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Incurable By
Kang Young-sook
Translated
by
Brother Anthony of Taizé
Jin-uk
was living a life in which there seemed to be almost
no possibility of anything
bad ever happening. Then one day he had his palm read
during a perfectly
ordinary evening get-together. The person who read his
palm was a woman living
with a friend who happened to be present that day. He
had a feeling that he was
being dominated by the woman’s gently rounded
shoulders and her somehow over-relaxed
attitude. She did not seem a good match for his skinny
friend, yet in some way they
were well matched. As the wine glasses circulated,
each person in turn held out
a palm to the woman. None of them was without a job,
they were all earning a good
enough living, so he wondered what they would want to
know, and although they
were friends he met frequently, they seemed
unfamiliar. Anyway, since Jin-uk had
never believed in that kind of stuff, his only concern
was not to disturb the
mood of the evening. His turn came. The woman examined
Jin-uk’s right hand and
left hand alternately for a long time. She took so
long that the other friends began
to lose interest. Then the woman said something; so
far as Jin-uk could remember,
it was something close to a definition of the lines on
the palm. The lines on the
palm, she said, are lines left by things happening to
friends that have no
relation to a person’s life, and by things happening
to family members. But why
would things happening to other people remain in his
palm? Jin-uk
tried to pull his hand back. He wanted her to stop. If
the farce was only going
to end when someone put a stop to it, that person
would have to be he himself,
he reckoned. He told her, let’s stop it now. Actually,
Jin-uk wanted to address
the friend, not the palm-reading woman. Hey, take her
away, tell her to bugger
off. What’s all this palm-reading junk? The wine
glasses, which had served to set
the mood, were now standing unused in the middle of
the table, while everyone
was pouring a mix of beer and soju. Then the woman
spoke again. “Why can’t I
see anything? There’s nothing there. It’s blank.” He
could not say for sure
that it was because of those words, but he found he
could neither drink, nor
eat the snacks, but neither could he be the first to
leave. He tried to stay
seated there, nonchalantly, as if he had heard
nothing. Later, he had a feeling
that blood was about to come bursting from his ears.
It was because the woman
had said that she could not see his future. The sounds
of laughter, of food
being chewed, the footsteps of waiters bringing
drinks, the music that verged
on being a ruckus, people replying to ringing cell
phones, he could not stand
any of it. And more difficult than anything else was
his own confusion. At that
moment, Jin-uk was engulfed in a feeling that he was
being crushed, buried in
something infinitely vast and atrocious. Anyway,
Jin-uk finally left the
restaurant first, after taking the woman’s business
card and stuffing it into his
bag like the others. ✽ For
quite a while Jin-uk had been working at H Bank. He
was not an ordinary bank
clerk who just sat there quietly, looking after his
health. He always worked
aggressively so as to be a model for others. He was
full of confidence and
comforted himself with the thought that he had
absolutely no problems. It
had happened one day a few years ago, just a couple of
days after the New Year,
when tires could be heard skidding in the snow-covered
parking lot in front of
the bank. Whenever a person left the bank, two others
came in. The tellers were
busy serving the increasing number of customers. Then
a woman in a black coat
walked in. People wearing black coats were common
enough. But that particular
black seemed strangely intense, like pitch, and it
sparkled. Jin-uk had been
sitting at his desk behind the tellers at the counter,
but the moment his eyes
met those of the customer, he stood up without
thinking and went out into the public
area. There he escorted her to an unoccupied position.
The woman sat down on
the chair but did not speak for a while, simply
staring down at her hands.
Although her hands were folded, the nails with their
transparent varnish looked
neat and modest. Then the woman began to speak, and
strangely, he found himself
concentrating more and more on the sound of her voice.
The woman said she was
soon going abroad and asked him to raise her overdraft
as much as possible. “I
need some money. I’ll be out of the country for a long
time. But I’m busy right
now so I’ll come back later. Please take care of it.”
She got up and laid the
passbook and her personal seal on the counter. Hers
was an overdignified
attitude, as if she was collecting money she had
deposited. Jin-uk briefly
called up her credit status on the terminal screen. It
was as bad as could be.
