Recitation

by Suah Bae

  “It surprises me that there could be such complete inflexibility between a married couple.” The healer craned his neck as he passed his ten stubby fingers over Mr. Nobody’s back, searching for the places where the muscles were knotted together. “But what was the general subject of these ‘memoirs’ supposed to be? You can’t have been writing a book simply to lay bare all the trivial dealings which go on in a marriage?”

  “For twelve years I was forced to make a living as a low-grade civil servant in the culture ministry, forbidden to write fiction.”

  “A civil servant in the culture ministry, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “What’s important is the word I mentioned just after that, ‘forbidden.’ Before then I used to teach foreign languages at university, but one day I lost my position there, entirely without warning. This was when China was in the middle of a war with Vietnam. And so I went to Vietnam as a war correspondent. After the war, in spite of my position having absolutely no connection with art history, I was posted to a museum. Whenever we had government officials visiting from Eastern Europe, especially Russia, I was tasked with giving them a guided tour of the basement rooms, showing them all the jewels and cultural assets. The reason they were travelling through our country being to search out any lust-worthy object. Eventually, when there wasn’t a single thing left that they fiercely coveted, I ended up breaking loose from them, like a planet that has strayed out of orbit.”

  “No more cultural assets, but now you can write fiction again, so you’re happy—is that what you mean?”

  “That’s correct. Fortunate in misfortune.”

  “You’re not a patriot, then.”

  “That’s right. Fortunate in misfortune.”

  “But now you’ve got the threat of your wife’s lawsuit hanging over you! Your back pain probably started up around when all this did.”

  At that, Mr. Nobody opened his eyes. “That’s right. Now I think about it, yes, you’re right. It was around then, I think, that my heart started causing me problems. I was recently diagnosed with dangerously high blood pressure.”

  “I guessed from your complexion that you had a genetic heart problem. But your back is different. That’s in my hands. How about now, doesn’t it seem that the pain has eased up a little?” The healer fetched an old towel and wiped his hands on it with a satisfied expression. “My specialization as a healer isn’t only the back. I can also cure tinnitus. If someone suffers from tinnitus, I bring my mouth to their ear and give them the warmest, most intense adhesion kiss in the world. Three times, usually. To first-time participants in my seminar it can look like merely a bit of fun, something done more for show than effect, but a kiss like that is the toughest, most energy-sapping thing for a professional healer like me. Because when the kiss is over, your mind is left as vague as if your soul had slipped away, and even your vision grows hazy. Not the one who receives the kiss, that is, but me, the healer. Ah, don’t move, you’ve still got oil all over your back. Wait for me to wipe it off.” The healer scrubbed Mr. Nobody’s back with the towel he’d used to wipe his hands. As the oil slopped down over Mr. Nobody’s sides, Kyung-hee worried about the quilt getting dirty. So she said to the healer, “Be careful, the oil’s going everywhere. If it gets on the quilt it’ll stain the fabric, and we won’t be able to get the smell out.”

  “The oil might have a deep colour, but it’s not dirty. So you don’t need to fret over stains. And if the smell makes it hard to get to sleep, there’s some fabric deodorizer on the bathroom shelf, a good spray of that will sort it out. No problem at all. Actually, that stuff is so effective I almost never have to launder the quilt. If an unexpected guest comes to stay”—the healer enunciated this part with a strange emphasis—“and they’re wanting a new quilt, I just give them one I’ve sprayed with deodorizer. And no one’s inconvenienced.” The healer giggled behind his hand. He turned to Kyung-hee and patted her back, his hands still oily.

  “How about it, would you like a massage?” Though Kyung-hee answered that she was even less fond of oil massages than of the regular kind, the healer had already started pressing his plump sausage fingers against her vertebrae and sacrum. “A twisted pelvis gives you a high chance of lumbar pain in later life, you know. And it’s even more likely that your legs will become crooked, or that you’ll end up with knee pain. It’s not good for your internal organs, either; anyway, it seems like your pelvis is twisted.” Kyung-hee, who had a habit of sitting crookedly and whose lower back was asymmetric, thought that this might well be true. Along with the advice about being careful of red cars and not wearing black.

