Three people share the same bed without knowing each other. For the purpose of this story, each one of them exists for only eight hours a day. Miss A between midnight and eight in the morning. Mr. B from eight to four pm. And Miss C starting from four in the morning until midnight.
Tres personas comparten la misma cama sin conocerse. Para esta historia cada una de ellas existe solo ocho horas al día. La Srta. A. entre la medianoche y las ocho de la mañana. El Sr. B. de ocho a dieciséis. Y la Srta. C. a partir de las cuatro de la tarde hasta la medianoche.
I’d been told this story about half a year earlier by some fellow medical interns. One of their China Medical University classmates had experienced something strange at the school’s Peikang campus. Back when she lived in an allocated dormitory, this student would often hear a loud, crisp bell ringing late at night.
Short stories tend to have much shorter lifespans than novels do. As such, a translation is a form of reincarnation. The end result is the same story, but also a completely different one at the same time. The first level of changes is due to the different language operating under another structure, a different set of ties binding the abstract with the specific. But there's also the second level, a more intimate level where the story surreptitiously obtains new properties after it’s been processed through the mind of the translator.
