Human Acts by Han Kang
The door to the office banged open and Yoon staggered in, straining under the weight of a large box of books. His glasses were all misted up.
‘Someone take my glasses off for me.’
Eun-sook rushed over and removed his glasses. Panting, Yoon bent down and let the box thud to the floor by the table. Eun-sook opened it up with a Stanley knife and took out two copies. After handing one to the boss, she turned her attention to the cover. There, where she had been expecting the name of the fugitive translator, she discovered that of the boss’s relative, the one who had emigrated to the US. The whole office had been in a state of high tension after handing this book’s proofs in to the censors – now, it transpired that it had been sent off to the printer’s with only two paragraphs removed.
Eun-sook covered the tabletop with newspaper before helping Yoon to unload the books. Accompanied by a press release, each copy went into an envelope bearing the publisher’s logo, and these were then stacked in neat piles to be distributed to the press the following morning.
‘Looks good,’ the boss remarked, again as if to himself. He cleared his throat then spoke again, more formally. ‘It’s come out really well.’
He took off his reading glasses and stood up. Struggling with his coat, he tried and failed several times to get his right arm into the sleeve. His arthritic shoulder, stiff and painful at the best of times, always seemed to get worse during winter. Eun-sook stopped what she was doing and went to help him.
‘Thank you, Miss Kim.’
From close up, his open, unguarded eyes seemed unaccountably tinged with fear, and the lines circling his neck were deeper than one would have expected for someone his age. Eun-sook found herself wondering why someone so timid and feeble would maintain close relationships with writers who were under the scrutiny of the authorities; why he kept on publishing precisely those books which earned the censors’ attention.
The boss had barely left the building before Yoon also clocked off for the day, leaving Eun-sook alone in the office.
Rather than go home early, she went and sat by the freshly printed books. Trying to recall the translator’s face, she found that for some reason or other she was unable to remember his appearance in any detail. It no longer hurt to let her fingers skim over her bruised right cheek. Even pressing down produced a sensation which barely qualified as pain.
The book was a non-fiction treatise examining the psychology of crowds. The author hailed from the UK, and most of the examples she had selected were from modern European history. The French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War. The translator had himself elected not to include the chapter on the 1968 student movement, believing that it would only serve to jeopardise the rest of the book in the eyes of the censors. He’d still translated this chapter, though, for inclusion in a full and revised edition at some point in the future. In the introduction, he wrote:
The decisive factor dominating the morality of the crowd has not yet been clearly identified. One point of interest is the emergence in situ of a particular ethical fluctuation separate from the moral standard of the individuals who constitute the crowd. Certain crowds do not blench at the prospect of looting, murder and rape, while on the other hand, others display a level of courage and altruism which those making up that same crowd would have had difficulty in achieving as individuals. The author argues that, rather than this latter type of crowd being made up of especially noble individuals, that nobility which is a fundamental human attribute is able to manifest itself through borrowing strength from the crowd; also, similarly, that the former case is one in which humanity’s essential barbarism is exacerbated not by the especially barbaric nature of any of the individuals involved, but through that magnification which occurs naturally in crowds.
The censors had scored through four lines in the paragraph which followed that one. Bearing that in mind, the question which remains to us is this: what is humanity? What do we have to do to keep humanity as one thing and not another? Eun-sook could remember the precise thickness of the line which had been drawn through these sentences. She could recall the translator’s fleshy neck, his shabby navy jumper, his sallow complexion; his long, blackened fingernails constantly fumbling with the glass of water. But she still couldn’t picture his face to herself with any precision.
She closed the book and waited. Turned to face the window, and waited for darkness to fall.
She had no faith in humanity. The look in someone’s eyes, the beliefs they espoused, the eloquence with which they did so, were, she knew, no guarantee of anything. She knew that the only life left to her was one hemmed in by niggling doubts and cold questions.
The fountain had been dry that afternoon. Gun-toting soldiers were hauling fresh bodies over to the wall in front of the Provincial Office. They dragged them by the legs, so that the backs of their heads bumped and scraped against the ground, then tossed them next to the bodies that had already been dumped there. Some of the soldiers had had a bright idea for increasing the efficiency of this process: a small group was marching into the Provincial Office’s inner yard, each holding a corner or edge of a huge waterproof tarp on which the corpses of a dozen people were being transported in one go. When Eun-sook had walked by, unable to prevent her eyes from widening at the sight, three soldiers rushed over and aimed their guns at her chest. Where are you going? Just home. I’ve been visiting my aunt; she’s not well. Her voice had been cool and steady, but her upper lip trembled as she spoke.
