The Library of Korean Literature | Dalkey Archive Press

The Library of Korean Literature A Sampler of Fall 2014 Titles

DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS Champaign / London / Dublin

THE LIBRARY OF KOREAN LITERATURE

The Library of Korean Literature, published by Dalkey Archive Press in collaboration with the Literary Translation Institute of Korea, presents modern classics of Korean literature in translation, featuring the best Korean authors from the late modern period through to the present day. The Library aims to introduce the intellectual and aesthetic diversity of contemporary Korean writing to English-language readers. The Library of Korean Literature is unprecedented in its scope, with Dalkey Archive Press committed to publishing 25 Korean novels and short-story collections over the span of four years.

The series is published in cooperation with the Literary Translation Institute of Korea, a center that promotes the cultural translation and worldwide dissemination of Korean language and culture.

The Library of Korean Literature Fall 2014 Titles

The Republic of Užupis

by Haïlji Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton Pavane for a Dead Princess

by Park Min-gyu Translated by Amber Hyun Jung Kim The Square

by Choi In-hun Translated by Kim Seong-kon Scenes from the Enlightenment: a Novel of Manners

by Kim Namcheon Translated by Charles La Shure Another Man’s City

by Ch’oe In-ho Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

The Republic of Užupis Originally published in Korean as Ujup’isŭ Konghwaguk by Minumsa, Seoul, 2009 Copyright © 2009, Haïlji Translation copyright © 2013, Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

Pavane for a Dead Princess Originally published in Korean as Juguen Wangnyeoreul Wihan Pavane by Park Min-gyu, Yedam, 2009 Copyright © by Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. Translation copyright © by Amber Hyun Jung Kim

The Square Originally published in Korean as Kwangjang Copyright © 1960 by Choi In-hun Translation copyright © 2013 by Kim Seong-kon

Scenes from the Enlightenment: a Novel of Manners Originally published in Korean as Taeha by Paegyangdang, 1947 Translation copyright © 2013 by Charles La Shure

Another Man’s City Copyright © by Yeoback Media Translation copyright © 2014 by Bruce & Ju-chan Fulton

CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 The Authors

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Excerpt from The Republic of Užupis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

By Haïlji Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

Excerpt from Pavane for a Dead Princess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 A Novel by Park Min-gyu Translated by Amber Hyun Jung Kim

Excerpt from The Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43

By Choi In-hun Translated by Kim Seong-kon

Excerpt from Scenes from the Enlightenment: a Novel of Manners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

by Kim Namcheon Translated by Charles La Shure

Excerpt from Another Man’s City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71

by Ch’oe In-ho Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

The Library of Korean Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81 Dalkey Archive Press

PREFACE

To the twenty-first century Western reader, Korea represents conflict. It is the locus of competing and dividing ideas; the battlefield upon which powerful forces have fought and are fighting. It is the land where the last bastion of Maoist Communism sits side-by-side with capitalism in its most extreme form; a society whose ancient and traditional culture contrasts vividly with the world’s most advanced technologies; where individual freedom strains against societal norms; where everyday reality runs parallel with the numinous.

This fall, Dalkey Archive Press’s Library of Korean Literature presents five new titles that, in their various ways, investigate these dividing lines, examining Korea’s status as a place where difference is especially acute.

Through a close quiet study of a single nineteenth-century village, Kim Namcheon’s classic 1939 text, Scenes from the Enlightenment, tracks Korea’s early progress from a society bound by the rules of family, rank, gender and respect toward a ‘new-style’ enlightened, Westernised nation, complete with bicycles and newly built roads.

In The Square, Choi In-hun investigates Korea’s division into two countries and two diametrically opposed polities. Set in the runup to the Korean War, its protagonist escapes a viciously right-wing south, seeking freedom in the socialist North, only to find there an equally destructive adherence to ideology.

Pavane for a Dead Princess is set in contemporary Korea, where popular culture’s obsession with beauty can be seen as society’s newest canker; while author Park Min-gyu’s addition of a ‘writer’s cut’ suggests another way of looking at this phenomenon.

On the surface, The Republic of Užupis appears to shun Korea, preferring instead a mythical state located possibly in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, or even stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. But through his protagonist, Hal, author Haïlji is in fact examining the yearnings and dislocation of his contemporary Koreans, and posits the idea that freedom and nationhood themselves may be just a dream. ⁄ 11

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Another Man’s City strays even further from reality. From mundane and quotidian events Choi In-Ho steadily builds an unreal and uncanny edifice—a virtual world reminiscent of Kafka, Orwell or Ishiguro.

Through this selection of the best in contemporary Korean writing, English-speaking audiences can learn, not just about the history, attitudes, dynamics and mores of the Korean peninsular, but also about the dichotomies that have created the modern, globalised world.

—West Camel, Editor, Dalkey Archive Press

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THE AUTHORS

Hailji – The Republic of Užupis Haïlji was born in Kyŏngju in 1955, studied creative writing at Chungang University in Seoul, and earned a doctoral degree in France. He is currently a professor at Dongduk Women’s University and has written more than ten novels in Korean, as well as poetry in English and French, including the collection Blue Meditation of the Clocks.

Park Min-gyu – Pavane for a Dead Princess Park Min-gyu published his first book, Legend of the World’s Superheroes, in 2003, for which he was awarded the Munhakdongne New Writer Award.

Choi In-hun – The Square Choi In-hun was born in 1936 in Hoeryong City, North Hamgyong Province, now in North Korea. He studied law at Seoul National University but joined the army without completing his final semester. From 1977 to 2001, he was professor of creative writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts.

Kim Namcheon – Scenes from the Enlightenment: a Novel of Manners Kim Namcheon was born in 1911 in South Pyongan Province, located in what is today North Korea. He was active in the proletarian literary movement the Korean Artists Proletarian Federation (KAPF). His early works pursued socialist realism. It is reported he was executed in 1953 as part of a cultural purge.

Choi In-Ho – Another Man's City Choi In-ho was born in 1945 in Seoul and graduated from Yonsei University. He first gained notice when three of hisstories were selected in competitions sponsored by the Hangukilbo and Chosunilbo newspapers and the journal Sasanggye (World of Thought). In 1982, he received the sixth Yi Sang Literature Prize. ⁄ 13

Excerpt from

THE REPUBLIC OF UŽUPIS

by Haïlji Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

The Republic of Užupis

CHAPTER 1 JONAS THE TAXI DRIVER

When the Asian man appeared at immigration control, the official, a young woman in an olive-green uniform, was startled. Asians were not a common sight in this country.

With an amiable smile the man presented his passport. As the woman flipped through it, her face took on a solicitous expression.

She spoke briskly into a telephone, a note of urgency in her voice.

Then she turned back to the man.

“Mr. Hal, someone will be with you shortly.”

And soon two other officials arrived: border control agents. They were dressed like the woman and they were armed. One of the men was gigantic, six and a half feet tall. The first thing they did was size up this man, Hal, a clean-shaven, neatly dressed gentleman, in his early forties. He was calm and thoughtful, his demeanor refined.

“Your boarding pass, please,” said the big agent.

What to make of this request? Granted, the big man’s accented English was a challenge, but who expects to be asked for a boarding pass at the immigration booth? Besides, the other arrivals were proceeding through immigration without a hitch. Why was Hal being singled out—it didn’t make sense?

“Boarding pass,” said the other agent, also in English, extending his hand. “Boarding pass!”

When Hal finally responded his voice was polite but firm. He had presented his boarding pass at the departure gate in Amsterdam, why were they demanding it of him now that he had arrived? He didn’t understand.

The two agents were taken aback. Was their command of English so weak that they could not understood Hal? The young woman stepped in: “You are ‘no visa,’” she explained to Hal. “Which means your stay in this country is limited to fifteen days. Before we can admit you, we need proof that you will leave the country within that time. That’s why we’re asking for your return ticket to Amsterdam.” ⁄ 17

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Hal shrugged. “But I’m not returning to Amsterdam, I’m going somewhere else, and I didn’t purchase a round-trip ticket. You’re not saying you’re denying me entry because I don’t have a round-trip ticket, are you?”

The young woman interpreted for the two agents, who conferred with each other, their expressions grave, before giving the woman instructions.

The woman turned back to Hal: “When do you plan to leave the country?”

“As soon as I can. By the end of the day, if possible.”

The woman was dubious as she interpreted for the agents. The two men instructed the woman further.

“And where is your final destination?”

“The Republic of Užupis.”

When this response was relayed to them, the two agents once again conferred, this time at some length, and came to a decision. After issuing one last directive to the woman they left.

The young woman produced a form and asked Hal to sign it, and when this was done she stamped his passport. “We are admitting you for forty-eight hours. If you are unable to leave the country in that time, it is your responsibility to report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs office that deals with foreign nationals; there is the address,” and the woman she returned Hal’s passport to him along with the form.

Hal thanked her and was proceeding past the booth when she asked him one last question.

“The Republic of Užupis?”

“That’s right.”

“Where is that?”

Why would she ask such a question? Hal didn’t reply.

After changing money Hal left the terminal, overcoat draped over his arm. It was snowing and there was a sodden chill in the air. Hal donned the coat. It was stylish and of an excellent weave, but too lightweight for the severe winters of this land. Hal didn’t realize what winter was like here.

Outside the terminal was a sleepy, nondescript plaza. It reminded ⁄ 18

The Republic of Užupis

Hal of a train station you might find in a small city in the countryside. A file of yellow taxis, a dozen or so, awaited fares, and a short distance off, a blue metro bus sat idling; there were no other vehicles.

The plaza had turned into a sheet of ice, and beyond it spread a grove of birches. Hal didn’t know what to make of it all—he had never seen such a small and unprepossessing international airport.

“Where to, sir?”

One of the taxi drivers snagged Hal, a man whose hair had turned white but who couldn’t have been older than his mid-forties.

His English was passable.

“Užupis,” said Hal. “Užupis?” said the driver, as if he had never heard the name before.

“Yes, the Republic of Užupis.”

“Republic?” The man looked even more puzzled.

Hal produced a postcard and offered it to the driver. “Here’s the address. I think maybe it’s not so far from here. It’s postmarked Vilnius, Lithuania.”

The man put on reading glasses and inspected the postcard, then approached his fellow drivers, who were huddled nearby, and showed them the postcard, asking them what they thought. Stamping their cold feet, the drivers looked at the postcard and consulted with one another, occasionally glancing in Hal’s direction. Finally, Hal set down his suitcase on the ice-covered plaza. Turning up the collar of his coat and putting on a pair of gloves, he took in his surroundings.

Shrouded by the falling snow and the advancing dusk, the birches at the far end of the plaza seemed to be floating on air. The blue bus admitted one last passenger and set off toward the birches—beyond which the city must have been located—and before long it too was floating through the falling snow. The plaza lapsed into desolate silence.

And then an imploring voice cried out: “Jurgita!”

Startled, Hal turned to see a beautiful young blonde with a doleful expression. Floundering toward her was a bulky, middle-aged man, a farmer by the look of him, clutching to his chest a huge goose. It was he who had called out the soulful “Jurgita!” presumably the name ⁄ 19

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of the beautiful young maiden. The melodramatic meeting of this graceful woman and the comical farmer was like something out of a play. Impervious to it all, the snow continued to fall.

“Okay, let’s go!”

The driver was back. He returned the postcard and while he loaded Hal’s suitcase into the trunk, Hal continued to gaze at the encounter between Jurgita and the farmer. Whereas the farmer was overcome with emotion and about to burst into tears, Jurgita remained still, her expression as doleful as before. She could have been a princess returning home from a long exile, to be welcomed by a former servant whose station had fallen to that of a rustic.

“Please,” said the driver, gesturing toward the back seat. With one last look at Jurgita, Hal climbed in.

The taxi was a vintage make and apparently finicky in cold weather, for it was reluctant to start. After the engine had turned over several times in vain, the driver opened the door, planted his left foot on the icy road, and managed to rock the vehicle several yards forward, at which point he released the clutch and the engine finally engaged.

Back in went the driver’s foot, the door shut, and off they went.

The first scene they passed was that of the other taxi drivers—big, well-built men stamping their feet, shoulders hunched up against the cold. They gazed vacantly at Hal as the taxi went past.

The next image was that of Jurgita and the farmer. Jurgita still looked doleful and still hadn’t moved. Depositing the goose on the icy ground, the farmer hefted her bags. Hal looked back at the retreating scene, drawn by the intensity of Jurgita’s beauty. She might have been looking his way, but he couldn’t be sure. Presently she was out of sight.

The taxi continued toward the birches, and as they passed the grove the driver turned on the radio and Hal heard a broadcast that he assumed to be in Lithuanian, not a word of which he understood.

He wondered if it was the news.

Beyond the birches, Hal saw the outlines of the city. Gray buildings came into view, dreary structures that might have been factories or apartments. He felt no warmth from this scenery, though these buildings too, owing to the fall of snow and night, seemed to be ⁄ 20

The Republic of Užupis

floating in the distance. And yet he felt buoyant as he gazed out the window, anticipating his imminent arrival at his destination.

Some ten minutes later the taxi suddenly braked and turned onto a through street. There wasn’t much traffic and the snow had accumulated on the road, which was flanked by barren, snow-covered lots, beyond which rose somber, grimy apartment buildings.

Hal watched, uncomprehending, as the taxi went in this new direction. The driver too, so sure of himself when they had left the airport, looked left and right, examining each sign they passed—had he lost his way? The strange thing was, the road was not difficult to follow—it was not the sort of road on which a person might get lost.

Finally, on a deserted stretch on the outskirts of the city, the driver came to a stop. “Would you please show me that address once more?”

Hal handed the postcard to the man, who once again put on his glasses to examine it. Then he pocketed the glasses and proceeded to cruise along slowly, perusing each road sign as if expecting Hal’s destination to appear. Hal was disbelieving: Did the driver really think he was going to find the Republic of Užupis in the outskirts of this dismal city? And all the while the meter was running.

The driver pulled over and stopped again, set the hand brake, and got out. “I’ll be right back.” And off he went through the snow, across a vacant lot toward an aging apartment building in the distance. Hal couldn’t help thinking the man had decided to milk his foreign passenger for all he was worth.

The driver approached three people standing outside the building and spoke to them. Inside the taxi Hal smirked: Let’s see how much you try to squeeze me for. The unintelligible broadcast still issued from the radio and the meter still was clicking, the fare working its way up. Above the meter was a clock that read 4:47. Hal removed his watch and re-set the time. And then he found himself coughing. How damp and chilly it was inside the old taxi! So much for the heater.

