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Gate 4 Ki
Jun-young Translated
by Brother Anthony
of Taizé
I
was seventeen and my mother
was thirty-nine when my stepfather suddenly fell over
backward as he was jumping
up and down, uttering great shouts of anger, dead
drunk at midday. Nine out of
ten people of the kind who enjoy commenting on other
folks’ business based on the
slightest acquaintance all said the same thing — that
a woman from nowhere had driven
a nail into the coffin of a healthy man. The two of us
were pitifully weak
before our merciless destiny. Although my mother could
not be expected to make
her way through the thorn bushes of life hugging me as
if pushing through a
curtain, still there was nothing I could identify to
which I could assign the
blame and so feel better. My
mom and my stepfather had lived together for about
two years and eight months. I only wish I could say it
was a period like a
gentle song. Actually, those thirty-two months were a
period of alternation between
twisted hopes and barely lulled despair. When my
stepfather suddenly dropped
dead, the substance of the hopes and despair
evaporated and I was left with
weird traces of an unfamiliar life which I had
awkwardly tried to patch together
with fragments of myself. My mom, my stepbrother, and
the dry cleaning shop my
stepfather had run. Could this odd combination form
the axis of a seventeen-year-old
girl’s life? It could. My stepbrother, whose only
pride was to walk around the
living room stripped to the waist, showing off his
physical beauty, would take
a chair out in front of the house and sit there idly,
exchanging greetings with
passers-by. “Ah, you must be grieving so much?” they
would say. Then he would give
a completely irrelevant answer: “The sunshine’s nice.”
“Spring is spring.” The
age difference between my mom and my stepbrother was
eleven years, and that between me and my stepbrother
was also eleven years. His
appearance at twenty-eight as he stood erect midway
between mom and myself, showing
off his broad shoulders and back muscles, was strange;
the strangeness felt
slightly hair-raising. There were a lot of interesting
possibilities in people’s
speculation that the women such a vigorous man was
most interested in might be
his stepmother and stepsister. As if intent on living
up to that, when anyone
came to the house or dry cleaning shop, he would pour
out more words than they might
have wanted to hear: “I’m a man, so it’s okay, but
women are different. My stepmother
has a trench coat like this, but loose clothes don’t
really suit her. Father
was inclined to make her wear clothes like straw
sacks. But I’m different. That
prim young girl, Jae-ok? Well, she’ll listen to what I
say some day, for sure.
Now she just stands there far off with arms folded,
eyes to the ground, but
someday she’ll learn to bow and be grateful.” Maybe
this young man, who had
suddenly lost his father and been obliged to lead the
funeral procession, had cried
alone in some secluded corner, but mother and I never
saw him shed a tear. His
habit of going on about women being so-and-so, men
being so-and-so, did not
suit a twenty-something man; in one way it felt
foolish and pitiful, but still I
did not get hysterical and tell him to shut up.
Thirty-two months was an
unreasonably short time for all of us to practice and
embody being a new
family. We could not explain to ourselves what was now
over. Several
uncles started to hang around. My mother
seemed to be trying to overcome the situation making
use of all the people she
knew. While calling various men “uncle,” though they
were not my true uncles, I
held back and calmly tried to find out a bit more
about the methods of grief
and consolation that a man and a woman can share, and
their application. I
used to place my face against the crack of the door
of my room and watch my mother with an uncle as they
lingered in the living
room, then quietly step back toward the window. When I
looked out from there, I
could see my brother lifting barbells. Though he had
gone outside to give them
some privacy, he had not gone far but hung around
close by. With a lifted
barbell, he would stand on one foot, then change feet,
trying to keep his
balance as he grunted to gather his strength. Lives
ticking over at the end of spring. Days when I
could move neither forward nor backward, that offered
no kind of end or
beginning. I had aches
and pains all over for no reason, as if my blood
vessels and nerves had become tangled,
and even the simplest problem felt bewilderingly
complicated. I began to
be dizzy with an odd feeling that I did not know which
hand I might stretch out
right at the moment, but while I stood there blankly
with problems I could not
diagnose by myself, unable to cross the threshold of
my room, I gradually
recovered my sense of reality. Then the gloomy
conversations, sighs and improbable
laughter arising around me began to hurt like the tip
of a needle, and I felt anxiously
that I should do something, only there was nothing I
could do. Just as I began
to reckon I should try to enjoy my school life, the
summer vacation started. My
mother wrote a letter and left home; my stepbrother
and I, with no common blood
between us, were left like a newlywed couple in the
old warehouse-like house.
