The Cabinet

by Un-su Kim

  Even though cats eat all sorts of urban trash, they still have the pride of a wild animal. They exist on a different plane from dogs, who receive food and shelter in exchange for cute wagging tails and warm hugs from their master. In fact, cats are subservient to anyone, regardless of if they’re strays or house cats. That is to say, cats have no masters. They only recognize friends and subordinates. You might think you’re raising your cat as its master, but your cat doesn’t think that. To your cat, you’re probably closer to a maid or butler, maybe a friend at best. If you don’t do your duties as a maid, you’ll hear a warning from your cat in the form of a stern meow. Meow! It means “My bowl is empty.”

  Once cats have had their bellies filled, they freely roam about their jungle of parks, rooftops, telephone poles, and empty buildings. They jump, they run, they charge, they hide. They may be staying in the city, but they’ve never lost their jungle muscles. They’re both wild and urban! Having the body of a cat – that is a truly marvelous feat.

  Paulus Willems once said, “There’s only one way for a human to be happy in this city. And that’s by turning into a cat.”

  You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Is life that much of a joke to you? Do you have that much time on your hands that you can daydream about turning into a cat?” I agree wholeheartedly. Life is not a joke. No matter how charming cats may be, people should never turn into cats. Why, you ask? Because life is not a joke, of course.

  And despite this, I still met up with that tiresome lump of a man named Hwang Bong-gon. You remember, the guy who calls me every morning saying he wants to be a cat. But I had a good reason for meeting him. Not long ago, Mr Hwang attempted suicide. They found him (I don’t know how or where) having consumed a whole bottle of sleeping pills. What was more impressive than his survival was the fact that he was able to push so many pills down his throat. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for someone to discover him. He was quickly taken to the hospital and had the contents of his stomach pumped. I guess someone was looking out for him after all.

  When I arrived at the restaurant, he was already on his fifth bottle of soju.

  “I’m in love,” he said as he looked at me with bloodshot eyes. “I said I’m in love! Do you even know what that means? What’s the point of life if you can’t be who your love wants you to be? It hurts so bad thinking about how I’m going to live my whole life in a form she cannot love.”

  Mr Hwang buried his face in his hands and began to sob. Hwang Bong-gon. He’s a large man at 6’3” and 290 lbs. It was hard to believe this large man sitting in front of me could go on whining about love. All the people in the restaurant were staring at me. It was mortifying.

  “You’re making a lot of noise just for love. But really, turning into a cat for love – come on, man.”

  “She’s a cat-lover.”

  “A lot of people love cats. They’re pretty cute.”

  “She’s not interested in me at all. I’m just a waste of space to her.”

  “Everyone has their type. So what if you’re not hers?”

  “Just look at me. Even I hate myself. There’s not an inch of my body worthy of being loved.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. You can be a little annoying at times, sure, but there’s lots of girls out there with unique taste in men. Even some who like hefty guys. All you have to do is look.”

  “There’s no one like her.”

  “If it were a matter of effort, maybe you could do something about it. But that’s not how love works. Turning into a cat’s the same business – probably more so. Maybe it’s time you call it quits?”

  “I can’t love anyone but her.”

  “You might think that now, but it’ll pass with time.”

  “No, I’ve loved her for seventeen years now. It only gets more intense with time. I was destined to love her.”

  I was getting tired of this game of verbal tennis. It felt like I was wandering through a maze with no exit. I felt bad thinking that he could have actually died, but I wasn’t cut out for this kind of conversation.

  “If you insist that she’s the one, why not just lose some weight? Lose some weight and I bet you’ll look like a new man. You’re tall; you’d probably look dashing. Don’t worry about looking like a balloon head; I heard you burn the fat in your face first. Go to the gym and jog a little… Yeah, they say cardio is the best for burning fat.”

