North Station

by Suah Bae

  Imagining that, rather than flowing, time only gets piled up infinitely inside us.

  Imagining related to Maya. At that time there was “Maya” between us. Maya was the pen name of the woman he had loved since he was in his teens. Even during that season we lived together in the Paris streets, he would read Maya’s books from cover to cover, whatever the content, made an effort to attend each event at which Maya appeared, and even wrote her long letters. As far as I know, though, he never received a reply. I had no idea when he’d met Maya in person or how he’d ended up being invited to her study, her bedroom. To be frank, I didn’t believe for a minute that such things were possible. We were lonely street performers, jobless, whereas Maya was a writer surrounded by admirers, someone who could even be called famous, meaning that however madly in love he was, there was too wide a gulf between them for them to meet in person, for their acquaintance to be actualized. But he talked that down. One day I read an article by Maya in a newspaper. I didn’t yet count myself among her readers, but I bought her latest book because, based on the article, its male protagonist closely resembled him. At this point, quite a long time had already passed since I’d last seen him. So you’re living with Maya! I thought as I read the book. You’re living with Maya! You’ve got her for your own! You’re loved! Maya had drawn him as a shadow behind a veil, but I was able to make him out quite clearly, down to each strand of hair. He appeared to have become Maya’s veiled bride and leaped over old, repetitive eternity in a single step. I imagined an extremely private evening, which he shared with Maya and her young son. The planet of their quiet fireworks. I imagined Maya’s soft small breasts, pillowed on my stomach. How precisely those things which are lived are worth writing about. Salut.

  You might want to change your clothes, Frau . . . , Mao said, producing a gray dress flecked with gold as I stepped into the studio. I took it and was heading for the bathroom when I suddenly got the feeling that something was wrong. I turned back and stared at Mao. I’m not Frau . . . , I’m telling you. That’s precisely why I need to have another ID photo taken.

  “That was only a little joke. I was trying to cheer you up. So laugh. Go on, crack a smile at least.”

  I tried to give the appearance of laughing, but it didn’t come off well.

  “Mao, we’ve already known each other for eight years or so.” I’d left the bathroom door open while I was getting changed, and raised my voice so that Mao could hear me. At the same time, I strained every nerve to ensure that those words sounded as though they carried no weight whatsoever. Which was in fact the case. Not that I strained my nerves, but that those words had no weight whatsoever.

  “All because you showed up one day, as suddenly as if you’d fallen from the sky,” Mao responded cheerily while he got his camera ready. “It’s all your fault.”

  Me: Frau . . . is not some ladybug who suddenly fell from the sky. Only the innocent by-product of a bureaucratic process. No one knows where she came from, who she is, which is entirely to be expected. To put it concretely, her hometown is documents. When, at a certain point in time, fragments of documents that have lost their owner and have been wandering aimlessly ever since happen to come together and form a person, an individual by the name of Frau . . . will naturally end up being born, without anyone having intended it.

  Mao: An individual who just happens to be registered at your address.

  Me: My address and my profile and my proof of identity.

  “I see.” Mao nodded vigorously. I couldn’t tell when he had taken the picture.

  I imagine the day when I first met Mao. That day, Mao had a woman with him. This is Gita, my ex-girlfriend. Her gold and gray off-the-shoulder dress had a faint luster and looked like stripped skin; each time she took a step forward, she came off as intentionally haughty or coquettish. But Gita wore a complex facial expression as well as the dress. As though she was worried that, in the future, I would end up wearing this dress which she so liked. Since Mao only had the one dress for his female subjects to pose in.

  I imagine the day when I first met Mao. I was on the Paris hills. In each small square and at each corner, peddlers had their wares laid out, and the countless people roaming what looked like Sunday’s flea market, oh yes, that was it, roaming the flea market, each looked to have made themselves up like a performer, identical. A performer from a bygone age, but I can’t be sure that time really does flit “past” us on its two feet. The water of memory flows, but isn’t it the case that our faces submerged within it are often not our own? And so it would not have surprised me in the least if Mao were to have come toward me towering over two meters tall, holding a black circus clarinet and made up as a white-face performer in a blue gown, moving slowly through the crowd. Standing there in front of the museum I would have shown no surprise, but rather looked straight at him and even—if I’d wanted to—smiled.

