It really does.
Whenever I see this kind of scene, I always end up thinking that humans are truly strange creatures.
Strange?
They’re needlessly loud and always in a rush, and violent too, in many ways.
That sounds more like the description of a city to me.
A city? Mujae thought for a moment, then laughed. In any case, a scene like this comforts me because it feels set apart from anything human.
Some soft thing brushed against my calf. I looked down and saw the same black cat rubbing herself against me. Her swollen belly was taut as a drumskin. Mujae carefully picked her up and put her on his lap. Her fur was matted with bark and grass seeds which Mujae began to remove, breaking off to stroke her when she twitched and fidgeted After a while she narrowed her eyes, settled down and began to purr. It was strange seeing Mujae with a cat in his lap, hunched on a cliff near the top of a mountain. There were still some people climbing up to the Buddha, though the steady stream had slowed to a trickle. They even stick pylons in places like that, Mujae murmured, staring out over the sea.
—
The sun sank lower in the sky as we made our way back down to the gate. I discovered the solution to my earlier conundrum – it was possible to walk down the slope without toppling over, but only by leaning as far back as we could go. By the time we reached the car dusk had fallen all around us. Half the shacks selling smelt and raw rice wine were closing up for the day, and the rest already had their doors shut and lights out. Mujae switched on the headlamps and swung the car out of the parking lot then down to the main road. I had the nagging feeling that I’d left something behind; I craned my neck to look in the rearview mirror, but all I could see were twin lines of telephone poles receding into the gathering dark. Mujae had grown considerably less talkative, and our silence was flooded by the noise from the car’s engine as it carried us forwards over the island. The streetlights were set much further apart than in the city, and disappeared altogether after a certain point. We drove with a great blackness to our left which we assumed to be the sea. Occasionally, the car’s interior would be dimly illuminated by lights from cuttlefish boats far out to sea, but these were only brief interruptions, as the road would soon dip down below hills or duck away inland.
Do you think we’ve missed the last boat, Mujae?
We haven’t.
We shouldn’t have, right?
There are still two more, the last one and the second to last.
Even after hearing that we still had plenty of time, I felt uneasy.
What are you so worried about, Eungyo?
It’s too dark.
Of course it’s dark, it’s nighttime.
But it’s so dark it doesn’t seem possible that we’ll make it to somewhere bright.
That’s nonsense, Eungyo, what’s got into you?
I know it’s nonsense, Mujae, but I can’t help thinking it. The words were barely out of my mouth when the car’s headlights bounced off a sign announcing the dock.
There now, what did I say?
Mujae turned into the dock, but it was still ominously dark. The glimpses afforded by our headlights revealed a quite different scene from what I remembered. To our right was the dark hump of a mountain which we definitely hadn’t seen when we’d disembarked. There were no lights on to signal to incoming boats, and it was equally dark across the water, where the mainland dock should have been waiting. There were no other cars waiting for a boat. We stayed there alone in the quiet dark, trying to understand what had happened. I felt as though someone had cast a spell on us, until I recalled that the dock we’d arrived at was relatively new, built to replace an old one further to the south. The dock the map had said was derelict.
This must be the old dock, Mujae.
Ah, he said, then we must have taken the wrong turning at the fork.
What do we do?
It’s all right, Eungyo, the new dock isn’t far away. Mujae turned the car around and drove out of the dock, but we hadn’t got far before the engine’s habitual rumbling turned into a death rattle, followed by an eerie silence.
—
The only landmark was a solitary streetlamp in the otherwise-empty darkness.
The emergency light was blinking and there was a smell like burned dust. Mujae got out first, and after a few beats I followed him. Thankfully, the car had rolled to a gradual stop rather than a violent crash. Loose wisps of smoke snaked up from under the bonnet, dispersing swiftly in the wind. A black, viscous spillage was spreading silently from beneath the car. While Mujae opened the bonnet and examined the engine, I walked around to the boot and looked back in the direction from which we’d come. Both before us and in front of us was engulfed in the same utter black. I looked from one direction to the other, then tipped my head back to gaze up at the sky. Dark as it was, I couldn’t see many stars, just the hazy, red-tinged sliver of a waning moon. The wind smelled of salt and fish.
