by Suah Bae
If the world were to become a place in which books are forbidden, and the only way for humans to have a relationship with literature was to learn entire books by heart—this is a hypothesis connected to Ray Bradbury’s novel—my first writer unhesitatingly gave two names when asked which writer’s works he would memorize, or which would be worth the effort even without such a hypothetical ban, and even though it would seem absurdly laborious: Shakespeare and James Joyce. But, he said, the writer I personally admire is Goethe. Though regrettably, he continued, laughing softly, his death makes it impossible to visit him and take tea together. He made a brief mention of Goethe’s house, now a museum, and added, still laughing, when I visited that house I stood in his study and could picture the writer sitting there at his desk, composing his works. When he lived there, Goethe generally employed a secretary to transcribe what he dictated, rather than putting pen to paper himself. I was surprised by this, and responded that in that case it’s hard to believe his sentences are entirely his own, as his secretary would have been able to improvise some minor edits in the course of his transcription, and since Goethe himself could not have remembered every sentence precisely as he’d dictated it, down to the punctuation, even on examining what his secretary produced, it’s possible that he wouldn’t have been able to spot any cuts or alterations. But the real cause for my surprise was that such a method, whereby another personality can squeeze its way into a creative work, was strange to me. The first writer immediately refuted this, saying that such a thing could not be. What makes you so sure? It’s not as though you yourself are Goethe. It’s unimaginable that a writer could compose a piece “through another’s pen.” “The ‘cornerman,’ who was one of those secretary-cum-assistants, took it upon himself to arrange Goethe’s manuscripts, you know. But he wasn’t just an assistant, as people commonly think, who looked after Goethe’s needs or ran small errands for him. Though his reputation has been thoroughly besmirched, a misconception that persists even today . . . the ‘cornerman’ was himself a poet, and had been one before he ever met Goethe. Though of course, some people devalue his poetic worth by labeling him ‘Goethe’s parrot.’ He was the son of a poor peddler, and lived in poverty his whole life. His fellow poets would never accept him into their own artistic rank. But it’s simply impossible to think that he would have put his hand freely to Goethe’s manuscripts. He was Goethe’s helper, but he was also his friend. I cannot think of him as someone who practiced petty deceptions while sitting at Goethe’s side. And since such a thought can, on the other hand, occur to you,” here the first writer broke off for a short while, as though pondering whether it was really admissible to speak his mind so frankly. “I think you must have never actually read Goethe’s original writing. Or books about him, such as Conversations with Goethe. If you want to make claims about a certain writer, you have to have read his books. If only you’d known the extent to which his writing pursues strictness and exactitude.”
After this discouragement, the first writer fixed me with a look of obvious disappointment. He’d probably supposed that I was an academic, faithful to the classics. I’d thought I knew a lot about him, but had completely forgotten his ardent worship of Goethe. What I knew of his career history and personal inclinations had actually led me to suspect the opposite.
“Are you suggesting that professional assistants could only work if they were always shut up in a corner? And that’s why they were called ‘cornermen’?” I’d hoped to avoid any further criticism by going off on a tangent, but he hurriedly dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “No no, that’s just a coincidence.” As though meaning to apologize for having been overly touchy, he arranged his features into an expression of tolerance, of choosing not to make an issue of my outburst. “His name really was ‘cornerman.’ Eckermann. It was a genuine surname, inherited from his father’s father’s father.” “Oh,” I said, clamping my mouth shut after that short sound.
We drank lemon-leaf tea in his study. The pale green leaves floated in the teacups. His study also served as his bedroom, workroom, office, dining room, and living room. The apartment comprised this single decent-sized space with a balcony, plus a small cooking area and bathroom. Apparently he and his wife each lived in a different apartment in the same building, so that each could have their own creative space. In the center of the room were three longish desks, each of a slightly different size, shape, and even height to the others, the three arranged in the shape of the letter , and littered with books and mail, documents and photographs, a standing clock, a typewriter and an ashtray, a penholder, a glasses case, a notebook, a lamp, pills, a tape recorder, a vase, a candle, a wine glass, a fountain pen, one bottle of ointment and one of ink, a muffler for windy days, a flyswatter attached to a key ring, a fax machine and telephone and, next to these last, a pair of socks, tossed there casually. The bed was pushed into the corner where the ceiling sloped down, the one section of wall that hadn’t been colonized by bookcases. The impression the first writer gave was not much different to what I’d gleaned from the photograph in the book. Granted that, according to him, it was twenty-two years since that photograph had been taken. In the photograph he was already gray-haired, a man with a short, sturdy neck and long, thick eyebrows, his lips curled in dissatisfaction. When he first removed his sunglasses, his gray-blue eyes appeared small, set in a face so deeply wrinkled it seemed strewn with dry straw. They were eyes that saw deeply, yet at a slant. Even the faint evening light seemed to dazzle him, causing him to blink repeatedly. Holding his teacup, this time he was the one to question me. But what it is that you do? Are you a journalist, or a writer? I grew terribly flustered; I was neither, and had been unable to prepare any response that might be suitably impressive.