Mom’s letter was as follows. Dear
Gwi-seong and Jae-ok, Everything
is just too painful. I reckon you can take
care of each other while I’m away. I just need some
time, time to think. I’ve
been living in such a rush without anything like that,
and so often found
myself at a point of no return. Summer is a cruel
season for me. Everything
started in the summer. I’m doing this because I don’t
want to start anything
new this summer. Maybe all of us will have gotten
better by the autumn. Mom
wrote the letter in awkward, looped handwriting.
I thought she might have left a separate message for
me, so I looked under the
bed sheets, in every corner of the vanity table’s
drawers, in the pockets of
the coats and pants hanging in the wardrobe. Then, as
I read aloud three times that
letter that started with my brother’s and my name side
by side, I began to
think differently and finally summoned up the courage
to call my brother and
read it with him. “Your
name’s written first.” “Just
a minute.” “Mother
doesn’t talk to me like this.” My
brother rubbed his palms together then placed them
over his eyes. “She
says she needs time to think, and that means she’s
not going to stay here quietly staring at the ceiling
or the wallpaper.” “I
can read too, so why don’t you shut up?” “Mom
did what she does best. She made a family
without thinking.” My
brother took his hands from his face and turned
his head toward me. “Didn’t
I say to wait a bit?” “I
know what you’re thinking. You want to say bugger
off, all of you.” “Can’t
you think of just one thing at a time? Your
words aren’t words. They’re shit. It’s all just as
it’s written here. Don’t
think any further. The rest is just shit.” For
a while my brother pretended to tidy up the
inside of the dry cleaning shop, then he put up a sign
saying it was closed and
went roaming around. Anyway, I had to wait as if
nothing had happened until
mother came back, as if I always did the same thing in
summer, like waiting for
rain in a heatwave. Whether good news or bad, until it
became words and
appeared clearly before me I could not talk with
anyone, with any kind of destiny.
Torn off and scattered like the crumpled and
disfigured pages of a calendar, we
were like unfathomable days peering at one another
like photographs of
different seasons rising one above another. “People
say that things get done better with me at
their side.” My
stepbrother knocked on my door in the middle of
the night and started talking. Even though he had no
obligation to consider my
condition and mood, he exposed eight of his top teeth
in his attempt at a
natural smile. “I
only have to dress up in a suit and stand beside
them and everything works out just fine!” He
shook an envelope containing money, blinked, then
stood up and went out. When he came back, having taken
off his jacket and tie
and left them somewhere, he was wearing a white shirt
with one side hanging out
of his pants, which had creases sharp as knife blades.
He was holding a half-full
bottle of whiskey in one hand. I was perched at the
end of the bed. “Have
a drink?” My
brother first swallowed a mouthful then offered me
the bottle. “I
don’t enjoy it. And I don’t like seeing people
drunk, either.” My
brother stood unsteadily, leaning against the wardrobe
door, and asked, “Were
you happy before?” “Why?” “If
you’re thinking something pointless, you needn’t
bother.” “What
do you mean, pointless? There’s bound to be a
reason for everything.” “What
you’re thinking is not in my mind, so don’t
worry.” My
brother took a few more sips from the whiskey
bottle before he spoke again. “Who
was it that said a good son is born? I don’t
think so. It’s something you decide. I don’t like
decisions. I haven’t changed.” He
shook his head, then after a while he spoke again. “All
his life, my father was never able to be really
angry; he must have felt relieved.” He
vanished from my sight and his footsteps gradually
faded away. He was neither my real brother nor my
father, but he was someone
who stood facing me in the dark which I was unable to
share with a combination
of both. That idea, the expansion of that idea, my own
opacity, frightened me.