  “I had a gynaecological operation, a long time ago,” Kyung-hee blurted out. “So that might have left me with a crooked pelvis, rather than back pain like Mr. Nobody.”

  “Ah, I see!” The healer fell briefly silent, and stole a glance at Mr. Nobody. “Of course, you do hear about women going abroad so they can have these operations in secret, but I never would have imagined that that sort of thing was going on in Berlin.”

  “I didn’t come to Berlin to have an operation,” Kyung-hee corrected him immediately. “That wouldn’t make any sense. If anything, the opposite goes on; women from Berlin go to liberal neighbouring countries so they can have the operation without having to go through the formalities of pregnancy counselling or having to wait a long time to ‘make up their mind.’ Places like the Netherlands. And actually, all countries keep their patients’ records private. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Besides, my own operation was something I had done twenty years ago. It didn’t happen in Europe. I was still a university student at the time. Back then, South Korea wasn’t anywhere near as free as the Netherlands, yet, strangely enough, there was no need to go abroad to have an operation. The main reason must have been that there simply wasn’t anyone who had that kind of money, I guess. So I remember them each, the bus stop in midsummer, the sycamore’s every patch of shade, an elderly person clutching a fan and a man in army uniform, and the hospital. I stepped down from the bus and walked over to the hospital.”

  I’ll give your ear an adhesion kiss, the healer offered Kyung-hee.

  The single sun became a body. This body appeared in the form of a flash of light, surging in long waves up towards the heavens, from out of the empty air. It was a footless white torch. The body preserved the form of the fire. The body is bloodstained throughout its life and the body is mysterious. The body is a hotchpotch of things which the body has discarded. The sun blazes up, burning its own body. The body is of me. Or I am of the body. The body is open. Objects, thoughts, and perceptions pass through the body as they flow by. The body is embraced. As the body is warm, so it is cold. The body knows pain. The body knows how to tremble. Or else knows itching and softness. The body is hungry, the body cries. The hot fluid that flows out of the body is called blood or urine. The body suffers the touch of lips and hands. The body loves the body. The body slips eagerly into sleep. The sleeping body is the soul’s traveller. The body dreams. In dreams the body sees colours dance. A glittering which defies description constitutes the world. I call this the glittering of the blind. Bright dapplings which come up to the pupils and ripen there. But utterly resistant to description or memory. Lights without form, heading in some unknowable direction.

  The image we end up seeing last in this life is said to be the moment of our birth, said Mr. Nobody. In that case, is it the future or the past? Kyung-hee asked. Almost at the same time as she spoke, a specific point on one of Mr. Nobody’s mucous membranes passed over the keenly-alert spot on one of Kyung-hee’s own, adhering closely. An invisible fire passed slowly over, burning vigorously. The tip of his tongue prised Kyung-hee’s eyelids open, and took some time to lick the surface of her eyeballs clean. His tepid saliva soundlessly scalded Kyung-hee’s eyes. Kyung-hee shuddered, now aware of the fact that she was not a person but some primitive organism made up only of duplicated sensations, a blind insect-cum-mutant butterfly with thousands of eyelids. With thousands of
eyelids that open as one. It was an action suggesting that a certain prophetic affection—I will long for you—was going to haunt many more lives in the days to come, functioning effectively.

  4. This particular street which leads from isolation

  They first came to know of each other’s existence through Mr. Nobody, or else through Maria. Mr. Nobody spoke of him as the cleverest of his sons, explaining that, from a young age, he had displayed outstanding artistic sensibility and linguistic skill, reminding him of a young Beethoven. But now the reality was that he, of all his sons, was having the most difficulty in making ends meet, and not only was it a struggle to provide for his family without relying on others for financial assistance, he had, in spite of his innate, superlative artistic talent, become one of those unfortunate human beings who fail to achieve anything, Maria said. He’s a good guy, warm-hearted and mild-mannered. And yet, at the same time, a man with a strong sense of responsibility and justice. Unlike the majority of East Asians, he’s found it difficult to adapt to the European way of life. He always had eyes for whatever was beyond his grasp; back in his hometown, while he was still a university student, I heard he even did some time in prison. After he got free of his father’s influence, he married a girl who was pregnant with his child and became a father at a young age. Just like his own father did.

