Han Kang - Human Acts

As the nights wore on, increasingly more shadows came and pressed up against my own. Our encounters were, as always, poorly improvised things. We were never able to tell who the other was, but could vaguely surmise how long we’d been together for. When a shadow that had been there from the first, and one that was newly arrived, both came to touch my own, extending along flat planes and folding over edges, I was somehow able to distinguish between them, though I couldn’t have said how. Certain shadows seemed marked by the weight of long drawn-out agonies, whose depths I was unable to fathom. Were these the souls of those bodies whose clothes were roughly torn, who bore deep purple bruises beneath each fingernail? Every time our shadow-boundaries brushed against each other, an echo of some appalling suffering was transmitted to me like an electric shock.

If we’d been given a little more time, might we have arrived, eventually, at a moment of understanding? Might we have groped our way towards exchanging a few words, or thoughts?

But this thread of quiet nights and days was severed.

That day, the rain bucketed down all through the afternoon. The sheer force of it sluiced the caked blood off our bodies, and the rot ran even quicker after this ablution. Our blue-black faces gleamed dully in the light of the full moon.

This time, they arrived earlier than usual, before midnight. As I always did at the sound of their approach, I angled myself away from the tower of bodies and melded seamlessly with the shadows of the thicket. The past few days had always brought the same two people; this time, I immediately made out at least six figures. They gripped the new bodies roughly, carrying them over and piling them up in a much more slapdash manner than the usual neat cross shape. This done, they immediately drew back, covering their noses and mouths as though gagging on the stench, gazing at the tower of bodies with a vacant look in their eyes.

One of them went over to the truck and returned with a plastic can of petrol. His back, shoulders and arms tensed up as he struggled under the load, staggering towards our bodies.

This is it, I thought. A multitude of shadows quivered all around, grazing my own and each other’s with soft shudders. Trembled meetings in the empty air, instantly dispersing, edges overlapping again, a soundless, fluttering agitation.

Two of the soldiers who’d been standing back came forward and took the plastic can between them. Working calmly and methodically, they removed the lid and began to pour the petrol over the towers of bodies. Making sure that each was evenly covered, that no body got more or less than its fair share. Only after shaking the last drops out of the can did they draw back to a safe distance. Each of them broke off a piece of dried shrubbery, sparked their lighters and, once the flame had caught, hurled it forward with all their strength.

The blood-stiffened clothes, their rotting fibres matted to our flesh, were the first to burst into flame. After that, the flames ate steadily through the head’s thick hair, the fine down covering the body, then fat, muscle, and innards. The blaze roared up as though threatening to engulf the wood. It was as bright in the clearing as it was in broad daylight.

It was then I realised that what had been binding us to this place was none other than that flesh, that hair, those muscles, those organs. The magnetic force holding us to our bodies rapidly began to lose its strength. At first shrinking back into the thicket, we slipped past each other’s shadows, passing over and under like a caress, until finally, clinging to the heavy clots of black smoke being belched from our bodies, we soared up into the air as though exhaled in a single breath.

The soldiers began to return to the truck; all but two, who, seemingly having been ordered to stay and watch until the very end, remained in their places, standing at attention. I skimmed down towards them, flickering around their necks and shoulders, where one bore the insignia of a private first class, the other that of a sergeant. I peered into their faces. How young they were. How their black pupils, dilated with fear, reflected the bonfire of our bodies.

The sparks spat out from the blaze snapped like fireworks. Water in the viscera hissed and boiled, until the organs dried and shrivelled. Black smoke rolled off our rotten bodies in ragged, intermittent breaths, and in those places where there was nothing left to produce it the white gleam of bone was revealed. Those souls whose bodies had already been thus reduced drifted further away, their wavering shadows no longer sensed. And so eventually we were free, free to go wherever we would.

Where shall I go? I asked myself.

To your sister .

But where is she?

I made an effort to keep calm. My body was at the very bottom of the tower, so there was still some time before the fire consumed it.

Go to those who killed you, then .

But where are they?

The wood’s inky shadows dappled the damp, sandy soil of the clearing. I flickered amid those patches of light and shade, thinking where should I go, how do I get there? I should have been grateful, perhaps, for the ease, the neatness with which my blackened, rotted face would disappear. The body that had caused me such shame was going to be devoured by the flames — that was no cause for regret. I wanted to pare myself down to a simpler existence, just as I had while I’d still been alive. I was determined not to be afraid of anything.

I’ll go to you .

And just like that, everything became clear.

There was no hurry. As long as I set out before the sun came up, I’d be able to find my way to the heart of the city by the lights in the windows. I’d be able to grope my way through the lightening streets, to the house where you and I used to live. Perhaps you’d found my sister in the meantime. Perhaps I’d be able to greet her again, in the only way left to me — by haunting the edges of her body. Or no, maybe she was already back there, in the room we used to share, waiting for me, hovering by the window, or above that cold stone terrace.

I slipped between the fire’s orange flames as it burned itself out. The tower of bodies collapsed into an indistinguishable heap of glowing embers, bodies formerly separate now mingled together.

The fire subsided, and darkness crept back into the woods.

The young soldiers were kneeling in the dirt, propping each other up shoulder to shoulder, sleeping like the dead.

It was then that I heard it: an almighty thunderclap, like thousands of fireworks going off at once. A distant scream. Living breaths snapped like a neck. Souls shocked from their bodies.

*

That was when you died, Dong-ho.

I didn’t know where, I only knew that was what it was: the moment of your death.

I whirled up and up through the lightless sky. It was pitch-dark. Nowhere in the city, not a single district, not even a single house, had their lights on. There was only one, distant point of light, where I saw a succession of flares shooting up, glittering shards of light being scattered from the barrels of guns.

Should I have gone there, right then? If I had, would I have been able to find you, Dong-ho, to ease the terror you must have felt at having just been knocked from your body? With that thick, heavy blood still creeping from my shadow-eyes, amid the dawn light being calved from the night slow as an iceberg, I found it impossible to move.

At four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, the editor Kim Eun-sook received seven slaps to her right cheek. She was struck so hard, over and over in the exact same spot, that the capillaries laced over her right cheekbone burst, the blood trickling out through her torn skin. How many slaps had it taken before that happened? She couldn’t be sure. Wiping the smear of blood away with the palm of her hand, she stepped out into the street. The late November air was crisp and clear. About to walk onto the pedestrian crossing, she paused, wondering whether it would be wise to go back to the office. The stretched skin was tightening over her rapidly swelling cheek. She had gone deaf in her right ear. One more slap and her eardrum might have burst. She swallowed the metallic blood that had gathered along her gums, and turned towards the bus stop that would take her home.