There was no money coming in regularly, and almost no
savings. There was no
knowing what money she was using to go abroad, and he
grew more curious. The
woman had already stood up and was on her way out when
he called to her in a
loud voice. “There’s a part you have to write for
yourself. Please wait a
moment and sign before you go.” More and more
customers were coming into the
bank. The woman made several phone calls, saying
goodbye to people, as she was
leaving Seoul. Jin-uk looked at the woman again, but
she was sitting there
quietly with almost no movement. He waited patiently
while the appointed teller
dealt with a previous client. As he did so, he began
to detect a strange scent
tickling his nostrils. Since the odd scent lingered in
his nose he began to explore
it. It was a scent that gave the feeling that the
shadow of a tiger was lurking
behind the modest-looking face, one that did not match
the image he had of her at
all. He only discovered later that the smell was a
special kind of perfume that
the woman liked. The scent, like someone very
experienced and crafty, was quite
overpowering. Up to that moment, he had no idea what
would come along together with
the perfume. As soon as the previous customer’s
business was dealt with, he
told the clerk to hurry up. And the clerk, a fairly
new employee, showed
plainly that he was embarrassed by the way his
superior was suddenly interfering
in his work. As the woman was getting up to leave, he
quickly pulled his name
card out of his jacket pocket and gave it to her. It
was a business card with his
cell phone number on it, one he did not give to just
anyone. That kind of encounter
was a very common thing, and Jin-uk knew very well
that people did not become
lovers just because of that. Nevertheless, Jin-uk did
not break up with that
customer, Su-yeon, for a very long time. ✽ Su-yeon
sat eating noodles at a stall in the middle of a
market. It was something
recent for her, this roaming around alone to eat. A
magazine had made a survey
asking people what dish they wanted to eat before they
died and she read that a
famous elderly celebrity had replied noodles boiled in
red-bean broth. She
imagined to herself red-bean broth spreading over
white cloth, and for some
reason the image remained in her head for a long time.
Su-yeon recalled how, whenever
she asked questions about her childhood, her mother
used to talk about noodles ad nauseam.
“When you were a kid, we had
nothing but noodles to eat. Not the nice long ones
hanging from the wooden
plank. Once the best part had been cut off, I boiled
the ends that were left
over and we ate them mixed with soy sauce and crushed
sesame seeds. There was
nothing else. I was afraid that you would die, eating
nothing but noodles. I thought
that my children would die of eating noodles.”
Strangely, Su-yeon felt saliva
pooling in her mouth when she recalled her mother’s
words. The
apartment where Su-yeon lived lay a ten-minute walk up
a slightly sloping hill
past a market alley. Whenever she went out, Su-yeon
did not return straight
home but lingered at the market entrance. Even when
she was returning home
after shopping for a designer handbag or luxury
cosmetics, she did not
immediately go back to the apartment, but walked round
the market. A hunger
that could not be satisfied even by shopping at a
department store could be
dealt with simply by eating tempura or stir-fried rice
cakes. When she put some
cut-price sweet potatoes or lettuce in a black plastic
bag and stuffed that into
her shopping bag, she looked up at her home as if it
belonged to someone else. One
apartment building was being built next to another,
one town next to another.