Contrary to your expectations, you never went back to the first writer’s house. The orchid’s petals and the empty birdcage were swaying in the wind. The balcony with the laundry hung out to dry, the brass candlestick clattering on the table, the chirping of unfamiliar language pressing in through the open window, the noise of tourists thronging the alleyways, and of motorbikes, formed the scene. And what it hinted at was a curious waiting. The kind of formless waiting that takes place within a long and hazy nap, when your schedule for the rest of the day is free. The first writer was remembering your name. But he was unable to recall when it was that he’d seen you last. It might have been several years ago, or several decades. He was remembering you as a broad-minded journalist who wrote pieces for newspapers and radio. Though as far as I knew, you hadn’t written an article for a very long time.
What is it that you do? Are you a journalist, or a writer?
I looked the first writer straight in the eye and said, I’ve been a fan of your writing for a long time, more than a fan, in fact, and so I’ve been hoping for a long time to meet you, and even, if possible, to translate your work—as this is the only possible way of bringing me closer to you, that I could dare to ask for. Though my love for him was perfectly true, the idea of translating his work was something I’d plucked from thin air on the spot. “Oh, so you’re a translator!” the first writer exclaimed, his face becoming open and welcoming. “I’d sensed you were something of the sort, you know. And I was correct.” I was in fact nothing of the sort, had never done anything you could call proper translation, but once the words had popped out of my mouth it somehow felt as though I genuinely did have a long-held wish to translate his book. I made a promise that when I went back to my hometown I would translate his work into my mother tongue and find a publisher worthy of bringing it out. I really was planning to do this.
The two of us exchanged many letters. If emails were included in the tally, the person with whom I’ve maintained the most extensive correspondence would be none other than you. It was already enough to fill a fair-sized book just a year after we first met. Of course, there were plenty of brief notes and postcards with just a single line like “thanks” or “okay.” You were an especial fan of letter writing. Each time you went travel
ing you sent several postcards back to friends, and your job meant that you spent more than half of each year away from home. My mailbox became crowded with your letters and postcards, not to mention the records and photographs, the essays and poetry collections. Once, you even tore out a newspaper advert you’d come across while eating breakfast in a hotel restaurant, and sent it to me, still permeated with the faint fragrance of tea. It was an ad for a tourist destination that the two of us had once visited together. You’d drawn an arrow in pen pointing to the bench in the photograph, with the words “We sat right here!” You also sent me any interviews you came across with either the first or second writer. Even when I went to Berlin for a while, you asked for my address there so you could keep mailing things. Some mail arrived for me there even after I’d moved out. One was an essay you wrote for a magazine, which you’d sent from America. The Berlin landlord forwarded it on, but it took almost eight months to get to me, having remained in Shanghai for several months in the bag of the person who was supposed to send it on. We called it the essay that had circumnavigated the globe. You sent quite a few letters even after we’d broken up. At the end of the final letter, you recommended a film, urging me to see it. You also wrote that I should go and visit the second writer, as you’d told him who I was. At this point, the second writer was already ill. A magazine carried his last interview, which he gave just before he died; in the photograph that appeared with it, his melancholy and ill health were evident in his face, in his huge sunken eyes. He wore suspenders to hold up his trousers, and his hands gripped the straps where they ran over his shoulders. As if they were a slender lifeline still tethering him to existence, the last such bond remaining.
Mr. H, how do you feel about these articles that talk about your cancer? Does it cause you to lose peace of mind, or start panicking?
I’m not exactly pleased about it, of course. It’s true that such articles make you shudder when you first see them. But all the same, I don’t start panicking or anything like that. The only one who panics is my wife. And so, I try to comfort her, you know. Saying “Darling, this is all a part of nature.”
The first writer and I watched the film together.
There was a scene in which the man said, my whole life, I’ve been afraid of being alone and being unable to write, those two things.
We were sitting in the theater. Once the male protagonist finished delivering those lines the first writer grasped my hand. He turned to me and said, “Those pitiful lines could have been spoken by me. I’ve spent my whole life failing to break free from them.” “But I envy you. You’ve accomplished everything there is, both as a writer and as a human being, and you’ve managed to keep yourself free from some things—economic necessity, for example. It seems there’s nothing left for you to fear. Your world is insanely enviable.” “For god’s sake please don’t say ‘accomplished everything.’ It sounds like ‘finished with everything.’” “All lives come to an end, including those with no such accomplishments. I could write a great deal about that other kind of life.” “You’re so pessimistic about your future!” “And you aren’t?” “I’m aware that there’s no further future for me. But that doesn’t make me a pessimist.” “There’s only one kind of future I wish for. One where I can free my soul from the mud suffocating it to death! But the more time passes, the clearer it becomes that both a soul and freedom are equally impossible.”
