Human Acts by Han Kang
Of the barrel it was blasted out of.
Of the smooth trigger.
Of the eye that had me in its sights.
Of the eyes of the one who gave the order to fire.
I want to see their faces, to hover above their sleeping eyelids like a guttering flame, to slip inside their dreams, spend the nights flaring in through their forehead, their eyelids. Until their nightmares are filled with my eyes, my eyes as the blood drains out. Until they hear my voice asking, demanding, why.
*
The days and nights that passed then did so without note. A succession of dawns and dusks went by, each half-light the selfsame shade of blue. The passage of time was otherwise marked only by the sound of the military truck’s engine, a deep rumble in the dead of each night, its headlamps’ twin beams slicing through the darkness.
Every time they came by, the tower of bodies covered by the straw sack would be added to. Bodies with their skulls crushed and cratered, shoulders dislocated, rather than having been shot. And now and then, bodies which still appeared relatively intact, dressed carefully in neat hospital gowns, and swathed in bandages.
On one occasion, the bodies of ten people they’d just piled up seemed to be missing their heads. At first I thought they’d been decapitated; then I realised that, in fact, their faces had been covered in white paint, erased. I swiftly shrank back. Necks tipped back, those dazzlingly white faces were angled towards the thicket. Staring out into the empty air, their features a perfect blank.
Had these bodies all been packed into that street?
Had they been there alongside me, jostling my elbow, part of that vast mass of humanity whose voices ebbed and surged as one, yelling and singing and cheering at the buses and taxis that inched their way through the throng, headlights on, making a show of solidarity?
What happened to the bodies of the two men who’d been gunned down in front of the station, which some of the protesters loaded into a handcart to push at the head of the column? What happened to those two pairs of feet bouncing gently in the air, almost unseemly in their nakedness? I saw a shudder run through you the moment you spotted them. You blinked violently, your eyelashes fluttering in agitation. I grasped your hand and tugged you forward, towards the head of the column, while you muttered to yourself in blank incomprehension, our soldiers are shooting. They’re shooting at us. I pulled you towards them with all my strength, opening my throat to sing while you seemed on the point of tears. I sang along with the national anthem, my heart fit to burst. Before they sent that white-hot bullet driving into my side. Before those faces were cancelled out, expunged by white paint.
The rot ran quickest in the bodies at the base of the tower, white grubs burrowing into them until not an inch of skin was left untouched. I looked on in silence as my face blackened and swelled, my features turned into festering ulcers, the contours that had defined me, that had given me clear edges, crumbled into ambiguity, leaving nothing that could be recognised as me.
As the nights wore on, increasingly more shadows came and pressed up against my own. Our encounters were, as always, poorly improvised things. We were never able to tell who the other was, but could vaguely surmise how long we’d been together for. When a shadow that had been there from the first, and one that was newly arrived, both came to touch my own, extending along flat planes and folding over edges, I was somehow able to distinguish between them, though I couldn’t have said how. Certain shadows seemed marked by the weight of long drawn-out agonies, whose depths I was unable to fathom. Were these the souls of those bodies whose clothes were roughly torn, who bore deep purple bruises beneath each fingernail? Every time our shadow-boundaries brushed against each other, an echo of some appalling suffering was transmitted to me like an electric shock.
If we’d been given a little more time, might we have arrived, eventually, at a moment of understanding? Might we have groped our way towards exchanging a few words, or thoughts?
But this thread of quiet nights and days was severed.
That day, the rain bucketed down all through the afternoon. The sheer force of it sluiced the caked blood off our bodies, and the rot ran even quicker after this ablution. Our blue-black faces gleamed dully in the light of the full moon.
This time, they arrived earlier than usual, before midnight. As I always did at the sound of their approach, I angled myself away from the tower of bodies and melded seamlessly with the shadows of the thicket. The past few days had always brought the same two people; this time, I immediately made out at least six figures. They gripped the new bodies roughly, carrying them over and piling them up in a much more slapdash manner than the usual neat cross shape. This done, they immediately drew back, covering their noses and mouths as though gagging on the stench, gazing at the tower of bodies with a vacant look in their eyes.
One of them went over to the truck and returned with a plastic can of petrol. His back, shoulders and arms tensed up as he struggled under the load, staggering towards our bodies.
This is it, I thought. A multitude of shadows quivered all around, grazing my own and each other’s with soft shudders. Trembled meetings in the empty air, instantly dispersing, edges overlapping again, a soundless, fluttering agitation.
Two of the soldiers who’d been standing back came forward and took the plastic can between them. Working calmly and methodically, they removed the lid and began to pour the petrol over the towers of bodies. Making sure that each was evenly covered, that no body got more or less than its fair share. Only after shaking the last drops out of the can did they draw back to a safe distance. Each of them broke off a piece of dried shrubbery, sparked their lighters and, once the flame had caught, hurled it forward with all their strength.
