last-minute aversion of a war that appeared inevitable to everyone concerned. The Great Sea Dragon, who began his life as a
kidnapped child slave, then a galley rower, then a pirate, and then a pirate captain, emerged as an unprecedented genius of naval warfare as he battled and slaughtered his way to dominance in South Ocean and all its islands. With his fleet of ten thousand ships and an ambition that knew no bounds, he meant to take the greatest prize of them all, the Empire of the Grand Circle. But the Sixth Emperor was a man of war himself, as he was raised on the rugged northern frontier where he also served as the lord commander of fortresses. Even after his ascendance to the imperial throne, he was happiest on the campaign trail, extending his domain, punishing his recalcitrant subjects, and delighting in the destruction of those who defied him. In his endless greed for military glory, he left much of the running of the state to a group of eunuch secretaries, which led to what would later be referred to as the Rule of Fifty Half-Men. By all accounts, he was eager to face the barbarian upstart of South Ocean, whom he referred to as Pirate Fish Stink.
The initial meeting of their envoys was not an opportunity for a serious negotiation but for the ritualized issuance of challenges as a prelude to war. To the surprise of everyone, however, the talks on Five Peaks Island became protracted, as the emperor and the warlord communicated via numerous letters that were written, translated, and transported over the course of weeks. It ultimately resulted in the Great Sea Dragon receiving the imperial title of the Grand Guardian of the South Ocean with the responsibility of overseeing the affairs of the southern seas. In return, the Great Sea Dragon recognized the emperor’s authority and swore to safeguard all merchant ships under the protection of the imperial monopoly. It culminated in the personal meeting of the two on Five Peaks Island, which the mural depicts, in which the warlord ceremoniously received the jade tablet of officialdom, acknowledging his status as the emperor’s subordinate. And the emperor, in turn, granted him the singular honor of submitting on his feet, rather than prostrating himself on the ground. The peace treaty was duly agreed upon, stamped with great seals, and a celebration of feasting, dancing, and musical performances followed.
Then the Sixth Emperor and his ministers returned to West Capital, the Great Sea Dragon and his ships sailed back to South Ocean, and the war that was thought to be inevitable never happened.
In recent decades, new discoveries made by junior historians at the Hall of Great Learning have provided startling insight into the event. Through their painstaking search in many archives across the country, they have unearthed documents of disparate nature that have revealed a hidden history of the Peace of Five Peaks Island. They include some discarded source material for the True Records of the Primal Dynasty, an early draft of the incomplete Preliminary Discourse on the Fall of the Primal Dynasty, a batch of official correspondences that was housed at the Hall of the Imperial Secretariat that were thought to have been destroyed during the burning of the palace by the Radiant army, and, most revealing of all, some personal writings of the two translators who worked on behalf of the emperor and the warlord. In addition, findings from a secret storehouse at the Temple to the Primordial Nothingness in Sundown Archipelago, relating to the events from the perspective of the advisors to the Great Sea Dragon, have provided support for the newly revealed narrative.
The mural of “Peace of Five Peaks Island” depicts some fifty people, most of whom can be identified as important personages whose presence at the event is verified in the historical records. Immediately behind the emperor are the high minister of military affairs and the chief imperial secretary, and at a little distance to their left is a noticeably tall official whose sharp-eyed attention is on the Great Sea Dragon, not his sovereign. While the red robes of all other officials are decorated with the insignias of a pair of cranes or a pair of turtles, his is the only one with a pair of flounders, marking him as a temporary appointee to a position at court. The figure represents the scholar given the honor name of Diviner Supreme, a grand master of learning at the Forest of Brushes Scholastic Academy who acted as the imperial translator and interpreter during the negotiations.
Diviner Supreme came from an illustrious family of scholar-officials, his father attaining the position of the high minister of rituals, but he was somewhat of a wayward younger son in his early life. He passed the civil examinations at a young age, but before he could receive a government appointment, he had to go into mourning period as his father died from falling off a horse. At its completion, he not only declined to pursue a career in officialdom but left West Capital to travel the world.