“If only you knew what an uncertain, indeterminate thing the ‘soul’ is, that it leaves us helplessly ignorant of how to look after it, even at our final hour!” He brought his face closer to mine and lowered his voice, speaking almost in a whisper. “Come and see me like this once a year.” The faces on the screen undulated in the uneasy darkness, a composite of light and dust. The dream’s wavelength spread. Bright white ekstasis flashing like lightning. That metallic dream pierced through me as it passed, and I felt a kind of pain that no longer hurt. “Come and see me once a year. For your sake, and for mine. Each year, around this time, come to this city and see if my name is still written by the door to this house. If it is, that will mean I’m still here. Then open the door and come right in, put down your bags, and spend a couple of weeks here. I have an old typewriter you can use for translation work. The kitchen is pretty cramped, but you can make yourself a basic breakfast, or something simple like soup. In the alley directly below there are lots of restaurants for tourists, and you can buy fruit, bread, dumplings, and delicious coffee in the shops, whenever you like. You can keep the windows open all year round here. Go for a walk around the ruins in the evenings. You can keep your orchid in this room if you like, or a bird. Even if you give them names in your language and speak to them every morning, I won’t mind in the slightest. I’ll sit with them for hours, waiting for that moment when you address them in your mother tongue. You’ll give water to the orchid, food to the bird, and your language to me. To me, it will sound like a love song without lyrics. And you’re welcome to leave your bags here between visits. Do you know those kinds of popular songs? If you come back to visit after leaving your bag, even if a year has passed . . . We won’t have that much time together, but there’ll be so much else for you to share in. And at night the two of us will sit side by side drinking lemon tea and I’ll read my writing to you. So you will be my first reader. Just a small gift that I can give to you. Come and visit me once a year, like that. Take a vacation in this city. And while you’re here, dream of the other cities you’ve not been able to go to. Write something about them. Travel together through dreams. Then, one year, when my name is no longer outside the door, think, then, that I am no longer able to welcome you, that I cannot even remember you any more. Cannot read to you, cannot listen to you. After that, there will be no more need to come and visit, not even the following year, as I will have ended up unable to write. I will be truly alone, and so, I will no longer need you.”
I get out of the taxi and enter the house with its small garden. The house is at the far end of the church tenement block; it stretches back quite far, but has a narrow facade. The front door has recently been painted. Next to the house is a spruce, and on that tree a young owl sits with its eyes half closed. For several weeks already, at around this time of day, that owl has flown from the nearby wood of Chinese thujas to this spruce right by your house. It is dusk.
I remember the day we were together on the boat. In the ashgray air, dense with murky fog, the harbor scene spread out as a wet painting. There weren’t many tourists on the boat; though it wasn’t especially cold, it was constantly sleeting. We were the only ones on deck. You were wearing a baseball cap you’d bought at a Busan street stall, and I had the hood of my coat up over my head. The coat’s waterproof material and the flag of the company that ran the sightseeing trips both produced a rough flapping sound. The flag bore writing in the shape of a shield. The whistle announcing a cargo ship’s departure hung heavy and drawn-out in the fog. Gulls cried as they wheeled in the gray air, and lights flickered on the hill near the harbor, the windows of rich people’s houses. It was the middle of the day, but it was as overcast and dusky as evening as far as the eye could see. The boat was making directly for an orange lighthouse visible up ahead, producing the monotonous repetition of water splashing then sucking each time it passed a hulking cargo ship. It occurred to me that I needed the bathroom. When I made to go down below deck, you told me you would never forgive me if I left you up here alone. Not meaning a quick trip to the bathroom, of course. You laid particular emphasis on “if you leave me alone.” My dear, if you left me alone in this desolate place I would never forget it. And I would never forgive you, you said, with a faint air of theatricality, standing tall on the deck behind me as I, heading to the stairs, tossed out over my shoulder that I was just going to the bathroom and would be back in a moment. I thought how strange it was that I wasn’t angered by your words. Hadn’t you always been the one to leave the other alone? The blue iron stairway was slippery with water. The smell of boiling coffee seeped out from th
e boat’s empty bar. On the other side of the window, its glass blurred with condensation, the bar worker was leaning against the wall in the small galley, smoking a cigarette. The boat pitched and rolled, and a damp mouthful of coarse-grained fog rushed into my throat and lungs. I coughed. It was the kind of weather that called to mind extreme sadness and impulsiveness.