Just then Hal noticed a hefty, middle-aged man plodding through the snow. Balanced across his shoulders was a massive grandfather clock. His clothing was shabby and he appeared exhausted—he must have toted his heavy burden a long distance. It was a curious sight, the man’s leaden steps dislodging snow and the clock that rested on his ⁄ 21

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shoulders looking rather like a coffin. Hal watched, fascinated.

As the driver was making his way back to Hal, he and the man with the clock crossed paths. But neither man seemed aware of the other. Each walked on in silence.

“I’m sorry,” said the driver once he was back inside. But, just as they were pulling away, a taxi approached from the opposite direction.

Hal’s driver quickly brought his vehicle to a halt, set the brake, rolled down the window, and beckoned to the other driver. The second taxi came up close. Down came the driver’s-side window and out popped the head of a man who looked very young for a taxi driver.

The two drivers began a conversation, unintelligible to Hal. Hal’s driver handed the postcard to the other man, who inspected it and then, looking exasperated, got out of his taxi. Hal’s driver got out as well, and the two men continued their conversation, at one point the younger man fishing out a cell phone and punching in a number.

The fare kept climbing. When would the conversation end? Waiting patiently, Hal was hit with a wave of drowsiness and began to nod off. He heaved a yawn and shook his head to clear it. Jet lag was setting in.

“Okay,” said Hal’s driver when he finally returned. The sky was distinctly darker.

“All right, you’ve had your fun, yes?” said Hal, who had finally lost patience. “The game’s over—let’s be on our way.”

The driver’s embarrassment was almost palpable. But he didn’t respond—perhaps he hadn’t understood? Instead he whirled the taxi about and set off in the direction from which they had come. The bleak scenery passed by in reverse. Hal watched the still unfamiliar landscape, but with no interest. Night had fallen.

They drove through the twilight, stopping at a railroad crossing while a dark, interminably long freight train passed. Hal fell asleep.

When he lurched awake, there was light outside. How far had they come? Hal saw a city street, but it was lifeless, snow accumulating all around.

The taxi made a circle on the plaza of an antiquated white building.

Where were they? Hal asked. City Hall, replied the driver in a gruff tone. He must have been upset that he wouldn’t be able to string Hal ⁄ 22

The Republic of Užupis

along any longer.

They left the plaza, turned down a dark, narrow alley, and crossed a bridge. Hal noticed a sign—“Airport 6 km.” So, an hour to travel six kilometers.

Across the bridge the taxi came to a stop. Finally. The driver got out and opened the trunk to retrieve Hal’s suitcase.

Hal climbed out and saw, lit faintly by a streetlight, a forlorn side street. At the foot of the light pole the snow continued to accumulate.

“That will be eighty-five litas,” said the driver after he had set down Hal’s suitcase. “But let’s say sixty, because I was a little lost back there.”

Hal looked about in a daze.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said the driver. “I’m actually a professor. I only do this on the side—that’s why I don’t know the roads so well.”

The part about not knowing the roads was presumably a baldfaced lie, but there seemed to be an element of truth to the claim that he was a professor: not many cab drivers could be expected to have such a good command of English.

“But this isn’t Užupis,” said Hal in a restrained voice.

“No, this is the right place—no doubt about it,” said the driver as he indicated a dilapidated three-story building. On the front of the building a small neon sign reading Hotel Užupis blinked on and off.

Hal clapped a hand to his forehead in dismay. “I said the Republic of Užupis, not Hotel Užupis!”

The driver became agitated; he was in a fix.

“Well, no matter,” said Hal as he produced a hundred-litas note from his wallet and offered it to the driver. “It’s dark already—I guess it’ll be all right if I spend the night in this hotel and go the rest of the way tomorrow.”

The driver relaxed. He reached into his pocket for change.

Hal made a dismissive gesture. “Forget it. Consider it a tip—nice job with that little game you played.”

The driver was skeptical. But when finally realized what Hal was saying, he became ecstatic: “Oh, thank you, thank you! You are so generous, sir! A true gentleman, sir!” And then he bowed. ⁄ 23

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Hal was disgusted.

“I tell you what,” said the driver. “If you wish to go to the Republic of Užupis, then I will be your guide—I will take you there tomorrow.

You see, I have no classes tomorrow morning.” So saying, the driver extracted a business card and gave it to Hal. “My name is Jonas. May I ask yours, sir?”

“Hal.” “Aha! Mr. Hal, you are my true friend now.” And with that Jonas climbed into his taxi and made his getaway.

Hal remained in the desolate street, gazing at his surroundings.

The darkness and the impassive accumulation of snow made everything look the same; nothing distinctive caught his eye. Still, Hal remained where he was, looking about blankly. Finally he hefted his suitcase and pushed open the door to the Hotel Užupis.

⁄ 24

Excerpt from

PAVANE FOR A DEAD PRINCESS A Novel by Park Min-gyu Translated by Amber Hyun Jung Kim

Pavane for a Dead Princess

LAS MENINAS 1

I remember she was standing in the snow. It was the year’s first snow.

The day was my birthday, and I was twenty years old. I remember the empty, lonely stretch of rice paddies, the smattering of trees, the darkness outside the window, the bus I was in, clunking down a road on the outskirt of town. We could’ve easily gone for miles without seeing a single person. Would she be there? I wondered, even as we neared the bus stop and I could glimpse the accompanying sign coming up ahead, misshapen like a scarecrow with a broken arm. A harmonica version of “Auld Lang Syne” was playing over the crackling radio.

She’d be there, I thought to myself, my forehead pressed against the cool window. The dusk had passed. The night had finally caught up to us and far outrun the bus. It wouldn’t have been strange if we had simply passed the bus stop, but the bus pulled to a stop after overshooting it by a dozen or so yards. She was standing where the shadow of the crooked sign ended in the snow.

The bus took off before my feet could touch the ground. For a second, as I was recovering my balance, I felt as though the ground were moving underneath me. It was moving, and the earth was spinning even in the dark, and now, after all that doubt, we were finally facing one another, as surely as the moon makes its orbit.

I didn’t think you’d come.

But you waited.

We didn’t say those words out loud, but it felt as though we had.

There was a faint light, perhaps from the hidden moon. I don’t remember what exactly we said. But I recall her hands, robbed of all warmth, and the endlessly long light of a faraway train journeying swiftly across the fields and disappearing into the distance. For a while, we kept our eyes on that light and then, as if on cue, we began walking in the snow. Her breath came out in small white puffs. They were defined by the surrounding darkness, and I felt I could hear the snow collecting in the silence. The snow was desolate and expressionless, 1 Or The Maids of Honor. Also the title of the painting by Spanish painter Diego Velázquez.

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like guests leaving a funeral.

I distinctly remember the road, with its naked, sparsely spaced trees, the surrounding rice paddies and dark factories, and the unknown, nameless streams and hills. Winter strips away the names of many things, I thought as I walked. The anonymous trees were rid of everything but their trunks and branches. The road, white and narrow, glimmered in the snow. We walked and walked that nameless road, tightly clasping hands. Little by little, they grew warmer. The touch and warmth of her hand, the things she must have been feeling— they coursed down her hand and through mine, like water rushing under the frozen surface of a stream. For some reason, I became sad.

She seemed to be crying softly. A few snowflakes fell across her blurry face, a face now unclear to me. I wanted to say something but didn’t know what. Instead, I squeezed her hand tighter and continued walking.

It could have been that I was feeling the real her for the first time.

She seemed so unfamiliar, like trees that become anonymous once stripped of their bark. Nothing was for certain: the snow, the road we were on,my handholding her hand, even the world itself. The trees, with no hands to hold on to, gave up trying to reach out to each other and stood shaking in the dark. People who can hold each other’s hands should never let go, I thought to myself.

Beyond the trees lining the road, I could see the faint lights of the restaurant Santorini, lonely and forlorn like the stars of a dying galaxy.

“To be honest, I thought you wouldn’t come,” she said softly, her head bowed like a snowman collapsing under its own weight. The words I missed you so much echoed inside me, like a faint hallucination. I didn’t say the words out loud or offer any excuses. Instead, I stopped and turned to face her. Gently, I began dusting the snow off her hair and scarf. Gingerly, she also began dusting the snow off my head. We stood there like snowmen, patting each other down. Without a word, I grabbed her and hugged her close. It happened so suddenly, but it felt like I’d planned it all along. Her body was cold like that of a lifeless princess. We stood ⁄ 28

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there in each other’s arms in the snow. A weathercock high above us creaked on its iron pole and turned in our direction, its beak cast downward. Gone was the “temporarily closed” sign that had hung over the restaurant’s fence a month ago. The fence, its paint chipped in places, was now strung with Christmas lights blinking intermittently like fireflies. Those lights, together with the real, living fireflies flitting around us, were all a blessing.

I still can’t forget the sound of her heart beating. It felt as if her heart had slipped into my arms, no, into my body, and become a part of me. Even after we went inside the restaurant and took a seat by the corner window, I felt I could hear it, an echo becoming dimmer and dimmer. I heard the sound of wood crackling in the fireplace, the sound of water boiling somewhere softly, the December wind knocking against the window, the wind chime tinkling against the door, and the sound of her heart beating. The sound of her heart beating. The sound I still hear to this day.

Inside the restaurant, it was dark. We silently sipped our green teauntil the owner came with a bundle of firewood and proceeded to untie it.

“Wait just one minute. It’ll soon warm up in here,” he said.

A man in his forties with a bushy beard, the owner either wanted to go to Europe or had been there and missed it, because the place was full of antique furniture and European knickknacks. Feeling slightly drowsy from the warmth, I looked out the window at the darkness, the falling snow, and the glittering snow-covered road we’d just passed. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. She was also looking out the window at the dark, her hands folded neatly in her lap. We tossed a few unremarkable questions back and forth. Other than that, we didn’t say much, even after we’d ordered food. There was the sound of wood crackling in the fireplace, of onions being chopped, of something frying in a pan. The sudden hug had placed a huge distance between us, worse than when we passed the empty rice paddies and the factory on the way to this European-themed place. I didn’t know ⁄ 29

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what to say. The meal began stiffly, in silence.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

She spoke in a tiny voice, but I felt as shaken up and unsettled as cracked ice. For what? And why? She began to cry, and try as I might, I couldn’t understand why. My mouth was full ofsalad, but the thought crossed my mind that maybe twenty-year-old guys are like AM radios. We can turnthe knob all we want, but we’ll never receive that elusive signal called woman. I sat there blank as a dead radio, facing tears as clear as late-night FM radio broadcasts. I felt I’d done something very wrong.

Twenty-year-old girls, as well, are like a radio wave guys can never receive. I learned this much later. She probably didn’t know what to do. Youth, really, is like a shortwave radio, and relationships, whether for better or for worse, are ninety percent filled with myth. But these were things we didn’t know at the time. In any case, we were only twenty years old, an age at which—for better or worse—we had no choice but to leave the majority of our luck to fate.

All love is founded on myth, the myth that you love him, that he’s somehow different from other guys, that she’s this type of girl, that you’re everything to him, that you understand everything about him, that she’s terribly beautiful, that he’ll never change, that he needs you, that he’s lonely, that you’ll love her forever. They’re all mistaken beliefs.

Yet those who find love in spite of the ugly truth are those who have decided to believe the good rather than the bad. That was the love we had, too. What she and I understood to be true was not true at all, but, luckily, we never realized that, which was okay because we could remember each other the way we wanted.

I laid my heart open to her tears so she could cry as much as she wanted. My heart became wet from her tears like a handkerchief, despite the warmth from the fireplace. It got wetter and wetter. And the more wet I became, the more her tears dried. I wanted to absorb her pain for as long as it took for her to become warm. I wished I could take away all her pain. My heart became wetter and wetter.

This must be why people love. If all you need to do is witness the pain and not experience it for yourself, that makes you the lucky one. ⁄ 30

Pavane for a Dead Princess

The other person’s pain, even if it’s someone you love, will only be her pain, not yours. Unless that pain is yours, you can’t be hurt by it.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. After saying many I’m sorry’s, each for a different reason, she started dabbing her eyes. I’d almost finished my food. Around the time I put down my spoon and Rachmaninoff died down over the speakers, she, no longer crying, asked, “Are you … okay?”

I couldn’t say I was but replied, “I’m okay.”

More than that, though … I’m happy you’re here. I’m happy I can be with you. I’m happy we can share a meal in a place that was closed the last time I came. I’m happy there’s a fireplace and that it’s so warm.

I’m happy I’m twenty, although to be honest, I still don’t know what I’m going to do with my life. I’m happy it’s snowing. I’m happy those lights are twinkling. Most of all, I’m happy you stopped crying. I think I’ll be even happier if you finish the little food you have on your plate.

She seemed different that day. I probably seemed different to her, too. Slowly, she began eating the food heaped on her plate like a small iceberg. Her spoon slowly zigzagged across her plate like an icebreaker. Her plate revealed its bottom, and she dragged her fork like a heavy anchor across it.

The owner came over with coffee and, in an exceedingly polite manner, began, “I apologize if I’m interrupting in any way. There’s a painting I’m working on, and …”

He informed us he’d be painting in his workshop next door so we should feel free to ring the bell on the counter if we needed him. I offered to pay him for the food right then, but the owner didn’t seem to care about settling the bill.

“Ring the bell.”

After he left, a new record came on the turntable. Bing Crosby’s voice came over the speakers. It was a carol from thirty years ago, celebrating a Christmas that wasstill two weeks away.

The fact we were alone brought a strange peace to us both. For the first time, she lifted her head and looked at me, though her face was half-covered by the coffee mug. I could look straight at her, too.

“I’ve been thinking how strange this place is,” I said.

“What do you mean?” ⁄ 31

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“Well, this place is called Santorini. Santorini’s an island in Greece.

But there are pictures of the Alps and Big Ben. And that’s the Arc de Triomphe. There’s the Eiffel Tower, Dutch windmills, the Leaning Tower of Pisa …Wait, are those Egyptian pyramids?”

She laughed.

“What about the Dabotap stupa? Where’s that?” I continued.

Even through the jokes, I was secretly thanking the restaurant owner for putting all these things inside this small island of Greece. It made her laugh for the first time that night.

“It feels like we’re in Kentucky Chicken.2 This place is called Santorini, but it’s got the pyramids. And I bet if we look around, we’ll find stone harubang statues, too. No wonder I feel so much at home,” I said, my chin resting on my left hand.

