Recitation

by Suah Bae

  As soon as we went into the shop we noticed two enormous bees stuck to the tacky lid of a box of sweets. The place was deserted, but the door leading to the space at the rear was open. Though the shop seemed very poorly stocked, the glass bottles lining the shelves were particularly eye-catching. Each bottle was filled with sweets of a different shape and colour. Yellow and gold as the eyes of a sick child, bloodshot red, frog green, glassy eyeballs on which time could get no purchase, things armed with an intense monotonous sweetness. The reason for their presence soon became clear. The rear of the shop looked to be a factory for making sweets. A makeshift partition formed of a wooden board covered with a grubby quilt had been erected in one corner of the shop. The voice gradually became more distinct, though it was still mixed with radio static. From the first, we’d guessed that the sound was coming from some kind of machine, like a radio, television, or tape recorder. This was not the voice of an ordinary radio DJ speaking into a microphone. Ringing out with sufficient volume to fill the space known as the stage, while maintaining a crisp clarity; pouring forth accompanied by a certain degree of pain at having to push itself beyond what was innate to it; that was the kind of voice it was. As the voice came, it brought a physical body with it. And when it left, that physical body left too. That thing, attempting through the use of an archaic physical body to outdo the future of the technology known as radio waves, was a sound that gave the impression of being truly human, almost primitive. We were rapt before we knew it. The sound of the sweet factory’s machine ceaselessly rotating over there inside the shop; the sound of the sweet, sticky sugar grains dispersing inside the machine like drops of water spraying from a fountain; the sound of a wide roller shifting slowly, as in a mill; the sound of sugar lumps being stretched out as you do for taffy; the sound of cooled sugar being chewed; an unidentified crunching; the sound of a faint late summer afternoon collecting on the factory floor; the sound of sugar fragments stuck to the soles of shoes; the sound of a rat-piss-stained, flower-patterned countryside quilt sagging down; the private amplification reigning over the darkness of the shop, unalleviated by artificial lighting; the sound of low sunlight slanting onto the moisture-clagged dirt floor; and the sound of the recitation coming from the radio. The sound of the vocal chords, made up of muscle and mucous membrane, which command the space of the stage, carrying to its outer reaches, the singing voice of the Saora shaman’s wife, singing an incantatory tune.

  At the sound of someone singing above the shaman raised his head.

  At that moment his soul left his body.

  His wife was standing by the brazier in the middle of the tent.

  The water in the pot came to the boil, and

  She put a branch of young spring elm into the pot, intended as medicine for her husband. A pale green bud had sprouted from the branch. It was the first bud of the year

  Which she had searched the frozen ground to find.

  When she removed the lid the steam rushed up,

  Filling the tent. In that white rush, she saw her husband mount a white bird and fly off.

  Though she reached out her hand to seize the tail of the bird, she failed.

  The bird ascended vertically to the mountain of cloud which reared up into the distance,

  Leaving behind a single white feather.

  She went over to her husband’s sleeping place. Her husband’s flesh-and-blood body was lying there intact.

  Though his mouth was parted and his eyes open, his breathing could no longer be felt.

  His white hair was scattered in all directions,

  His eyes glowed red with burst capillaries.

  A thick, pliable vein coiled around his whole body like a dull green iron chain.

  There is a place I love, he had said the night before.

  Above a tall tree,

  In the bosom of the wind,

  A lonely place rearing up from within the clouds,

  The edge of an inaccessible cliff.

  The white bird’s feather bobbed on the boiling water.

  People on horseback, black hoods pulled down over their faces, raced past outside the tent.

  They were holding crescent moon knives in their hands. Each time one of them brandished their knife the moonlight scattered into fragments in front of her eyes.

  The liquor bottle and mirror broke.

  The wolves howled.

  The wind raged. A ram gushed black blood and black milk flowed from a woman’s chest.

  The brazier’s fire went out.

  The shaman’s wife was eighteen years old, the abundant black mass of her hair reaching down to her chest, and her white forehead round as the moon.

  She stood in a daze in the tent, into which the cold air had suddenly flooded.

  Father of the tree of life, let me follow him, send the white bird, the shaman’s wife cried out.

  At that, the feather in the water transformed into a winged bird. And a voice from somewhere said,

  You mustn’t think for long, the ground will split but the gap in the rocks will soon heal up, thick moss will conceal the cleft of the entrance.

  Only if you mount the bird this instant will you be able to follow the one who has already died and left for the underworld.

  You mustn’t think for long, the sky will split but a light that no one knows will stitch up that crack in an instant.

  You mustn’t think for long, the dead go at a speed that the living cannot match.

  You mustn’t think for long, don’t turn to look back, go dancing lightly forwards.

