by Nick Caistor
It turned out to be a Greek restaurant, not a Korean one. The owner greeted them effusively and led them to a table. Only when they were finally seated did they get the chance to look around. They found themselves in a squarish room that was higher than it was wide, with about twenty tables covered in white paper cloths, heavy china plates, tin utensils and chunky glasses. Dark wooden beams stretched across the ceiling, and hanging from them, defiantly incoherent, were a great many crystal chandeliers. None of them was lit; what little light there was came in through the front window from the narrow street outside. The walls were lime-washed blue, with several small, garish oil paintings hanging from them.
Curious as all this was, it was nothing compared to the owner. He was a hyperactive, loud, middle-aged Greek with a very dark complexion, intensely black curly hair, thick eyebrows, sideburns and moustache, and a check shirt with the buttonholes bulging across his paunch. Even though there were two waiters, he busied himself at every table, shouted out all the orders, and when there weren’t any, sang snatches of Italian opera in a deep voice that made the air quiver.
He took their orders, which they had deciphered as best they could from a menu written in three languages: Korean, Greek and Italian. They asked for a mix of baklava, goat stew (highly recommended) and bean soup, with a bottle of the house red. The food was good and the atmosphere, once they became accustomed to it, was welcoming. They soon fell into conversation again.
The little Buddhist monk, who knew the importance of wives to his own private agenda, turned his attention to Napoleon Chirac’s partner, who until then had remained discreetly in the background. Her name was Jacqueline Bloodymary; she appeared to be about the same age as her husband or slightly older, did not dye her hair or wear make-up, and was very French.
Turning towards her with a friendly gesture that signified both ‘at last we’re going to talk about something interesting’, and ‘I didn’t ask before simply because I was unable to, because your husband took centre stage’, he enquired what she did for a living. The pleasant smile she responded with showed she had understood the intention of his gesture. Her satisfaction came not only from the pleasure of having understood this gesture, the intellectual contact that was the basis for civilised interaction, but also from her realisation that there was room (and more) in a person of such reduced dimensions for gestures of such a variety of meanings.
What did she do? was his question. Did she merely collaborate in her husband’s work and accompany him on his travels, or did she have her own interests?
Her reply came as a great surprise to him, a rare occurrence as Buddhism usually shielded one against shocks of any kind.
I am a… cartoonist.
A cartoonist? She had smiled as she said this, and hesitated a little, as if the word might have more than one meaning. The mysteries of language.
But she had not meant to create an enigma or have him guess what she meant. She explained at once, accentuating her smile – that is, making it look serious.
She drew ‘cartoons’ for tapestries.
The little Buddhist monk mentally flipped through the folders in his memory archive, and came up as intelligently as ever with:
‘Aubusson?’
No, not quite. It was a dream of hers to work one day for the famous tapestry makers, but at the moment she did so for more modest manufacturers, family firms or old village workshops that needed to update their designs. She was aiming for Aubusson, but had no wish to rush her apprenticeship, like a writer who learns to write a novel by writing short stories.
But that must be poetic work, even if it were considered as a stepping-stone towards a more artistic endeavour. Especially since she could never tell what the final outcome would be.
He was right: it was like writing film scripts. What counted was the idea; that was what she was paid for, and she felt like an inventor. In her case, it was a visual idea.
Where did she get her ideas?
Where did she not get them from! At one time she had let her pencil roam over the paper for entire afternoons (endless notebooks) and then chose from this ocean of doodles some short black lines where something new, suggestive or mysterious had been registered.
The little Buddhist monk, raising eyebrows that were themselves short black lines in a suggestive and mysterious drawing, expressed his admiration at the procedure because it appeared so simple.
Really simple! Whoever said work should be hard? It was enough to choose one’s work well and then choose the easiest way to do it.
Over time though, she had given up this ‘automatic writing’, although not entirely: she had moved on to another kind of automatism, that of chance encounters of shapes in the real world, and their faithful reproduction in drawings. Of course, this did not mean she had renounced abstraction, because when these drawings were cut up, inverted or superimposed on one another, they went back to their state as signs suggesting ideas.
After that came a third stage, then a fourth, and a fifth. There were always new ones. The main aim of this change of method was to learn and gradually acquire the capacity to draw the idea directly without any intermediary.
The tapestry weavers repeated this ‘idea’ endlessly. In fact, for them a single idea could suffice for a lifetime.
Jacqueline had taken a pencil from her bag and had been illustrating her words on the white paper that served as a tablecloth. Joining up all the little doodles with a few skilful strokes, she produced two lines that looked fractal and represented the opposing outlines of the two pagodas, as she had imagined them from the description the little Buddhist monk had given. The space between the two pagodas, ingeniously illustrated, formed the shape of a falling horse.