All the houses seemed to have been flattened, except
for the high-rise
apartments in the new town development. The owner of
the tiny hole-in-the-wall store
was always sitting in front of his TV, looking down at
the newspaper, then
pushing up his glasses. He
was always sitting in the same position, but when she
entered the store, he
would stand up, offer to shake hands, and start to
chatter. Once he began, he
would always boast that he had worked hard and sent
all his children to
college. This time, as usual, as soon as Su-yeon came
in, after a handshake,
without asking, he took out a bottle of water, opened
it, pushed it into her
hand, then looked down at the newspaper again. Su-yeon
sat down on a round
wooden stool, brought the bottle to her lips and
drank. Why am I sitting like
this on a round wooden stool in a dark, smelly store
full of metal shelving? Su-yeon
thought, as she chewed on the water in her mouth with
her teeth. The old man
picked at his nose, rolled the pickings between his
fingers, then dropped them
on the newspaper. Customers pushed open the glass
door: “Do
you have any sugar substitute?” “Do
you have any Andong Soju?” “Why
don’t you have any brown sugar? You had it before.” “I
want to buy some glass noodles.” Whenever
someone came in and began to say something, the old
man would start pouring out
words like a flowing tap. “With this little store I’ve
put three kids through
college. One went to study in America and still lives
there.” “Well, well.” Su-yeon
nodded. “Grandpa, you told me about your children last
time. Please stop
talking.” Su-yeon shouted loudly and the old man
stared at her. Talking about running
a hole-in-the-wall store, raising children and
educating them was a whole life:
Su-yeon was just someone sitting briefly in the store
on the round, yellow stool.
Su-yeon looked down at the large paper bag holding a
designer handbag as it
stood on the black cement floor. Then the old man
spoke again. “Those ignorant
people don’t realize that Seoul’s population is
shrinking. I don’t know why they
keep building apartments when nobody’s having any
babies. Oh, it’s all here in
the newspaper, isn’t it?” The noise of digging could
be heard coming from the
apartment construction site. There was a lot of noise,
it being rocky ground. Su-yeon
was about to say something, then gave up. Instead, she
gave another wry smile.
In actual fact, Su-yeon thought of nothing but Jin-uk,
twenty-four hours a day.
Abuse, abuse, violent, abusive words. The sense of
unity that they once had
with each other had vanished in continuous verbal
abuse. Her face was distorted
and her body unspeakably weary. She wished Jin-uk was
dead. “Since he knows all
my evil deeds, I wish he’d die and disappear.” Sitting
on the round, yellow
stool she talked to herself like an actress. Above the
store owner’s head, a
news report emerged about a man who had thrown away a
ten-month-old baby while
arguing with his wife about the cost of living. The
announcer explained that in
a fit of temporary madness, he had taken the baby for
a doll. The baby was born
not knowing that its parents didn’t have any money.
Even if it had known, it
could not have avoided being born, being pushed
forcefully down its mother’s
vagina, ceaselessly like a screw. Su-yeon could
understand the baby’s position.
But she could not understand Jin-uk. Su-yeon had been
attracted to Jin-uk because
he worked at a bank. As a banker, she had wanted him
to control her compulsive
overspending and return everything to normal, be it
her bank account or her debts.
That was all. ✽ “You’re
good drinkers!” The
four people sitting at the next table were eating
meat. The remark was made by
a woman who seemed to be the mother of the children.
Jin-uk and his high-school
friend were also drinking soju at the next table to
wash down the meat. The
friend turned over the meat using the chopsticks he
had been eating with, then
piled it onto Jin-uk’s plate. “So
what are you doing now you’ve quit the bank? You’re
crazy, quitting at your age;
you think you’re in your thirties?” Jin-uk
was uncomfortable with the air in D city. People knew
the exact number of
spoons in each other’s houses, and the air all seemed
to have the same color
and weight. He always hated coming back to his
hometown. “Don’t
let it worry you. Look, you dickhead, stop turning the
meat over with your
chopsticks. It’s disgusting.” Jin-uk
scolded his friend sullenly, but his eyes kept being
drawn to the table next to
theirs. “A
woman should act like a woman; a woman should not
drink too much.” The
woman who seemed to be the mother had spoken to the
girl who seemed to be her
daughter. The young girl, whose hair was tied in a
tight ponytail, emptied her soju
glass in a single gulp, then received another glassful
from the man sitting directly
in front of her. There was something odd about what
looked at first to be an
ordinary family of four. His friend continued to turn
over the meat with his
chopsticks, whether Jin-uk liked it or not. “It’s
good to be a strong drinker. A woman’s no less a woman
for drinking well, is
she?” The
man spoke the distinctive dialect of D city, with a
strong accent. “Stop
eating meat and eat some rice.” The woman who seemed
to be the mother told the
children. “What
are you talking about? Order some more meat.” The man
spoke again. “That’s
enough meat, let’s just eat rice.” The woman who
seemed to be the mother,
refusing to give up, went on insisting. “Let’s
have more meat.” The man was persistent. His friend
briefly glanced at the
table next to them, then continued turning over the
meat with his chopsticks. “Dear,
let’s stop. The kids are full, they can’t eat any
more.” When the woman who
seemed to be the mother spoke again, frowning
fiercely, the man shouted at her.