I’m sorry, Mujae said. I couldn’t see him, so I walked back round to the front of the car. He was crouched with his chin in his hand, elbow resting on his knees. He seemed to be examining the bumper, but when I went up to him he said again, I’m sorry, his voice still faint and despondent. I’m sorry things turned out this way. I wanted to ask him what he had to be sorry for, but I thought that would just make him apologise again, so instead I said, It’s okay, it’s okay, then turned away to face into the dark, the vast field stretching out around us.
There were no tall structures that I could make out, just some low-slung shapes that might have been fences or walls. I sensed an even wider expanse beyond the field, and I realised what it meant to be an island.
As I turned around I nearly stepped on Mujae’s shadow. The car bonnet was still propped open, and Mujae was on his feet now, peering inside. He was silent, and the dense weave of his shadow stretched from his heels to the edge of the road, giving off a feeling different from that of other things that were there. At the radius of the streetlamp’s puddled light the darkness of the field sucked up the shadow, so I couldn’t tell where the shadow ended and the darkness began. It seemed as though the island itself were Mujae’s shadow.
Mujae! I called his name, but he made no reply.
The light haloeing his bowed head only served to emphasise the night that lay beyond it. I looked up at the streetlamp, feeling lost and afraid. The metal hemisphere capping the bulb looked like an upturned bowl, or perhaps a mouth. The mouth of the darkness. It had to have one somewhere. And whenever it chose to close that mouth, Mujae and the light would go poof and vanish. Setting my back to the darkness, that seemed to tug at the nape of my neck, I walked towards Mujae. I took his hand, which felt cold and hard, more like a bone than living flesh. Even if it is a bone, it’s Mujae’s bone, I thought, squeezing as though our lives depended on it.
Mujae.
Mujae.
Shall we walk? I said, and finally he turned to look at me.
Where to?
To the dock.
It’s so dark, you don’t know who we might run into. Could be anyone.
Anyone would do, I said, that’s why we’re going. I’d be happy to run in to anyone right now. And if we do, won’t they be just as startled, given that we could be anyone too?
We’ll have missed the last boat.
Even so, there must be people who live around there. Let’s go, I said, pulling him by the hand, and he began to move forwards without much resistance. His hand felt both heavy and insubstantial in mine, and I felt strangely alone.
When we’d moved a little way beyond the streetlamp’s aureole, Mujae said, Wait, and returned to the car. He got a hazard triangle out of the boot and set it up facing the direction from which we’d come, the stretch of road that led from the derelict dock. He came back and slipped his hand into mine. We promised the car that we’d return with help as soon as we found some, then
turned away, still holding hands. The sound of the blinking emergency light gradually faded away. As we moved beyond the light’s reach, the density of the air and the feel of the wind seemed to alter. From time to time we looked back over our shoulders at the car huddled beneath the streetlamp. Next to it, a tall, slender shadow was swaying. It was a fair distance away by now, and the darkness had obliterated the ground, making it impossible to tell whether it was Mujae’s or mine. It wavered on the spot as though hesitating over some action, then slowly began to move in our direction. It passed into the darkness from the edge of the light and vanished from our eyes.
It’s following us, I thought, and this thought, that a shadow was following us, didn’t strike the least fear in me. At the top of a low rise we saw streetlamps twinkling in the distance. There were three of them, leading towards a bend in the road. Walking through the darkness that lay outside the light I felt as though the path we passed along was floating in mid-air. Are we ghosts? we wondered. Who could tell, this late at night. We might be ghosts seeking others of our kind, walking under a pale moon.
We walked slowly on, alternately engulfed in darkness and exposed by light.
Eungyo, Mujae said. Shall we sing?
Copyright © Hwang Jungeun 2010
Translation copyright © Jung Yewon 2016
This edition first published in the United Kingdom by Tilted Axis Press in 2016, by arrangement with Hwang Jungeun c/o Minumsa Publishing Co., Ltd.
tiltedaxispress.com
First published in Korean as 백의 그림자 by Minumsa Publishing Co., Seoul, 2010.
The right of Hwang Jungeun to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN (paperback)9781911284024
ISBN (ebook)9781911284031
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Edited by Deborah Smith
Cover design by Soraya Gilanni Viljoen
Typesetting and ebook production by Simon Collinson
Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
About Tilted Axis Press
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Tilted Axis publishes the books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new.
Tilting the axis of world literature from the centre to the margins allows us to challenge that very division. These margins are spaces of compelling innovation, where multiple traditions spark new forms and translation plays a crucial role.
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One Hundred Shadows Page 9