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Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: warsaw
Posts: 2,285
bernhard has a spectacular aura about 
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[Translation Award Winner: Fiction]
Quote:
The Pager (Part 1 of 3)
The following are the complete English versions of the short story `The Pager,’ the winner of the 35th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards, sponsored by The Korea Times and Korea Exchange Bank. _ ED.
Written by Kim Young-ha
Translated by Dafna Zur
Visionaries dream about reality. Believe me, reality is what visionaries dream about.
_ Chang Chongil, from ``The Woman Crazy For Sylvia Plath.’’
1. Pager
Should I?
I picked up the phone, started to dial, put it down again. Hmm, maybe now’s not the best time. She may be sleeping, in which case she’ll be a little short of pleased to hear from me.
Bottom line is _ I behaved totally out of character yesterday. Maybe that’s why my heart starts to race when I recall the scene. I hadn’t tried a stunt like that in all twenty-eight years of my life. I’m the vacillating, wishy-washy type, who ends up doing a whole lot of nothing.
Then I thought of Suji. Three months ago, she tells me she’s going overseas to study. ``You mean, your parents agreed to send you?’’ I said, surprised. She stared back at me with a very perplexed expression. ``Obviously I’m not going alone.’’ I was still clueless. ``What are you talking about?’’ I said, annoyed, pressing her for an answer. ``You still don’t get it?’’ She said sharply, picking up her pocketbook. ``I’m breaking up with you, I’m marrying someone else, and I’m going abroad to study. Now do you get it?’’ I nodded. As she got up, I grabbed at her pocketbook and blurted, ``Good luck in your studies.’’ She gave me the most pitiful smile. And that was it. My parting words sounded ridiculous even to me.
I sat in the coffee shop after she had gone. Our last moments left me completely red-faced, so that the full realization that I’d made a mess of the relationship escaped me. I thought about it long and hard. Where did I go wrong? And what made her so pompous and confident? How could she do it? How could she walk out on our two-year relationship, marry someone else and go off to study? At this stage, I was a bit angry.
On reflection, I knew I’d gotten it wrong. Breakups aren’t one-sided. They don’t happen because of one or the other’s mistake. Relationships end because they’re meant to end _ isn’t that what love is all about? Still, I agonized about where I had gone wrong. If I’d made mistakes, they’d include my habit of religiously watching two videos a day, buying her only cheap earrings, and never attempting to write a resume or CV. Anyway, she was gone. At this moment she’s probably parked her Japanese car in front of a supermarket in Boston, and she’s inside with her husband buying an armful of frozen meals, just being happy. Of course, Suji’s husband is presumably ecstatically happy, too. Suji’s the kind of girl who knows how to hide her feelings.
Good luck in your studies. I started playing with the idea of showing up at her wedding to take back what I had said. I fantasized endlessly about walking up to the bride in her waiting room, surrounded by all her friends, and whispering something devastating. Fantasies _ they were all the revenge I was capable of, my only entertainment. My best line: I was in the neighborhood, so I stopped by. Picturing myself hanging over her, whispering in her ear with a nonchalant smile put me in the best of moods. She’d be tense, expecting the worst, and then she’d giggle nervously in relief.
My final fantasy was about the moment at the end of the ceremony when the photographer asks the friends of the bride and groom to step forward. I’d squeeze in on the groom’s side. Later, when they look at their wedding photos together, they might even get a strange thrill from seeing me standing there.
But I never did go. I stayed home and rented the comedy, ``Four Weddings and a Funeral.’’ I took part in the movie’s four weddings and one funeral. I remember enjoying the film, but I can’t recall the storyline now. That’s the way it always is with me.
Should I try to page her again?
I fingered the phone again. As I did so, her presence from yesterday vividly came to mind.
It was about 3 p.m., at Chungmuro subway station. I was walking along the yellow line, the one the announcement warns against: ``The train is arriving; for your safety, please step behind the yellow line.’’ Maybe I was safe, maybe not. I like that kind of tightrope walk. My favorite tightrope is the one that divides reality from fantasy. Sometimes I think that reality is fantasy; sometimes I go through life believing that my fantasies are real. But this blur never struck me as problematic. It’s like watching a film: I explore my fantasy world within a fixed framework of time.