The blood-stiffened clothes, their rotting fibres matted to our flesh, were the first to burst into flame. After that, the flames ate steadily through the head’s thick hair, the fine down covering the body, then fat, muscle, and innards. The blaze roared up as though threatening to engulf the wood. It was as bright in the clearing as it was in broad daylight.
It was then I realised that what had been binding us to this place was none other than that flesh, that hair, those muscles, those organs. The magnetic force holding us to our bodies rapidly began to lose its strength. At first shrinking back into the thicket, we slipped past each other’s shadows, passing over and under like a caress, until finally, clinging to the heavy clots of black smoke being belched from our bodies, we soared up into the air as though exhaled in a single breath.
The soldiers began to return to the truck; all but two, who, seemingly having been ordered to stay and watch until the very end, remained in their places, standing at attention. I skimmed down towards them, flickering around their necks and shoulders, where one bore the insignia of a private first class, the other that of a sergeant. I peered into their faces. How young they were. How their black pupils, dilated with fear, reflected the bonfire of our bodies.
The sparks spat out from the blaze snapped like fireworks. Water in the viscera hissed and boiled, until the organs dried and shrivelled. Black smoke rolled off our rotten bodies in ragged, intermittent breaths, and in those places where there was nothing left to produce it the white gleam of bone was revealed. Those souls whose bodies had already been thus reduced drifted further away, their wavering shadows no longer sensed. And so eventually we were free, free to go wherever we would.
Where shall I go? I asked myself.
To your sister.
But where is she?
I made an effort to keep calm. My body was at the very bottom of the tower, so there was still some time before the fire consumed it.
Go to those who killed you, then.
But where are they?
The wood’s inky shadows dappled the damp, sandy soil of the clearing. I flickered amid those patches of light and shade, thinking where should I go, how do I get there? I should have been grateful, perhaps, for the ease, the neatness with which my blackened, rotted face would dis
I’ll go to you.
And just like that, everything became clear.
There was no hurry. As long as I set out before the sun came up, I’d be able to find my way to the heart of the city by the lights in the windows. I’d be able to grope my way through the lightening streets, to the house where you and I used to live. Perhaps you’d found my sister in the meantime. Perhaps I’d be able to greet her again, in the only way left to me – by haunting the edges of her body. Or no, maybe she was already back there, in the room we used to share, waiting for me, hovering by the window, or above that cold stone terrace.
I slipped between the fire’s orange flames as it burned itself out. The tower of bodies collapsed into an indistinguishable heap of glowing embers, bodies formerly separate now mingled together.
The fire subsided, and darkness crept back into the woods.
The young soldiers were kneeling in the dirt, propping each other up shoulder to shoulder, sleeping like the dead.
It was then that I heard it: an almighty thunderclap, like thousands of fireworks going off at once. A distant scream. Living breaths snapped like a neck. Souls shocked from their bodies.
*
That was when you died, Dong-ho.
I didn’t know where, I only knew that was what it was: the moment of your death.
I whirled up and up through the lightless sky. It was pitch-dark. Nowhere in the city, not a single district, not even a single house, had their lights on. There was only one, distant point of light, where I saw a succession of flares shooting up, glittering shards of light being scattered from the barrels of guns.
Should I have gone there, right then? If I had, would I have been able to find you, Dong-ho, to ease the terror you must have felt at having just been knocked from your body? With that thick, heavy blood still creeping from my shadow-eyes, amid the dawn light being calved from the night slow as an iceberg, I found it impossible to move.
3
The Editor. 1985
At four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, the editor Kim Eun-sook received seven slaps to her right cheek. She was struck so hard, over and over in the exact same spot, that the capillaries laced over her right cheekbone burst, the blood trickling out through her torn skin. How many slaps had it taken before that happened? She couldn’t be sure. Wiping the smear of blood away with the palm of her hand, she stepped out into the street. The late November air was crisp and clear. About to walk onto the pedestrian crossing, she paused, wondering whether it would be wise to go back to the office. The stretched skin was tightening over her rapidly swelling cheek. She had gone deaf in her right ear. One more slap and her eardrum might have burst. She swallowed the metallic blood that had gathered along her gums, and turned towards the bus stop that would take her home.
Slap One
Now begins the process of forgetting the seven slaps. One per day, then it’ll be over and done within a week. Today, then, is that first day.
She turns the key in the lock and steps inside her rented room. She removes her shoes and lines them up neatly, then lies down on the floor, on her side, without even bothering to unbutton her coat. She rests her left cheek on her folded arms. The right cheek is still swelling. The upward pressure prevents her from opening her right eye properly. The toothache that had begun in her upper molars throbs up to her temples.