“Do you still go to Kentucky Chicken?” She asked.

“Sometimes,” I replied vaguely, but the truth was I hadn’t gone as often as I used to after she left.

“How’s Yohan?” She asked.

“I don’t know,” I said hesitatingly, but I told myself I should tell her the truth. “Actually, he got worse after he transferred to the new clinic. The way he acts and the way his mind is …” I was quiet for a while. “Life’s strange, isn’t it?”

Instead of answering, she turned to look out the window. She stared at the darkness for a long time.

“The snow stopped,” she whispered.

The snow stopped, I murmured to myself. It felt as if a long time had passed. Snow erases everything. Sometimes, it covers up the things that can rot and disappear. So for a little while, snow helps us to remember the scattered memories we keep in our hearts. And now the snow had stopped.

Just as how you can never rake all the fallen leaves no matter how hard you try, you can never recover all your memories. A part of me seemed buried underneath time or maybe underneath all that snow.

As I drank the coffee, I thought of the part of me I’ll never find but will remember and the parts of me from the past that can never be found. I didn’t know what part of me was buried in my past and 2 Name of the bar the two frequented.

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what part remained to sit there and drink the lukewarm coffee. I came to the sudden realization that I was twenty years old. It felt like stating, the snow stopped, and nodding one’s head at the realization.

The world was as dark and empty as a funeral after the guests have left. Her gaze followed the hill of silver snow back inside, past the windowsill and the plastered wall in the corner to rest on a small picture.

It was of the Alps. The mountains looked very grand for such a small picture, and depending on the angle, it could look like a continuation of the hills outside the window.

“That’s the Jungfrau,” she said.

“How do you know that name?” I asked.

“It may not be part of Maienfeld,3 but it’s part of the Alps,” she replied. “It was the setting for my childhood fantasy.”

“Fantasy?” I asked. “You mean you wanted to hike up that mountain?”

Shaking her head ruefully, she replied, “I wished I were born there, on the Alps. If not as Heidi, then at least as a little goat. No one would come, not for two months or three, or ever. I’d raise goats together with maybe my grandfather, the only other person there … I’d have things to keep me busy without my having to go anywhere, like school or out on the streets … I would be always alone. No one would find me, and I wouldn’t have to see anyone … I imagined a life where no one can see one another and where it’s okay even if we don’t see each other. If Clara comes to visit, that’d be fine, but I won’t go with her to somewhere like Frankfurt. Too many eyes there. Of course, I could be good friends with Clara. If I only had to meet one pretty girl in this world, I can make do with that.”

“You can’t live like that, though,” I said. I looked down at my coffee mug and suddenly realized I wanted more coffee. “Even if you open a restaurant in a place like this, you still have to deal with people. If someone rings the bell, you have to come running to refill someone’s coffee or something.”

“You’re right. That dream was something I had when I was young. Kids think like that.”

I was about to actually ring the bell when I noticed a small coffeepot 3 Swiss highlands and the setting of the story Heidi, a novel by Johanna Spyri.

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on the counter shelf. Along with Greece, the Mediterranean, now this. I filled my empty cup full of the owner’s rich kindness. The coffee was still warm. It was instant coffee, having nothing whatsoever to do with Greece.

“If possible, we should go there sometime,” I said. The possibility of that happening was zero, yet I said it in all seriousness.

“You mean the Jungfrau?” Confused, she sat there expressionless, her fingers playing with the mug handle. Stone stupas had more likelihood of climbing the Alps than we had; that’s how poor we were at the time. But neither of us took that suggestion as a joke. We were twenty years old. The possibilities we had were endless, more than what those moss-covered stupas had.

“I’m wondering,” she whispered. “Was there . . . Was there a time you were ever really embarrassed?

The kind of embarrassment you can’t do anything about, the kind that makes you think of killing yourself? The kind where you can’t keep your eyes open but you can’t close them either, and everyone is staring at you? You try to hide, but you’ll be caught in the end, like …” And she trailed off.

I didn’t know why she asked me that all of a sudden, but I gave it serious thought. “Was I embarrassed … You’re asking me about my most embarrassing moment,” I repeated, as I took a deep breath.

“Well … It happened when I was twelve,” I began. “There was this huge boil on my forehead. It was right in the middle of it, too. It was red and got bigger and bigger until one day, it was sticking out of my forehead like a volcano ready to burst. It made me a little dizzy. But more than the pain, I was annoyed I couldn’t scratch it, no matter how bad it itched. That was what made it hard to bear. If I forgot and put my hand up to touch it, I got this burning feeling like there were tiny screaming Pompeii people inside my head, running from the lava and trying to claw their way out. It was a Monday morning when the jerk I call my dad called me over. He couldn’t care less about my health; what he couldn’t take was seeing any kind of scar or blemish on his face, his son’s face, or anyone else’s face. He told me to come near, then stuck this huge patch and some yellow wax paper over the boil on my forehead. It was this big. It was huge. Then he told me to ⁄ 34

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go to school. It wasn’t as if my school was in the Alps and only had five kids in it. It was crowded with kids, to the point where we had to be divided into morning and afternoon classes.I had to walk several blocks from my house to the school, and there were five crosswalks and one overpass on the way. The weather was absolutely gorgeous.

There were so many kids crossing the street, and I heard laughter coming from everywhere, but I can’t say if I saw anyone. I might as well have been all alone walking down that road. I crossed the overpass and the crosswalks, I went to class, and during break time, the students all poured out of their classrooms. Then I came back home.

After the day was over, I felt as if I’d changed into a completely different person. I can’t really describe it, but that’s how it felt.

“Actually, I think even after I came home and put my bag down, I acted for a while as if nothing had happened. I walked around all day with an expression that said nothing was wrong, and it had set on my face like some kind of cement. But I didn’t realize that. The house was empty when I came home and the afternoon sunlight was pouring in.

I remember seeing a small grasshopper on our floor, moving its feelers around. I put my bag down and sat on the floor. It was warm and I sat for a while, looking at the flowers in the yard and the sheets and blankets hanging on the laundry line. And then, all of a sudden, tears exploded out my eyes. It was a real explosion, like bang! I’ve never cried that much, before or since. That’s also when I realized my face was stiff. I was screaming in torment on the inside of my face, but the outside was too stiff to register the scream. This strange croaking sound escaped my throat. I got scared. And, suddenly, I recalled very clearly all the faces of the kids I passed on the road that day. It was unbelievably vivid. I could recall the faces of every single kid I saw that morning, even the kids from other grades, whose names I didn’t know. And then I fainted.

I don’t remember when I woke up. But I remember looking up to see my mom. She stayed with me all night, wiping down my cheeks and neck with a wet towel. I couldn’t stop crying. My eyes shut tight, I didn’t answer a single question my mom asked. And I took two days off school. Pus finally came oozing out of the boil on my forehead and the swelling went down. I was completely fine, but for some ⁄ 35

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reason, I couldn’t stand up, and I didn’t want to. I lay curled up like an injured cat licking its fur. I was feeling incredibly vulnerable. I went back to school and acted normal toward those kids again, but it was clear my life wasn’t the same. It was like my body could remember each and every single face I’d seen that morning. Whenever I saw them or when they came over to talk to me, I flinched, as if a thorn was suddenly thrust up into the bottom of my foot. As if this invisiblebut very real thorn was stabbing at my foot. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do,” she said, in a thin voice. For some reason, I felt as if a thin, yet hard thorn was still somewhere in my body. It was as hard as a needle and as old as rust. It’s still there. Feeling this needle, invisibly yet surely circulating through my bloodstream, I finished my story in a listless voice.

“It’s strange. That all happened so long ago, and I thought I forgot all about it. There were other more embarrassing moments that happened to me later on, like when I was caught jerking off or when I lost to a smaller kid in a fight. But my mind always goes back to that day. Now that I think about it, after that day, I became a quiet kid. And because of that, I’ll probably be a quiet adult, too.”

You’ll go down in history …You’ll go down in history … The needle was skipping on the old Bing Crosby record. I felt like I was circling a dark valley, like a reindeer spinning round and round. I got up and went to the turntable behind the counter, and lifted the needle carefully to free the reindeer. We all have a red nose, like Rudolph’s. We can tease and laugh all we want, but Santa’s not coming. She didn’t say anything more about embarrassment. She only gazed intently into my eyes or, rather, at my forehead and stretched her hand out as if carefully stroking an injured reindeer’s head.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered. When I did as I was told, I felt the caress of her hand, like the soft tongue of a kindly animal. Her hand lingered gently over my forehead, and after melting that piece of rust, or whatever it was that was inside me, it slipped away. Again, I heard the sound of wood crackling in the fireplace, the sound of the wind rattling the windows, the sound of the wooden posts and stairs creaking, and the sound of our even breathing. I prayed to ⁄ 36

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someone somewhere to let this moment go down in the history of my memory.

“Open your eyes,” she said. I looked at her, feeling as peaceful as a sleeping cat. “Happy birthday.”

Next to my coffee mug was a neatly gift-wrapped LP record. She’d carried it tucked under her arm the whole time we were walking in the snow, so the wrapping was crumpled in places. I wasn’t sure if I said thank you, but I must have said something to that effect. What I do remember clearly is the feel of the wrapping paper between my fingers, her voice as she urged me to open it, and the silver foil that shone like Rudolph’s red nose. The gift was a compilation LP of Maurice Ravel pieces, and on the front was written Pavane pour une infante défunte large letters.That was the moment my newly minted twenty-year-old self began spinning on the turntable of fate.

“Should we listen to it?”

I may not be able to remember all the memories of that day in the blizzard of time, but I still hold on to that memory of us listening to that LP record, like a scene captured in a painting. It was a scene filled with the slow notes of the music, the bolero and the face of the dead dancer I pictured in my mind, her face, the trees standing crooked in the dark, and the wind sweeping over the earth like the wild, untamed stretches of the Arctic …

It may be that I passed through time, through darkness, and through the valley of the shadow of death with that one snapshot in my memory. If I’d known what to say, or if I’d known the significance of every moment or the events that were to come, my twenties would have played to different notes and danced on the tables of a different kind of life. Our present never allows us to know what the future may bring. Ravel’s music was completing the tunes of fate, and when it ended, she whispered, “Do you like it?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t have to—that’s how happy I was. Without a word, I nodded and carefully placed the LP back in its jacket and wrapped it in the paper.

“I think it’s time for us to leave,” she whispered, as she glanced at the clock. There were about thirty minutes left until the last bus was due to arrive. ⁄ 37

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After ringing the bell, we sat waiting in the chairs at the counter.

Or we might have been leaning against it. On the wall behind the counter were several dozen cutouts of famous paintings. Some were the size of postcards, and some were as big as wall calendars—Millets, Rembrandts, Van Goghs, and Picassos were tacked up on the wall.

“That’s Velázquez.” She pointed to one with her finger.

“Where?” I said as I turned to look, thoughI didn’t know who Velázquez was, much less what he’d painted. “That?”

“No, that’s Bacon.”

“The one to the right?”

“That’s Gauguin. The one below it to the left.”

“That over there?”

“Yes, that’s Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez. It means ‘maids of honor.’”

While waiting for the owner, I sat through the tale of Princess Margarita and the painter Velázquez who drew her, and of how Maurice Ravel was inspired by the painting to compose Pavane pour une infante défunte. The owner did not come; instead, the intercom under the bell buzzed. It was him.

“Did you have any problems?” He sounded tired.

“No.” At that, the owner let out a world-weary sigh and a while later said in a small voice, “You can just leave.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You can just leave.”

“But,” I began, but he cut me off.

“Just make sure you close the door on your way out. Goodbye.”

He hung up. That was strange. Throughout the conversation, I’d kept my eyes on the maids in Las Meninas. What particularly captured my attention was the short woman in the dark blue dress standing behind a dog with chin tucked in. I put the receiver back in its place, my eyes still transfixed by that woman’s face, which seemed out of place in a palace.

“What did he say?” She asked.

“He said we can go ahead and leave.”

I checked the menu and placed some approximate cash on the ⁄ 38

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counter, turned off the lights in the hall, checked the kitchen, closed the door, and left. As I did all that, it seemed the woman in the dark dress was seeing me off.

“Are you sure we can just leave like this?” She asked.

“We have no choice,”I replied.

We set out once more into the darkness that had grown even more imposing because of the cold. While we were indoors, the untamed mass of Arctic hair had grown wilder.

It was a strange night. Nothing was certain. We didn’t ask each other how we really felt, nor did we share a conversation that was definitive by any means. The year’s first snow felt clumsy, and the walk back felt so short compared to when we walked it the first time.

While walking in the snow, however, I confessed many things. And I confessed them clearly enough. Even if what we believe is a mistake, humans cannot live without believing that mistake to be true.

“Humans can be so strange,” I said.

“Why?” A very clear white puff rose from her lips.

“They’re playing carols already this season. I heard “Auld Land Syne” twice on the way here.”

“That’s because that’s how much we miss it. We miss it because it’s gone so fast.”

“Why would you start missing it in advance, though? We can miss it later, after it’s gone.”

“Because that feeling disappears in that moment. Because we can’t do anything about it anymore. We can miss it all we want, but it won’t be any use.”

“If that were true, we should start playing carols in the spring.”

“We’d be losing too much if we start missing it that early, though.”

“What do you mean we’d be losing too much?”

“We’d be losing the possibility that you might not have to miss it at all.”

“How do you know that?”

“If you’d asked that question in the spring, that same question would have changed by the time winter came to ‘How could I have not known that?’ I think that’s how it is when we miss something.”

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“In any case, 1986 will pass soon. And it’ll never …”

“Come back.”

After a short silence, she asked. “How does it feel to be twenty?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really knows what that feels like. But it’s just … It feels as if some things have gotten smaller.”

“Gotten smaller?”

“Like … my demands. The things I want. Wishing something were more like that or hoping something were more like this. In the past, I was full of demands, but now they’re gone. And I feel I shouldn’t be asking for those things anymore. I can’t really explain it, but that’s how it is. And besides, aren’t you the same age as I am?

Has anything changed for you? Do you feel you can start dropping the honorifics with me now?”

“No, not yet. And with me, it’s the complete opposite.

“What?”

“Now that I’m twenty, for the first time, I have something I want.”

“Really?”