  “You just don’t get it, do you? As long as I’m a human, she’ll never love me. She can’t feel that kind of emotion toward other humans. Pity, empathy, love, even hatred – she doesn’t feel any of them. She has no interest in humans. She once told me, ‘I have no interest in people, just like you have no interest in pine trees or grass. I’ve tried a million times to love another person. But I just can’t do it. I don’t feel anything.’”

  “What, does she have a disorder or something?”

  “I’m not sure. The doctors say the part of her brain that controls emotions is broken. But what do they know! It’s not like she can’t feel any emotion. She loves cats. Cats make her feel happy and sad, too.”

  Mr Hwang took another sip of his drink, and I took a sip of mine, as I sat next to this stubborn, dense man who loved, and had loved for seventeen years, a woman who could feel no emotions toward humans. I didn’t know what to tell him.

  There are some people who can’t feel love or fear because of a problem with the part of the brain that governs emotion.

  These individuals – whose brains could have been damaged by anything from car accidents or disease to radiation poisoning or genetic disorders – can think perfectly logically and rationally; their only problem is when it comes to emotions. According to a recent article published in Psychological Science, such individuals tend to be better at finance, investing, and gambling. Because they can’t feel the fear, they can make calm and rational investments or bets carrying risks that would scare away most people. The article also reported that there are a significant number of famous Wall Street investors who cannot feel such emotions.

  Kim Yuri, the woman Mr Hwang loves, suffers from a similar disorder. But unlike others, she can still experience emotions – when it comes to cats, that is. Doctors don’t have a good explanation for this. Kim Yuri’s condition wasn’t brought about by some traumatic accident. The disposition has developed slowly since she was a young girl.

  “I grew up in an orphanage,” Mr Hwang explained to me. “She was the headmaster’s daughter. The headmaster was a remarkable man. He treated all the children like his own. Because of this, his daughter had to wear the same clothes and eat the same food as us. She even slept in the same quarters. Ironically, it was his own child who had to grow up like an orphan. But she was a sweet girl. She never abused the fact she was the headmaster’s daughter and she never complained or asked for special treatment. She never acted jealous or envious of anyone else. In fact, she liked sharing her crayons and dolls with the orphans. She would always sit on top of the Zelkova branches and look down at the other children. I’ve loved her for seventeen years. I’ve always looked after her, and even now I stay by her side. When the headmaster passed away, his dying wish to me was to please look after his daughter. So, I’ve always stuck around her. And on the rare occasion she calls me first, I go running. She has a lot of cats, so it’s hard for her to manage them all on her own. She appreciates my help. But it’s purely platonic. She’s tried to feel something for me. We even tried sex once. But it just didn’t work. It was like if a human tried to have sex with a hippo. She simply couldn’t do it with me.”

  According to what Mr Hwang tells me, Miss Kim showers her cats with love. In fact, she already has forty-nine of them. And raising forty-nine cats in a small place would take a lot of love because cats are very territorial animals. What’s more, she owns almost every breed of cat there is, regardless of taste. Indeed, she doesn’t care about breeds. Whether it’s an expensive cat, a mixed breed, pretty or ugly, it’s all the same to her.

  �
��She takes care of all forty-nine cats by herself. She even puts out food in each alleyway for the strays. With this in mind, the real number of cats she looks after is much larger. Naturally, when she sees a cat that’s been hit by a car with its leg broken or its intestines on the street, she can’t just pass it by. Once she saw a cat that had been hit by a motorcycle, crawling around on the ground with its intestines trailing it; she almost lost her mind. She cried out about how evil and cruel humans could be. I had never seen her once cry while at the orphanage. That was the first time I had ever seen her cry. She wasn’t the kind of girl who cried or smiled ever. But that day, she held that bloody cat in her arms as she ran to the vet hospital. The cat eventually died. Yuri didn’t eat for three days. She has spent almost all her earnings on cats – buying cat food, cat litter, cat shampoo, cat toys. She’s hand-built towers for her cats to play in. She nurses injured cats back to health and looks after stray cats. She sincerely feels empathy and love for cats. But she has no interest in humans. One day she asked me what love is. Here I am with my chest about to explode from love, and I couldn’t tell her a thing about love. She once told me, ‘If only you were a cat, I think we would be able to do that thing called love.’ I can’t forget those words. I want to teach her what love is. I want to teach her how tender love can be; it’s warm; how noble the act of sharing love is. I want to show her that love is the only beautiful thing we humans are capable of.”

