Translated fiction: A boy sees a dragon slipping into his bedroom – an image he’ll never forget

This happened twenty-two years ago.

It was summer. Armed with slingshots and stones, us friends were roaming outside the Chinese Mansion. Our fight always raged with squirrels, chameleons, moles, dogs, even snakes and mongooses.

“Do you have an idea what the Chinese do with their dead?” Utkal stopped in his tracks with the football ensconced in the crook of his arm. Those were the days when one had to put the rubber bladder separately inside the ball. After the bladder was filled with air, lacing up the muzzle was a herculean task.

Utkal would always come up with such questions in those days. At times, it seemed like the only purpose of his existence was to pose such questions, like Socrates. “Do they cremate them, bury them or simply feed them to vultures and crows?”

“The Chinese never die,” I replied. “We live next to the Chinese Mansion, but I have never seen a Chinese funeral. They just get older and older but never die.” Then I remembered the coffin that had been brought out of the Chinese Mansion. “Perhaps, after getting fed up, their relatives put them in a coffin and leave them in the jungle.”

There was a large drain, whose source was somewhere in the Chinese Mansion....

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