“What
are you talking about? Here, give us four more
servings of rib fingers. Let’s
have some more meat. Eat up.” While
the two were arguing, the girl quickly drank the soju
in her glass. Jin-uk
went outside to smoke a cigarette. The temperature,
which during the day had
risen above freezing, had grown cold as stone with
nightfall. Jin-uk stood at
the edge of the sidewalk, smoking, then looked round
on hearing a phone ring.
The girl who had been sitting at the next table had
opened the door, come out
and walked around the corner of the restaurant, and
was standing in front of
the wall. There she lit a cigarette, then took out her
phone. Jin-uk went on
smoking as though he had not seen her. “Rib
fingers are the cheapest meat you can get. Even if you
eat till you burst, it
costs less than 100,000 won. It’s mean and crappy to
make a thing of paying the
bill. Pisses me off!” Across
the road, behind the forest of high-rise apartments,
he saw a collection of
lights that seemed to have been tossed up onto the top
of the hill. Although
the whole neighborhood had been designated for
redevelopment, some small houses
still remained up there on top of the hill. All the
brothers used to eat
breakfast rapidly, grab their lunch boxes, then go
racing down the alley as if they
had popped out of a small barrel. Jin-uk had tried
hard to erase the small room,
which used to seem as if it was about to burst, and
the narrow alley from his
head. Because his goal was to get a job at a bank and
to rise as far as he
could, he repeated every day: “I want to be a banker!
I want to be an
international banker!” “Woody
Allen? That guy? A film star, or is he a movie
director? Don’t worry, he’s not
like that. What do you mean, Woody Allen! He’s just a
local guy who’s frickin’
ancient.” The
girl spoke as she stubbed out the cigarette on the
ground with the toe of her
sneakers. “I’d
better be getting back.” The
girl took out a breath freshener from her pocket and
sprayed her mouth with it.
She glanced at Jin-uk, who had drawn closer and was
standing at the door. Her
eyes were full of revolt. As
soon as he returned to his seat, his friend snapped at
him. “Are
you crazy? You’re already over forty and you’ve taken
early retirement?” The
woman who seemed to be the mother at the next table
likewise could not keep
quiet. “Where’s
that smell of cigarettes coming from?” The
girl was still looking down and in a flash, without
thinking, Jin-uk addressed
the woman who seemed to be the mother. “Oh,
I’m sorry. I just came in from smoking a cigarette.” The
woman who seemed to be the mother immediately gave
Jin-uk a dazzling smile. Every
time the voice of the friend scolding Jin-uk grew
louder, the high-school girl
at the other table turned her head briefly and looked
at their table. Then, when
Jin-uk stared at her she looked back at her own table. “Lonely!
Lonely? You dickhead! The other guys’ kids are already
grown up and at
university while you’re still not married. Dickhead!
Shall I call someone for
you to sleep with? Lonely? You’re lonely, aren’t you?
You idiot. Stupid idiot.”
They had walked from the restaurant to the hotel,
which was less than five minutes
away, and as they entered the lobby, his friend
grabbed Jin-uk and blabbered.