“But I don’t know if I can ask for it. AndI don’t know what to do. I … I’ve never once thought of myself as someone who can ask for anything. I thought I shouldn’t … What right would I have to … How dare I …”

Abruptly, she stopped in her tracks, forcing me to come to a stop, too. She lifted her hands and buried her face deep in them. I’d never seen an adult crying like that, so at first I didn’t assume she was crying.

The many shapes of her—the innocent her, the young her, the baby she was before she was born, the old woman she’d become—seemed superimposed, matryoshka-like, where she stood. She, and the many shapes of her, did not make a sound. In fact, she wasn’t crying; she was holding back her tears. Only her heaving shoulders showed that cried for a little while. She lifted her face and looked at me. She whispered weakly to me, or rather, at the silent darkness that lay beyond me.

“Hold me.”

I pulled her close to me. Her body was as cold as the trunk of a nearby tree. I wanted to hold her, all of her, the many hers inside of her, the many hers that were lying stiffly huddled inside of ⁄ 40

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her like the rings of trees. It felt like something incredibly hot was flowing between and through our chests. My eyes were closed, but I could feel the blessing of the empty fields around us. I felt the darkness binding us as one, the hairs of the Arctic trembling like strings playing a long bolero piece, and the benefaction from the trees as they scattered silver snow over us. Slowly, I brought my lips to hers.

Something as soft as the year’s first snow came crashing like a comet.

We stood like that in that secret darkness. We couldn’t see anything, like people trapped inside a crater, and the world beyond the hollow in the ground was as quiet and silent as if it were underwater. Was that a dream? Or was that a moment of illusion granted us by this cruel world? I still cannot forget how my lips felt as they left hers, how her breath felt against my cheek, how her eyes shone, and how our two hearts beat endlessly like two drums beating to the rhythm of the bolero. It felt as if I’d lived my whole life for that one moment.

The whole time we were walking, she was crying. The way I wiped her tears and walked with my arm around her shoulder—the footprints we left in the snow and the narrow path lined sparsely with trees—all seemed part of a planned orbit. We didn’t say a word as we turned off the path that stretched ahead like railroad tracks and walked to the bus stop. Like a narrow-gauge railroad that had ended its last run, the darkness that transported us was also going back the way it had come.

“Are you cold?” I asked. She shook her head, no, as if the answer were obvious. In the light of the streetlamp, the most glittering snow of the day was floating on top of the darkness like small white islands.

“Don’t you regret it?”

Instead of asking why I might regret what happened, I wanted to accept her fear. I shook my head, no, as if the answer were obvious, just as she did a few moments ago, mimicking her as if I were the other prong of a tuning fork that ran underneath the ground and back up to connect to her.

“I should walk you home,” I said.

“That’s okay. My dorm is right over there.”

We exchanged words to that effect. Somewhere, a pile of snow ⁄ 41

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gave in to its own weight and collapsed. We waited a short while for the bus to arrive. The moment seemed to go on forever. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the bus never showed up.

“I don’t know,” I murmured.

“Don’t know what?”

“I don’t know if I miss this moment or if I’m losing it.”

Both she and I had to put off making up our minds about the moment that was to pass. In the end, people face everything that comes their way like this, and they let everything leave them like this.

She seemed to be thinking the same, like the other end of a tuning fork. I felt the vibrations of a bus coming through the snow from far away. The vibrations slowly gave way to light, until the light materialized as a bus that stopped in front of us, emitting a loud noise.

Once more, we squeezed each other’s hand. The moment the door of the bus opened, we had to let go of each other as though separating the two prongs of a tuning fork. We didn’t get to say a proper goodbye.

I climbed on the bus and paid the fare and struggled with the window that wouldn’t open. The bus lurched forward as I tried vainly to wipe the fogged-up bus window. I remember how she waved at me, how she took a few steps toward the bus, how cool the window felt against my forehead, and how I could only see her face beyond the blurry window. That was the last I saw of her.

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Excerpt from

THE SQUARE

By Choi In-hun Translated by Kim Seong-kon

The Square

The sea was breathing, tossing and turning its heavy, blue scales that were much bluer than any pastel crayon.

The Tagore, an Indian ship loaded with released prisoners of war, was heading toward a neutral country, sliding its neatly painted 3,000-ton white body through the warm, thick mist of the East China Sea. Released POW Lee Myong-jun came down from the right-hand side of the deck and then went toward the boat’s back railing and stood, leaning over it. He pulled out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and lit it. However, the wind quickly blew it out. After doing this a few more times, he bent down and covered his face with his right hand so he could satisfy his craving. It was right there that he saw it again with his own eyes. From the time the boat had left shore, he had experienced hallucinations. Whatever it was, it stole a glance and quickly hid itself once Myong-jun turned around. Even after he realized it was just a phantom, it lingered, and kept on coming back. This time, those eyes were staring at him from the doors that led inside the boat. Myong-jun turned his head, and it hid in the dark again.

Those eyes without a face! As before, Myong-jun felt that he had forgotten something that could not be forgotten, and then had the feeling of suddenly remembering what it was all about. He could not tell exactly what it was. In fact, nothing was forgotten; there was not a thing he could not remember. Even though he knew this, whenever those eyes stared at him the same feeling would return. This was very unpleasant. As he passed by one of the sailors, he noticed that he pointed toward the captain’s cabin, a pipe in one hand and a thick rope in the other. Myong-jun nodded. He turned toward the sea and flicked his cigarette into the churning waters. He then walked toward the stairs leading to the captain’s cabin.

The captain, who was sitting at a slight angle, drinking his tea, as Myong-jun entered, silently gestured to another cup of tea with his chin as if he was telling Myong-jun to help himself. The captain had good Aryan features; he was a well-carved, handsome man with an admirable beard. Myong-jun sat down and drank his tea. The Indian tea was much more bitter than the one he had drunk in the POW camp. Yet, from time to time, the captain invited Myong-jun to take ⁄ 45

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the tea, as if it were a gourmet blend. Myong-jun turned away from the captain and looked out the left porthole of the ship. Except for the masthead, this spot offered the best view. From here, Myong-jun could see the brightly shining, majestic sea,which stretched out like a fully unfolded fan.

As Myong-jun took in the aquatic view, he saw visitors. Two seagulls were hovering over the deck as if they were guardians keeping watch over the ship. They zigzagged to and fro with varying closeness.

When they were especially brave, the birds perched on the mast. Right now, they were flying at an angle in the air, just like a scene from a drawing.

An Indian sailor named Muraji was in charge of overseeing the POWs on the ship. But he was drunk all day and gambled with the chef and the rest of his crew late into the night in the kitchen attached to the engine room. It was not him but Myong-jun who worked as the liaison officer between the captain and the POWs. The captain’s English was not bad. When they first met, the captain had asked Myong-jun about his schooling. Myong-jun answered, in an American accent, that he had attended X University. The captain had immediately corrected Myung-jun’s pronunciation, saying back to Myong-jun with a British accent: “You mean university?”

The captain silenced the “r” sound. He told Myong-jun that he attended the British Maritime School, naming as his classmates some high-ranking British naval officers, who Myong-jun had never heard of. Unlike land men, the captain did not, however, give the impression that he was bragging about himself. There was a childlike innocence in his way of speaking. While making friends with people from different countries, Myong-jun found that foreigners were generally more innocent and untainted than Korean people. Yet, when it came to principle, foreigners could be like stubborn children. They would be reluctant to compromise over something they thought was wrong. Myong-jun noticed that, not only the captain, but the other sailors had a caring attitude toward the POWs on the ship. This respect for the POWs probably came from the fact that the POWs had chosen to go to a country other than their own. Those on board ⁄ 46

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had chosen a neutral country in which to live, and the sailors most likely admired this difficult decision. When he felt the admiration, Myong-jun felt ashamed. He thought that he and the other POWs did not deserve it. If he investigated the feeling further, he would feel as if some horrifying truth was there, ready to come out. So Myongjun decided not to ponder the issue.

“How are you feeling?” The captain asked.

“There is no feeling. I don’t even think about it,” Myong-jun answered.

The captain blew out circles of smoke as he laughed lightly.

“I suppose it is something I’ll never be able to understand. I guess what I am saying is that I’ll never be able to understand why one would leave his own country and go to live in another one. Don’t you have any parents or close relatives?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Who? Your mother?”

“No.” “Your father?”

Myong-jun nodded as he thought about why the captain had asked if he had a mother first.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Myong-jun’s face paled considerably as he tried to give an answer to the question. The captain raised his right index finger and shook his head as he apologized. ”I’m sorry! I’m sorry.”

Whether or not it was his habit to apologize for opening personal wounds, Myong-jun did not know. But the captain’s apology showed how gentle and refined his manners truly were. Myong-jun was sorry to make the captain uneasy, albeit momentarily. Then, from both sides of the cabin, a gust suddenly blew in through the windows.

This caused the pinned-down maps to ruffle wildly. The seagulls flew right outside the window, right up to the frame, then suddenly down again, making a diagonal line toward the stern, then they were out of sight. As the sunlight was becoming surprisingly bright, a numb feeling began to flow through Myong-jun’s arms and legs. The captain’s words rang in his head: Do you have a girlfriend? He did not ⁄ 47

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know those words would have such a powerful effect on him.

“If I had a girlfriend, would I be leaving for another country?”

Myong-jun answered. Taking account of the apology, Myong-jun’s voice purposely became milder.

The captain frowned for a moment.

“It’s possible, though,” he muttered.

Startled by the captain’s calm, low voice, Myong-jun lifted the empty teacup and ran his fingers along it.

“It’s possible,” the captain repeated in a halfhearted echo.

“Do you really think so?” asked Myong-jun, realizing that the captain’s tone had taken a more serious turn.

“There comes a time when a person puts his most important things aside and leaves his country,” said the captain.

The captain was most likely thinking of his own personal experience. It seemed as if he were about to tell some bleak story of his sad love, dark like the night sea and bleak like the sea gale. Just then, a sailor came in with a report, saying there was some problem in the engine room. The sailor’s voice was so low and muffled and quick that Myong-jun didn’t exactly know what the problem was.

As the captain stood up to leave, he put his hand on Myong-jun’s shoulder and said: “Come back later on this evening.”

He then smiled, let the sailor lead, and followed him down the stairs. After they had gone, Myong-jun sat there for a little while and then went back to his cabin.

He shared a single room with Park, who was lying down in the lower bunk. Park, who had been a teacher in Hamhung, since boarding the ship had slept whenever he had the opportunity. He was a young man with an angular, square face, and sleepy, slanted eyes. When Myong-jun first met him, he thought that Park was exhausted and burned out. Myong-jun was also exhausted, but he felt that Park’s circumstance was definitely more pathetic, foul, and tiring. Myong-jun looked down on Park because of the man’s sorry situation. Myongjun smiled as he thought to himself that this feeling must have been what belligerent communists called, “petit bourgeois traits.”

Park turned toward the wall and asked: ⁄ 48

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“The next stop is Hong Kong, right?”

“Yeah,” Myong-jun confirmed.

Myong-jun crawled up to his bed and saw a bottle of whiskey buried in Park’s pillow. Park must have been sipping it while lying in bed, thought Myong-jun with a wry sense of pity.

“Is there a chance we can go ashore?”

“Probably not. We were not allowed to go ashore in Japan, either.”

“What kind of detainees do they think we are? Why do they still treat us as POWs?” Park was drunk, so logic was of no use against him. So what?

What the hell can we do about it? Myong-jun wanted to shout angrily. Park was not the only one feeling this way, yet he was acting as if he were the only one suffering. This attitude annoyed Myong-jun.

To avoid the frustration of answering, Myong-jun stretched out his legs in silence. He felt better as a tingling sensation flowed out into his legs and arms. He turned his upper body to one side, reached down with one arm, tapped two or three times, and stretched out his hand. The neck of a stumpy bottle met his hand. Myong-jun studied its label and noticed it was Japanese whiskey. It was about one-third empty, but there was still a good amount left. He unscrewed the lid and took a sip. An aromatic burning sensation flowed onto his tongue. After a few more gulps, he returned the bottle to its rightful owner. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Myong-jun could hear Park’s hollow laughter down below. For some reason, Myong-jun got goose bumps and sat up abruptly.

“What’s the matter?” Myong-jun asked.

There was no answer.

“Well, what’s wrong?” He asked again.

After a short pensive moment, Park answered rather solemnly.

“If you were asked again, would you still choose to go to a neutral country? I’ve been asking myself that question lately, and now I’m not quite sure.”

Myong-jun’s half-raised body sank down without a sound. It was best to leave Park to his own devices.

Suddenly, he felt a dark seasickness grab him, a feeling as if his ⁄ 49

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bunk were sinking quietly down into the abyss of the sea. In order to soothe his burning throat, he got up, left the bunk, and drank a large cup of water. As he was crawling back into bed, Myong-jun felt the whiskey already forcing his eyes shut.

“If given another chance, would I still choose to go a neutral country? Would I? Yes, of course…”

When Myong-jun woke up, it was just about dinnertime. At dinnertime, all of the POWs would come out and meet in one place.

After this, they would return to the back of the ship and assemble before the guardrail. There, they would spend a little time together and then soon go off in various directions. It was different in the beginning. In order to stick together, they decided not to split up but to meet often. When they met, it was almost like a force kept them from separating. Yet that wasn’t really the case. While it had only been three days since the ship left the port, it was already ten days since the POWs first met at the port. While they were waiting to depart, learning things from Muraji, the men stuck together and did everything as a team. It could be due to a fear of being pushed outside the security of working as a group. After all the work was done, all that remained was to wait for the destination. With anticipation hanging over their heads, nobody mingled with one other anymore. That did not mean that they had suddenly grown cold. It meant that, until they arrived at the uncertain final destination, each man had psychological knots to untie in his own heart. So they wanted to be reclusive and alone in their compartments, both physically and metaphorically. The scene unfolding in Myong-jun’s room was the same as that unfolding in every other room on the ship. Whenever the POWs gathered for a meal, they watched each other’s eyes. They carefully searched each other’s faces, trying to see how each one was doing. There was not a face free from stress. These men were relieved yet increasingly frustrated. There was relief that they were not the only ones who were fretting about the uncertain future. But this relief did not soothe their uneasiness. The knots still remained untied in their solitary hearts.