VI
By the time they left the restaurant it was mid-afternoon. The little Buddhist monk suggested they go straight to the temple on the outskirts of the city, the one he had suggested would be ideal for them to start their work with. Unless they had to return to their hotel first to pick something up… No, said Napoleon Chirac, he had all his gear in his backpack, he never left without it. But he was worried about the time. Wouldn’t it soon be nightfall? He had to remind him that his method of working was essentially time-consuming as it was the painstaking representation in space of the time it took to complete a 360 degree turn.
The little Buddhist monk dismissed these fears with a decisive wave. He said the Frenchman could never before have found it so easy to perform this turn and capture the suspension of time from the inside. Besides, far from being a waste of time, their little trip was perfect, since they had any way to wait for the light, the famous Korean light, to become less harsh: by the time they got to the temple it would have reached exactly the right point of velvety density, and from then on would only gain in depth, reaching the summit of the photographic ideal.
He sounded over-optimistic, but said all this with such conviction that it made the French couple want to go and see. And since this was why they had come, and as they had nothing else to do, they followed him.
And so they set off back along the narrow alleyways, hurrying after the little figure who glided along at ground level. Slightly uneasy, they wondered who exactly they were following. If they had to explain, what would they say? That they had run into the smallest man in the world? Or would they need to say ‘the smallest Buddhist monk in the world’? It would be unfair to reduce him to his physical dimensions, because they had been able to appreciate his intellectual and human capabilities, and something like a friendship had grown up between them. They understood him perfectly, and yet in some (indefinable) way his size still gave rise to the doubt: who exactly did they understand so well? How? Following him along these narrow streets, which were a chaotic mixture of East and West, was like following the genie of tourism, an impression only strengthened by the fact that nobody but them seemed to see him.
When they reached the station, which really was very close, they could transfer their attention away f
rom their guide and take a look around. There were so many people heading in so many directions that the little Buddhist monk slowed down, turned towards them and suggested they stick close to each other to avoid getting lost. Was it the rush hour? Here, all hours are rush hours.
The station was an amalgam of the ancient and modern. This is true everywhere, but here it was even more striking because the modern was ultra-modern, with cutting-edge railway technology stuck like a collage on to the ancient. And the ancient was itself very old indeed, dating from the first days of the train, a time when such modes of transport were ultra-modern, too modern to replace the horse.
They found the ticket office. Napoleon Chirac went up to the window; behind a thick pane of glass, an impassive Korean man spoke to him in Korean through a microphone. His discreet lip movements did not coincide with the sounds emerging from the speaker. The Frenchman realised that not only did he not understand him, but that he didn’t know what to say to him either, as he had no idea where they had to buy tickets for. From down below came the helpful voice of the little Buddhist monk telling him the name of the station that was their destination. He made him repeat it, because he found the devilish pronunciation of oriental names hard to follow. As he had to look down to perform this short dialogue, the ticket clerk, who could not see below the customer’s chest, probably thought he was either consulting the ground itself, or a little dog. Eventually he was able to say the name of the station and held up three fingers to show that he wanted three tickets. At the same time as the clerk said something incomprehensible, the little voice down below shouted: ‘No, two! Only two!’ A moment of confusion followed, since the Frenchman was obliged to carry on two dialogues at once, so that while he persisted with the incomprehensible station name (varying his pronunciation slightly) and still held up his three fingers, he also said to the figure below him: ‘Why two? Aren’t you coming with us?’ This worried him, as it meant a change of plan. And as more unintelligible words poured from the speaker, the voice below explained that Buddhist monks travelled for free on the Korean railways. So Napoleon began to signal with two fingers, bending the third back into the palm of his hand.
Once the problem had been resolved, they went past a huge number of platforms, from which trains were constantly departing. Some were bullet trains, made of pink metal and aerodynamic in shape; others were old and dilapidated, pulled by steam locomotives. Theirs was somewhere in between, the carriage walls made of wooden trellis work. But their carriage was quite ordinary, without compartments, and with seats covered in turquoise-coloured plastic.
On board the train, the crush of the platforms was transformed into impeccable order. All the seats were occupied by men in dark suits with briefcases, or women in ironed, brightly-coloured dresses, office workers returning home as smartly dressed as if they were just starting their day.
There was a whistle, and the train pulled out. If the French couple had been hoping to get a panoramic view of the city, they were disappointed, because no sooner had they left the platform than the train entered a long, dark tunnel.
Is this an underground train? they asked, when they saw that the tunnel showed no sign of coming to an end.
The little Buddhist monk replied that they were only crossing the Rocky Wall that separated the upper neighbourhoods of the city from the lower ones.
They closed their eyes, bored at seeing nothing but darkness and drowsy from their meal and the range of emotions and impressions with which the first half of the day had bombarded them.