I tried to protect myself and him at the same time
from those awkwardly kind
people who kept ringing our doorbell and asking how we
were doing. I lied to
acquaintances, who were trying to start conversations
with anxious expressions,
that my mother was run down and had been admitted to
hospital. And that
sometimes my brother would go and look after her. “So
it’s just you and your brother living here?” I
was able to answer that question smoothly and
naturally. It seemed that my unconscious was much
deeper and darker than their
curiosity. “Sometimes
my brother’s girlfriend stays with us. She’s
like a good sister to me.” Mother
never phoned me. So I did not call her. I
packed away the identical T-shirts that my stepfather
had bought for me and my
mother in a box with other spring clothes and put it
in a corner. After we had moved
into his house, we all went out together just once and
that day we had a
picture taken. No one had great expectations that
everything would turn out all
right. I reckon only those who have tasted such things
can imagine the taste.
Anyway, I used to cry whenever I wanted to while
watching touching human
documentaries that were served up at 6:00 p.m. like
tidy meal tables. Since I
did not know what I ought to be missing, I imitated
the longings of other
people. Yet I suppose I cried for myself. After a good
cry, I felt strong enough
to do the laundry by hand for an hour. Then my wrists
felt as though they were
growing stronger and, since I wanted my legs to be
just as strong, I used to
dance around waving my arms and legs energetically.
Two or three friends used
to phone to share news. Only I had no news to share.
So the calls gradually grew
less frequent. Then
one evening, a nail artist some two years older
than my brother visited our home and introduced
herself as his girlfriend. I
was amazed to find that something I had chattered away
glibly had become a
reality, and for a moment I almost deluded myself into
believing that the words
I had made up to avoid embarrassment had worked like a
prayer. “Didn’t
my brother tell you how delicious the pickles
in our house are?” I
glanced at our junky fridge affectionately as if it
were a butler with tales to tell. “Gwi-seong
doesn’t talk about side dishes. He barely
talks about rice, either.” “Then
try some.” So
the nail artist and I ate together in the dim
light. She said that the soup I cooked was more
delicious than the pickles. I
did not believe her, but still I pretended to be very
pleased with the
compliment. “What’s
your mother like?” she asked. She
came to the house of a man who never talked about
rice, about side dishes, or about mother, and smacked
her lips as if we’d known
each other a long time and without any ulterior
motives seemed to take a liking
to me. “Oh,
she’s just ordinary.” I
replied briefly, and could find nothing more to
say. My brother came in while we were doing the dishes
after the meal. He
covered one of his eyes with the palm of his hand and
explained that he had to
have six stitches in the skin under his eye,
muttering, “It can’t always be the
same today as yesterday.” He opened the bathroom door
wide, went in and began rinsing
his mouth with an orange mouthwash. My brother was
proud of his healthy teeth, as
of his hard muscles. If he had been born a horse, he
would have lived in luxury.
His
girlfriend went after him, stood in front of the
bathroom and kept asking what had happened. Then,
perhaps losing interest on
hearing him reply that it was nothing, she went on
talking about herself. She pawed
the air with her right hand, saying she would go crazy
if she was always the
same as yesterday. She explained it was because of a
crazy woman she had met the
day before. The insane woman didn’t like this, didn’t
like that, and finally
left without paying, and although her hair had been
done, the soles of her feet
were dirty. She went on to say that if ever she got a
shop in a good location she
would put washbasins by the window and distribute
numbered tickets, making
everyone wash their hands and feet on entering. The
color of the tickets would
be purple, she said, because the shop’s signboard
would be purple, then she threw
back her head and laughed loudly. As I watched her
laughing so loudly, I decided
that I was not the only person in the world who was
going mad and felt somewhat relieved. Perhaps my
brother felt the
same. My
brother’s girlfriend visited our house five or six
times more. Once she slept in his room for four days.