  His memory goes with him,

  His self grows distant with him,

  He goes only forwards, his footsteps stop for nothing,

  He will soon have forgotten everything…

  Just then, someone emerged from the sweet factory at the rear of the shop, went behind the partition and switched off the radio. The voice abruptly disappeared. The man flicked the wall switch and a dim light began to glow in the small bare bulb suspended from the ceiling, but this made no difference to the overall level of brightness in the shop. A continuous drone came from the bulb, like the buzzing of bees. The roller was still lurching effortfully around in the room at the shop’s rear. We asked the man if he happened to know the name of the artist whose recitation had just been broadcast over the radio. We weren’t expecting much, given the shop’s almost depressing level of shabbiness, the extreme wildness of the surrounding environment, the poor village setting in which everything was tumbling down, the rough, boorish ambience of the buildings, and, more than anything else, the fact that the man looked so old and infirm we were unable to guess his age. He raised his head to answer, revealing clouded pupils from which the power of vision had clearly been lost, and explained that, rather than a live broadcast of a voice actor reciting a piece in the studio, this was a pre-recorded recital that had been made into an audiobook. The difference, that is, between listening to the same piece of music on a record and as a live broadcast in a recording studio with an orchestral accompaniment. Saora Shaman’s Wife had been repeatedly recorded, he’d already listened to it in three different versions. He added that, however, rather than the recitation having been recorded in the audiobook publisher’s studio, it was a live recording, done directly from an on-stage recitation in Seoul. And that he preferred on-stage recitations, which inevitably include incidental noise such as the strange echoes produced by a larger space, the actor’s footsteps and the creaking of the stage floorboards, the audience’s coughing, and thus feels more alive than a neat, clean studio recording. Pleased, we asked again whether he knew the name of the recitation actor, saying that the voice sounded exactly like that of an actor we knew called Kyung-hee, whom, admittedly, we had never seen on stage. The old cataract sufferer, a devotee of radio recitations as well as a sweet factory worker and store clerk, nodded. I know the voice of that recitation very well. I’ve heard recitations by that voice several times. Even among a group of voice actors, I’m confident that I could pick out t
hat actor’s voice. But as to the voice’s owner, which is something different than the voice itself, I’ve never been especially concerned to know. And so it stands to reason that I’m ignorant of the actor’s name. True, the recitation actor’s name is mentioned at the very end of the recording, but it isn’t as easy to pick up on as the title of the recitation or the name of the writer. Moreover, a reciting voice can sound different on the radio from live on-stage, or from the actual voice, and since it’s also possible for it to sound similar to the voice of someone else whom we already know, lay-people, people who aren’t recitation fanatics like me, might get the actor confused with someone else, he explained. In that case, we asked, trying to maintain a shred of hope as we paid for a paper bag of prunes, could you tell us whether you’ve ever heard anything about a recitation actor by the name of Kyung-hee, whether a recitation actor by that name exists, whether such a thing is possible? The man deftly ran his fingers over the notes we handed to him, checking the amount and denomination, and gave us the exact change. He answered, even though I’m a recitation devotee, and could probably recognise many recitation actors’ voices, I don’t know the name of a single actor. Why on earth should I know a recitation actor’s name, surely that’s as unnecessary as knowing their face. And so we tried again, saying in that case we’ll put the question a little differently, given that the voice which had just been reciting Saora Shaman’s Wife is familiar to you, might you be able to tell us where that voice is now? Whether there’s anything you can tell us about that voice? Oh, he said, I’ve heard that voice give recitations many times. What’s more, I know that the voice’s owner recently gave several performances at a particular theatre. They kept giving out the details on the radio, you see. Like a type of advert. If you’d like, I could tell you the name of the theatre. I’m not sure of the precise location, but a theatre specialising in recitation, the name…

  A few days later we were walking through one of Seoul’s residential districts. It was close to miraculous that, just then, inexplicable chance operated in such a way that our attention was drawn to a poster on the door of a shabby building. The poster was only a crude black-and-white thing upon which dark, sombre hues and indistinct forms flickered. Besides which, the print was so small and blurry it was impossible to read without going and peering at it close up. As we were walking along the road and our gaze lighted upon the three-quarters silhouette of the stage actor on the poster, in that instant we saw Kyung-hee’s image. So we went up the poster and read what was written on it, and learned that it was advertising a recital of Saora Shaman’s Wife, to be performed that very evening, in the basement warehouse of that building.

  We were incredibly excited at eventually finding the theatre, having had only a vague name to go on. So we wanted to go down to the basement right away, and find out about the actor who would be performing this recital. Of course, we would have to sit through the performance first. We went down two flights of stairs, and found a small door without any form of signage. We knocked on the door and an usher promptly emerged. We had to purchase a ticket before we could go in. Though our spirits sank when we saw the actor’s name, printed in clear type on the ticket—a name whose three syllables bore no resemblance to ‘Kyung-hee’—the photo, which was a little less blurry than the one on the poster, was further confirmation that we’d been right to get our hopes up. Our surprise was such that we inadvertently voiced our thoughts out loud, so she really is a recitation actor. The usher turned to look back at us, frowning, and said, obviously, she’s the Saora Shaman’s wife. Despite the lack of any artificial amplification, his unusually low voice dispersed rapidly through the space, like a wave with a long wavelength. When he opened the door the galvanised iron plate became partially detached and dragged along the cement floor, producing a sound which grated on the nerves in an extremely unpleasant manner.

