Han Kang - Human Acts

There isn’t a single empty seat in the house. The front rows look to be mainly made up of actors and journalists, perhaps because this is the opening night. When Eun-sook and the boss had been making their way to their seats and she’d glanced to the back of the auditorium, four men in particular had caught her eye. Though they were interspersed among the rest of the audience, she’d been in little doubt that they were plain-clothes policemen. What is Mr Seo going to do? she’d thought. When those men hear the lines that the censors scored through coming out of the mouths of these actors, will they jump up from their seats and rush onto the stage? That chair whirling through the air above the table in the university canteen, the spurts of blood from the boy’s forehead, the cooling plate of curry. What would happen to the production crew, watching the scene unfold from the lighting box? Would Mr Seo be arrested? Would he escape only to live a hunted existence, a fugitive whom even his own family would struggle to track down?

Once the figures of the men have melted back into the wings, their steps sliding forward with a dream-like lassitude, the woman begins to speak. Or so it seems. In actual fact, she cannot be said to say anything at all. Her lips move, but no sound comes out. Yet Eun-sook knows exactly what she is saying. She recognises the lines from the manuscript, where Mr Seo had written them in with a pen. The manuscript she’d typed up herself, and proofread three times.

After you died I could not hold a funeral,

And so my life became a funeral.

The woman turns her back on the audience, and the lights go up in the long aisle between the seats. Now a strapping man is standing at the end of the aisle, his clothes of tattered hemp. His breathing comes ragged as he walks towards the stage. Unlike the aloof, impassive figures who glided across the stage mere moments ago, this man’s face is contorted with feeling. He stretches both arms up above his head, straining for who knows what. His lips gupper like a fish on dry land. Again, Eun-sook can read what those lips are saying, though speech is an uncertain name for the high-pitched sound shrieking out from between them.

Oh, return to me.

Oh, return to me when I call your name.

Do not delay any longer. Return to me now.

After the initial wave of perplexity has swept through the audience, they subside into cowed silence and gaze with great concentration at the actor’s lips. The lighting in the aisle begins to dim. The woman on stage turns back to face the audience. Silent as ever, she calmly watches the man walking down the aisle, invoking the spirits of the dead.

After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral,

So these eyes that once beheld you became a shrine.

These ears that once heard your voice became a shrine.

These lungs that once inhaled your breath became a shrine.

Eyes wide open yet seeming not to see the waking world, shrieking up into the empty air while the woman merely moves her lips, the man in hemp mounts the stairs to the stage. His upraised arms swing down, grazing her shoulders as though brushing away snow.

The flowers that bloom in spring, the willows, the raindrops and snowflakes became shrines.

The mornings ushering in each day, the evenings that daily darken, became shrines.

The lighting over the seats comes back up, dazzling the audience. All of a sudden, Eun-sook sees a boy standing in the aisle. He is wearing a white tracksuit and grey trainers, and clutching a small skeleton to his chest, hugging it to him as though he is cold. When the boy begins to walk towards the stage, a group of actors emerge from the darkness at the end of the aisle and follow on behind, stooped at ninety-degree angles and with their arms dangling down, looking like four-legged animals. There is something grotesque and supernatural about the sight of these men and women, around a dozen altogether, proceeding down the aisle with their black hair hanging down. Mumbling, shrieking, moaning, they raise their heads, revealing lips that twitch incessantly. Every time these sounds grow louder, the boy turns to look behind him, flinching back at what he sees. This slows him down, so the group soon overtake him and are first to reach the steps to the stage.

As Eun-sook stares transfixed at this scene unfolding, her own lips twitch without her knowing. As though in imitation of the actors, she calls out a silent name, the sound dying heavy in her throat. Dong-ho .

The young man at the back of the procession turns around, still bent double, and snatches the skeleton out of the boy’s grasp. Passed from one dangling hand to another, the skeleton eventually reaches the old woman at the head of the procession, her back so bent that it resembles the letter ㄱ. Hanks of grey-streaked hair falling down around her face, she clasps the skeleton in a tight embrace as she mounts the steps to the stage. The woman in white and the man in hemp, who have been standing up there all the while, quietly move aside to let her pass.

Now the only moving figure is that of the old woman.

Her footsteps are so incredibly slow they barely disturb the air around them, while an abrupt cough from the audience seems an intrusion from another world. As though this is the trigger, the boy starts out of his stasis, leaping up onto the stage in a single bound and pressing himself up against the old woman’s bent back. Like a child being given a piggyback, like the spirit of someone dead. So close, it’s impossible to say whether or not they are touching.

Dong-ho .

Eun-sook bites down on her lip, hard, as multi-coloured streamers flutter down from the ceiling onto the stage. Scraps of silk on which funeral odes are written. The actors gathered in front of the stage abruptly straighten up. The old woman stops in her tracks. The boy, who had been inching along behind her, turns to face the audience.

Eun-sook closes her eyes. She does not want to see his face.

After you died I couldn’t hold a funeral, so my life became a funeral.

After you were wrapped in a tarpaulin and carted away in a garbage truck.

After sparkling jets of water sprayed unforgivably from the fountain.

Everywhere the lights of the temple shrines are burning.

In the flowers that bloom in spring, in the snowflakes. In the evenings that draw each day to a close. Sparks from the candles, burning in empty drinks bottles.

Scalding tears burn from Eun-sook’s open eyes, but she does not wipe them away. She glares fiercely at the boy’s face, at the movement of his silenced lips.

It was a perfectly ordinary biro, a black Monami biro. They spread my fingers, twisted them one over the other, and jammed the pen between them.

This was the left hand, of course. Because I needed my right hand to write the report.

It was just about bearable, at first. But having that pen jammed into the exact same place every day soon rubbed the flesh raw, and a mess of blood and watery discharge oozed from the wound. Later on it got bad enough that you could actually see the bone, a gleam of white amid the filth. They gave me some cotton wool soaked in alcohol to press against it, but only then, only once the bone was showing through.

There were ninety other men in the cell with me, and more than half had that selfsame bit of cotton wool stuck there between their fingers. You weren’t allowed to talk to each other. Your eyes would just flick down to that scrap of cotton wool then up to meet the other man’s gaze, but only for a split second. That was enough to acknowledge the mark you shared. No need to linger.