She cooked for me a few
times. It was mostly deep-fried food. She also bought
me cooking oil and frying
powder, as well as a fan with a mauve propeller. A
vulgar laugh and a gaudy
frilled blouse, endless nonsense, and thin ears that
readily fluttered at anyone’s
words. In a short time I felt as if I had befriended a
lot of things that would
remind me of her. I had a vague but urgent feeling
that I would remember them
for a long time. Perhaps out of the urgency itself, I
had been drawing in a lot
of things. Her smell was especially good. Let’s say
that it was a sweet,
bitter, spicy scent resembling sorrow. “Right,
when is it your mom’s coming back?” “She’ll
soon be back, I guess.” “You’ll
speak up and support me, won’t you? We’ll
sell the dry cleaner’s and set up a nail shop. We’ll
combine it with a hairdresser’s,
and later we’ll open a branch. We’ll spray nice
perfume about morning and
evening, play music. If we feel down, we’ll employ
other people and go out for
a drive. It’ll be good for everyone, especially your
mother.” “Yes,
I’ll put in a good word for you.” There
was nothing funny about the way she talked as
if Mom and I had the final say in any decision. So I
responded sincerely. As if
every big and small dry cleaning shop in the world
would worship us. As if people’s
foreheads would light up like well-wiped ovens under
the hot sun, and we would stamp
numbers on them. Then she said that my brother and I
really looked alike, cheerfully
pointing out that when we were not talking, by the way
we pouted and wrinkled our
noses, anyone would have known we were brother and
sister born of the same
mother, we were as alike as loaves of bread baked in
the same mold. She also
praised the stamina of our dead father, saying that
having a child so late in
life showed he was someone truly competent. Perhaps
she was just being polite,
but she went on to say that although she was sorry for
what had happened to our
father, we had to wash away sorrow with joy. I replied
that if he had met her they
would have had a lot to talk about, it was a shame.
Moreover, her soaring, high-toned
laughter, sharp and stabbing, reminded me of my
stepfather’s sudden fit of passion,
when he stamped on the floor, the veins of his throat
suddenly swelling, unable
to control his fury. Her words were not completely
unfounded. If all of that had
a color, it was probably a blend of blue and red,
which gives purple. Purple
that drives people mad; purple that makes the veins
swell; purple that makes
people laugh full-throatedly. For her I was ready to
lay a purple carpet from the
front door to the entrance of my room. For me who had
nowhere to go, this place
had to be capable of being a different place. However,
such an anesthetic relationship
soon opened its eyes to reality. It eventually did.
One summer’s night, she called
at an unexpected hour, the phone ringing loudly and
persistently. “I’m
drinking with Gwi-seong and he keeps saying
weird things.” “What
do you mean?” I asked slowly, blinking in the
darkness. “He
says his real mother’s in the grave now.” “It’s
because he’s drunk, surely?” I responded
calmly. “He
says if he sells the dry cleaning shop and pays
off his debts, there’ll be nothing left.” “Really?” That
was the first time I’d heard of it. “And
he keeps spouting senseless philosophy.” “What?” “He
says that not having children is good fortune.” She
started to cry. “He’s
talking rubbish because he wants to get rid of
me, right?” “Are
you pregnant, by any chance?” I
could not be an aunt, for sure, but at least I
could just imagine myself as one for a moment. Then I
heard her answer: “No,
it’s worse than that. Gwi-seong started to babble
on about his rubbishy philosophy when I told him a lie
as a test. He seems to
think I got to thirty for nothing. Fucking bastard.” I
heard the sound of a purple signboard being switched
off. I
have heard that when they are in a no-win situation
people make familiar choices. It was on a late-night
radio program. All the crazy
things happening around me were struggles to live, but
also a kind of escape. Mom
believed that her life turned tough because she had
met the wrong man at the
start and set out on the wrong foot in life, so she
brought in a new man for
every problem. My deceased stepfather frequently said
that in his life he had been
obliged to struggle in order to gain his fair share
even in very small matters.
