Han Kang - Human Acts

The women waited until Jin-su disappeared around the corner before they began to break up. ‘Do you know anyone who lives around here?’ the student who worked in the cafeteria asked her. She shook her head. ‘Come with me to Jeonnam hospital, then. My cousin is a patient there.’

At the hospital the lights in the lobby were all off and the entrance was locked. After the two of them had been banging on the door for a few minutes, a guard came out flashing his torch at them. He was followed by the head nurse. The tension was evident in both their faces. They’d thought it was soldiers who’d come back.

The corridors and emergency stairs were as a dark as the lobby. Guided only by the beam from the guard’s torch, they eventually reached the ward where the other woman’s cousin was staying. Here, the blackness was even more intense; sheets had been hung over the windows. Even in the pitch dark, they could sense that the patients and nurses were alert. The other woman left Eun-sook’s side and went over to her aunt. ‘What are we going to do?’ her aunt whispered. ‘They’re saying that when the soldiers get here, the wounded will all be shot.’

Eun-sook sat down beneath the window, her back against the wall.

‘Don’t sit near the window, it’s dangerous.’ The speaker was a man who seemed to be the relative of the patient in the neighbouring bed. It was too dark for Eun-sook to make out his face. ‘There was a lot of gunfire the day the soldiers retreated, too — the clothes we’d hung over this window had bullet holes in them. If someone had been standing there, what d’you think would’ve happened to them?’

She shifted away from the window.

One of the patients was in a critical condition, his breathing ragged; a nurse came to the ward every twenty minutes to check up on him. Every time the beam from her torch arced over the ward like a searchlight, the faces it illuminated were rigid with terror. What are we going to do? Will the soldiers really come into a hospital? If they’re saying the wounded will be shot, shouldn’t we discharge them all as soon as it’s light? It’s barely been a day since your cousin recovered consciousness; what’ll we do if the stitches tear? To each of her aunt’s whispered questions, the student who’d worked in the cafeteria made an even quieter reply. ‘I don’t know, Aunty.’

How much time had passed? Eun-sook heard a faint voice, clearly coming from some distance, and turned towards the window. The voice grew stronger: it was a woman, speaking into a megaphone, but not Seon-ju.

‘Citizens, please join us in front of the Provincial Office. The army are re-entering the city.’

The silence swelled inside the room, like a huge balloon expanding to fill all corners. A truck rattled by in front of the hospital, and the voice grew even louder.

‘We have resolved to fight to the end. Please come out and join us, fight with us side by side.’

The voice dwindled, fading into the distance. Barely ten minutes had passed before the silence it had left it its wake was broken by the sound of soldiers. It was like nothing Eun-sook had ever heard before. The resolute, synchronised thud of a thousand pairs of combat boots. Tanks whose thunderous roar threatened to shatter paving slabs, shiver down walls like glass. She put her head between her knees. A small voice piped up from one of the ward beds. Close the window, Mum. It’s already closed. Close it tighter, then. Can’t you close it tighter? When the military din eventually swept past, the street broadcast could be heard once more. It cut through the silence muffling the heart of the city, faintly audible even from several blocks’ distance. ‘Citizens of Gwangju, please join us in the streets. The army is coming.’

When the unmistakable sound of gunfire was eventually heard, coming from the direction of the Provincial Office, Eun-sook was already wide awake. She could have pressed her hands over her ears, could have screwed her eyes tight shut, shook her head from side to side or moaned in distress. Instead, she simply remembered you, Dong-ho. How you darted away up the stairs when she’d tried to take you home. Your face frozen with terror, as though escaping this importunate plea was your only hope of survival. Let’s go together, Dong-ho. We ought to leave together, right away . You stood there clinging to the second-floor railing, trembling. When she caught your gaze, Eun-sook saw your eyelids quiver. Because you were afraid. Because you wanted to live.

‘How is he planning to get it past the censors?’ the boss muttered. He was examining the invitation card which had just been delivered by a young man from Mr Seo’s theatre. He almost appeared to be talking to himself, but Eun-sook knew that the question was aimed at her.

‘Could he be rewriting the whole script from the beginning? But there’s less than a fortnight left until the performance … how are they going to rehearse?’

The initial plan had been to publish the play this week and ensure that a review appeared in the newspapers’ literary sections the week after. That would be a good way of publicising the stage performance, which in turn would offer an opportunity to promote the book; they had also decided that, during the run, Yoon would sell copies of the play at the entrance to the theatre. But now that the censors had made publication impossible, even performing a play based on that eviscerated script was off the cards. And now, for whatever reason, Mr Seo had gone and sent round the invitation cards as though none of this had happened.

The door to the office banged open and Yoon staggered in, straining under the weight of a large box of books. His glasses were all misted up.

‘Someone take my glasses off for me.’

Eun-sook rushed over and removed his glasses. Panting, Yoon bent down and let the box thud to the floor by the table. Eun-sook opened it up with a Stanley knife and took out two copies. After handing one to the boss, she turned her attention to the cover. There, where she had been expecting the name of the fugitive translator, she discovered that of the boss’s relative, the one who had emigrated to the US. The whole office had been in a state of high tension after handing this book’s proofs in to the censors — now, it transpired that it had been sent off to the printer’s with only two paragraphs removed.

Eun-sook covered the tabletop with newspaper before helping Yoon to unload the books. Accompanied by a press release, each copy went into an envelope bearing the publisher’s logo, and these were then stacked in neat piles to be distributed to the press the following morning.

‘Looks good,’ the boss remarked, again as if to himself. He cleared his throat then spoke again, more formally. ‘It’s come out really well.’

He took off his reading glasses and stood up. Struggling with his coat, he tried and failed several times to get his right arm into the sleeve. His arthritic shoulder, stiff and painful at the best of times, always seemed to get worse during winter. Eun-sook stopped what she was doing and went to help him.

‘Thank you, Miss Kim.’

From close up, his open, unguarded eyes seemed unaccountably tinged with fear, and the lines circling his neck were deeper than one would have expected for someone his age. Eun-sook found herself wondering why someone so timid and feeble would maintain close relationships with writers who were under the scrutiny of the authorities; why he kept on publishing precisely those books which earned the censors’ attention.

The boss had barely left the building before Yoon also clocked off for the day, leaving Eun-sook alone in the office.

Rather than go home early, she went and sat by the freshly printed books. Trying to recall the translator’s face, she found that for some reason or other she was unable to remember his appearance in any detail. It no longer hurt to let her fingers skim over her bruised right cheek. Even pressing down produced a sensation which barely qualified as pain.