The sea was calm. The breeze was cooler in the evening than in the afternoon, and the moon was already out in the sky. All the POWs stood in one line, grabbing hold of the railing, and looked down into ⁄ 50

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the sea. All of them were silent. It was not this way at the start of the voyage. In the beginning, the men were loud and would sing songs overflowing with happiness. Myong-jun thought to himself that the group should get together and put in money for liquor before the trip was over. The captain would approve of it, of course. Myongjun, suddenly remembering the invitation for him to come by later on in the night, looked up at the captain’s cabin. It looked like a small, brightly lit watchtower shining in the darkening sky. Myongjun blinked two or three times when he thought he saw white dots on the mast. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought it was the seagulls.

Suddenly, he was afraid that the captain would approach the subject of his girlfriend again. If you hear another person’s secret, you might as well tell yours too. He did say “Come later on this evening,” didn’t he? Myong-jun looked around. Only three or four other people were still around. After a few moments of thought, he headed toward the kitchen instead. The cook’s neck, thick and fat like a pig, twisted around in plump rolls to watch as Myong-jun entered. He stared at this newcomer and then turned back to his business. This stare was a habit of his. Maybe he has bad eyes, thought Myong-jun. He saw Muraji sitting beside the cook. In the middle of the room of shiny aluminum, there was a group of card players in a circle with their heads bowed and their backs bent, as if they were close friends.

When Myong-jun first ventured into the kitchen, the cook nodded at him to join the game. Now, whenever Myong-jun entered the room, he was met with silent tolerance.

The cook was a loner. Myong-jun stood there for a moment, watching the card game. The cook lowered his shoulder, and when his turn came around, he threw the card down with an agility that did not match his appearance. Myong-jun then went out and sat on the stairs leading up to the captain’s cabin. He looked up at the mast, and from this close spot he could clearly see the two seagulls casting indistinct silhouettes in the sky. Myong-jun got up abruptly and swaggered up the stairs toward the bow of the boat. He gazed up at the sky.

The stars were almost gushing out of the night sky. Even against the bright moonlight, the stars gleamed with luminous passion.

The captain was looking at his map when Myong-jun walked in. ⁄ 51

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As he saw Myong-jun enter, the captain put down his compass and sat down in a chair.

“The seagulls are following us,” Myong-jun unexpectedly spit out the words.

The captain was unfazed by his entrance.

“The sailors call seagulls ‘spirits of dead sailors.’ They also call these birds the heart of a girl who cannot forget a sailor. Once, a bird followed us all the way from England to Calcutta. It’s not a rare thing, you know.”

He shook his head with a small smile.

“We missed it after it left. Isn’t it something? They probably sleep on the mast.”

The captain stuck his head out of the window and looked up toward the birds.

“Hmm, the ladies are up there. Do you think it is more romantic to call them girls? The gull sisters,” he chuckled.

The cook came in with some coffee. He served his boss and his friend with an air of jealousy mixed with respect. He then turned around, walked out, and went down the stairs. As the footsteps faded away, Myong-jun asked, “Captain, can the cook swim too?”

The captain laughed heartily.

“Of course he can swim! But I doubt whether or not he can float in the water,” He said, laughing again.

Myong-jun’s dark mood faded a bit as he watched the tall captain having a giggling fit. As the captain finished laughing, his mood turned somber. He lowered his voice and told Myong-jun the following story: “It was twenty years ago. I was just getting ready to leave on my first trip from Calcutta when I received a letter. It was a letter from this girl who had left me for no reason. In the letter, she said that, although she knew I blamed her, personal circumstances had caused her to leave. She wished me good luck on the trip. As I watched the shoreline while thinking of the letter, I saw a seagull following our ship. What I said to you just a moment ago was the same thing my captain told me at that time. I thought the seagull was the soul of the girl. After that, once in a while, the same thing would occur, but that ⁄ 52

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is all in the past. I am now an old man who never fails to take gifts home to my son and daughter-in-law.”

The captain opened the door of a cupboard and took out a long hunting rifle and put it up to his shoulder. He aimed it once and then handed it to Myong-jun.

“This is a Japanese hunting rifle. My son kept pestering me to get him one.”

After drinking some more coffee and talking for a while, Myongjun left the captain’s cabin. It was a beautiful, starry night. He looked up, and it seemed as if the mast of the ship was piercing the stars above it. Below it was the captain’s cabin, and below that was the deck. He found a dark corner and lay down in it. He could see the birds hovering above him. They looked like a white ribbon tied up to the mast.

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Excerpt from

SCENES FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT: A NOVEL OF MANNERS

By Kim Namcheon Translated by Charles La Shure

Scenes from the Enlightenment: a Novel of Manners

1.

In a certain village lived two families from the MiryangBak clan.

There was BakRigyun, whose family had called this village home for five generations, and who made his living selling noodles behind Mr. Gil’s smithy, which was next to the herbal medicine shop just inside the Gate of the Visiting Immortal. His younger brother, Seonggyun, ran an inn and stable five houses up. Their children were as numerous as a litter of piglets, but they had nothing in the way of property except the pitiful thatched-roof houses where they lived. Even though they made their livings running a noodle shop and an inn, and even though they had not even a patch of land to their names, they went around calling themselves yangban aristocrats. None of their ancestors had held the post of prime minister, and the family had never produced a high-ranking minister, a renowned statesman, or a famed general. The head of the second generation of their family, after they moved to this village, had been a petty official, who died at a young age; his wife, Lady Seong, had hung herself so that she could follow in her husband’s footsteps, earning herself the title of “virtuous woman,” but leaving behind her their son. This had been recorded in the village chronicle, and when the Bak brothers were in their cups they would recite the Chinese characters of the citation, or mumble its Korean translation as if it were a Buddhist chant.

“Lady Seong, the wife of BakGwiseong and eldest daughter of SeongNonsan, when her husband BakGwiseong died, she hung herself in devotion to him, and the people of the village buried her body with her husband in a single burial mound. Lady Seong was twentythree years old at the time.”

The monument erected in her memory was just outside Visiting Immortal Gate, on the left-hand side, beneath the shabbiest in the long row of monument pavilions. When weeds grew in the furrows between the roof tiles and sparrows nested in the corners of the eaves, the Bak brothers would uproot the weeds and clear away the nests with their own hands. But the roof began to sag and the pavilion began to lean to the right. It would take no small amount of money ⁄ 57

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to repair or rebuild it. They propped it up by putting a single pillar on the right side and, although it was still an eyesore, they managed to keep it standing. It was a forlorn sight as it stood there awaiting its own demise—just like their hollow boasting that they were yangban.

BakRigyun took aside a customer coming in for noodles and complained, “Who does that BakSeonggwon think he is? He says he’s a MiryangBak but all he does is ruin my reputation, and who knows what Bak family he’s from anyway? That vagabond goes around stealing whatever he can get his hands on, saying that he’s a MiryangBak…” There was indeed another family from the MiryangBak clan living in this village. The head of this family had built a large house at the highest point in the village; it towered above a dozen or so houses, about halfway between the Pavilion of the Descending Immortal and Visiting Immortal Gate, right about where Nine Dragons Bridge was.

The master of the house had just turned forty this year, and his name was BakSeonggwon.

BakRigyun may have wondered “what Bak family” BakSeonggwon was from, but he was, in fact, also from the MiryangBak clan.

It was just that no one knew whether one of his ancestors had been anything more than a petty official. Seeing that his family had no monuments to a filial son or a virtuous woman, he certainly didn’t seem to have anything to boast of, not like BakRigyun’s family did.

He was not originally from this village. He’d moved here some twenty years ago from Eunsan. His grandfather had been a petty official who had schemed his way into some rice from the government storehouse. He’d earned a fortune by lending against rice stipends, or buying them up when they were cheap and then selling them again in the spring or summer, when rice prices had risen. Of course, when the people ran out, he distributed his own rice or the rice he used as collateral, and then demanded it back at the harvest at exorbitant interest, and it was with this money that he would have bought his land. At any rate, Seonggwon made a good amount of money, but his father had squandered it all with his gambling, his drinking, his frequent visits to Pyeongyang in his later years, and even his smoking of opium, which had just been introduced from abroad. When he ⁄ 58

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died an untimely death, there was little left of his estate.

Not long after BakSeonggwon had finished his three years of mourning for his father, the Revolt of 1894 broke out. At the time, he was a hot-blooded youth of twenty-three or twenty-four. When everyone else fled to the mountains of Gangwon Province, he deemed that it was truly the time for a brave man to take action, and he stayed behind, entrusting his wife and children to relatives who were leaving the village. He traveled back and forth from Jasan to Suncheon, Pyeongyang, Junghwa, and even Hwanghae Province, selling to the soldiers there. Many daring peasant soldiers who had left their farmlands helped transport military supplies, and most of them were paid in silver coins. Seonggwon used brass coins to buy as many of these silver coins as possible, and then buried them in the ground in secret.

When the war was over and everyone returned from their place of refuge, BakSeonggwon took his wife, concubine, and children from Eunsan and came to this village, looking for a place to settle down. What caused him to leave Eunsan and settle here? According to rumors that made the rounds later, he had poor relatives in Eunsan, and if they found out he had come into money, he would have had to spend it all helping them; so he claimed that he had never had anything but his two red fists, and quietly left to seek his fortune, finally settling down in this village.

Seeing that he built a small house in the Dumutgol neighborhood just after he first arrived, that story seemed likely enough. He put up his wife and concubine in that small house with its few rooms, and he split up his three children between their mothers. But a year later, when everyone who had fled the village returned and sold their houses because they were broke, he bought dirt cheap the street-side house near the marketplace where he now lived, and he redecorated and expanded the small house where he used to live and kept his concubine and her son there.

Until BakSeonggwon moved to the marketplace, few people had seen his wife and concubine. So the village was abuzz with all sorts of rumors: that some strange fellow claiming to be from the MiryangBak clan was living in Dumutgol, that he was a brazen young fellow like â „ 59

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no other, that he had three sons and was impudent enough to have two wives, that he had money, or that he didn’t have money—there were even rumors about the truth of the other rumors.

The first to become curious about him, of course, were BakRigyun and his brother. That fellow claimed to be a member of the MiryangBak clan, but was it really true? Their wives, for their part, were dying to catch a glimpse of his wife and concubine. Yet during holidays they didn’t go into the hills with the other women, nor did they appear beneath the swings, nor did they come out to jump on the seesaws.

But when this BakSeonggwon promptly bought the best house in the village and split up his wife and his concubine, vague hearsay went out the window, and new rumors spread around the village like the measles—the only thing certain was that he came from Eunsan: some of his cousins and second cousins lived there. But one question remained unanswered by these rumors: where did this fellow—who had not fled with the rest of the village, but had stayed behind to make money, yet was, nevertheless, a good-for-nothing who’d left his hometown behind and set out as a vagabond—where did he suddenly get all this money, this house, and this livelihood?

So BakRigyun and his brother used their businesses, asking those who came to eat noodles, those who came to sleep at the inn, and those peddlers and traveling merchants who went from village to village in Pyeongan Province like a millstone spins round, and they learned that BakSeonggwon had earned a great sum while everyone was off taking refuge during the war.

BakRigyun and his brother, who had been ready to look down their noses at him, were not only embarrassed, losing their taste for ridicule, they secretly began to fear that he might be more than he seemed. Yet between themselves they said that he could never be a yangban because he was from a different part of the MiryangBak clan, and whenever they drank, as always, they continued to repeat their mantra: “Lady Seong, the wife of BakGwiseong and eldest daughter of SeongNonsan.”

Yet their wives were also curious. Through the open kitchen door or the cracks in the sorghum stalk fence, they saw BakSeonggwon ⁄ 60

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going to and fro in his dress clothes, strong of body and uncommon in countenance; and they had seen his son, the one who would be five or six this year, in his rainbow-striped coat and with his hair tied with thick, Chinese silk ribbons, following along behind a domestic or hired hand; but they had seen nothing of the faces of the two women. What did his wife look like, was his concubine pretty?—they say his wife is the daughter of a family in the JeonjuChoe clan that lived in Gaenggoji, about ten li from here—so where did he get his concubine, and where did a young man still wet behind the ears get a concubine anyway?—he would have been destitute and poor back then. The more they thought about it, the more they were dying to see the concubine’s face.

One day, the women got together and, with an old woman who lived next door and was famous for her backbiting, set out for the shrine on the hill behind Dumutgol. The old woman and Rigyun’s wife wore large bamboo hats, while Seonggyun’s wife, who was still a young woman, not yet thirty, wrapped herself in a plain cotton hooded gown, and they walked down a narrow back alley toward Dumutgol.

After hesitating by the shrine, they followed their original plan and went as swift as an arrow to the house of BakSeonggwon’s concubine.

They already knew that, although he often slept here, BakSeonggwon returned to his own home directly after eating breakfast.

The old woman went in first and said, “We would like a drink of water. We’ve come from the shrine and we’re thirsty …”

The three of them sat in the house for some time, studying the etiquette of the household and the concubine’s appearance, and only left when they’d had their fill.

While the three of them were in near-perfect agreement in their opinions of how the house was kept and of the decorum of the household, they were of two minds when it came to the concubine’s appearance. The backbiting old woman and Seonggyun’s wife both claimed that no part of her face was without flaw, while the elder sister-inlaw—that is, Rigyun’s wife—proclaimed that she was a stunning beauty. She said that the old woman was originally a backbiter, so naturally she would say something like that, and her younger sisterin-law finding flaws in the other woman’s face could be explained by ⁄ 61

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the fact that she was still young and spoke out of jealousy; everything that she herself said, however, was true to the mark.

The old woman, in her own fashion, spread yet another rumor.

All she had discovered was that the concubine had married at seventeen and borne her first child at eighteen, but from this the old woman managed to spin a slanderous tale: that, in the prime of his youth, BakSeonggwon had won her from her newly-wed husband in a card game. This tale was preposterous, but such fabrications are always fascinating, and it spread as if it were the truth. The sistersin-law also lied and said they had heard it straight from the woman’s mouth. This rumor made the rounds in the village for a long time.

Yet there was not a single person who knew that in BakSeonggwon’s storehouse—a small space as dim as a cave, bounded by walls as hard as stone and half dug into the earth—were three large jars.

There were, in fact, two servants who had dug this cellar with their own hands, but not even they knew for what purpose. Naturally, then, no one knew that the jars were filled to the brim with Japanese silver coins. BakSeonggwon had hoarded these silver coins, the coins for which he had exchanged Korean brass coins during the Revolt of 1894.