He couldn’t bear my mother’s youthfulness, the flush
of life that had not yet faded,
having brought her into his home without any great
struggle. He was suspicious
and kept trying to start fights until his mental and
physical energy was
exhausted. As for my stepbrother, he was someone who
had for a moment occupied
a position in my life as though we shared the same
flesh and blood; he was a no-good
muscleman, who often talked nonsense, but he could not
help it. That was how he
was. Someone without a lot of questions, someone who
deferred answers. Someone
who placed importance on the health of the body, the
energy of the organs, and stressed
the working order of the metabolism. Someone who could
not be a good son. Someone
who disliked making decisions. In my nightmares he was
the only one who did not
want salvation. So when I heard that he had been
stabbed beneath a bar’s
half-extinguished neon sign one winter’s night at the
age of thirty-three on
behalf of the people who had betrayed him, I merely
found myself thinking it
was typical of him. The most reliable darkness along
the edges of my unpredictable
life. “Are
you superstitious?” “No.” “Then
do you believe in jinxes?” “No.” “I
do. Shall I tell you about them?” “No.”
I
do not think my brother made any effort on my
behalf. Placed in a time where making an effort was
not the answer, we only
knew how to consume each other’s feelings and points
of view casually, in a way
that was not going to be an answer. When we sat with
knees drawn up on the spot
where the man who had been his father for a good while
and briefly my father,
too, used to sit, we looked like an as yet unborn
brother and sister. Shadows mingled
and spread across the walls and the floor, wavering in
a cluster. “Do
as you like then, listen or not. When the weather
changes and I first put on my winter coat, if I find a
banknote in the pocket I
have to meet someone new.” “That’s
stupid.” “I
have to spend the money on that new person. Then I
feel as though I’m wearing a new coat.” “That
doesn’t interest me.” “You’ll
always live a good new life wherever you go. While
I’m off to somewhere good.” “What
do you mean?” “Nothing
can always be the same as yesterday.” “What
are you talking about? Where’s this good place
you’re off to on your own?” “Girls!
They really make you tired!” I knew there
was the kind of comfort that only such a person could
give. Someone who was simply
nothing, a simple person who was nothing, someone who
was always the same to me.
Someone who was nothing yet something. I
waited for Mom to come home. At first, I just
waited for her to come back. She was the person who
had built a bridge between
me and the strange world. Someone whose life had
become what lies between what
she had gained and what she had lost through having
me. Then I waited for Mom
in another way. When she came back, we would start off
differently. My brother might
be just a brother or more than a brother or less than
a brother. In any case, even
if he was not a person but a thoughtless creature
living in a world of horses galloping
ahead wearing blinders to block the sides, it seemed I
might be willing to go
further with him. Passing through sadness can
reproduce the energy of life only
by such an effort to be able to handle even many other
sorrows. I am someone in
need of resolve, of reckless resolve. Someone wanting
to put her heart and determination
together here and there. Someone wanting to swear a
blood oath. Someone whose
age never felt right. I
found my mom’s dress in the closet, my brother’s
sunglasses in a chest of drawers, dressed up and went
out alone into the
streets where I had once hung out with my fun-loving
friends. There I met
someone. It was a man who did not know me and did not
want to know about me. He
was a skinny man in his forties who knew how to show
his curiosity about a girl
like me and was good with words. Until I became aware
of his gaze, I had been
sitting idly on a bench watching people go by as if it
was the last sight I
would ever see in this world. So when I realized I was
the object of someone’s
gaze, I was flustered and dropped my purse on the
ground. As I bowed my head to
pick up my purse, the tip of my hair touched the
ground, and the oversized
sunglasses that I had perched on the tip of my nose
fell off. “Are
you all right?” Finally
the man spoke, approaching with gentle
gestures. He had a document envelope hanging on his
right side and was wearing cowhide
sandals. It was a hot day, but he was wearing a
light-blue long-sleeved linen
jacket. On the front of the white T-shirt he was
wearing underneath, there were
holes scattered like drops of water and every time he
moved, his ankles were
slightly exposed under the narrow hems of light gray
pants. His nose was
sharply pointed and his eyes slightly tilted upward.
He asked again: “You
don’t look all right, I’ve been watching you.