He went so far as to rub his mouth, from which a
strong garlic smell was
issuing, against his cheek. Holding each other by the
shoulders, they hugged for
a good while. Jin-uk pushed back the curtain in his
hotel room and lay down on
the bed. Judging by the noise of the cars, the
high-rise buildings and the
brightness of the lights, the town was now a mammoth
city. Jin-uk’s brothers had
all left and settled down in other cities. When their
father died, the brothers
and their children gathered. The brothers showed no
sign of sorrow, like people
with no birth-parents, no roots. Even when they viewed
their father’s body, their
expressions seemed to suggest they had left everything
important at home. Of
course, he had not cried either. He heard the door of
the room next to his
open, then the wardrobe door. He could hear the sound
of footsteps, the door
creaking. Jin-uk did not feel like sleeping so he
slipped on his coat and went
out. He walked once around the empty hotel lobby, the
coffee shop with no
customers, then went down to the basement sauna floor.
The sauna was already
closed. On the way back to his room, he pushed open
the front door of the hotel
and went outside. He bought cigarettes, then looked
back into the convenience
store. Some kids were eating cup noodles. “Hey,
Mister!” Jin-uk
had come out of the convenience store and was pushing
open the front door of
the hotel. It was the girl who had smoked a cigarette
at the restaurant. “Can
you give me some money?” He
smiled when he heard the girl speak. “Another
time.” He
had to say something, but he had nothing to say, so
without thinking he said
that. The girl did not give up and tried to follow him
into the hotel lobby. He
pulled out his wallet and handed all the cash in it to
the girl. She looked
delighted and vanished, opening her cell phone as she
went. He
took off his shoes and sat down on the sofa beside the
table. Then he took a
white envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket.
Inside there was a sheet
of white paper with the lines of a palm in blue. He
imitated the woman who had
read his fortune, first wiping both palms with wet
wipes and then blowing on
them. It seemed important to dry them well without
leaving any moisture. Next, he
took out of his bag an ink-pad he had bought at a
stationery store and used a
sponge to smear the ink over his palms. He lifted both
hands and shook them, then
looked for a sheet of paper. He could find none. He
saw the smooth white sheet spread
over the bed and pressed both hands gently onto that.
Then he looked down at
the sheet, hoping that thin lines would appear on the
white surface. ✽ Everything
was covered in snow. Once the car was on the highway,
Jin-uk pulled out the pack
of soju he had bought at the convenience store,
inserted the straw, and drank
it as if it were a health tonic. Over the barbed wire
fence below the road rose
things like gimlets, twigs, and thorns, piercing the
white snow-covered
landscape. Birds gathered on them. A red truck waited
at the traffic lights. It
was a Coca-Cola truck with only the logo in black. He
sped along behind the Coca-Cola
truck for a while. Soon after, his navigation system
stopped working. Jin-uk parked
in an empty space beside a traffic light. The truck
with the Coca-Cola logo could
be seen disappearing into the snowy white landscape.
Jin-uk started to walk aimlessly. A
group of women in navy sweaters were standing in front
of a dried-up puddle. With
their identical dresses and platform sandals, they
looked like nurses. The
women glanced at Jin-uk who was standing on the other
side of the street,
smoking a cigarette, as they stripped away the vinyl
wrappings from plastic
buckets. Then, as they poured the contents of the
purple plastic pails into the
puddle, each held her nose. Jin-uk took out a new
cigarette and lit it. The
nurses sat down in a line in front of the pit with
their thighs exposed. They
were trying to free their shoes from the muddy ground.
Jin-uk staggered toward
the nurses. The hair over their brows was lifted
skyward as a flurry of wind
mixed with snow passed. “I’m going to withdraw my
installment savings next
month.” One nurse spoke as she brushed back her hair
with her hand. “Buy us a
pizza!” The nurses were exchanging that kind of small
talk. “Tell the director
to freeze this more. Look at that wriggling. It’s
disgusting!” A nurse spoke as
she pointed at the puddle. “Hey!
You! You’re not allowed in here. Get out. This is the
hospital’s waste
treatment plant.” A man wearing a mask appeared and
waved his arms as he shouted
at Jin-uk. He seemed to be an employee of the
disinfection company, full of a sense
of duty as he stood alone in the field. It was a
vacant lot of unspecified use surrounded
by a gray wall. There were two trucks standing at the
far end of the wall, where
plastic pails and cardboard boxes were piled neatly on
one side. Jin-uk slowly
went outside of the walled area and walked past the
nurses gathered in front of
the truck. He wanted to say something to the nurses,
but felt too awkward. “Do
you have to be good at math to become a nurse?” Jin-uk
asked suddenly. The
nurses laughed loudly, tilting backward. ✽ His
friend’s house stood on its own right by the roadside.