  Tears started to fall from Mr Hwang’s now sober eyes. He wiped his tears with the back of his hand and took another shot of soju. Not knowing what to say, I also took another shot. The alcohol tasted like bitter medicine.

  All afternoon I drank as I listened to him talk about love. And, to be honest, I was moved by the innocence of a man wanting to change his entire being for the woman he loved. What’s the point of life in this godforsaken city if you can’t change everything about yourself for the one you love? We drank a lot that day. We were both drunk. Mr Hwang cried, and so did I. Finally, I made up my mind.

  “All right. Let’s turn this bastard into a cat!”

  I learned that humans are a mirror of the world. After getting to know Mr Hwang, I started to doubt the symbols of the world I knew. The world I saw reflected in Mr Hwang’s eyes had completely overturned my own world. Something was wrong. I didn’t know if it was Mr Hwang or me or Miss Kim or this world, all I knew was something was wrong. And if something was wrong, what we needed was change.

  I know, I can hear you saying, “But really? A cat?” You shouldn’t be so quick to judge. I said it before. Sarcasm is no help and will never save us from the unhappiness of our lives. So, if you don’t know a spell, or potion, or some special way of turning into a cat, please just be quiet. The only thing we need right now is the magic to turn Mr Hwang into a cat.

  “Is there really someone who’s turned into a cat?”

  “There is. He was a Spanish-African named Paulus Willems. He’s the legendary figure who successfully turned into a cat. He lived a respectable life as a human. He also lived a magnificent life as a cat. It took many lonely difficult years of practice. But eventually he was able to be reborn as a magnificent cat. He’s an inspiration for millions of people dreaming of doing the same.”

  “What did he do after turning into a cat?”

  “He was adopted by a good family. True cat lovers.”

  “Ah, of course–”

  THE MAGICIAN

  In his book In Search of Lost Magic, magician and esteemed student of the occult Callad de Lacras said this about magic:

  You may never discover magic. But it won’t be because magic doesn’t exist. It’ll be because you stopped dreaming. Magic exists all around us. In fact, magicians are quite common.

  I was on my way to meet a magician with Mr Hwang. I knew it was a fool’s errand. The mere thought that it was possible to turn into a cat was foolish. But with what I knew from Cabinet 13, this was the only choice I had. And besides, it was the least I could do to help Mr Hwang, who was bent on dying by suicide if he couldn’t turn into a cat. I just wanted to know if it was possible, for his sake. So please, don’t laugh. It was embarrassing enough as it is.

  The magician lived in a town called Giseok in the shadow of Mt Taebaek. It was once a bustling place, but now it was a dying coal town. Teams of bronze-faced miners were headed to the mines for their shifts. Each time the wind blew, a cloud of soot was ejected from the coal stacks in the open-air storage next to the tracks. Several people were hanging around in front of the way station, which only saw two trains a day. As there wasn’t a single person who looked even remotely like a magician, we assumed he hadn’t arrived yet. But then, a shabby-looking man emerged from the crowd outside the stations. As the man approached us, I secretly wished it weren’t him.

  “Hey! You work for the doc, right?”

  I was slightly taken aback by his informal tone. After taking a moment to look us over, the first thing the magician asked us was, “You must be rich coming all the way out here.” Taking my silence as an admission, he suggested we get a drink. The next thing I knew, I was sitting down with the magician and 290-pound Mr Hwang at a bar with some webfoot octopus, pork belly, and a menagerie of side dishes including cucumber, carrot, garlic, and peppers. Was I excited by this magical meeting? Yes, I was excited – so excited about having to catch a train at dawn headed for the middle of nowhere.