Can I sit here?” I
drew my legs together, adjusted my dress and
expression, but did not walk away when he sat down
beside me. I wanted to look
like an experienced woman. Besides, I no longer wanted
to become lost in any
place, any relationship. “What
do you do?” “Oh,
this and that. Aren’t you hungry?” I
let him chatter away to his heart’s content. Back in
his twenties, he had been a local radio DJ. Now, he
was running an online
shopping mall with some partners, trying to expand it
to cover three or four
different items. He was about to enter the Chinese
market. He had many hobbies.
He was good at bowling, expert at billiards, learning
golf hard, and most of
all he enjoyed speed. There was a dry wind blowing
over the world he inhabited.
Like a desert. But whenever a girl like me cried moist
tears it would turn into
a garden, a secret garden with flowers blooming that
could be beautiful enough,
even if it was only the size of a palm. If someone
opened the door to that, a
new window on life would open. “Really?” “Yes,
I have a vacation coming up soon.” “Really?” “Your
lovely smile makes my heart beat fast.” The
ability to spot the risk of losing one’s way
amidst many people walking about as though they’re
fine under a scorching sun
and the complex maze of multiple circuits and forests
of buildings connecting
the busily spinning affairs of the world. That
strange, wonderful ability to
detect the signal risk lights up. I wanted to give him
a reward. “Give
me your phone number.” He
smiled faintly as he bowed his head, groped about
in his document envelope, ripped out a sheet of paper,
and wrote down his phone
number. Timidly small figures standing in a slanting
line on a scrap of graph
paper with small wrinkles on the ripped-off part. “You’ll
have to wait. I’m no easy girl.” I
spoke in a cool voice, but as if holding back
tears. As if saying, I’ll cry for you, just wait. It
seemed that what was
acquired and what was innate in me, my movements and
the sound of my words were
finally synchronized, so that the blood in my body was
circulating rapidly. I
walked as if I was out of my mind. I walked back home
at the cost of blistered feet.
My brother had not been home for several days. Nothing
happened, like my
brother’s new girlfriend ringing the doorbell. I
poured cooking oil into a
frying pan and fried everything that could be fried.
Fried, then threw it away;
fried, then threw it away, fried, then threw it away. People
say, people are always saying, that life is
bitter and sweet, long and short, that doors close and
open in unexpected
places, that there is darkness even in places where
there is light, there is
laughter even in places where there are tears, and so
they go on colliding, things
happen, happen, happen, they say. A season’s breathing
has a common feel just
like a season’s radio comments, so sometimes I focused
my whole being as I
ranged to and fro between one frequency and another,
and endlessly, as if night
were day and day were night, I laid down everything
inside me such as painful
confessions, the sound of others laughing,
complaining, telling tales and
criticizing; I swam in them, sometimes trying to get
swept away, while a day or
two or other time-spans expanded and contracted, while
I endured the unbearable
feelings that knocked on my heart. I starved until I
felt utterly numb. Guessing
at the farewell to be spoken by somebody who would
show up and press the
doorbell, or imagining the feelings of being well or
not well which I could not
even guess at and then giving up, such were the things
I conjured up and
erased. I thought that people distant or nearby might
all be some kind of
optical illusion. As if I had decided to stay alone at
home as an alibi for a life
that I could not liquidate easily and that could not
be liquidated, I often
thought of going home once I went outside. To the
house that was not my house. Then,
growing angry as if realizing afresh that all this
frequent endurance was not
worth pursuing, I phoned my brother. The man who was
not my true brother. “You
and Mom took my place.” “What’s
up? I’ve been sick as a dog.” “You
took my place. I’m the one who should be sick as
a dog and able to leave home. Everyone’s going too
far.” I
cried, wiping my nose over and over again. “All the
women able to cry come to me and cry,” he said,
“Women!” “How
are you sick?” I
worried about the sickness of this guy who had taken
my place. I worried as if I was admitting that I had
no place to start with. It’s
sad seeing a muscleman who’s sick. It’s sad seeing a
sturdy racehorse fall. It
reminds you of some kind of execution. A gunshot. Yet,
no sound of moaning
comes to mind. It is more wretched than sorrow to
imagine that in a place where
you cannot check it. Asking “Are you okay?” while
shaking your head in fear. “No
news is good news.” I pictured my brother
smiling. The teeth and cheekbones all glistening. “I
didn’t know anyone was worried about me like that.