Jin-uk was supposed to
meet his friend’s mother. She was so old that she
could no longer hear or smell
anything. Oddly enough, though she could understand
nothing else, she
immediately recognized the name of her son. But that
was all. Jin-uk soon gave
up trying to communicate and lay down on the warm
floor of the room. He dozed
off and when he awoke, the old woman was sitting
there, looking down at him. Try
as he might, he could find nothing about her that
resembled his friend. Perhaps
the side profile as she sat quietly with her head
slightly bent was the only
aspect that resembled his friend. His whole body was
soaked with sweat, his
throat was dry, his lips felt as though they were
cracking. The old woman was
still sitting beside him, not saying a word, darning
socks, trimming worm-like,
dried greens, coughing slightly as she smoked a
cigarette. Jin-uk went back to
sleep again. Suddenly, he had the feeling that Su-yeon
had come and was lying
beside him, pressing her lips to his, touching his
stomach with her cold hands.
He felt warm just imagining it. But no matter how he
tried to reach her lips, he
could not touch her or hold her face with his hands.
At some point, Su-yeon was
gone and he had the feeling that the old woman was
touching his groin, at which
he opened his eyes abruptly. Somehow, his body felt
light, like a sheet of
paper. When
he next woke up with his shirt clammy, one other
person was sitting in the
room. Jin-uk immediately rose to a sitting position.
“I’m the kid’s younger
uncle. My brother passed away early. I wish the kid
were here.” He seemed to be
talking about K, while K’s mother remained silent.
While K’s uncle and mother
smoked, Jin-uk pushed open the rattling door and went
outside. The street, the hills,
everything in front of him were all so dark that he
felt he could not breathe. “Sis,
just go to bed now. I’m going home.” After a while,
the uncle emerged, put on
his shoes and walked away into the darkness, speaking
as he went. “Tomorrow I’ll
bring a bottle of liquor. Let’s have a drink. Don’t
go, stay one more day.” K’s
uncle disappeared into the darkness, while his
tottering footsteps continued to
be heard. Jin-uk took out the envelope containing the
money K had asked him to
deliver and placed it on the floor by the wall. ✽ Su-yeon
was standing at the entrance of the subway station. It
had started to rain just
as she was coming out of the station so she couldn’t
start out right away. The
woman she had spoken with on the phone said she was
from China. Nowadays
everything came from China and she reckoned it would
be all right; she was
planning to take the potion with strong Chinese
liquor, nearly 50 degrees proof. “It’ll
soon be over. All the people who used it have said the
same.” Su-yeon
could not believe what the woman from China said. “Do
you mean dead people really
come back to life and say that?” “No, of course not,”
she replied and added, “they’d
already performed experiments on animals in China.