According to those in the family, and to the servants and hired hands, that dugout cellar was a shrine for special spirits. And it was true that there were a few pieces of white paper, with the names of guardian spirits on them, on a shelf in one corner. But this rumor was spread

by BakSeonggwon himself as a scheme to prevent thievery.

Whenever a good wet or dry field became available, if the price of silver was high, he sold a few of the valuable silver coins, and then used the proceeds to buy the land, without attracting attention.

He was also a fearsome and ruthless moneylender. If a borrower missed the appointed day, he would confiscate houses and land.

Houses were fairly worthless, so he generally took the land. In the case of families who were still well off and had land, he would pile interest upon interest over the course of a year, so within two or three years it would grow to many times the original sum. His assets piled up like snow. And yet there were still few in that neighborhood who knew him as a rich man.

It was not long before there was no one left who called him by ⁄ 62

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his name. No one knew who started it, but everyone called him by the respectful title of Assistant Curator Bak. It may have been a title made up by the flatterers who frequented his house, but if you asked BakRigyun about it, he would say: “Now look here! People are calling him Assistant Curator, and it seems like a right proper position, but Assistant Curator is just an empty title bought with money, a bought title!” Then he would whip out his pipe from behind his back and puff away at his tobacco to calm his thunderous wrath.

At any rate, he was Assistant Curator Bak. Before he turned forty, at the age of thirty-seven in fact, he was already the father of five children. Up until that time, he had called his eldest son “Big Boy,” his son who had been born in Eunsan “Eunsan Boy,” and the rest by their birth order, but he decided to give them new names appropriate to their places in the family in order to establish the proper decorum.

His father was Bak Sunil, and he was BakSeonggwon, so there was clearly already a custom of naming children in each generation according to the principles of metal, water, wood, fire, and earth; but when his eldest son was born, Bak Sunil was intoxicated with liquor and opium, and so had not given his grandchild a proper name before he died, just “Big Boy” and “Big Grandson.” BakSeonggwon—no, let us also follow the custom of the people, and from now on call him Assistant Curator Bak—this Assistant Curator Bak was twenty at the time, and he had no particular interest in his children until he passed the age of thirty. Sons had been common in his family since he was a young man, so he was not worried about preserving his line, and there was little opportunity for him to grow fond of his wife or children when he was engaged in various money-making ventures designed to reverse the decline in his family’s fortunes. So it was only when he was thirty-seven that he came to name his sons. The character for “Sun” in his father’s name contained the character for water, and the character for “Gwon” in his own name contained the character for wood, so all he needed to do was think of a character with fire in it. After all, water bears wood and wood bears fire. After spending an entire day flipping through this book and that, he decided upon “Hyeong,” which means “bright,” and thus contains the character for fire. He himself shared the second character of his name ⁄ 63

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with his brothers, so, according to custom, his sons would have to share the first character of their names. The names he thus created were as follows.

Hyeongjun, Hyeongseon, Hyeonggeol, and Hyeongsik; he had one daughter, whom he had called “Harvest Girl” because he had “sold” her to the harvest deity, but he did not follow the naming custom and instead renamed her Bopae. Hyeongseon and Hyeonggeol had been born in the same year, but Hyeongseon had been born a month earlier.

Hyeonggeol was the child of the concubine, and thus not part of the direct line of descent, so he was not called the third child; Hyeongsik, who was two years old that year, was called the third child instead. Up until then, to distinguish them, Hyeonggeol had been called “Jasan Boy,” since his mother had given birth to him in Jasan and then brought him to Eunsan, and Hyeongseon was called “Eunsan Boy”.

Big Boy, or Big Grandson, became Hyeongjun, Eunsan Boy became Hyeongseon, Jasan Boy became Hyeonggeol, Third Child became Hyeongsik, and Harvest Girl became Bopae.

Once he had decided upon the names, Assistant Curator Bak called his three eldest sons before him and made the announcement.

Although he did not show it, the happiest of the three was Jasan Boy, or Hyeonggeol, who had always been displeased that the young Hyeongsik was called Third Child, when that place was actually his.

Of the discrimination he suffered as the child of a concubine, he had always hated most the insult in his name, which was there for everyone to hear. The others, as well, had always found being called “this boy” and “that boy” rather grating on the ear, so they all seemed pretty happy.

“And I also change Harvest Girl’s name to Bopae. That’s the ‘bo’ character for ‘treasure’ and the ‘pae’ character for ‘shellfish,’ so call her ‘Bopae.’ I will tell the whole family, our domestics, our hired hands, our tenant farmers, and our servants—so call each other by your new names.”

After sending his three sons out he called his wife and told her, and then he ordered her to tell the domestics.

The eldest son, Hyeongjun, was nineteen at the time, and had a room of his own, and a wife. ⁄ 64

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He lay down early that night and stared vacantly at his young wife as she spun yarn in the lamplight. Whir, whir, clack … whir, whir, clack … the repetitive sound of the spinning wheel mingled with the sputtering of the oil lamp and drifted to his ears like a lullaby. He felt sleepy, so with a grunt he rolled over and lit his pipe. When the bobbin grew full and bulged out, his wife took it off the spindle and replaced it with a new one. She used a wooden stick to oil the spot where the belt touched the spindle, and glanced out of the corner of her eye toward her husband. He had finished smoking his pipe and was staring at his wife’s side when he caught his wife’s glance and grinned at her. She blushed and spun the spinning wheel faster than before. Every time she lifted her left hand to raise the belt, her high sash was pulled up and the white skin next to her breast could be seen. He watched this for a while and then said, “That makes quite a racket. Put it aside and let’s go to sleep.”

He dropped his head down onto his pillow. They were still at the stage where they were too shy to talk to each other in a bright room. The young woman understood what her husband meant, and although she was shy about immediately getting up, putting out the light, and undoing her clothes, it was an order from her husband, so she admonished herself that she should not dare disobey him and stopped spinning. She took the belt off the spinning wheel, pursed her lips, and then blew out a puff of air to put out the lamp. It was a dark night. The rustling of clothes being taken off could be heard.

First she took off her jacket, then her skirt, and then she felt around on the folding screen at the opposite side of the room and hung her clothes next to her husband’s. Then she sat down again and unraveled the hand-stitched quilted sash from around her breasts and waist, and then she took off her coarse hemp bloomers.

Hyeongjun waited impatiently for each and every article of clothing to leave his wife’s body, and he let out the low sigh he had been holding in. His wife at last took off her long socks and, wearing only a single cotton undergarment, silently lifted up her end of the blanket. She laid her head down on one side of the long ‘lovebird’s pillow’—the pillow she had made and brought with her when they were married—unraveled her carefully braided hair, and then turned ⁄ 65

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her back toward her husband and lay on her side.

“My name changed today.”

She almost laughed at her husband’s sudden announcement. She had heard the news from her mother-in-law earlier that day. She said nothing, but in the darkness she opened her mouth for the first time and smiled broadly.

After a while he turned toward his wife, wrapping his leg around her calf, and said, “My name is Hyeongjun. Bright “hyeong” and hero “jun.” Hyeongjun. From now on, call me that.”

Then he rubbed his face against his wife’s back. This time what he said was truly laughable. How on earth could she ever call her husband by name? They had been married for two years, but she had called her husband “Dear” maybe once or twice. So he must be playing some ridiculous prank on her, telling her to call him Hyeongjun. She knew that “Big Grandson” or “Big Boy” were names that others might call him, and she knew that it was not a name for his wife to call him aloud. It tickled when he rubbed his face on her back, and shivers ran through her whole body, so she spun around.

“The second son’s name is Hyeongseon, Jasan Boy in Dumutgol is Hyeonggeol, the baby’s name is Hyeongsik, and Harvest Girl’s name is Bopae.”

Once more he said, “My name is BakHyeongjun,” and then he put an arm around his wife and drew her head toward him. She was overwhelmed and let out the long breath she had been holding in.

“From this summer I will be calling you the father of my child.”

She barely managed to say this, and then reached out and put her left hand on her husband’s back without even realizing it. Hyeongjun thought about becoming a father for the first time five months from now and put his hand on his wife’s slightly bulging belly.

Just like that, three years passed. Assistant Curator BakSeonggwon had just turned forty. There was no one who called his sons by their childhood names anymore. Only Bopae, who turned twelve that year, was still called Harvest Girl by mostly everyone, though there were a few who called her Bopae. Yet there was no problem with calling daughters by just about any name. BakHyeongjun, the eldest, ⁄ 66

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already had a son and a daughter. Assistant Curator Bak’s grandson was nearly three years old. And there was a daughter who had been born just this year. The grandson’s name was Seonggi.

Even at the age of forty, Assistant Curator Bak’s hot-tempered and stubborn nature had not abated. The prime of life begins at forty, so he was more vigorous than ever. Lady Choe was forty-two, and she occasionally spent the night with her husband, but after Hyeongsik she seemed to have stopped bearing children. Hyeonggeol’s mother, that is Assistant Curator’s concubine Lady Yun, was thirty-seven and thus still in her prime, but even though her son, Hyeonggeol, was nineteen this year, for some reason, after giving birth to him in Jasan at the age of eighteen , there had never been any news of another child, so it would seem that it been long since she had stopped bearing children as well. It was for this reason, and because she had always been pretty, that, even though she was thirty-seven, Lady Yun still looked like a young woman without a wrinkle on her face. In the back yard of the house in Dumutgol she built a stone tower to the seven deities and fervently prayed that she would bear more children, and she rubbed her hands raw praying every day to the deity in the cellar, desperately hoping that BakSeonggwon would not take a younger concubine.

Perhaps it was because of these prayers that Assistant Curator Bak seemed to show little interest in taking another woman. Instead he was terribly fond of his drink, though not so much as to be a cause for worry. Whether he was with his wife or his concubine, he asked for liquor at odd hours, so those in the women’s quarters always had liquor and side dishes prepared. Strips of dried meat, pollack, fruit, dried yellow corvina—the cupboard was never bare of these, and there was never a shortage of good meat. They hired an old man from Pyeongyang who was a skilled fisherman, put him up in a room in the rear of the men’s quarters, and had him catch fish; and in the winter they had the young people take falcons out to hunt quail.

Perhaps it was because he had been a good drinker in his youth, but Assistant Curator Bak did not drink as much as he had in his younger days—yet there were still few days that he did not have a drink. He brewed his own liquor, sometimes adding pear and ginger, sometimes ⁄ 67

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improving the taste with apricots, and he even occasionally put asps or other serpents in jars of liquor and drank these as a tonic. While it is true that the drinking gave him problems with his stomach and bowels, he had always been a man of such a strong spirit, never being defeated by anything, these did not concern him in the least.

Even when he was drunk, he did not forget his money, his fields, his household etiquette, or his children. He had never consulted with anyone on anything, but when he was well into his cups he would lie alone in his room and mull over one thing or another. His was an obstinate character, and once he made a decision he would see it through.

His stubborn and unbending personality, confident and quiet, was made ever more so by the self-assurance that came from never having once been proved wrong. He also had keen foresight, and he was convinced more than anyone of the power of money. He knew that the world still turned on pedigree and family standing, but he was certain that the day was not far off when all this would kneel before his wealth. More than anything else, his confidence was boosted by the quiet belief that the silver coins he had amassed twenty years ago would now begin to hold sway.

He sent his eldest son to the village school to study classical Chinese, but after that he did not send him on to a new-style school.

As the eldest son and heir to the estate, he had done all the studying he needed. Money lending, harvesting, overseeing all the family affairs, and managing people were all the skills he would require. Hyeongjun himself showed no inclination to follow his younger brothers when they left the village school for the new Christian school that had opened, and he made no effort to study the new learning when this school closed down after three years and the county magistrate used his influence to found Dongmyeong School. Then again, his younger brothers would soon be third-year students in elementary school, and the following year they would be first-year students in high school, so it was probably no idle rumor that he decided not to go because he would be embarrassed at being a mere first-year student.1 1 The modern schooling system established in 1895 consisted of two separate curricula, an “elementary” curriculum and a “high” curriculum, the first lasting for three years and the second lasting for two or three years. Both of these cur-

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Assistant Curator Bak thought hard about finding suitable brides for his sons. His eldest, Hyeongjun, was already married to the daughter of the Sangmyeong Kim family from Gyeongju and had given his father a grandson and a granddaughter, and their family decorum seemed proper enough—his daughter-in-law was gentle in nature and skilled at working with her hands, so she was the ideal eldest daughter-in-law.

His second son, Hyeongseon, was arranged to be married to the daughter of the YeonilJeong family, who lived behind Descending Immortal Pavilion in the upper part of town, and they had already sent letters and the wedding silks. Before long the wedding day would be here. The Jeong family lived in the same village, so he knew their affairs like the back of his hand. The head of the family had held a high government position, from which he had retired, and his estate was considerable.

If there was a concern, it was that Hyeonggeol, who was the same age as Hyeongseon, would be something of a problem. Being the son of a concubine, it would be difficult to find a proper bride for him, but there were other women besides those of eminent families, and why shouldn’t he find a bride, Bak thought, so he didn’t trouble himself too much over this either. Hyeonggeol was rather rowdy, and he was much taller than his brother, Hyeongseon, though the latter was a month older; he was even a half-inch taller than his eldest brother, which did not please his father at all. Of course, Hyeonggeol had no control over how tall he grew, but Assistant Curator Bak was also irked by his son’s nasty temper. Even when he was young, there were not a few times when he caused trouble at the village and regular schools by beating other children until they bled.

His mother treasured and spoiled him, but that was not all. Every time Hyeonggeol got in trouble, Assistant Curator Bak thought about how he himself had been such a hot-tempered troublemaker ricula together were what would today be called primary or elementary school.

(The distinction between the curricula was eliminated in 1905, and the period of schooling was shortened to four years.) According to official regulations, the students were to be between eight and fifteen years of age, but these regulations were not followed strictly in the smaller villages.

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in his youth, and he could not help smiling.

Whatever the case, Assistant Curator BakSeonggwon’s family was as fortunate as it could be. Not only was he himself content, but so was his whole family, and, at least on the surface, his domestics, his servants, his hired hands, and his tenant farmers all seemed content as well. On occasion he went out into the backyard and looked with satisfaction on the waters of the Biryu River, a tributary of the Daedong River, as they flowed leisurely beneath the twelve mountain peaks. For nearly twenty years that river has been with me, he thought, washing away in an instant all my labors and fears and joys, never stopping as it flows, today as it did thousands of years ago, to the Daedong River and then on to the Yellow Sea.