That’s why.” “Is
that odd? Is that really so odd?” Then
I hung up the phone. I
felt sick as if my throat was blocked. Had the
hunger moved up to my neck? Did I only have any
sensation left in my throat, so
that my pain was clamoring and pleading there? I
brewed some barley tea and
drank it. I crouched among the things I had tidied up,
wiped clean, and rolled
around there. I focused on the concrete feeling of my
body touching something
and moving away from it. My hair scattered over the
floor, wrapped round my
neck, covered my face. Autumn’s
too far off. I will not give autumn a
chance. I will not forgive, nor will I ask for
forgiveness. I rose and looked
for my bag. I pulled out my wallet and found the graph
paper I had stuffed into
the loose change pocket. I spread out the tightly
wadded piece of paper, laboriously
went over the tiny figures, then dialed the number. The
man took my call in a very small voice after five
rings. “Who is this?” A voice that cracked slightly at
the end. I did not know
his name. So my words had to swing back and forth
between us like wind blowing
from a distance, like a smell borne on the wind, as if
swirling about among strangers
getting off together at a bus stop. The bench on which
our eyes first met, the
light that afternoon — swaying furtively as if we
needed to correlate all the
hints life had given us. “You
remember?” The
man paused briefly before he replied, as if
reading from a script, that anyway he had been
waiting. I liked that obvious
lie. “Shall
we meet?” It
seems that there is always a slightly ominous
undercurrent
to any feeling that things are going well. I repeated
my address twice, then
had him read it back once, checking how clear it
sounded. All the while accepting
how strange my life’s home or people’s place names
are. “But
today’s tricky.” He
added the condition as if taking one step back. A
man holding my address in one hand and taking one step
back. “Really?” “Today’s
my mother’s birthday.” He
spoke as if he was swaying. “She’s
in a nursing home now.” “Me
too.” “What?” “My
mother is in hospital, too.” “Really?” “Yeah.
I’m alone for a while. A while’s not a very long
time, though. Is it?” “Right.” “Do
you think I’m lying?” “Why
would you lie?” “Right?
It’s my birthday, too. Twenty-two.” “A
good age.” “There’s
no need to ruin a good time because of a
nursing home, right? I feel good now.” “Well.” “Don’t
bother with a cake, bring some flowers when
you come, purple ones.” “I
will.” “I’ll
be waiting.” The
man made me wait. I washed, dressed, combed my
hair, and waited patiently for the doorbell to ring.
It was the easiest, most light-hearted
wait compared with all my other waits. The man brought
a purple flower. Just
one vaguely purple one bent over among some white
flowers. I was not satisfied
but I accepted it merrily. The skinny man and I slept
together, but it was not
such a great experience as people claim. He seemed to
be having a hard time,
and I fell asleep worrying it might result in a baby.
In that night’s dream our
house burned to ashes. They say dreaming of a fire is
a good dream. I thought
that while I was still dreaming, and opened my eyes. I
greeted the dawn with opened
eyes then shut them again for a while, until I heard
the man scuffling around, and
woke again. “You
didn’t make it to the nursing home.” “Hmm.” The
man pulled the curtains apart, daylight came
pouring in, revealing his skinny back. The bone
stretching the whole length of
his skinny back. “You’ve
got a snake on your back.” “It’s
a star.” “It’s
not. It’s just a bone.” “It’s
a constellation.” He
turned his back this way and that, making me laugh
briefly. We didn’t see each other for very long.