  “You’re kidding me, right? You got dumped by a girl and now you want to turn into a cat?”

  It was only after six quick shots of soju that the magician finally spoke. He was drinking alcohol like a starving man eats bread, and seemed to be suffering from alcohol dependence. An awful stench was emanating from his body, as though he hadn’t bathed in days. I knew that ascetics often made such sacrifices, but the man in front of me looked less like an ascetic and more like a bum.

  “Dumped or not, that’s not really the point,” I interjected. “The problem is the girl doesn’t feel emotions for people. She only has feelings for cats.”

  “Tomayto, tomahto. She likes cats, she doesn’t like you – what’s the difference?”

  “I guess so,” Mr Hwang said timidly, making his portly frame as small as he could.

  “Can you really make it as a cat?” the magician asked.

  “I’d rather live as a cat than a human. I mean it. I’ll do my best. Please, just help me.”

  Mr Hwang pleaded to the magician as he poured him another obsequious glass of alcohol. The more Mr Hwang promised to “try hard,” the more irritable and haughty the fake magician became.

  The reason I came to see this magician was because he was the only bona fide magician inside Cabinet 13. All the other “magicians” Professor Kwon had met didn’t make the cut. And that was because Professor Kwon thought them all fakes. Most of their files either found their way into the recycling bin or became footnotes. That’s to say, this bum that was sitting in front of me was the only magician who was able to pass that hardnose’s test and make it into the file cabinet as a magician. The problem was, there wasn’t a single thing magical about him. Perhaps there was a mix-up in the files? The magician and Mr Hwang continued their ridiculous conversation.

  “And tell me, what are you going to do when you become a cat? Did she say she’ll marry you if you manage it?”

  “I’ve never wanted something so improper as becoming that beautiful woman’s husband, or having sex with her, or bearing a child with her. All I want is to be by her side.”

  The magician emptied his glass and chewed on still-raw webfoot octopus as he took a moment to think before speaking again.

  “Just forget about her. You’ll be better off.”

  After saying this, the magician shut up and only opened his mouth to drink or eat. I wanted to punch the bum in the mouth as I watched him gnaw on the octopus.

  The magician sniffled frequently, as though he had a cold. And there was an indescribably awful smell coming from his shoes, which he had at some point taken off. His
socks were so dirty that you couldn’t tell what their original color had been. With eyes filled with incredulity, I stared at this charlatan.

  “Can you show us a simple trick or something?” I said as I poured him another glass of soju.

  “Why? What do you think I am? Some cheap peddler?”

  It was all I could do to not say yes. To be completely honest, calling him a cheap peddler would be too generous. But thinking about Mr Hwang and how far he’d come to meet this magician, I decided instead to suck up a little.

  “But I heard you’re Korea’s finest magician.”

  “Says who?”

  “Professor Kwon.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It’s true.”

  “That old timer doesn’t believe in magic for shit. Neither does he believe in magicians. When he came here to see me all those years ago, all we did was argue. Why come to meet a magician if you don’t believe in magic? What a crazy old coot.”

  Visibly upset by the memory of Professor Kwon, the magician hastily downed another couple shots of soju. Next to me, Mr Hwang was sitting with a look of worry on his face. We had emptied the grill of all the octopus and pork belly. The magician picked up his chopsticks only to put them back down in disappointment. I ordered another three servings for him, despite the fact he had eaten all three servings of pork belly and undercooked octopus without sharing.

  “Please, have some more,” I said as I poured him another glass of soju.

  “You know, this place has great clam soup.”

  The magician spoke in a somewhat bashful manner. I was starting to get really annoyed with him, but nevertheless I ordered some clam soup.