When they opened their eyes again, they saw they were speeding through chasms, over bridges suspended between vertiginous heights or steep mountainsides, or ledges at dizzying angles. As far as the eye could see – and it could see very far – all of this was part of a vast mountain range dotted with forests, lakes, sunken valleys and tall peaks. In the incessant hairpin bends made by the tracks, they alternately saw the locomotive puffing up an incline, or the guard’s van sliding down a descent; on one side a peak rising into the clouds, on the other the tops of centuries-old pines covering a distant valley floor. They became slightly alarmed: weren’t they travelling too far? They had understood that the temple they were heading for was on the outskirts of the city…
The little Buddhist monk reassured them: not only were they still in the city, but they were not far from the centre. What they could see was a park, a nature reserve.
A park? But it’s immense!
He said it wasn’t that huge. It appeared more extensive than it was, because of the high mountains and the vertical perspectives.
It was volcanic terrain, which in the remote past had undergone violent folds and transformations.
Civilisation had tamed it, turning it into Sunday afternoon walks in the fresh air, secluded nooks for lovers and backyards for childish antics. A proof of how moderate-sized it was came from the fact that mothers sent their children to play there in the time between coming home from school and the evening meal. When they wanted them to come in, all they had to do was lean out of a window and give a shout. As they gazed out at the vast landscape stretching to the horizon, the French couple could scarcely believe it. They asked what the place was called.
The Mountain Park… of Korea, replied the little Buddhist monk, with a slight hesitation that he immediately concealed by pointing out some of the park’s attractions: the highest and lowest peaks, the darkest forest, the lightest, the valley of clouds, the deepest lake…
Why is there nobody in it?
It must be because of the time of day.
It’s a privilege for all these people, said Napoleon Chirac, to come home from work in the evening and to be able to enjoy these majestic surroundings. The soul rejoices at the sight of all this grandeur.
He was about to add something more when an incident distracted him. A gentleman, a typical Korean bureaucrat, who was seated slightly in front of them on the far side of the aisle, suddenly stood up and pulled the white cord that ran beneath the luggage rack. The train braked at once, with a loud screeching sound. The door between their carriage and the one in front opened and the guard came in at a run. He started arguing with the man who had pulled the cord to stop the train. The French couple looked to the little Buddhist monk for an explanation, or at least a translation. Instead of complying, he merely pointed at the carriage window opposite them. Outside, a station platform had appeared. This seemed to them to explain the incident: the passenger must have wanted to get off there, and when he saw that the train was not slowing down, he had pulled the emergency communication cord.
But why then was the guard still trying to convince the passenger with words and gestures that he should not get off the train? In any event, he was unsuccessful: the bureaucrat had clutched his briefcase firmly to him and was striding towards the door, deaf to the other man’s exhortations. When they looked out of the window again, the foreigners thought they noticed something strange about the station; not only was it deserted, but it looked too simple, like a makeshift stage set; it even seemed to them translucent. The train pulled out of the station, and they saw that the passenger had indeed disembarked, and was walking along the platform.
The little Buddhist monk gave an irritated sigh. His reaction was enough to dissuade them from asking any further questions.
However, soon afterwards the same thing happened again. This time it was an elderly lady dressed in a parrot-green tailored suit who stopped the train by pulling the cord. The guard appeared once more, there was the same argument, with the same result. Since this time the station had appeared on their side, they got a better view of it, and were convinced it was not real. It must be some kind of hologram. They commented to each other that the projector might be on the carriage roof…
The little Buddhist monk interrupted them with another sigh, this time a weary one. It wasn’t a projection, or at least not of the kind they were imagining. There was nothing for it but to reveal something he would have preferred to pass over in silence so th
at they wouldn’t think ill of his country; but anyway, it was quite harmless, almost ridiculous. The deception had begun when he told them the name of the park. In full this was: The Mountains of the Witches of Korea. The fact was that, according to popular tradition, this area was inhabited by witches. Of course, nobody had ever seen any, apart from the inevitable few madmen and visionaries, and the witches’ questionable existence was only revealed in the effects they produced. These were as gratuitous as they were unpredictable, although over time they had become almost routine. The witches were pranksters; the recurring trick they seemed to love was to take over the mind of a passenger on the train that crossed their domain and induce them, in a hypnotic state, to stop the convoy and get off at some point or other along the route, a point at which there momentarily appeared the semblance of a station that was their illusory ‘destination’. After the victim alighted, the station disappeared within a matter of seconds, and so did the hypnotic state, leaving the poor passenger with no other recourse than to walk the rest of the way.
The ‘prank’ was repeated in exactly the same way on each train. It didn’t amuse anyone, except for the ‘witches’, who apparently never grew tired of it. There were many complaints to the Western Railway, and there had even been lawsuits. The guards had received orders to do everything they could to convince the hypnotised passengers not to get off, apart from using force; and although they never succeeded, they always followed the regulations.