Still, he somehow managed to
sit down with me and my brother for a meal at our
house. He displayed
remarkable agility in coping with the situation; the
role he quickly adopted
was that of my homeroom teacher. “What
subject?” At
my brother’s careless question we all laughed, it
seems. “Art.” It
was midday by that time, but in my memory the daylight
always disappears at that point. All is quiet and
peaceful. Mom
came back home and I transferred to a school with
a dormitory attached. I assume that between my
stepbrother and my mom there was
nothing to blush or raise their voices about. Ten
months later Mom married a
new man, while I graduated from high school and got a
job at a beauty salon. I worked
earnestly beyond my abilities, and was given short
vacations; I used to think I
had lived through all those days for the sake of those
vacations, but people saw
it quite differently. They seemed to think: “There
must be some reason why she
works so hard.” So I was embarrassed, like someone
who’d been found out at some
awkward moment, and thought that nobody, myself
included, knew me well. When I
had any free time, I would make short trips, emptying
my purse in the process. Thoughtlessly,
as someone who counts for nothing, I went flying off
into another life then
returned to my previous life. From
time to time I talked with my brother over the
phone. Sometimes he would call first, sometimes I
would call first. The
conversations never lasted long. When we lost touch I
thought: “No news is good
news.” Then one day I saw the nail artist who liked
purple by chance on the
street. Unlike in the old days, she was wearing no
makeup and was simply
dressed. She was holding a child’s hand while crossing
the road, but when the
child started to whine she shouted something at it and
went marching ahead on
her own. The child sank down on the ground and began
to cry loudly and
persistently. Some other person, unable to bear the
sight, picked up the child
instead and comforted it, then handed it back to her.
I reflected that the things
I had once felt desperate about were somehow going on
endlessly somewhere, dressed
in the clothes of ordinary life, but it was not a new
enlightenment. I
was at Incheon airport when my mom told me about my
brother’s surgery. The call came from my mother just
when I had finished the
departure procedures on my way to spend three days in
Beijing. Mom was
depressed because the first time she saw my brother in
several years had to be an
occasion like this. “They
said I was at the top of the list of his recent
calls. Did he know this would happen? He just suddenly
called, said a few words
about you, then hung up. But at the time I didn’t
think anything of it, since that’s
how he always was ...” Mom
told me that he had lost a lot of blood and had
been in a critical condition, but fortunately the
worst was over, his blood
type did not match with hers, but he could receive
blood from his new father. As
I boarded the plane, for the first time in my life I
clung to the uncertain
assurance that there might be a god. It wasn’t because
I was overcome with
emotion as I anticipated his recovery or as I imagined
my new father lying
beside my stepbrother and being able to share his
blood. It was because a
picture I had found when I was packing the previous
night was in my bag. “What
subject?” “Art.” “Art?” That
day, at that moment, my brother looked at me, I looked
at him, and the man who was pretending to be my
teacher looked at us
alternately. “Yes.
Now sit there together, the two of you, facing
each other.” “Like
this?” My brother asked. “Yes,
that’s it.” He answered. “Are
you going to draw us now?” “Yeah.
I want to draw you, now.” “Is
it going to be hung up somewhere once it’s
finished?” “Would
you like it as a present? But I’ll take it
home first, work on it a bit more, and give it to you
next time.” He
probably made me and my brother pose to avoid
further conversation. I meekly did as I was told.
Later, he really did give me
the picture as a present, and it was surprisingly
skillful, even though it was meant
as a joke. In
the picture, my brother and I are sitting facing each
other. On one
side there is a half-open door, and outside it is very
bright. We are in the
dark, me naked and my brother dressed in his everyday
clothes. In real life, my
brother liked to walk around without his clothes on,
utterly unconcerned. But
the person who drew the picture was able to depict
only my naked body. With
both hands I am gathering my hair on the top of my
head while my brother,
slightly leaning forward, has one arm stretched out on
the table. The palm is
facing upwards. What’s the next scene, I wonder. If I
drop my hands my hair
will fall. I will then calmly rest one cheek in my
brother’s upturned palm. The
pictures that have not been drawn will be placed next
to the picture that has
been. “Does
it look perverted?” The
man who was neither an artist nor a teacher asked me,
and I, who was
as much myself as I could be, answered in a husky
voice. “No.
I like it.” The
day I first saw the picture, I cried, but now I no
longer cry as I did
that day. I really cried my fill during those days
when I lied the most. That
may be why. In the
darkness that I once passed through, I was naked,
dangerous, and beautiful. In
the lies and pain of occluded days there may be
something more truthful than
truth, but time past does not return. And sometimes,
even when I was far
away, it was only in that abyss that I felt a sense of
total emancipation.
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