â „ 70

Excerpt from

ANOTHER MAN'S CITY

By Ch'oe In-ho Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

Another Man's City

SATURDAY 7 a.m. <POWER ON> What the hell? K groped the fuzzy boundary between sleep and wakefulness for an answer—what had awakened him?

His alarm clock. The strident ring a desperate cry letting the world know of its existence. Again the shrill clamor.

Dammit! K didn't like being woken up. He fumbled at the nightstand, found the alarm clock, silenced it.

He wasn't fully awake. But he was conscious enough to splice the snapped filmstrip of his interrupted sleep, and he closed his eyes.

Hey! The alarm was telling him it was time to get up. He forced his eyes open, checked the display on the clock. 7 a.m. sharp. 7 a.m.

He groaned. Time to rise. Time to get his butt in gear—get up, get ready, get off to work. He sat up.

Wait. Something wasn't right. Wasn't it Saturday? Saturday—he didn't have to go to work. Saturday—a day of privilege, a day he slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, lazed around.

Sure, it's Saturday, right? he clucked, easing himself back into bed.

He grabbed at the elusive remnant of his sleep, felt it twitch like the severed tail of a lizard.

It's Saturday all right. Which meant he'd been out late last night drinking with H, right? And come home and made love with his wife, right? No day off the following day, no sex with his wife the night before: For K this was a rule inscribed in stone.

“The Friday night festival, you and me,” he would whisper. Their cue for lovemaking. The next day had to be a day off. Otherwise it was too much work, it took too much out of him. That they'd done it last night was clear proof that today was a day off.

And so … The lizard tail of his dream was no longer twitching.

It had disappeared into the magic forest of dreamland. So much for the possibility of going back to sleep.

But if today was Saturday, he should be able to sleep in. So why the alarm? Way back when, he used to set the alarm for seven so he wouldn't be late for work. But these days he rarely bothered. If he didn't get up right on time, his wife was there to awaken him, right? ⁄ 73

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So who had set the alarm to go off on a Saturday morning? His wife? Couldn't be. She was helpless with mechanical contrivances, wouldn't dare touch an alarm clock. Which left him.

He closed his eyes, searched his memory. It was a fact that he'd drunk more than usual last night and come home late, but he wasn't so drunk, so witless, that he'd set the alarm for a morning when he didn't have to get up. But if it wasn't him, and it wasn't his wife, then who the hell had managed to interrupt his sleep? Was someone playing mind games?

No sense trying to get back to sleep. So he opened his eyes, sat up, stretched. The curtains were open, sunlight fanning in through the window. From the kitchen came the clatter of dishes and the smell of buttered toast—his wife was up and about, fixing breakfast.

The familiar aroma, the familiar polka-dot pattern of the curtains.

“My room all right,” he murmured.

He felt the urge and sprang out of bed, heading for the bathroom. Tapping his full bladder, he watched the yellow stream foam up in the toilet bowl, noticed the alcohol odor. He flushed the toilet, looked up, was startled. There in the mirror, a man without a stitch of clothing. None other than himself, but it took him an extra moment to realize this. The image in the mirror didn't feel like him. He gaped at that image. That's me? He was buck naked. And not once in his married life had he ever slept without pajamas.

“Who are you?” he mumbled, glaring at the man in the mirror.

“Who's hiding there?” There was no answer, only his voice hanging heavy in the air. And then, realizing how silly the question was, he burst into laughter. “Knock, knock, who's there? That's a good one—it's me.”

The naked, laughing man in the mirror looked obscene. The genitalia beneath the flabby belly resembling the pendulum of a wall clock, his laughter working his body like a metronome.

He chuckled. Who took my jammies off? His wife? He shook his head. No, even when they made love, she couldn't abide him being naked. She'd been like that since the day they were married.

“A naked body is revolting, there’s something dirty about it. ⁄ 74

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Makes me think I’m in a butcher shop, looking at a side of beef,” she'd say.

And so it was only in pitch darkness that she would agree to foreplay and intercourse. Nor did K want his naked form displayed to anyone, even his wife. Revealing himself was too shameful and embarrassing.

So who left me in my birthday suit? Looking at himself in the mirror, he felt like a plucked chicken.

Maybe he'd shed his pajamas in his sleep? Impossible. Even halfawake, people didn't do that sort of thing, unless they were sleepwalkers or prostitutes.

Where were his pajamas anyway? He returned to the bedroom and looked around. Odds were a million to one his wife hadn't stripped them off of him, but if she had, they'd be somewhere near the bed, folded neatly. He scoured the vicinity. Nothing. No pajamas.

“Honey!”

No response—she was too busy in the kitchen, K figured. Just as well—she'd never seen him naked, and if she did now, she might scream her head off, like he was a pervert exposing himself. He found an undershirt and a pair of briefs in the wardrobe, and threw on an old dress shirt over them.

Back to the bathroom, where he squeezed a large dollop of toothpaste onto his toothbrush and started brushing. He gagged—all that booze!—and took aim at the toilet bowl. Out flowed a short stream of sour fluid, toothpaste foam, and saliva. He flushed the toilet and lowered the lid. Back to brushing. K observed his face in the mirror.

A familiar face, gloomy splotches of color. A depressing countenance. It didn't sit well with him.

Well, then, how about a shave—just the thing to brighten his appearance. No good getting down in the dumps, especially on a Saturday, especially after a stressful week at work.

With his shaving brush he worked up a generous helping of lather.

His face took on the fuzzy look of their puppy. If he didn’t shave in the morning, by the end of the day his face would take on a dark shadow, that’s how fast his beard grew. His razor began to slice through the lather. An electric shaver would have been faster and easier, but K ⁄ 75

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stuck with his razor, preferring the sharp edge. Cutting mercilessly through his beard offered the same thrill as when, just before ejaculation, he stopped thrusting and held back the semen that was about to fountain out.

Before he knew it he was whistling. His whistling was amplified in the confines of the bathroom, and for an instant he imagined himself soloing the part of “Shadow of a Faded Love” that the singer whistles. But K wasn't one to whistle tunes; improvising was better, giving expression to his mood of the moment.

Oops—he had drawn blood. A frequent occurrence. He stuck a piece of tissue to his chin. There—a nice clean shave. He looked much more cheerful now. With warm water he removed the remnants of lather. Then came a palmful of aftershave. Getting out of bed, washing his face, shaving, combing his hair—among this sequence of tasks, applying aftershave was best. It was the climax of his morning grooming.

The aftershave was strong stuff. It felt like a branding iron on his nicks and scrapes. Then came an electric buzz that left his face momentarily numb. And the fragrance, so powerful he didn't need cologne. He'd used the same aftershave since his bachelor days. It was simply called V. Its scent defined him. V is me—accept no substitutes.

But something was amiss. He held up the bottle, examined the label. Y. Not V but Y. A brand he'd never used, had never seen before.

How could it be? As far back as he could remember, V was his one and only aftershave, the one he had used yesterday, the day before, a week and a half ago, last month, last year, years back, even before he was married. V was his brand, his trademark. It had to be somewhere. He examined his toiletries. They were kept in a ceramic bowl on the counter next to the sink. A gift he and his fellow church members had received on the tenth anniversary of the church; it was inscribed “God Is Love.” To one side of the bowl were his toothbrush and toothpaste, a selection of Q-tips, his nail clippers, his electric nose-hair clippers, Mercurochrome and other first-aid items, the moisturizer he occasionally applied after his shower, as well as air freshener for the bathroom. They were all where they were supposed ⁄ 76

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to be, just as he'd arranged them. This was his very own space, the sink and mirror and drawer. His wife kept her toiletries in her vanity case.

He checked the drawer next to the sink. Everything in place there as well, everything where he had put it. K liked to organize things, and was peeved if they weren’t where they ought to be. In the back of the drawer were the condoms and other contraceptives, as well as the sample of erectile dysfunction medication he’d been given by his doctor friend H. K had tucked it away for emergency use, unbeknown to his wife.

He glanced at the pills, two of them, blue, secured in clear cellophane. Damn, he clucked. If only I'd remembered them last night.

After coming home drunk he'd signaled his wife that it was festival time. And she had obliged. Unless something unavoidable came up, Friday nights were reserved for the two of them—that was the agreement.

Even though they made love in deep-sea darkness, his wife still seemed to enjoy it. He could feel, as she built toward climax, the temperature of her seething body skyrocket when he entered her.

And when she came, he could almost see her light up like a phosphorescent fish.

But last night had been a dud—he couldn't get an erection, hadn't been able to complete the act. Never in their marriage had this happened. Her body had felt ice cold. How to describe it? It was like caressing a dead body, a cold-blooded creature. He remembered passing his hand across the cheek of his mother just before she was encoffined—his wife had felt even colder. The frigidity of marble, of ice, of an inanimate object—that's how his wife's body had felt. He had thought for a moment he was in bed with a corpse. This was supposed to be their love life, their bed—it wasn't a butcher shop, he wasn't raping her, he wasn't some pervert, some necrophiliac.

“Honey, what is it?” she had asked, her voice importunate in the dark room, where no light penetrated the curtains.

“Can't get it up.”

“You must be tired. And you probably drank too much, didn't you?” ⁄ 77

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Looking now at the pair of blue pills, K was seized with regret.

If only he'd remembered, he could have taken them on the sly, then given it another try.

But it wasn't those pills he was looking for, it was his aftershave.

Where was it? He considered the possibilities. Someone had taken it—and replaced it. His wife? Couldn't be. He was the one who purchased his aftershave, she had nothing to do with it. Which would leave K as the culprit. Am I playing a trick on myself, the old shell game?

K lifted the toilet lid and sat. Not for the usual reason, but because he needed to make sense of what was going on. Something was messed up. It started at 7, when the alarm had come on. It had come on by itself—nobody had set it. And then for the first time in his 15 years of married life he had risen from his bed naked, his bedclothes having vanished like a magician's dove. And finally his aftershave had disappeared, replaced with a brand he wouldn't be caught dead with.

Where had this string of events begun? Or was he imagining this?

No—it was real, and the tricks had started last night. Maybe with the menacing chill he'd felt in reaction to his wife’s corpse-like frigidity, killing his accustomed sexual desire. Did that mean his wife, like his aftershave, had been replaced?

He shook his head. Yes, he was under an illusion—the visible world was real but his brain had processed it into something distorted.

K shot to his feet, turned on the shower. Put a hand underneath and the next moment felt the familiar hot water pouring down. Same hot water as yesterday, thank God. He turned it off. Now he knew he wasn’t hallucinating.

He took a quick shower. As he dried his face with the familiar towel he saw in the mirror his familiar face, like a reproduction of a portrait. Further proof that he wasn't delusional.

Combing his hair came next, and here he was especially attentive.

Streaks of gray had begun appearing, exactly when, he couldn't remember. At first he had plucked the offending hairs, but before long it became a losing battle. If he kept removing the gray hair he'd end up practically bald. So why bother? By now he was used to the gray. ⁄ 78

Another Man's City

And today he was no grayer than he'd been yesterday.

There in the mirror, his nose, his lips, his earsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;K himself. He examined that face with his small magnifying mirror. Exaggerated, grotesque as a death mask, it was nevertheless his face. But just to make sure, he opened his mouth wide and checked his teeth. There, toward the back, his gold crown. The sight of that familiar molar released him, finally, from his unease. There was no hallucination, no illusion; he wasn't on a stage set or in a make-believe world.

Light of heart and whistling, K went out to the living room.

Once he saw the familiar scene of his wife at work in the kitchen, he could bring down the curtain on this shadow play.

â &#x201E; 79

The Library of Korean Literature Dalkey Archive Press

1. Stingray Kim Joo-young 2. One Spoon on This Earth Hyun Ki Young 3. When Adam Opens His Eyes Jang Jung-il 4. My Son’s Girlfriend Jung Mi-kyung 5. A Most Ambiguous Sunday, and Other Stories Jung Young Moon 6. The House with a Sunken Courtyard Kim Won-il 7. At Least We Can Apologize Lee Ki-ho 8. The Soil Yi Kwang-su 9. Lonesome You Park Wan-suh 10. No One Writes Back Jang Eun-jin

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11. The Republic of Užupis Haïlji 12. Pavane for a Dead Princess Park Min-gyu 13. The Square Choi In-hun 14. Scenes from the Enlightenment: a Novel of Manners Kim Namcheon 15. Another Man's City Ch'oe In-ho

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SELECTED DALKEY ARCHIVE TITLES MICHAL AJVAZ, The Golden Age. The Other City.

GERALD L. BRUNS, Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language.

PIERRE ALBERT-BIROT, Grabinoulor.

GABRIELLE BURTON, Heartbreak Hotel.

YUZ ALESHKOVSKY, Kangaroo.

MICHEL BUTOR, Degrees, Mobile.

FELIPE ALFAU, Chromos.

Locos.

IVAN ÂNGELO, The Celebration.

The Tower of Glass.

G. CABRERA INFANTE, Infante’s Inferno.

Three Trapped Tigers.

ANTÓNIO LOBO ANTUNES, Knowledge of Hell.

The Splendor of Portugal.

JULIETA CAMPMPOS, The Fear of Losing Eurydice.

ALAIN MRIAS-MISSON, Theatre of Incest.

ORLY CASTEL-BLOOM, Dolly City.

JOHN ASHBERY AND JAMES SCHUYLER, A Nest of Ninnies.

LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE, Castle to Castle.

Conversations with Professor Y, London Bridge, Normance, North, Rigadoon.

ROBERT ASHLEY, Perfect Lives.

GABRIELA AVIGUR-ROTEM, Heatwave and Crazy Birds.

DJUNA BARNES, Ladies Almanack.

Ryder.

JOHN BARTH, Letters.

Sabbatical.

DONALD BARTHELME, The King.

Paradise.

SVETISLAV BASARA, Chinese Letter.

MIQUEL BAUÇÀ, The Siege in the Room.

RENÉ BELLETTO, Dying.

ANNE CARSON, Eros the Bittersweet.

MARIE CHAIX, The Laurels of Lake Constance.

HUGO CHARTERIS, The Tide Is Right.

ERIC CHEVILLARD, Demolishing Nisard.

MARC CHOLODENKO, Mordechai Schamz.

JOSHUA COHEN, Witz.

MAREK BIEŃCZYK, Transparency.

EMILY HOLMES COLEMAN, The Shutter of Snow.

ANDREI BITOV, Pushkin House.

ROBERT COOVER, A Night at the Movies.

