by Nick Caistor
The French couple asked the little Buddhist monk what the rational explanation was for this phenomenon. He shrugged his shoulders. Suggestion, superstition, the ‘real dreams’ of a nation that lived in dreams, who could say? It might also be some kind of metaphor employed by a population alienated by modern life, alienated by their routine jobs and lengthy working days, to express the boredom of their journeys back home, or their dependence on the cruel chance that ruled the functioning of public transport and city life in general.
This left the French couple pensive. The train continued to climb and descend mountains. In the white and golden distances the world became mist and the mist became world. The blue peaks rose like the boundless borders of a concave landscape.
VII
A red arch framed the entrance to the shrine. Once they had passed beneath it, they had to follow a winding path which rose and fell and was lined by trees and flowering shrubs. Sometimes the vegetation appeared wild and untouched; at others it seemed cultivated by keen gardeners. From the high ground they could spot the roofs of the shrine up ahead. To either side, beyond groves of trees and hedges, they could see meadows, lakes, stands of bamboo and ancient lonely trees that stood like giants on the lookout, as well as an old wall that also rose and fell almost parallel with the path, but now to the left, and now to the right. In the silence, the birdsong was loud and clear, with such a variety of different calls it was as if the birds had gathered from all latitudes and continents for an international competition.
Their guide had been telling the truth when he had said they would not be bothered by tourists, because there were no visitors to be seen. Here and there solitary monks strolled along or stood stock still to contemplate a flower or empty space. They neither greeted nor looked at them, but something about their self-absorption led Napoleon Chirac to think he and his camera might not be welcome. Would the temples even be open to the public?
Wouldn’t they need special authorisation to photograph them? He reproached himself for not having asked before. They had touched on so many things in their conversation, and yet this fundamental point had escaped him. Striding along the path in front of them, the little Buddhist monk seemed certain of a good reception, but maybe he took it for granted without having checked. After all, he was a monk, and so it was logical that he should have free access to all the temples he took it into his head to visit. But perhaps he had never been to one accompanied by foreigners.
Well, there was no point creating so many problems for oneself. If they didn’t allow him to work, he had not missed much. He could regard it as an agreeable walk that had taught them a lesson. But they would have lost a day. Without being able to explain how it had happened, Napoleon’s thoughts had taken a pessimistic turn. The atmosphere of the place continued to suggest that things wouldn’t be so easy.
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Jacqueline. She was walking with obvious delight as she admired the vegetation, breathing in its perfumes, and doubtless making mental notes for her cartoons. He tried to copy her carefree attitude and enjoy the moment. It couldn’t be that difficult; all he had to do was recover the optimistic mood he had been in for most of the day.
However, in order to recover it, did he not first need to work out what had prompted it? The key obviously lay in their providential encounter with the little Buddhist monk at the moment they’d stepped outside their hotel to breathe the air of Korea. Providential in the extreme: bumping into a native who spoke French, knew everything, someone they got on with and who had offered to be their guide. All the problems of a journey to distant lands had been resolved at a stroke. Wasn’t there something magical about it?
My word, but there was! So why not continue to trust in that magic? It was very easy to do so, because it had not been exhausted by their initial encounter. Napoleon realised there was an extra element that had made everything even more special, and was still having its effect: the physical size of the little Buddhist monk. Something as trivial as an excess in dimensions – in this case, a negative excess – was enough to suggest that he was supernaturally effective.
No sooner had Napoleon formulated this reassuring line of reasoning than he saw something that plunged him back into confusion. A monk had appeared some way off at a bend in the path. He was absorbed in the contemplation of a spiderweb. And the fact was that this monk was astonishingly little. The Frenchman’s dismay was immediate. If there were other monks this small, the magic of ‘his’ was lessened. He looked from one to the other. Even if the distance prevented him from properly estimating his size, the newcomer must have been about half as tall as an average man. Of course, this still left him considerably taller than the little Buddhist monk. At the risk of stumbling on the uneven ground, he continued to stare, and it seemed that this monk was even a little bit bigger than he had first calculated. A rapid glance at their mannikin guide reassured him completely: ‘theirs’ was definitely smaller. He must have been confused by the identical names he applied to them both, because this temple resident was also a ‘little Buddhist monk’: nobody could deny that he really was small. In addition to being a relative term, ‘small’ was a very broad term, very ‘big’ in its own way. And if there was still any doubt as to how correct his estimation was due to the distance, it was a doubt in their monk’s favour, because distance makes things smaller.
