A Tabby-cat's Tale Read online

  Xulu and I buried Tabby in the park on Jiuhua Hill. We didn’t need the spade and scythe, there were plenty of root holes. We placed him in one—he looked like another tree root—covered it over with earth, which we firmed down, and made a note of where he was, backing it up with a photograph. I developed the film and sent the picture to my brother, far away in the south, telling him of Tabby’s death. I made a point of saying that there was good feng shui around the grave: it was on the side of Jiuhua Hill and overlooked the city, which was spread out below in the distance. Tabby had a bird’s eye view of its myriad houses—I sent the picture as proof.

  A year passed, and my brother came back to Nanjing to arrange for a job transfer. Of course, he went to mourn at my sister-in-law’s grave. He had already been up Jiuhua Hill and dug where the photograph indicated, for Tabby’s corpse. I didn’t know whether it had completely decomposed or not, but he gathered the bits together and laid them in a small suitcase he had brought with him. He then buried the suitcase and its contents beside my sister-in-law. The graveyard was a fair distance from Jiuhua Hill, but he was able to make the journey on his motorbike without much trouble.

  It was just that, in my view, it was all so unnecessary.

  . . .

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  A Tabby-cat's Tale

  Copyright © 2000 Han Dong

  All rights reserved by and controlled through Han Dong

  Translation copyright © 2014 by Nicky Harman

  A Tabby-cat's Tale (《花花传奇》) was first published in a short story collection, My Plato (《我的柏拉图》), published by Shaanxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe （陕西师范大学出版社）.

  ISBN 978-0-989-12677-9

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  v1.0, 20141706

  About the author

  Han Dong, 韩东, was born in 1961 in Nanjing. After graduating in philosophy and lecturing in Xi’an and Nanjing, he relinquished teaching in 1993 to make his living as a writer. In the 1980s, Han Dong became an important avant-garde poet, and edited the influential poetry magazine Them (《他们》). He is also known as an essayist, short story writer, blogger and novelist. His first novel, Banished!, was translated into English in 2009. He has made several literary tours in the West, and has been writer-in-residence in Gutenberg, Germany and Saint-Nazaire, France. His English-language home page can be found here.

  About the translator

  Nicky Harman lives in the UK. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time from Chinese. She has translated authors such as Chen Xiwo, Han Dong, Hong Ying, Dorothy Tse, Xinran, Yan Geling and Zhang Ling, and she is a regular contributor to Words Without Borders and Paper Republic. In 2012, she was one of the judges for the Harvill Secker Young Translators Prize. Follow her on Twitter: @cfbcuk.

  About Frisch & Co.

  Frisch & Co. Electronic Books is a Berlin-based ebook company that focuses on publishing contemporary literature in English-language translation. In partnership with prestigious publishers from around the world—including Suhrkamp Verlag, Editorial Anagrama, Edizioni Nottetempo, Companhia das Letras, Atlas Contact, and Natur & Kultur—Frisch & Co. seeks to bring innovative and original writing into English for a worldwide audience. Founded in 2012, Frisch & Co.’s titles are available on ebook retailers throughout the world and in DRM-free format on our website.

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Contents

  A Tabby-cat's Tale

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  About the author

  About Frisch & Co.