After lying in the same position for close on twenty minutes, she gets up. Stripping down to her white underwear, she hangs up her clothes, slides her feet into her slippers and shuffles out to the washroom. A scoop of cold water from the washbowl to splash onto her swollen face. She opens her mouth as far as she can manage, and brushes her teeth so gently it’s more like a caress. The phone rings, then cuts off. She dries her wet feet with the towel, and as soon as she steps back into the room the phone rings again. She reaches out to pick up the receiver, then changes her mind and yanks the cord out at the wall.
‘What will happen if I answer?’ she mumbles to herself, rolling out the thin mattress and cotton quilt. She isn’t hungry. She could force herself to eat something, but it would only give her indigestion. It’s cold under the quilt, and she huddles into a ball. That phone call just now would have been from the office; perhaps the boss would come over. She would have to answer his questions. I’m okay, it’s just that they hit me. No, only slaps. I can still come to work. I’m okay, I don’t need to go to the hospital. My face is a bit swollen, that’s all. Good thing she’d pulled the cord out.
As the quilt’s cocoon starts to warm up, she cautiously straightens out. Outside the window, it is six o’clock and already dark. The light from the street lamp glows dully orange through a section of the glass. Once her tension has dissipated a little thanks to the warmth and her comfortable position, she turns her mind to the task at hand.
Now, how am I going to forget the first slap?
When the man struck her the first time, she didn’t make a sound. Neither did she cringe away in anticipation of the next slap. Rather than jumping up from her seat, hiding under the interrogation room’s table, or running to the door, she waited quietly, holding her breath. Waited for the man to stop, to stop hitting her. The second time, the third time, even the fourth time she told herself would surely be the last. Only when the palm of his hand came flying towards her face for the fifth time did she think, he’s not going to stop, he’s just going to keep on hitting me. After the sixth time, she wasn’t thinking anything any more. She’d stopped counting. But when the last slap had been delivered and the man plumped down across the table from her, lolling against the back of the folding chair, she silently added another two to her mental tally. Seven.
His face was utterly ordinary. Thin lips, no noticeable irregularities to his features. He wore a pale yellow shirt with a wide collar, and his grey suit trousers were held up by a belt. Its buckle gleamed. Had they met by chance in the street, she would have taken him for some run-of-the-mill company manager or section chief.
‘Bitch. A bitch like you, in a place like this? Anything could happen, and no one would find out.’
At this point, the force of the slap had already burst the capillaries in her cheek, and the man’s fingernails had broken her skin. But Eun-sook hadn’t known that yet. She stared blankly across at the man’s face. ‘Listen to what I’m telling you, if you don’t want to die in some ditch where not even the rats and crows will find you. Tell me where that bastard is.’
She had met up with the translator – ‘that bastard’ – a fortnight ago, at a bakery by Cheonggye stream. It was the day the weather had suddenly changed; she remembered having to rummage through her winter clothes to find a sweater to go out in. She used a napkin to blot away the wet patch left by the cup of barley tea, then placed the proofs on the table, facing the translator. Take your time, sir. While she occupied herself with tearing off pieces of the crunchy streusel bread, washing each mouthful down with a sip of cold tea, he went through the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb. He took almost an hour all told, occasionally asking her opinion on minor amendments and additions. Lastly, he suggested that they go through the table of contents together. She brought her chair round to his side of the table and went through the proofs page by page, double-checking the amendments and table of contents. Before they parted, she asked how she should contact him when the book came out. He smiled.
‘I’ll go and look for it in a bookshop.’
She took an envelope out of her bag and held it out to him.
‘It’s the royalties for the first edition. The boss said he wanted you to have it in advance.’ The translator took the envelope without speaking, and slid it into the inner pocket of his jacket. ‘How shall we get any further royalties to you?’ ‘I’ll be in touch, later on.’
&n
‘This was in your drawer, you little slut … that bastard wrote it, and you’re telling me you don’t know where he is?’
Avoiding the man’s eyes as he flung the bundle of proofs onto the table, she looked up instead at the dusty tube of the fluorescent lamp. He’s going to hit me again, she thought, and blinked.
She had no idea what made her think of the fountain at just that moment. Behind her closed eyelids, glittering jets of water sprayed up into the June sky. Eighteen years old and passing by on the bus, she’d screwed her eyes tight shut. Glancing off one droplet after another, sharp little shards of sunlight burrowed through her heat-flushed eyelids, stinging her pupils. She got off the bus at the stop in front of her house and went straight to the public phone booth. Shrugging her satchel onto the floor, she swiped at the sweat trickling down over her forehead, inserted a coin into the slot, dialled 114 and waited. ‘The Provincial Office complaints department, please.’ She dialled the number she was given and waited again. ‘I’ve just seen water coming out of the fountain, and I don’t think it should be allowed.’ Tremulous at first, her voice became clearer as she carried on speaking. ‘What I mean is, how can it have started operating again already? It’s been dry ever since the uprising began and now it’s back on again, as though everything’s back to normal. How can that be possible?