Han Kang - Human Acts

‘What’re you doing?’

‘It’s my turn this week.’

‘Like it was last week, you mean?’

‘Well, it was meant to be someone else this time, but he had a blind date so I swapped with him.’

‘Dummy.’

The moment our eyes met and we laughed, carefree. The moment the chalk dust got up my nose and threatened to provoke a sneezing fit. The moment I stealthily slipped the black board cleaner you’d just finished shaking out into my bag. The moment I looked into your bewildered face and told my sister’s story, without boasting, sadness or embarrassment.

That night, I was lying down with the quilt pulled up to my stomach, pretending to sleep. My sister got home late from her shift like always, and I heard the familiar sounds of her setting up the table on the washstand and mixing water into her rice, which had gone cold. With my eyes open the barest chink in the darkness, I watched her, in profile, as she washed her hands, brushed her teeth, then tiptoed over to the window to check that the mosquito coil was burning properly. There, she discovered the blackboard cleaner I’d balanced on the window sill, and laughed. The first time low as a sigh, then a brief burst out loud a few moments later.

She shook her head, picked up the rag cleaner then quickly set it back down again. As usual, she spread her quilt out on the floor as far away from me as possible in the cramped space, but then crept over to where I was sleeping, shuffling on her knees. I shut my eyes fully, felt her hand pass once over my forehead, once over my cheeks, then heard her shuffle quietly back to her bedding, heard the quilt rustle as she slipped herself underneath. In the darkness, that laughter I’d heard from her just now sounded again. The first time low as a sigh, then a brief burst out loud a few moments later.

That was the memory I had to cling to, there in the pitch-dark thicket. I had to conjure up every little sensation of that night when I’d still had a body. The cold wind, heavy with moisture, that had blown in through the window late that night, the soft shush of it against the soles of my bare feet. The scent of lotion that rose faintly from the direction of my sleeping sister, mingled with menthol from the pain-relieving patches she applied to her aching shoulders and back. The grasshoppers in the yard, their faint, almost soundless cries. The hollyhocks that towered up in front of our room. The wild roses blooming in a gaudy, blowsy riot of colour against the breeze-block wall opposite your room. My face, which my sister had twice caressed. My stilled, unseeing face, which she had loved.

*

I needed more memories.

I needed to keep spinning them out, quicker, in a continuous stream.

Summer nights, washing my neck and back in the yard. The rope of cold water you pumped into the metal pail, scattering into brilliant jewels as you splashed it over my sweat-gummed skin. Remember how you laughed, watching me shudder and oooh .

Riding my bike beside the river, racing along with the wind strong in my face, parting it before me like a ship’s prow slicing through water. My white summer shirt flapping like a bird’s wing. How I heard you call my name, riding along behind me, and responded by pumping the pedals as hard as I could. How I whooped with elation, hearing your plaintive voice fading away as I increased the distance between us.

It was a Sunday; in fact, it was Buddha’s birthday. My sister and I were on our way to Gangjin for the day, to pay our respects to our mother at the temple where her spirit was worshipped. Springtime strips of rice paddy streaming by outside the window of the intercity bus. Sis, the whole world is a fishbowl . Clear water in the rice fields forming an unbroken mirror — it was just before planting season — reflecting nothing but an endless expanse of sky. The scent of acacia seeped in through the closed window, my nostrils twitching automatically.

Burning my tongue on a steamed potato my sister gave me, blowing on it hastily and juggling it in my mouth.

Flesh of a watermelon grainy as sugar, the glistening black seeds I didn’t bother to pick out.

Racing back to the house where my sister was waiting, my jacket zipped up over a parcel of chrysanthemum bread, feet entirely numb with cold, the bread blazing hot against my heart.

Yearning to be taller.

To be able to do forty push-ups in a row.

For the time when I would hold a woman in my arms. That first woman who would permit such a liberty, whose face I didn’t yet know, how I longed to extend my trembling fingers to the outer edge of her heart.

I think of the festering wound in my side.

Of the bullet that tore in there.

The strange chill, the seeming blunt force, of that initial impact,

That instantly became a lump of fire churning my insides,

Of the hole it made in my other side, where it flew out and tugged my hot blood behind it.

Of the barrel it was blasted out of.

Of the smooth trigger.

Of the eye that had me in its sights.

Of the eyes of the one who gave the order to fire.

I want to see their faces, to hover above their sleeping eyelids like a guttering flame, to slip inside their dreams, spend the nights flaring in through their forehead, their eyelids. Until their nightmares are filled with my eyes, my eyes as the blood drains out. Until they hear my voice asking, demanding, why.

*

The days and nights that passed then did so without note. A succession of dawns and dusks went by, each half-light the selfsame shade of blue. The passage of time was otherwise marked only by the sound of the military truck’s engine, a deep rumble in the dead of each night, its headlamps’ twin beams slicing through the darkness.

Every time they came by, the tower of bodies covered by the straw sack would be added to. Bodies with their skulls crushed and cratered, shoulders dislocated, rather than having been shot. And now and then, bodies which still appeared relatively intact, dressed carefully in neat hospital gowns, and swathed in bandages.

On one occasion, the bodies of ten people they’d just piled up seemed to be missing their heads. At first I thought they’d been decapitated; then I realised that, in fact, their faces had been covered in white paint, erased. I swiftly shrank back. Necks tipped back, those dazzlingly white faces were angled towards the thicket. Staring out into the empty air, their features a perfect blank.

Had these bodies all been packed into that street?

Had they been there alongside me, jostling my elbow, part of that vast mass of humanity whose voices ebbed and surged as one, yelling and singing and cheering at the buses and taxis that inched their way through the throng, headlights on, making a show of solidarity?

What happened to the bodies of the two men who’d been gunned down in front of the station, which some of the protesters loaded into a handcart to push at the head of the column? What happened to those two pairs of feet bouncing gently in the air, almost unseemly in their nakedness? I saw a shudder run through you the moment you spotted them. You blinked violently, your eyelashes fluttering in agitation. I grasped your hand and tugged you forward, towards the head of the column, while you muttered to yourself in blank incomprehension, our soldiers are shooting. They’re shooting at us . I pulled you towards them with all my strength, opening my throat to sing while you seemed on the point of tears. I sang along with the national anthem, my heart fit to burst. Before they sent that white-hot bullet driving into my side. Before those faces were cancelled out, expunged by white paint.

The rot ran quickest in the bodies at the base of the tower, white grubs burrowing into them until not an inch of skin was left untouched. I looked on in silence as my face blackened and swelled, my features turned into festering ulcers, the contours that had defined me, that had given me clear edges, crumbled into ambiguity, leaving nothing that could be recognised as me.