  What with the white makeup and white conical hat, roundish at the end, Mao’s head looked like one great big chicken egg. He had painstakingly painted his lips red, and his right eyebrow was made up with the thick black-colored cosmetic characteristic of whiteface performers. His left eyebrow had been shaved so drastically as to be almost invisible. The blue gown he was wearing had sleeves whose shoulders billowed out like jars, and its neckline was decorated with artificial pearls. Waving the black clarinet like a baton as he walked in his bright gray shoes, he looked majestic, every inch the commanding officer of the performers. And so it will not surprise me even if I fall back in love with him. Because I have never seen a whiteface performer, never embraced a whiteface performer, never affectionately kissed a whiteface performer who has only one thick, black eyebrow. I moved toward him and did it all just as I had imagined. And I spoke his name, Mao, Mao, Mao, my Mao. We held hands and were quiet for a while. His expression masked by his makeup, Mao waved his hand in the direction of the museum and said, we will end up entering that place. Inside it I will take your photograph. Your sleep, called Dignified Kiss of Paris Streets. His mouth twitched curiously as though he was on the point of bursting into laughter. Mao, you won’t photograph me in an ugly way? Promise me that you won’t make me a laughingstock. I begged him like this because I was worried, but what is ugliness and what is beauty? I only ceaselessly imagine that day when I first met Mao. Each time I enter a new sleep that day reveals itself before me. Three women approach from the far side of the fields, walking side by side; each are wearing dresses, and one of them is me. We three women stretch out our arms from our sides and clasp each other’s hands. Me and Gita, and—surprisingly—Maya’s cold hand. The fluttering hems of our dresses are wet with the evening dew, and the sky is dense with stars. The moon is at our backs, and the camera, suspended in midair from a crane, photographs our shadows. Our faces concealed by our hanging hair. A parade of masked empresses, wings attached to our backs. We, women.

  Mao, who detests the news and all media, cannot set eyes on a newspaper stand without making some cynical remark. Babbling excitedly about the bastards who, seeing that North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the melting glaciers mean that we are all doomed to die, are rushing to the banks to get a low-interest long-term residency loan for two hundred years! But Mao, newspapers don’t always print such nonsense. I’m reading a different article. An article that isn’t fear mongering, an article about an item disappearing from a museum exhibit. Serial number 228 – Sleeping Man, a find excavated from the Paris hills, woke up one day and went off somewhere (people, I am truly not in the least surprised). He would have climbed down from the bed, crossed the deserted exhibition hall, passed through the entrance hall, and walked down the stairs. His would have been a slightly stooped and awkward gait, but no one would have been observing him carefully, so if he had slipped into the crowd as he left the museum no one would have been able to tell that he was serial number 228 (even if they had, something else would have come up to distract them). The sight of you from long ago, standing at the bus stop, absentminded as ever, with both hands th
rust into the pockets of your shabby old jacket. The bus is coming. I feel my body swaying and gradually thinning out in the sunlight. I will become invisible, and all that will eventually remain in the wind are the flowers from the pot I had been carrying.

  The chairs in the waiting area had bumpy plastic surfaces, so the pen made a crunching sound as it staggered over the paper. The digital clock on the wall of the government office showed twenty-five minutes past four in the afternoon. Confusing that with the date, I was on the verge of writing down April 25th on the documents for Frau . . . when I realized my mistake. But where do I have to hand in this application form? Each counter window had a number, and the numbers went up to at least 41 (Frau . . . could not see as far as the higher numbers). It seems like all the information windows in the world have gathered here! After handing in the application and getting a receipt you have to take that to the office on the first floor and get an official note of confirmation. If you come back again two weeks later with that note, you will be able to obtain a certificate of registration. When you come to get that certificate, remember to bring your old proof of identity, your newly issued temporary proof of identity, your certificate of stay in the country and the permit, a copy of your bank statement, license, registration certificate for your place of residence, written confirmation from the police, medical insurance . . . people are hovering hesitantly around chairs and sofas in the waiting area. They are all reluctant to approach the counter, wanting someone else to stride up first and grandly present their documents. Where did all these people come from? Where did they come from, and where do they want to go? The civil servants at the counter wait contentedly, sitting slightly askew, both hands in their pockets. Waiting not for the applicants to approach them, but for the end of the period during which these applicants are permitted to come for an interview. For the conclusion of a lawful and natural administration. In the glare from the electric lights their eyes gleam faintly behind spectacle lenses, beyond the glass partition bearing the government logo. “According to the constitution, all citizens have the right of residence and the right to work, with the exception only of those cases in which the base of livelihood cannot be sufficiently provided, and thus society at large ends up shouldering the burden; where there are factors that endanger the security of society at large, or where such rights must be curtailed in order to prevent infringements upon efficiency, good morals, and manners; or to soundly safeguard the institutions of marriage, family, and collective culture (from Peter Handke’s ‘The Three Readings of the Law’).” Frau . . . peers once more at her clumsy-looking application documents. Such meager content doesn’t seem likely to secure her any type of permission at all. Not even for something as trivial as getting a new photo taken, that is. Her old documents will already have been posted somewhere, and the new documents haven’t even been handed in yet. This time gap, in which she doesn’t exist on paper, binds her like a chain. The door opens and closes incessantly, and the congregation swells. Mute supplicants, enough to fill the hall. Applicants spanning a lifetime. Applicants who are not tall, who stand there not saying a single word, concealing their thoughts and feelings, hesitating within the commotion of silence. Breathing deeply, Frau . . . looks up. There are small ventilation holes in the ceiling at regular intervals, which look like speakers. Or are they an ordinary fire-sprinkler system? Punishing all heat with water. She imagines water pouring down from above and sweeping away her documents, sweeping away the documents of all the people gathered there, sweeping away the smiles of the civil servants sitting at the counter windows, extinguishing the hard fossils of faces that wanted to keep living, the electricity wires and electric storage equipment, the telephones and telegram stationery, filling up the hall of time and overflowing without limit. If that happened, my documents would be free of me. They would be able to go wherever they want. To be whatever they want to be. Frau . . . put her name and signature at the bottom of the document. As soon as the tears spill from my eyes, lascivious laughter bursts out from among tired, bored tourists with mugs of yellow beer set in front of them, as though they had been waiting for something of the sort. They who have suddenly grown ancient in this moment, their hair turning gray and their teeth falling out. Where did they come from, and where do they want to go? Twilight is falling outside the window, and the civil servants are preparing to go home.