  “How was your flight?” Banchi asked.

  “That was just what I was going to tell you about; that I had a great flight, fantastic. Although the plane was delayed, and then the whole thing took around four hours, longer than usual…”

  “And you still didn’t find it tedious?”

  “Well of course I did, it was as tedious as those things always are. But, surprisingly, the in-flight TV was showing Out of Africa.”

  “What? You went via Africa?”

  “No, Out of Africa. The film.”

  “Ah, that. But what’s so great about watching a film on a plane? And surely it can’t have been the first time you saw that particular one?”

  “Oh, you’re quite right. I must have seen it at least five times already. But the Out of Africa I saw on this trip was the one I enjoyed the most.”

  “So the ones you’d been watching up until then were different Out of Africas?”

  “No, they were all completely the same Out of Africa.”

  “Well, it’s been a long time since I saw it myself, so long that I can’t recall anything of what happens. I guess it can’t have made much of an impression on me. I always used to get it confused with A Passage to India, oddly enough. I mean, the titles aren’t even that similar.”

  “Huh? What about India?”

  “A Passage to India. The film, not the book.”

  “Ah, okay. I’ve seen it, now I think about it, but it was a really long time ago.”

  “I saw it in Vienna. Probably with Maria. I can’t remember which cinema, though.”

  “I haven’t seen Maria in ages.”

  “Same here. We only used to call each other for the briefest chats, but it’s been years since we’ve managed even that…”

  “It’s the same for me, but I always think of her…”

  “What? Just a minute, that wasn’t what I was wanting to ask…”

  “You already did ask me! About how my flight went.”

  “Ah, yes, that’s right. So how was it?”

  “I already told you it was good! Fantastic, in fact.”

  “A fantastic flight? I find that hard to believe… well, you’re lucky, at any rate. I hate flying, you see. But is this all your luggage?”

  “The bag’s so heavy, I didn’t want to rely on you carrying it for me.”

  “What are you talking about, it’d be my pleasure…”

  “Banchi, where’s the post office?”

  “What?”

  “The post office, one where I can send an international letter.”

  “Ah, you need Central Square for that. I’ll drive you there tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, but there’s no need. I can walk.”

  “Oh, it’s no hassle. I’m taking my sons to the Children’s Palace tomorrow so I’ll have to take the car out anyway.”

  “I’ll still walk, all the same. I like walking. I have to go everywhere on foot, it seems.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to send a postcard.”

  “Ah, a postcard.”

  Kyung-hee told the story of how she’d once gone to the post office of a central Asian city in order to send a postcard.

  When you walk over grimy, irregular paving stones which are broken off at the edges, then go up the stairs whose edges have also crumbled, you find yourself in the post office’s high-ceilinged hall; the skylight is very high up above the weak lighting and stacks of post boxes, so the interior is always gloomy, and the air is shockingly polluted, she said. As though there was an enormous invisible goods truck parked there inside the post office, constantly belching out exhaust fumes, Kyung-hee thought, feeling dizzy. There’s clearly not enough oxygen in here, I can’t breathe properly, I have to go outside. But Kyung-hee had to buy a picture postcard and send it abroad. And besides, the situation outside wasn’t likely to be much better; the din of the vehicles as they passed through the square, the restless, nerve-grating blaring of car horns, the turbid air, would be just as bad outside as in. Kyung-hee had to buy a picture postcard and send it abroad. At the entrance to the post office was a notice reading ‘Beware of Pickpockets’; as at most public facilities, this was written in English rather than the local alphabet. Kyung-hee went up to the counter and began to sort through a paper box of postcards. I have to go outside, on foot, always on foot.