She left the square on their orders, making an effort to regulate her steps. When she reached Daein market, a huge tank came roaring down the main road. They want to show everyone that it’s all over, she’d thought to herself, almost absent-mindedly. That all the protestors have been killed.
The neighbourhood where she lived with her parents, though close to the university district, was so utterly devoid of human life it was as though a plague had ravaged it. When she rang the bell, her father instantly came running out, only unlocking the main gate for the brief time it took to usher her inside. He got her to hide up in the kitchen loft, then moved the tall cupboard over beneath the entrance so that it wouldn’t attract anyone’s notice. As morning wore into afternoon, the heavy tread of combat boots started to be heard. Sounds of doors being slid open, of struggling bodies being dragged, of something being smashed, sounds of begging and pleading. No-oo, our kids weren’t at the demo, they’ve never even touched a gun. Someone pressed the bell for Eun-sook’s house, and her father’s voice rang out in answer. Our daughter’s still in high school. Our sons are in middle school and primary school, what would they be doing at a demo?
When she finally came down from the loft the next evening, her mother informed her that the corpses had been loaded into the city garbage trucks and driven off to a mass grave. Not just those that had been dumped in front of the fountain; even the unidentified bodies, the ones that had been kept in coffins in the gymnasium, all had been taken away.
The government and municipal offices had reopened, as had the schools. The shops had their shutters back up and had resumed trading. Since martial law was still in effect, no one was permitted to be out in the streets after 7 p.m. Soldiers also set up checkpoints arbitrarily throughout the day, and anyone who had come out without their ID card was hauled off to the nearest police station.
In order to make up for the class time that had been missed, the majority of schools extended their summer term into early August. Until the day when they closed for the summer holidays, Eun-sook called the Provincial Office’s Public Enquiry Department every single day, from the phone booth next to the bus stop. It’s not right for the fountain to be on, for God’s sake make it stop. The handset became sticky with the sweat from her palm. The staff at the Department responded patiently, assuring her that the matter would be discussed. Once, Eun-sook’s call was answered by a middle-aged woman, clearly sympathetic yet sadly resigned. I’m sorry, but you need to stop calling. There’s nothing we can do about the f
Outside the window, a pale fluttering trembled the curtain of gathering dark.
It was time for her to get up and leave the office, but instead she remained where she was, unmoving. The flakes of snow silently sifting down looked as soft and white as freshly ground rice flour. Nevertheless, she could not think of them as beautiful. Today was supposed to be the day for her to forget the sixth slap, but her cheek had already healed. It barely even hurt any more. When the next day dawned, then, there would be no need to forget the seventh slap. There would never be a day when she would forget the seventh slap.
SNOWFLAKES
After the set change the lights come up again slowly. In the centre of the stage stands a tall woman in her thirties, her white hemp skirt recalling the kind of homespun item worn by mourners. When she silently turns to face the left-hand side of the stage, this appears to be the cue for a tall, slim man dressed in black to emerge from the wings. He comes walking towards her, carrying a life-sized skeleton on his back. His bare feet tread the boards with carefully measured steps, as though he fears he might slip in the empty air.
The woman turns now to the right, still silent as a marionette. This time the man who steps out from the wings is short and stocky, though in his black clothes and the skeleton on his back he is identical to the first. The two men glide towards each other from their opposite sides, like images from some old-fashioned film, proceeding in slow motion as their projectionist laboriously cranks the handle. They reach the centre of the stage at the same time, but they do not pause. Instead, they simply carry on to the other side, as though forbidden to acknowledge the other’s presence.
There isn’t a single empty seat in the house. The front rows look to be mainly made up of actors and journalists, perhaps because this is the opening night. When Eun-sook and the boss had been making their way to their seats and she’d glanced to the back of the auditorium, four men in particular had caught her eye. Though they were interspersed among the rest of the audience, she’d been in little doubt that they were plain-clothes policemen. What is Mr Seo going to do? she’d thought. When those men hear the lines that the censors scored through coming out of the mouths of these actors, will they jump up from their seats and rush onto the stage? That chair whirling through the air above the table in the university canteen, the spurts of blood from the boy’s forehead, the cooling plate of curry. What would happen to the production crew, watching the scene unfold from the lighting box? Would Mr Seo be arrested? Would he escape only to live a hunted existence, a fugitive whom even his own family would struggle to track down?
Once the figures of the men have melted back into the wings, their steps sliding forward with a dream-like lassitude, the woman begins to speak. Or so it seems. In actual fact, she cannot be said to say anything at all. Her lips move, but no sound comes out. Yet Eun-sook knows exactly what she is saying. She recognises the lines from the manuscript, where Mr Seo had written them in with a pen. The manuscript she’d typed up herself, and proofread three times.