ANDREJ BLATNIK, You Do Understand.

STANLEY CRAWFORD, Log of the S.S, The Mrs Unguentine, Some Instructions to My Wife.

LOUIS PAUL BOON, Chapel Road.

My Little War. Summer in Termuren.

RENÉ CREVEL, PUTTING My Foot in It.

ROGER BOYLAN, Killoyle.

RALPH CUSACK, Cadenza.

IGNÁCIO DE LOYOLA Brandão, Anonymous Celebrity.

Zero.

NICHOLAS DELBANCO, The Count of Concord, Sherbrookes.

BONNIE BREMSER, Troia: Mexican Memoirs.

NIGEL DENNIS, Cards of Identity.

CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE, Amalgamemnon.

PETER DIMOCK, A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family.

ARIEL DORFMFMAN, Konfidenz.

BRIGID BROPHY, In Transit.

FOR A FULL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS, VISIT: www.dalkeyarchive.com

SELECTED DALKEY ARCHIVE TITLES COLEMAN DOWELL, Island People, Too Much Flesh and Jabez.

ARKADII DRAGOMOSHCHENKO, Dust.

RIKKI DUCORNET, The Complete Butcher’s Tales, The Fountains of Neptune, The Jade Cabinet, Phosphor in Dreamland.

WILLIAM EASTLAKE, The Bamboo Bed, Castle Keep, Lyric of the Circle Heart.

JEAN ECHENOZ, Chopin’s Move.

STANLEY ELKIN, A Bad Man, Criers and Kibitzers, Kibitzers and Criers, The Dick Gibson Show, The Franchiser, The Living End, Mrs. Ted Bliss.

FRANÇOIS EMMMMANUEL, Invitation to a Voyage.

SALVADOR ESPRIU, Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth.

LESLIE A. FIEDLER, Love and Death in the American Novel.

JUAN FILLOY, Op Oloop.

ANDY FITCH, Pop Poetics.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Bouvard and Pécuchet.

KASS FLEISHER, Talking out of School.

FORD MADOX FORD, The March of Literature.

JON FOSSE, Aliss at the Fire, Melancholy.

MAX FRISCH, I’m Not Stiller, Man in the Holocene.

CARLOS FUENTES, Christopher Unborn, Distant Relations, Terra Nostra, Where the Air Is Clear.

TAKEHIKO FUKUNAGA, Flowers of Grass.

WILLIAM GADDIS, J R, The Recognitions.

JANICE GALLOWAY, Foreign Parts, The Trick Is to Keep Breathing.

WILLIAM H H. GASS, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, Finding a Form, A Temple of Texts, The Tunnel, Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife.

GÉRARD GAVARRY, Hoppla! 1 2 3.

ETIENNE GILSON, The Arts of the Beautiful, Forms and Substances in the Arts.

C. S S. GISCOMBE, Giscome Road, Here.

DOUGLAS GLOVER, Bad News of the Heart.

WITOLD GOMBROWICZ, A Kind of Testament.

PAULO EMÍLIO SALES GOMES, P’s Three Women.

GEORGI GOSPODINOV, Natural Novel.

JUAN GOYTISOLO, Count Julian, Juan the Landless, Makbara, Marks of Identity.

HENRY GREEN, Back, Blindness, Concluding, Doting, Nothing.

JACK GREEN, Fire the Bastards!

JIRˇI´ GRUSˇA, The Questionnaire.

MELA HARTWIG, Am I a Redundant Human Being?

JOHN HAWKES, The Passion Artist, Whistlejacket.

ELIZABETH HEIGHWAY, ED., Contemporary Georgian Fiction.

ALEKSANDAR HEMON, ED., Best European Fiction.

FOR A FULL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS, VISIT: www.dalkeyarchive.com

SELECTED DALKEY ARCHIVE TITLES AIDAN HIGGINS, Balcony of Europe, Blind Man’s Bluff, Bornholm Night-Ferry, Flotsam and Jetsam, Langrishe, Go Down, Scenes from a Receding Past.

ERIC LAURRENT, Do Not Touch.

VIOLETTE LEDUC, La Bâtarde.

EDOUARD LEVÉ, Autoportrait, Suicide.

MARIO LEVI, Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale.

KEIZO HINO, Isle of Dreams.

DEBORAH LEVY, Billy and Girl.

KAZUSHI HOSAKA, Plainsong.

JOSE´ LEZAMA LIMA, Paradiso.

ALDOUS HUXLEY, Antic Hay, Crome Yellow, Point Counter Point, Those Barren Leaves, Time Must Have a Stop.

OSMAN LINS, Avalovara, The Queen of the Prisons of Greece.

NAOYUKI II, The Shadow of a Blue Cat. GERT JONKE, The Distant Sound, Geometric Regional Novel, Homage to Czerny, The System of Vienna.

JACQUES JOUET, Mountain R, Savage, Upstaged.

ROSA LIKSOM, Dark Paradise.

ALF MAC LOCHLAINN, T he Corpus in the Library, Out of Focus.

RON LOEWINSOHN, Magnetic Field(s).

MINA LOY, Stories and Essays of Mina Loy. D. KEITH MANO, Take Five.

MICHELINE AHARONIAN MARCOM, The Mirror in the Well.

MIEKO KANAI, The Word Book.

BEN MARCUS,The Age of Wire and String.

YORAM KANIUK, Life on Sandpaper.

WALLACE MARKFIELD,Teitlebaum’s Window, To an Early Grave.

HUGH KENNER, Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians, Joyce’s Voices.

DANILO KISˇ, The Attic, Garden, Ashes, The Lute and the Scars, Psalm 44, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich.

ANITA KONKKA, A Fool’s Paradise.

GEORGE KONRÁD, The City Builder.

TADEUSZ KONWICKI, A Minor Apocalypse, The Polish Complex.

MENIS KOUMANDAREAS, Koula.

ELAINE KRAF, The Princess of 72nd Street.

JIM KRUSOE, Iceland.

AYŞE KULIN, Farewell: A Mansion in Occupied Istanbul.

EMILIO LASCANO TEGUI, On Elegance While Sleeping.

DAVID MARKSON, Reader’s Block, Wittgenstein’s Mistress.

CAROLE MASO, AVA. LADISLAV MATEJKA & KRYSTYNA POMORSKA, EDS., Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views.

HARRY MATHEWS, Cigarettes, The Conversions, The Human Country: New and Collected Stories, The Journalist, My Life in CIA, Singular Pleasures, The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, Tlooth.

JOSEPH MCELROY, Night Soul and Other Stories.

FOR A FULL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS, VISIT: www.dalkeyarchive.com

SELECTED DALKEY ARCHIVE TITLES ABDELWAHAB MEDDEB, Talismano.

GERHARD MEIER, Isle of the Dead.

HERMAN MELVILLE, The Confidence-Man. AMANDA MICHALOPOULOU, I’d Like.

STEVEN MILLHAUSER, The Barnum Museum, In the Penny Arcade.

FLANN O’BRIEN, At Swim-Two-Birds, The Best of Myles, The Dalkey Archive, The Hard Life, The Poor Mouth, The Third Policeman.

CLAUDE OLLIER, The Mise-en-Scène, Wert and the Life Without End.

RALPH J. MILLS, JR., Essays on Poetry.

GIOVANNI ORELLI, Walaschek’s Dream.

MOMUS, The Book of Jokes.

PATRIK OURˇEDNÍK, Europeana, The Opportune Moment, 1855.

CHRISTINE MONTALBETTI, The Origin of Man, Western.

OLIVE MOORE, Spleen.

NICHOLAS MOSLEY, Accident, Assassins, Catastrophe Practice, Experience and Religion, A Garden of Trees, Hopeful Monsters, Imago Bird, Impossible Object, Inventing God, Judith, Look at the Dark, Natalie Natalia, Serpent, Time at War. WARREN MOTTE, Fables of the Novel: French Fiction since 1990, Fiction Now: The French Novel in the 21st Century, Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature.

GERALD MURNANE, Barley Patch, Inland.

YVES NAVARRE, Our Share of Time, Sweet Tooth.

DOROTHY NELSON, In Night’s City, Tar and Feathers.

ESHKOL NEVO, Homesick.

WILFRIDO D D. NOLLEDO, But for the Lovers.

BORIS PAHOR, Necropolis.

FERNANDO DEL PASO, News from the Empire, Palinuro of Mexico.

ROBERT PINGET, The Inquisitory, Mahu or The Material, Trio.

MANUEL PUIG, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, The Buenos Aires Affair, Heartbreak Tango.

RAYMYMOND QUENEAU, The Last Days, Odile, Pierrot Mon Ami, Saint Glinglin.

ANN QUIN, Berg, Passages, Three, Tripticks.

ISHMAEL REED, The Free-Lance Pallbearers, The Last Days of Louisiana Red, Ishmael Reed: The Plays, Juice!, Reckless Eyeballing, The Terrible Threes, The Terrible Twos, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down.

JASIA REICHARDT, 15 Journeys Warsaw to London.

NOËLLE REVAZ, With the Animals.

JOÃO UBALDO RIBEIRO, House of the Fortunate Buddhas.

FOR A FULL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS, VISIT: www.dalkeyarchive.com

SELECTED DALKEY ARCHIVE TITLES JEAN RICARDOU, Place Names.

GAIL SCOTT, My Paris.

RAINER MARIA RILKE, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

DAMION SEARLS, What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going.

JULIÁN RÍOS, The House of Ulysses, Larva: A Midsummer Night’s Babel, Poundemonium, Procession of Shadows.

JUNE AKERS SEESE, Is This What Other Women Feel Too?, What Waiting Really Means.

AUGUSTO ROA BASTOS, I the Supreme.

VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY, Bowstring, Knight’s Move, A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs 1917–1922, Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot, Literature and Cinematography, Theory of Prose, Third Factory, Zoo, or Letters Not about Love.

DANIËL ROBBERECHTS, Arriving in Avignon.

JEAN ROLIN, The Explosion of the Radiator Hose.

OLIVIER ROLIN, Hotel Crystal.

ALIX CLEO ROUBAUD, Alix’s Journal.

JACQUES ROUBAUD, The Form of a City Changes Faster, Alas, Than the Human Heart, The Great Fire of London, Hortense in Exile, Hortense Is Abducted, The Loop, Mathematics, The Plurality of Worlds of Lewis, The Princess Hoppy, Some Thing Black.

RAYMYMOND ROUSSEL, Impressions of Africa.

VEDRANA RUDAN, Night.

STIG SÆTERBAKKEN, Siamese, Self Control.

LYDIE SALVAYRE, The Company of Ghosts, The Lecture, The Power of Flies.

BERNARD SHARE, Inish, Transit.

PIERRE SINIAC, The Collaborators.

KJERSTI A. SKOMSVOLD, T he Faster I Walk,the Smaller I Am. JOSEF SˇKVORECKY´, The Engineer of Human Souls.

GILBERT SORRENTINO, Aberration of Starlight, Blue Pastoral, Crystal Vision, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, Mulligan Stew, Pack of Lies, Red the Fiend, The Sky Changes, Something Said, Splendide-Hôtel, Steelwork, Under the Shadow.

LUIS RAFAEL SÁNCHEZ, Macho Camacho’s Beat.

W. M. SPACKMAN, The Complete Fiction.

SEVERO SARDUY, Cobra & Maitreya.

ANDRZEJ STASIUK, Dukla, Fado.

NATHALIE SARRAUTE, Do You Hear Them?, Martereau, The Planetarium.

ARNO SCHMIDT, Collected Novellas, Collected Stories, Nobodaddy’s Children, Two Novels.

GERTRUDE STEIN, The Making of Americans, A Novel of Thank You. LARS SVENDSEN, A Philosophy of Evil.

PIOTR SZEWC, Annihilation.

GONÇALO M. TAVARES, Jerusalem, Joseph Walser’s Machine, Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique.

ASAF SCHURR, Motti.

FOR A FULL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS, VISIT: www.dalkeyarchive.com

SELECTED DALKEY ARCHIVE TITLES LUCIAN DAN TEODOROVICI, Our Circus Presents . . .

AGLAJA VETERANYI, Why the Child Is Cooking in the Polenta.

NIKANOR TERATOLOGEN, Assisted Living.

BORIS VIAN, Heartsnatcher.

STEFAN THEMERSON, Hobson’s Island, The Mystery of the Sardine, Tom Harris.

TOOMAS VINT, An Unending Landscape.

TAEKO TOMIOKA, Building Waves.

JOHN TOOMEY, Sleepwalker.

JEAN-PHILIPPPPE TOUSSAINT, The Bathroom, Camera, Monsieur, Reticence, Running Away, Self-Portrait Abroad, Television, The Truth about Marie.

DUMITRU TSEPENEAG, Hotel Europa, The Necessary Marriage, Pigeon Post, Vain Art of the Fugue.

ESTHER TUSQUETS, Stranded.

DUBRAVKA UGRESIC, Lend Me Your Character, Thank You for Not Reading.

TOR ULVEN, Replacement.

MATI UNT, Brecht at Night, Diary of a Blood Donor, Things in the Night.

LLORENÇ VILLALONGA, The Dolls’ Room.

ORNELA VORPSI, The Country Where No One Ever Dies.

AUSTRYN WAINHOUSE, Hedyphagetica.

CURTIS WHITE, America’s Magic Mountain, The Idea of Home, Memories of My Father Watching TV, Requiem.

DIANE WILLIAMS, Excitability: Selected Stories, Romancer Erector.

DOUGLAS WOOLF, Wall to Wall, Ya! & John-Juan.

JAY WRIGHT, Polynomials and Pollen, The Presentable Art of Reading Absence.

PHILIP WYLIE, Generation of Vipers.

MARGUERITE YOUNG, Angel in the Forest, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.

REYOUNG, Unbabbling.

VLADO ZˇABOT, The Succubus.

ZORAN ZˇIVKOVIC´, Hidden Camera.

LOUIS ZUKOFSKY, Collected Fiction.

VITOMIL ZUPAN, Minuet for Guitar.

SCOTT ZWIREN, God Head.

ÁLVARO URIBE AND OLIVIA SEARS, EDS., Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction.

ELOY URROZ, Friction, The Obstacles.

LUISA VALENZUELA, Dark Desires and the Others, He Who Searches.

PAUL VERHAEGHEN, Omega Minor.

FOR A FULL LIST OF PUBLICATIONS, VISIT: www.dalkeyarchive.com