  Kyung-hee wrote a postcard to Maria. The gist of the message was that Kyung-hee had gone travelling, was still travelling, and that this travelling was likely to take her to Vienna, where she could visit Maria. On foot, Kyung-hee jotted down impulsively at the bottom of the postcard. It now read as though Kyung-hee was announcing that she was going to walk all the way from Korea to Vienna. Of course Maria would never believe this, would probably laugh at what seemed an amusing joke. As is always the case with other actual people, in practice Maria would have no idea. That Kyung-hee would really, actually walk that route. That she would really, actually walk that route all the way to the far end. But Maria would see. That Kyung-hee would be expelled from her own fantasy and end up wandering restlessly from one actual airport to another. Would pass by the terrorist security device, the automatic vending machine dispensing clear plastic bags for items containing liquids, the exclusive VIP counter which had been left completely unattended. Having been delayed due to a storm, the plane would fly so low as to seem to touch Kyung-hee’s head, and the look on her face just then, entirely oblivious of the enormous plane circling above her head, might give the impression that she thinks that which is moving between one clouded item of vocabulary and another, creating past and future simultaneously, is not the plane but herself. Kyung-hee herself, real and actual. Solely through real and actual phenomena.

  Kyung-hee was inside the Central Post Office building. Leaning against the table and coughing drily, Kyung-hee wrote one continuous letter so long it took up four postcards.

  Maria, how are things? I went travelling. I’m still travelling right now. At some point during my travels I’ll probably end up visiting you in Vienna. What I wanted to tell you is that a few years ago I left my home in Seoul, entirely out of the blue. But the thing is, even after walking all day and then some, I still couldn’t escape from my native city. When I left the house I took the biggest suitcase I had, stuffed full with enough clothes and other items to last me several months. Underwear and socks, sweaters and t-shirts, a small blanket, a scarf and a knitted hat, a dozen pencils, a dictionary, books, vitamins and cold medicine, cough medicine, headache tablets, water-soluble painkillers, I even stuffed a sleeping bag into my spare shoes. After all that, you can imagine, the suitcase was practically the same size as me. Pulling
that enormous suitcase along behind me as I walked, my way was blocked by bus stops and motorways, theatres and parks, metal fences and concrete walls, multi-story car parks and facilities for who knows what. And that’s without saying anything of the heaps of rubbish that had been dumped by the side of the road, or the incredible mass of streetside hawkers. Before I knew it I was halfway up a hill, the sweat running off me. Only then did I become aware that the city was made up of countless red hills, like the surface of Mars. All objects that came into view as I went further up the hill did so by shooting up over the horizon, like the round moon rising through a thin layer of atmosphere. Houses and temples and skyscrapers and endless stairs, hills, cars, enormous doors leading into buildings and underground stations. It took all my strength to heave the suitcase up, grasping it with both hands, whenever I could spot the way forward up the hill, and this was made even more difficult by the fact that the footpath kept coming to a dead end unannounced and descending into a subway. Before I knew it, my straining forehead would be soaked in sweat yet again. The bumpy pavement slowed me up, and meant that the suitcase clattered incessantly. Worried about people getting in the way of me and my bag, I deliberately chose whichever routes looked least-frequented, which perhaps accounts for my ending up faced with a succession of steep, winding hill paths. After two hours of this wandering, well, you can imagine how exhausted I was. I sank to my knees in the middle of the path. It seemed that the city had seized hold of me and was refusing to let me go. As though it was gripping my umbilical cord in its clenched fist, I who had already disappeared some time ago, having become a goshawk’s prey. Every time a human being thinks about their own origins, we have to make a concerted effort to drive from our minds the image of a hospital bedpan filled with a frothy mixture of blood, pus, and semen. In the seething spume of an open drain, which I almost stumbled into down some dead-end alley, I was able to recall those words. You said you keep a skeleton in your room, right? I keep thinking of it. There was a time when you said that you wanted to travel to Banchi’s country, didn’t you, to look at the rotting bulk of a dead horse lying exposed to the sun and wind, and you know, you suggested that the two of us go together. I keep thinking of it. I’ll never forget how you said that you wanted to see the process by which an overripe flesh-and-blood body, a lump of muscle and fats, goes back to solid earth; to witness it with your own eyes, from beginning to end. You asked me to do you a favour, to stand at your side with an umbrella, so that if any birds of prey swooped down I could use the umbrella to chase them away…