After you died I could not hold a funeral,
And so my life became a funeral.
The woman turns her back on the audience, and the lights go up in the long aisle between the seats. Now a strapping man is standing at the end of the aisle, his clothes of tattered hemp. His breathing comes ragged as he walks towards the stage. Unlike the aloof, impassive figures who glided across the stage mere moments ago, this man’s face is contorted with feeling. He stretches both arms up above his head, straining for who knows what. His lips gupper like a fish on dry land. Again, Eun-sook can read what those lips are saying, though speech is an uncertain name for the high-pitched sound shrieking out from between them.
Oh, return to me.
Oh, return to me when I call your name.
Do not delay any longer. Return to me now.
After the initial wave of perplexity has swept through the audience, they subside into cowed silence and gaze with great concentration at the actor’s lips. The lighting in the aisle begins to dim. The woman on stage turns back to face the audience. Silent as ever, she calmly watches the man walking down the aisle, invoking the spirits of the dead.
After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral,
So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.
These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.
These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.
Eyes wide open yet seeming not to see the waking world, shrieking up into the empty air while the woman merely moves her lips, the man in hemp mounts the stairs to the stage. His upraised arms swing down, grazing her shoulders as though brushing away snow.
The flowers that bloom in spring, the willows, the raindrops and snowflakes became shrines.
The mornings ushering in each day, the evenings that daily darken, became shrines.
The lighting over the seats comes back up, dazzling the audience. All of a sudden, Eun-sook sees a boy standing in the aisle. He is wearing a white tracksuit and grey trainers, and clutching a small skeleton to his chest, hugging it to him as though he is cold. When the boy begins to walk towards the stage, a group of actors emerge from the darkness at the end of the aisle and follow on behind, stooped at ninety-degree angles and with their arms dangling down, looking like four-legged animals. There is something grotesque and supernatural about the sight of these men and women, around a dozen altogether, proceeding down the aisle with their black hair hanging down. Mumbling, shrieking, moaning, they raise their heads, revealing lips that twitch incessantly. Every time these sounds grow louder, the boy turns to look behind him, flinching back at what he sees. This slows him down, so the group soon overtake him and are first to reach the steps to the stage.
As Eun-sook stares transfixed at this scene unfolding, her own lips twitch without her knowing. As though in imitation of the actors, she calls out a silent name, the sound dying heavy in her throat. Dong-ho.
The young man at the back of the procession turns around, still bent double, and snatches the skeleton out of the boy’s grasp. Passed from one dangling hand to another, the skeleton eventually reaches the old woman at the head of the procession, her back so bent that it resembles the letter ㄱ. Hanks of grey-streaked hair falling down around her face, she clasps the skeleton in a tight embrace as she mounts the steps to the stage. The woman in white and the man in hemp, who have been standing up there all the while, quietly move aside to let her pass.
Now the only moving figure is that of the old woman.
Her footsteps are so incredibly slow they barely disturb the air around them, while an abrupt cough from the audience seems an intrusion from another world. As though this is the trigger, the boy starts out of his stasis, leaping up onto the stage in a single bound and pressing himself up against the old woman’s bent back. Like a child being given a piggyback, like the spirit of someone dead. So close, it’s impossible to say whether or not they are touching.
Dong-ho.
Eun-sook bites down on her lip, hard, as multi-coloured streamers flutter down from the ceiling onto the stage. Scraps of silk on which funeral odes are written. The actors gathered in front of the stage abruptly straighten up. The old woman stops in her tracks. The boy, who had been inching along behind her, turns to face the audience.
Eun-sook closes her eyes. She does not want to see his face.
After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral.
After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck.
After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain.
Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning.
In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drinks bottles.
Scalding tears burn from Eun-sook’s open eyes,
4
The Prisoner. 1990
It was a perfectly ordinary biro, a black Monami biro. They spread my fingers, twisted them one over the other, and jammed the pen between them.
This was the left hand, of course. Because I needed my right hand to write the report.
It was just about bearable, at first. But having that pen jammed into the exact same place every day soon rubbed the flesh raw, and a mess of blood and watery discharge oozed from the wound. Later on it got bad enough that you could actually see the bone, a gleam of white amid the filth. They gave me some cotton wool soaked in alcohol to press against it, but only then, only once the bone was showing through.
There were ninety other men in the cell with me, and more than half had that selfsame bit of cotton wool stuck there between their fingers. You weren’t allowed to talk to each other. Your eyes would just flick down to that scrap of cotton wool then up to meet the other man’s gaze, but only for a split second. That was enough to acknowledge the mark you shared. No need to linger.