Thorough experiments. It’s
guaranteed.” Anyway, Su-yeon decided to meet the
Chinese woman. Saying she was
going to buy the potion did not mean she was going to
take it right away. She
did not know what she would do if Jin-uk said
something extreme, so she just
wanted to have it with her. “I only know Jongno. I’ll
wait outside the subway
station.” The Chinese woman was resolute. Su-yeon
was standing beneath the awning of a cell phone store
beside some workers from
a subway construction site. The cigarette smoke they
were exhaling came straight
toward her. The workers’ hands, clothes and shoes were
all covered with gray
dust, and they were smoking hard. “How about ashy
brown? I think that color would
suit you.” Suddenly, she was hearing things. It was
something the hairdresser
always said when she went to have her hair dyed,
though she did not even know
what ashy meant. But now the word suddenly made sense
to her in isolation, even
without explanation. The workmen grumbling beside her
did not have dyed hair,
but because they were all the time covered in dust
their hair was automatically
ashy brown. “And this month’s card bill is no joke.” A
not so tall worker spoke
up, still smoking. “We spend all day digging and the
card company gets all the
benefit.” A
fairly tall worker with curly hair standing next to
her chimed in. “I wish I were
buried down there, dead. Suppose we blow up the card
company?” The smaller one
said, motioning with his jaw toward the construction
site for the subway
station expansion. The smell of dust, of clay, and oil
mixed with subterranean moisture
emitted by the bodies of the workers filled her
nostrils. “It’s too difficult,
I can’t go on living like this.” There was no knowing
who had spoken. Su-yeon hurried
over to a streetside kiosk, bought a bottle of water
and drank from it. As she swallowed
the lukewarm water she gazed blankly at the
construction site. The site, its
rebars and wooden beams surrounded by gray containers,
shuddered tremulously. Su-yeon
dropped the bottle she was holding and sank to the
ground. There came the sound
of an explosion and from the construction site the
sound of people screaming.
The men standing under the awning all squeezed their
way across the sunken
street and went running toward the construction site.
Su-yeon fell forward, covering
her head with her arms. She was unable to meet the
woman from China. ✽ “You
really should dye your hair an ash brown color.” The
hairdresser twisted her
hair with her fingers as she spoke. Su-yeon told her
to do whatever she wanted.
She surrendered her head and shoulders to the
hairdresser and sat there quietly.
She closed her eyes and dozed off briefly, then came
to her senses with a startle,
her knees trembling. She was once again surprised on
seeing the person in front
of her in the mirror. She was glad that she could
always change her appearance
in this way and so manage to get away from herself. In
the space between the face
she knew and the face she wanted, she was able to
breathe. Su-yeon went back
home and sat leaning against the three-meter-wide
wardrobe decorated with
mother-of-pearl. The wardrobe seemed like a giant
waterfall that would soon be falling
over her back. She slowly pressed harder against it,
but she was troubled by
the feeling of a weight that seemed about to come
pouring down. Su-yeon relaxed
her body and propped her legs against the wardrobe,
lying flat on the floor and
spreading her arms wide. Liquid came flowing from her
eyes as if she had used eye
drops. She
went out into the living room and turned on the TV.
The screen lit up, showing
bobsled athletes preparing to compete. One of the
athletes said, “You wouldn’t
know how painful it is to resist the pull of gravity
racing at nearly 150
kilometers per hour. But once the season is over, I
soon miss that terrible
pain.” Su-yeon closed her eyes without realizing it.
The crowd at the bobsled track
stood watching how fast a two-man or a four-man team
lying flat could go
speeding down a track of ice enclosed in ice walls.
The camera fixed to the
helmet of the team member who had been interviewed
went speeding headlong down
the icy track. The
construction site for the new town apartment complex
was so close that the
sound of piles being driven into the ground could be
heard all day long. The
noise seemed to be spreading via Su-yeon’s body to the
whole apartment, so
whenever it grew louder she would cover her ears with
her hands. She dreamed
that she fell into a river, and when she got out of
the water, she could not
find Jin-uk. She sat down by the river and cried
bitterly. In the dream she walked
out of the water alone, while Jin-uk had disappeared.
There could be no worse
nightmare than that. Su-yeon continued to cry. Because
she was only crying in her
dreams, she did not feel sick or sore as when she
cried in reality. ✽ Su-yeon
took the business card of the woman who had read
Jin-uk’s palm and boarded Subway
Line 4. She had been to Gwacheon Grand Park and the
Racecourse before, but once
the train headed toward Ansan, she could hardly
remember the geography of its
route. The palm-reading woman’s office was located in
the center of Gwacheon
city. In the small officetel room there were two
desks, and next to the
entrance where slippers were set out for visitors,
there was a water purifier with
a business card holder on it. Colored threads
decorating the ceiling produced a
rather mysterious, yet cheery atmosphere. She did not
want to say she was
someone’s girlfriend or anything like that. The woman
offered her a cup of tea,
then wiped her palms and smeared them with blue ink,
as she had done to Jin-uk and
the others. She took a few prints on clean sheets of
white paper, put the best
on the desk, and began to examine it closely. After
studying the lines for a
while she picked up a magic marker. Lines marked in
red and lines in blue; soon
the lines formed a single image. “If
you think something is bad, it is bad, but if you know
beforehand that something
is bad, you can take care and try to avoid it.” The
woman stroked a vase of
roses set on the table as she spoke. “There are some
people where I can see nothing.