The tranquillity brought by this reasoning, which passed through his French mind as rapidly as a lightning flash, didn’t last long. This was because no sooner had the first monk disappeared from his range of vision than another one appeared, equally immobile and concentrating on some thought or other: and he was much smaller than the previous. Napoleon roughly calculated that he must be half the size, although he did not want to exaggerate: this one was further away from the path and was standing in a hollow, or perhaps on a hillock; it was hard to calculate. Whatever the case, he was strikingly tiny. Was Napoleon to conclude that in Korea the vocation of Buddhist monks was reserved for people of reduced size? If that were so, the sense of enchantment produced upon them by the little Buddhist monk was simply due to their ignorance as foreigners; they would have to rethink the way they had adopted him as a magical spirit or talisman. While considering this, Napoleon looked ahead of him once more and had the pleasant surprise of confirming that ‘his’ little Buddhist monk was still smaller, like one of those legendary champions whom the new generations of competitors try to surpass but cannot. He screwed up his eyes (but there was no point concentrating hard on this isolated figure, because that only made him seem larger), then quickly turned his head to superimpose his outline on that of the other monk. But this one had disappeared behind a hedge, or perhaps the path had turned a corner.
At that very moment, to complete his mental confusion, he spotted a third little monk also standing lost in meditation (apparently they had nothing better to do), also tiny. Except that he was much smaller; Napoleon thought he was about half as tall as the second one, and the first one now seemed to him enormous. In his bewildered state, he was unable to decide whether this monk was much further off than the previous ones, or much closer. He tried to get a good view of him before looking away, because he suspected that he was going to disappear as soon as he had taken a few more steps, hidden behind a shrub or some such. He did not take long observing him, because he needed to keep an eye on the little Buddhist monk, who was still striding out ahead of them. He was relieved to see yet again that he was still smaller, incomparably smaller. But if new monks from the temple kept appearing who were smaller each time, wouldn’t one eventually beat him?
The Frenchman tried to get this stupid game out of his head. He had no idea why he had started it in the first place. What did he care if there were bigger or smaller monks? But it wasn’t so simple. Once he had embarked on this speculation, it wasn’t easy to return to the starting point and not set off. It might be easier to take the speculation to the opposite extreme, and get out of it that way. He made
one last effort in this direction: maybe the monks he had seen were one and the same, seen from varying angles and distances; given the winding nature of the path, this was not such a far-fetched idea. If this were so, it would explain his sensation that, however small they were, they would never be as small as their little Buddhist monk: the reduction in size due to distance is never that deceptive, thanks to the automatic corrections the brain carries out.
Another explanation could be that they were not real monks at all, but statues, like the cement gnomes that people put in their gardens, statues of the temple’s ancestral bodhisattvas whose different sizes represented their level of importance or illumination. And of course, these two explanations were not mutually exclusive.
Napoleon Chirac recognised that it was childish of him to cling to the belief that his little Buddhist monk was the smallest Buddhist monk in the world, and yet in every artist there is a remnant of childhood not assimilated into the adult personality, like a seahorse in a human-shaped tank, or like a talisman that allowed him to enter all the temples and take all the photographs he wished.
VIII
His work soon freed him of these sterile fantasies. Despite the particular direction that he had followed within his profession as a photographer, which had more to do with phantoms than realities, the process was a more concrete manipulation of reality. And because he was still uncertain how much time he would have, in spite of the little Buddhist monk’s assurances, he set to work with a certain urgency. What a contradiction: he was abandoning a desperate attempt to prove to himself that he had come across someone who could manipulate dimensions as if by magic, only to almost instantaneously reject the assurances about enchanted, suspended time that this same being had made. But this wasn’t really a contradiction, or it should be said that realism was a contradiction in itself. The flowers from a lemon tree are not lemony, and yet its leaves are! The less realist a work of art, the more the artist has been obliged to get his hands dirty in the mud of reality.
No one prevented Napoleon Chirac from placing his tripod wherever he wanted, nor the camera on the tripod, or the photoelectric lighting cells all around him. The kind of photography he believed in made it necessary for him to decide first and foremost which the central point was. But before he could do that, he had to work out what circumference most interested him. He let himself be guided by intuition, refined by his practice and rectified by his taste. He had discovered that in nature there was no such thing as a circumference. It was the occasion that created them.
In general he chose a point off-centre, so that the circle would open out. The centre of the temple looked a bit like one of those raised open bandstands common in European parks. It was made of wood painted dark red, with a very low roof and half-surrounded by a balcony supported on slender columns. On one side was the shrine, which was dark apart from a bronze Buddha gleaming at the far end. On the other, a dwarf stone pagoda that did not obstruct the view of the park. And in the background (but it would also be in the photograph) stood the monks’ tumbledown dwelling.
Paper decorations hung from all sides of the circular roof. There were more in the entrance to the shrine and inside it, as well as little paper lanterns in the nearby trees. The impression was of an untidy, gaudy children’s birthday party. The pop music blaring out of loudspeakers everywhere only added to the sensation.
Is this a day of celebration? he asked the little Buddhist monk.
No, it wasn’t. But as is well-known, for Buddhism ‘every day is Christmas’.