  We would never have guessed that the cramped, recessed space was in fact a performance stage. Around thirty cushions had been arranged on the floor of the dark hall by way of audience seating. The lights above the tiny stage were off. The explanation being that there was still a little time before the performance began. So that day we were the first of Kyung-hee’s audience to enter the theatre. Several more people arrived over the course of the following hour or so, up until the start of the performance. Our seats were at the very front. The other audience members were a teenage couple, whose love of small theatres was probably due to such places being dark and sparsely attended, three middle-aged women who seemed to be a group of friends, and several men who were there on their own, ranging in age from twenty-something to sixty-something. Finally, after a young woman who looked like a university student had come in and found a seat, the usher closed the small door and brought up the lighting over the stage. It was a typical recitation stage, not aiming for any experimental or dramatic effects. The only props were a screen suspended at the front, with an entirely ordinary chair to the left of it, so that the performance depended solely on the voice.

  And that was how we encountered Kyung-hee again, or thought we encountered her. Dependent on the white lighting which illuminated nothing of her face, as it was set up to focus only on the script she was holding and the movement of her feet over the stage, and moreover was not especially bright. Dependent on the utterance known as ‘voice’ being produced by the vocal chords of a tall body cloaked in a black ankle-length costume. Dependent on the material fact that the human body is a musical instrument which generates sound waves, producing emotions and feelings which vary in accordance with minute differences in the shape of the internal tubes which pierce this instrument, producing sounds which make up an atmosphere particular to each individual. At some point we’d taken a look at the minutely detailed anatomical drawing of the human vocal chords in the natural history encyclopedia which Kyung-hee always carried around with her; it bore a surprisingly strong resemblance to the reproductive organs of a woman with her legs parted.

  We had a copy of the letter that had been sent to Kyung-hee. The letter might have already arrived at Kyung-hee’s address; it still isn’t clear whether she actually read it. Presumably the letter had gone via several addresses before eventually reaching us. The very first and last of those addresses being what Kyung-hee had dubbed ‘my Berlin address.’ The letter was initially sent to this Berlin address, then, presumably having been transported to Korea in some traveller’s luggage, for whatever reason that traveller then posted the letter back to the Berlin address from a post office in central Seoul, then, after many months in Berlin, the letter passed along some unidentified route to Shanghai and then on to a central Asian capital, was sent from that city’s central post office to an address in Seoul, and finding no one willing to receive it there, was sent back to the Berlin address with the stamp ‘addressee unknown.’ This time, the person entrusted with getting the letter to Kyung-hee made several copies and sent these out to various addresses in Kyung-hee’s notebook, which she’d probably left in Berlin with the rest of her luggage; the letter we received was one of these copies. It was over two years since the letter had originally been written, and the writer was no longer living. The more hands the letter passed through, the more distant it grew from its initial character, from the myth of its genesis. The person responsible for passing it on would add a brief note to the envelope before handing it over to another party; judging by these memos, it seemed that of those who had received the copy, we were probably the only ones to have actually met Kyung-hee, and so we resolved to give her the letter in person. This, we felt, was our final task.

  That day, no more than two metres lay, in reality, between ourselves and Kyung-hee as she stood on the stage. But when we reached out to pass her the letter, her long sleeve concealed the hand that clasped it, and though, perhaps because the air was so damp, our ears could detect no rustling of paper, though the letter vanished into that voice, which seemed another of the stage’s illusory devices, we were seized by the feeling of having seen it reach the
opposite riverbank, far in the distance.

  I don’t know much about my father. Not only because he is an old man of ninety. Given that all fathers will reach the age of ninety at some point, unless they die first, it’s difficult to assert as a logical extension of this that no one knows much about their father. For a long time now, I’ve been unable to shake the suspicion that my father is already deceased; that those who speak as though he were still among the living do so purely because they do not wish him to die. And so they say to me quite coolly, ‘A call came from your father’, or ‘Your father sent me a letter.’ In that way, he remains alive. And perhaps for precisely that reason I, his son, am also able to live. I want to know how the various records he prepared for my life, while he was working as a trainee journalist at a magazine, will be spread out before me. He wrote a will, an autobiography, various newspaper articles in addition to his regular column, and many letters; he even wrote some poems in his younger days, though I must admit I’ve never read any of them. The magazine editor hired me because I claimed to be attending night university, majoring in humanities. But that was a lie.