That means death. People with no future. I have to
talk to that kind of client
for a very long time. Then, in some cases, the problem
becomes clear. If the
problem can be fixed things will be all right.”
Su-yeon asked various
questions, but the woman only said one thing. “When
you go home, do not turn on
the TV, do not listen to music, or turn on your cell
phone. It’s best when
there’s no one else in the house. If there is someone
else, do it in the middle
of the night. Sit quietly alone in the house without
anyone else around and see
what response emerges in your body. No matter what the
response is, it is
something emerging in your body, it is your mind
responding, so just let it be.
Do not feel guilty.” Su-yeon received from the woman a
copy of a book in English
analyzing psychic influences that had nothing to do
with her. On being asked if
she would be able to read the book, she replied that
obviously all books were
readable and took it. As
she was waiting for the elevator she met a Yakult
saleswoman, who for some
reason seemed familiar. In that short period of time
the woman counted the
number of Yakult packs in her wheeled cart. Su-yeon
plucked up her courage. “Excuse
me. How do I look?” The answer came quickly. “What?
What did you say?” Su-yeon merely
laughed. “No, what I mean is, don’t I look a bit
strange?” The saleswoman laughed,
as if to say there certainly were some strange people
around and held out a
Yakult. “Drink this.” “I didn’t realize that Yakult
carts were powered by
electricity. It must make it easier.” “Strange. Today
everyone is saying
strange things. How do you look? You look fine. I can
see fine!” Su-yeon took
the escalator down to the subway station to catch the
train. A large number of
shoulders were being borne down beneath the ground.
For some reason, those many
shoulders seemed to be visible from afar. Su-yeon had
not been able to ask or
hear anything about Jin-uk’s fortune. ✽ Su-yeon
sat down on the couch in the middle of the living room
after brushing her teeth
and washing her face. As the woman had told her, she
turned off every device
capable of making a sound. She had told her to relax
but she couldn’t. Where
should she put her hands? Should she fold her arms, or
put her hands gently on her
knees? She tried this, then that. She felt time
passing outside the window. Su-yeon
did not know what to do, like someone standing in
front of a table of offerings
commemorating people with no names. She wanted to know
where her heart was. Her
heart had fallen onto the floor of the living room and
was rolling about. There
was no feeling that she wanted to see Jin-uk or that
she felt sad about parting
from him. Everything was just frightening. She was
always sensitive to noises
outside the window, but now she could not hear
anything. Somehow even the noise
from the construction site had faded away. Then a
sound reached Su-yeon’s ears.
She thought for a moment that she was hearing the
voice of her heart. It was
similar to the scat of a jazz singer she had once
liked. She had followed every
performance of that singer who had been about her own
age, so she thought she
was hearing her voice as a hallucination. She glanced
toward her mother’s room.
She soon realized that it was not a jazz singer’s
scat. She stood up from the
sofa and opened her mother’s door. The window was
slightly ajar, although it
was not midsummer, and her mother was sitting with
hunched shoulders emitting
groans that recalled a jazz singer’s scat. It was a
sound produced by the uvula
vibrating as if expressing horror. It was a sad sound,
one that she was hearing
for the first time in her life. Su-yeon closed the
window, lowered the curtains,
and stood gazing at her mother’s back. Her 76-year-old
mother’s back was trembling.
Su-yeon stood transfixed, staring at the
mother-of-pearl wardrobe rising behind
her mother, like someone realizing after several
centuries that their mother is
alive. “Su-yeon, I want to eat some noodles,” her
mother said. |