In the course of his many adventures, he proved to be a veritable genius in the learning of languages, as he ultimately mastered completely no less than twenty-four living tongues and the reading knowledge of twelve defunct ones. After wandering the world for over twenty years, he finally returned to his family home in West Capital barely alive, after suffering a near fatal wound in a pirate raid in Middle Ocean. He eventually recovered, but the permanent damage done to his right leg made him unfit for prolonged travel. He was subsequently appointed as a master at the Forest of Brushes, becoming the greatest scholar of languages and linguistics of his time.
Although the exact origin of the warlord known as the Great Sea Dragon is obscure, he spoke a dialect of the language of Sundown Archipelago used in the southernmost islands. He forced all the sea lords of his fleet to adopt the tongue, even those who did not come from the archipelago. When he achieved dominance in South Ocean, the obscurity of the language became a major problem for the imperials in trying to assess his threat. It turned out that in the entire officialdom of the Grand Circle, Diviner Supreme was the only one who had knowledge of the Sundown tongue from his sojourn on the islands. Consequently, when the negotiations on Five Peaks Island was set to begin, he was given a temporary appointment as the imperial translator and interpreter.
In the painting “Peace of Five Peaks Island,” standing to the right of the Great Sea Dragon, half hidden in shadow, is a slight figure in a nondescript gray robe, a young woman who is the one and only female figure in the picture. Despite the important role she played in the event as Diviner Supreme’s counterpart who interpreted for the warlord, very little can be affirmed about her identity due in great part to the deplorable lack of information about women from that particularly sexist era. Even her original name is unknown, as Upright Lotus is an amity cognomen given to her well after the event. What can be reasonably theorized from the historical context is that she was probably a member of a prominent merchant family of the south, one who likely worked as an assistant to her father or some other patriarch of the clan after demonstrating a talent for languages.
Due to the highly restricted nature of the imperial trading monopoly in the seas under the control of the Grand Circle, merchants of South Ocean were effectively shut out of the area. As they had little choice but to deal with intermediaries of Middle Ocean, few of them bothered to learn the imperial tongue. What must be remembered is that the Great Sea Dragon’s ascendance from the pirate captain of a single ship to the master of a fleet of ten thousand was remarkably fast, the speed with which he dominated South Ocean taking everyone by surprise. When he decided to take his fleet north, he had limited time to look for someone who could act as his interpreter and translator. It is unknown how Upright Lotus came to serve him, but the fact that she was one of precious few in the south who could speak the imperial tongue must have come to his attention under some particular circumstance.
What the newly unearthed documents reveal is that Diviner Supreme and Upright Lotus systematically mistranslated all essential communications between the imperial court and the leadership of the Great Sea Dragon’s fleet, and in all likelihood did the same in their interpretive work. The documents also show that this was not the result of ignorance or incompetence but a deliberate act, pointing to the remarkable fact that the two translators colluded in the production of unfaithful renderings. Some examples of such mistranslations follow.
In the True Records of the Pure Dynasty, in the entry to the fourth day of the fourth lunar
month in the nineteenth year of the Sixth Emperor’s reign (Year of the Snake), it is written that on the occasion of the first round of negotiations on Five Peaks Island, the emperor sent a letter of admonishment to the Great Sea Dragon. While it is described as a “stern warning” to the warlord to refrain from challenging the Grand Circle and to submit himself to the authority of the emperor, its exact contents have been unknown until the recent discovery of a batch of imperial correspondences. What is immediately apparent from perusing the letter is that the Sixth Emperor did not assign the Office of the Imperial Secretariat to write an appropriate letter but rather composed it himself, as is apparent from his eccentric calligraphy in red ink. Far more than a “stern warning,” it was an insulting missive designed to provoke certain war, as the Great Sea Dragon is addressed throughout as Pirate Fish Stink. In addition, there is no way to describe its nature other than as the ravings of a madman. The Sixth Emperor promises not just defeat and annihilation in battle but the sexual violation of corpses, the magical tearing apart of souls, and the mass execution by extended torture of all the women and children of Sundown Archipelago as sacrifice to the god of war. He describes the entirety of South Ocean turned red with blood, the sinking of the southern islands by means of geomantically raised earthquakes, and the descent of all his defeated enemies into an underworld realm of eternal rape. The original letter was kept at the Hall of the Imperial Secretariat while a clean copy was sent to Five Peaks Island where it was delivered to the envoys of the Great Sea Dragon.