The paper decorations and the lanterns were of bright, lively colours, mostly red, although the rest of the spectrum was also well represented. Some of them were spherical, and these most resembled the balloons of children’s parties; others were shaped like pagodas, flowers or Chinese letters. Most of them though were round or long concertina shapes, clustered together in different-sized bunches; these were what set the overall tone of the decor. They were swaying gently in the breeze, and all looked brand new. Could the monks have so little to do that they spent all their time making them and putting up new ones every day?
The photographer was bewildered. He was unsure whether he had won the lottery or was wasting his time. The old wood from which everything was built and the views in the background of nature both wild and cultivated could not have provided a more striking contrast to this lamentable party atmosphere. But that was what made it exotic.
At least he could not complain about the light, which seemed to him perfect. He looked at the small tablet on which he received the data from the cells he had spread everywhere. The screen showed very strange results. It could have been his fault because, trusting to the subtlety of the Buddhist light, he had employed the smallest cells. Should he have taken into account the fact that in the East the rational mind is augmented by ‘illumination’? Well, he told himself, the cells knew more than him. On a molecular level, light cannot be disassociated from colour, which is why shapes became visible in representation, whereas at the cellular level there was a disassociation, and beyond what could be represented there was only ‘illumination’ as a mental gesture. Small iridescent whirls appeared in the space between the cells. The rivers of shadow flowed like perpetually waving decorative streamers. He had got himself into a real mess. The optical readers were out of control. What could the answer be? Maybe it was the coloured concertinas hanging everywhere that were causing the distortion. The concertinas could be giving off light. What if there were also concertina cells? Perhaps without realising it, he had made an important scientific discovery… No, he didn’t think so. The situation was still trivial.
IX
He was roused from these thoughts by Jacqueline calling to him. She was looking closely at one of the walls of the shrine. He went over, accompanied by the little Buddhist monk, who had been standing silently by his side watching him at work. His wife pointed out a bronze plaque set in the wall which had Korean writing on it. She wanted to know what it said.
The little Buddhist monk translated it into French, but since it was still largely incomprehensible, he had to explain that it was a text in praise of a minister’s widow.
How strange, commented Napoleon Chirac, that a translation should need a translation.
For her part, Jacqueline expressed her admiration at seeing someone reading so fluently – as their little friend had just done – a text written in those fiendishly difficult Oriental ideograms. She said that she could spend her whole life studying them without ever understanding a thing. (Although she did like drawing them for her tapestries.)
At this, they heard an amused laugh down at floor level. But at first, the short speech the little Buddhist monk embarked on was critical rather than amusing.
Oriental ideograms! he repeated scornfully. What a lack of discernment that innocent expression revealed. As if the Orient were a single exotic whole covering everything. It was no surprise that, if this was their starting point, Westerners needed not only translations of the translations, but translations of the translations of the translations and so on to infinity. And even so, he was afraid that infinity would not be enough for them to understand.
This was especially erroneous in the present instance, because as a matter of fact Korean writing was the simplest in the world. And it was so deliberately. The Korean alphabet, Hangeul, had been created in 1446 during the reign of Sejong during the Joseon dynasty. It had been given the name of Hunminjeongeum, in other words ‘The Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People’. Its promoter, the remarkable King Sejong, had ruled from 1418 to 1450. A great protector of learning, he regretted that his people did not have access to knowledge because of the difficulties of the Chinese characters that were used for writing. He therefore brought together all the scholars of his kingdom, and with their guidance this alphabet was created. At the proclamation of its launch he declared: ‘I have invented a series of twenty-eight letters that are very easy to learn, and
it is my fervent desire that they serve to increase the happiness of my people.’
Nowadays only twenty-four are used: fourteen consonants and ten vowels. It is a purely hieroglyphic system, which is extremely rare and possibly unique. The stroke representing each consonant imitates the position of the tongue needed to pronounce it. For example, the ‘g’ is a small right angle, as in the top horizontal line and the right-hand vertical one in the depiction of a rectangle. A simple test suffices to demonstrate that this angle is a faithful representation of the position of the tongue as it pronounces the sound ‘g’: that is, flat at the front, and then lower at the back. Or take the ‘n’ sound. This is represented by a little angle that is the opposite of the ‘g’; in other words, it is the lower horizontal line and left-hand vertical of the same drawing of a rectangle.
As for the vowels, there are three basic ones. A horizontal line representing the earth, a vertical one representing a standing person, and a little circle representing the sky. (These are not hieroglyphs but mnemotechnic devices).
In writing, these signs are combined from the top, with a consonant and a vowel (and occasionally another consonant) forming a sound, in other words a syllable.
Children learn this alphabet at the age of two or three. Foreigners can get to grips with it in an hour or two, and thanks to its rational nature it is supremely easy to reproduce. Illiteracy is unknown in Korea. At first the alphabet was criticised precisely for being too easy. It was called Achingeul (morning letters) because they could in fact be learnt in a morning; or Amgeul (women’s letters).