  How Can One Day Be Different from the Rest?

  “How can one day be different from the rest? Or, how can one day be just like all the others?” This was the title of the play Mrs. Kim wrote. The performance was to be on as large a scale as the title itself. The play called for a huge semi-circular stage to be divided up as many times as possible, each tier packed with countless small rooms. As the arrangement of these rooms describes a huge semi-circular curve, it will be difficult for those in the audience who aren’t seated right in the middle to see more than just a fraction of these rooms, but that doesn’t matter in this case. The more rooms the better. When Mrs. Kim first wrote the play she had the stage divided up into three hundred sixty-five rooms, one for each day of the year, but while the performance was in production this was adjusted to the more realistic number of a little over one hundred.

  Each room was intended to signify a day. The rooms appeared similar at first glance, but less so upon closer inspection. One room had a blue kettle by the window, another had an empty vase on the table, etc.; some rooms had beds and some had sofas. And then there were rooms that were bathrooms, others that were living rooms or entrance halls. There was not a single word of fixed dialogue. The actors were free to go into whichever room took their fancy and improvise a performance that encompassed a single day, whatever they felt was appropriate to the particular room. They could come in bearing flowers and put them in a vase, and then the actor who came in after them could toss those flowers into the trash. If there wasn’t a trash can, they could even throw them out of the window. If there was coffee in the room and they drank it, if they curled up on the bed or sofa for a nap, it’s all fine. Once the performance of a single room was felt to be sufficient, in other words once the performance of a day was concluded, the actor moved to a different room. That was the whole play: hypothetical days filled with each actor’s own arbitrary actions. Just like ordinary people, that is, who spend their own days as they please. If two actors happen to end up in the same room, they fall in love with a sense of inevitability, then when this mutual harmony has been completely exhausted they end the day without regret by leaving the room. There is no way to ensure that all loves come to an end when a day has gone by, and of course, there were cases when lovers encountered each other again in their aimless wanderings between the rooms and picked up their love where it had last left off, though this was less common. And though the director strictly forbade it, there were also instances in which one actor caught another’s eye during rehearsals and the two would plan to meet on stage in a particular room. Still, normally they would meet other partners in other rooms and fall in love all over again.

  Sometimes, the lights would go off in a room midway through the performance; this meant that, at that moment, the actor in that room had died. This would be the end of her performance. She couldn’t go into another room, or even leave the one in which the lights had gone out. The actor who had at one time been their lover would never be able to meet her again, no matter how long they spent searching among the rooms on that huge stage. Because no one can enter a room where the lights are off. It was not determined in advance which rooms will have their lights turned off or when, so none of the actors knew when they might die. They died suddenly, like being struck by an invisible arrow. At a table where they had written something worthy of being counted as great literature; by the window box, wondering how today would be different from other days; changing their trousers; on the phone; making passionate love; attempting suicide; sleeping; getting undressed to go to bed; yawning with boredom; in some pit of sadness or despair, or else in some moment of happiness, want
ing, earnestly, to live.

  But a serious problem was discovered once rehearsals began. Mrs. Kim had not prescribed how long each day should be. Each actor regulated the tempo of the day according to their mood; when their internal clock told them that the day was up, they promptly changed rooms. And so it was frequently the case that morning would be beginning in one room while, in the very next room, it was afternoon or evening. This confusion was exacerbated when two people ended up in the same room. One person would be living the morning, and the other would be living a different time of that same day. This was a problem when it came to love. The words love speaks in the morning are different from the glance it proffers at night. Moreover, one person would want to begin love then and there, while the other would be preparing to perform the end of love against the backdrop of the setting sun that only he could see. And if, having finished that day’s love, he went ahead and left the room, the other would be left behind, at a loss, feel abandoned, and fall victim to frustration or resentment. Often the actors were sufficiently absorbed in their improvisation that these emotions were not performed, but actually felt, and impromptu fights sometimes broke out on stage. Another problem was that, despite there being far more rooms than there were actors, there were still times when three or even four people would end up in the same room, in which case there was nothing for it but for them to give themselves over to an extremely complicated and confusing three- or four-way love. In a single room, as in reality, there was nowhere to hide oneself away, nowhere to avoid a partner’s gaze, so these tangled and unruly love affairs would give birth to quarrels and wounded pride. And so not long after rehearsals had begun, days of tumult and pandemonium were no longer a rare occurrence.