It was on that subway tightrope walk that I met her. She wasn’t standing on the brink like me; she was leaning back against the much safer wall. Strands of straight brown hair fell over her shoulders; a long, voluminous knitted sweater came down to her behind, complementing her oval face; and her jeans, frayed at the bottoms, dragged down to the floor, giving her a sexy aura of decadence. But it was the girl’s pose that held me spellbound. She was leaning against the wall, one leg stretched out straight, one slightly bent, and her hands were in her jeans’ pockets. But this doesn’t really describe her. The key was she knew how to adopt the pose that would make her look most beautiful. She must have a full-length mirror in her room. Because I’m sure that only people who watch themselves endlessly in the mirror can pose so impeccably. I imagine her looking at herself naked in the mirror. Stripped bare, she slowly walks up to the mirror. And she strikes that pose, listening to her Walkman, swaying ever so gently. The music? Schubert’s ``Death and the Maiden’’ would be best. Nudity and death _ I liked the combination. The two have one thing in common _ exposure. Nothing to hide. Nudity exposes that original human form normally hidden by our clothes; death exposes the secrets of the dead. Death snatches away the sexual complications, absurdities and extravagances from the defenseless hands of the dead.
The girl also had big eyes, and her gaze stayed fixed. Only people who are used to being the focus of public stares can do that. Like anchors on the nine o’clock news, or TV stars. Normal people look all around in subway stations. Those that don’t look around know that if they do, they’re most likely to clash eyes with someone else.
Yesterday _ the day we met _ started off on the right foot. A Taegu University magazine commissioned 50 pages of manuscript. They wanted an analysis of recent commercial advertisements, looking specifically at those that borrow words and concepts, which in the past were used exclusively by social movements. For example, they asked me to decipher the social significance of ads like this one, for jeans: ``The motion of tireless revolution.’’ Blue jeans and revolutionary motion. Commercial imagination is such a melting pot. Throw in Lenin’s collapsed bronze bust; add rhetoric born of radical ideas. That’s why this kind of imagination can’t be called imagination at all. This kind of imagination probably dreams up chemical defoliants and industrial mergers. Anyhow, they’d pay about 200,000 won for the completed manuscript. That would be enough to cover books and cigarettes for the next while.
How long do you plan on living like this? Suji used to ask. To be honest, I wasn’t all that content with having to survive on miscellaneous articles in school papers and magazines. But answering that type of question with the ``I promise to get my act together’’ line was even worse. Moreover, there was no reason she’d believe me. You say things like that to justify yourself in politics. She was going to leave me, and this was her way to secure the foundations for a final farewell.
Fortunately, I feel the girl I met yesterday suits my temperament infinitely better than Suji. Suji always blamed other people for the misfortunes in her life; this girl didn’t. The kind of girl that can pose like that, the kind of girl that watches her naked reflection in a full-length mirror couldn’t maliciously blame others for her own problems. And when you think about it, my pathetic attempt at a farewell _ Good luck in your studies _ was not entirely my fault either. Inevitably, I became flustered and hesitant in front of a woman who played her role to such ‘political’ perfection. She was always whining about how I’d ruined her life. She kept saying that had she met someone decent, she’d have continued her studies.
Imagine how refreshing this new girl is!
As soon as the train started coming in, the girl leaning against the wall stepped behind me. I heard a faint jingle. I stole a furtive glance in her direction. The sound must have been coming from the two rings hanging from each ear that were swinging even as I looked away. Did she know that the accessories dangling from her ears emitted a sound that stimulated some man’s auditory functions?
A love affair with a stranger. What an exciting thought! And a totally new experience for me. I’ve always dated women I knew long and well, women I met at work or some gathering. I’d find an appropriate weekend, watch a second-rate porn film, drink draft beer in the back alleys of Kwanchol-dong, and spend the night with whoever would. Soon, formal speech turned mutually familiar, and next thing I know she’s demanding I say I love her. Affairs devoid of any imagination. It was scary, sometimes. Nothing was up to me _ I just had to fit together the right puzzle pieces.
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source : http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/cult...3411011680.htm |
11-05-2004, 11:49 AM
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