Three Stories

What I find most intriguing about Muzaffer Kale’s stories, and most difficult in translating them, is their poetic brevity. I guess I’m talking about silences and space and the constant urge I feel, as his translator, to clarify what I think he believes those silences and spaces are filled with in the world of the story. Of course, I can’t, and don’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to.

Muzaffer Kale (pronounced/Ka’-leh/) had published 12 books of poetry before turning to prose fiction. The stories in his most recent collection are more conventional in length, but most of his 2015 book Güneş Sepeti, from which the Turkish language originals of these translations were taken, feel unique. I balk at calling them “flash fiction” because the concept of sitting down to write a story of less than five hundred words seems less important in the rest of the world than it does in America. Kale’s very short stories don’t read like they were born out of a challenge, but rather out of a sentiment, like stories a poet had no choice but to write. They are admirably terse yet broad in scope, evocatively figurative yet direct in tone, revealing a writer caught in the middle of a kind of literary metamorphosis.

Translation is always a sticky endeavor. The very first word in “Wind and String Instruments,” for instance, is a moniker for the character Kurt: “geçkin,” which more or less means “past one’s prime but not elderly.” In fact, he is called “Geçkin Kurt” twice before the final line, where he becomes “Old Kurt,” and it bothers me to have left it out. But there was no good option, only a bunch of bad ones, and I’d only be earning cheap laughs by repeating them here. All difficult choices aside, ultimately my hope is that the delight I felt when reading these stories in Turkish has carried over for Muzaffer Kale’s English readers.

—Ralph Hubbell

SUNSTROKE

The young usta putting in our roof insulation had messed around for too long in the noonday sun.

He hit rock bottom.

His face turned pale.

________

So we moved him inside. He was downright burning and all dried up. “Don’t give him any water from the fridge,” we said, “he’ll crack!” We gave him some from the faucet instead. He needed an antifebrile. We found one but had a hard time getting him to swallow.

The sun had run him through.

“We need to get you to a doctor right away,” I said.

“I’m not going to a doctor for this,” he said. “It just happens to me sometimes.”

________

He looked woozy. With sunstroke, the brain feels like it’s swinging around in emptiness. Typically, your mind swarms with thoughts you couldn’t have otherwise dreamt up, thoughts so slick and disconnected that they elude your grasp, slipping away. The ones that don’t slip away are poisonous. They’re no good to you. You end up wishing that you could push through with the thoughts of some other person’s mind. A wet, woven ladder dangles from that cord just below the base of your neck, and if you stand up to walk your flesh and bones do it separately. Alone in that state, how far can you get? Getting anywhere would be impossible.

If you’re lucky, though, you’ll recover in a day.

When he pulled himself together a little, he said, “I’ll get my strength back at home.”

“Usta,” I said, “look at you, your water’s still sitting there, and you didn’t drink anything while you were working!”

“I didn’t feel like it,” he said.

“Go take a shower then!”

“No, no! I’ll take one at home.”

________

It’s true, he didn’t have a mind to drink. Sometimes a person brings these problems on himself. He just takes on too much. And there was his hat, sitting there among his bags and tools. He didn...