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Authors

PROFILELee Jangwook

Lee Jangwook has authored two novels, Stranger than Paradise and Delightful Devils of Callot; two short story collections, King of Confessions and Everything But a Giraffe ; four volumes of poetry, including The Mountain of Sand in My Sleep; and a volume of critical essays, Revolution and Modernism. Request Line at Noon was published by Codhill Press in 2016.

FICTION

The Diving Bell and the Poison Vol. 64 Summer 2024

The patient sustained catastrophic respiratory damage. At first, he was incapable of breathing independently and had to be intubated, but his condition later improved and the tube was removed. Orthopedics predicted a significant chance of nerve damage due to compression fractures to the first and second lumbar vertebrae, and explained that the patient had also seriously fractured his fibula and calcaneus. Even if everything else somehow stabilized, he would never walk normally again. Then again, ambulation wasn’t the problem. The microfractures to his left cranium were accompanied by brain damage. He had retained partial consciousness, but the patient continued to drift between lethargy and confusion. If there was one thing to be thankful for, he had miraculously avoided damage to the hippocampus, meaning his language and memory functions were likely to recover. Something to be thankful for, yes, from a doctor’s perspective. From anyone’s perspective, really. Anyone would say the same thing. Gong returned to her office and sank into the chair, melting into the cushions. It had been autumn until just recently, but the world outside was clearly already freezing. Winter. So it’s winter. White-gray trees peeked out between the white-gray buildings. The landscape grew paler by the day, bleached into monochrome. She liked that. It’s like . . .a good season for quitting something. She had been aware of this exhaustion for some time. But rest wasn’t the solution. Sometimes resting would only worsen the fatigue. Rest could sometimes mean neglecting the soul, abusing it. She tried to avoid being alone. And if that wasn’t possible, she made sure to always be doing something. At least grinding tomatoes in the blender, perhaps staring at the pulp until it turned to puree. That puree, too, would be processed again. Digested in the stomach and blended with other matter. Gong knew that corpses, too, worked like tomatoes. They slowly decayed, broke down, and disappeared, until finally they were indistinguishable from their surroundings. Like a person sinking into the water and trying to look around. Descending into the pitch-black abyss, perceiving one’s own body deteriorate. Slowly realizing that they were becoming part of the world that surrounds them. Much had changed in the past month. But “changed” was too mundane a word. Her life was now something altogether different. Did it even qualify as “life” anymore? Did breathing, moving, and being sustained count as life? Hyeon-wu would have laughed and replied, Sure does. Life’s a stubborn, dogged monster. Gong turned on her phone. The wallpaper was a picture of Hyeon-wu, smiling as brilliantly as a cloudless day. In the background were mountains, and hikers, too. Gong would playfully complain, You’re a photographer, can’t you send me something nicer than a phone selfie? Hyeon-wu would burst into laughter. Almost a literal Bwa-hah-hah. She had never laughed that way before, not once. She’d loved Hyeon-wu’s laughter almost as much as his pictures, probably because it was the kind of laugh that could disarm anyone. They had moved in together about five years ago. They hadn’t meant to not get married, but time had simply flown by. They hadn’t meant to not have children, but again, time had simply flown by. Did it feel empty to realize their lives were made of so unintentional choices, she wondered out loud, but Hyeon-wu would reply that it didn’t. Even if we didn’t mean for it to happen, our choices and perspectives still shaped it all. And those choices and perspectives were shaped by the logic of the universe we inhabit, too. Even trivial choices with surprising results are ultimately influenced by the rest of the world. That much was obvious to anyone, and cliché of course, but Hyeon-wu made it all sound so persuasive. Gong would respond by tilting her head, staring into his face. Let’s get married, Hyeon-wu had said, lying face-up in bed, Everything will be so much easier that way. Leaning back on a pillow, Gong turned the page of a book and replied, Sure. His proposal wasn’t particularly moving, nor was her response particularly hesitant. Being together for five years does that to people, huh, thought Gong. What if one of us gets into a car crash? We’re not considered family, so we can’t be each other’s guardians. And if I die in an accident somewhere, they wouldn’t let you see my body, Hyeon-wu said, smiling awkwardly. Gong didn’t smile back. Embarrassed, Hyeon-wu added, Sorry, I know it’s a serious topic. Gong still didn’t respond. Hyeon-wu quickly said, Anyway, what should we have for breakfast tomorrow? Boil up some nurungji? No wait, salad with chicken breast sounds better. Or maybe both, heh heh. One month ago on that fateful morning, Gong got up feeling properly rested for once. The sleeping pills had done the trick. In spite of the lingering daze, the dreamless night of rest had been lovely. Sunlight filled the living room balcony, a sight so unfamiliar that she suddenly felt out of place. As though she’d never seen such bright light, such a brilliant image, as though she’d never seen sunlight fill a balcony. It made no sense. I’ve lived here for years. Seen that balcony thousands of times. And on the sunlit balcony was Hyeon-wu. Leaning over the railing, halfway outside. Teetering dangerously on the edge. Gong gasped. One of those days you’re going to disappear, just like that. It was a terrible premonition. The balcony looked like an aquarium of sunlight, and Hyeon-wu’s silhouette was almost hazy as he leaned even further out the balcony with camera in hand. Gong raised a hand and tried to yell. But there was only silence. Is this a dream? Being a photographer doesn’t give you a license to put yourself at risk for your pictures, Gong had once said, but Hyeon-wu had laughed and given a long-winded response about how risks were what imbued his pictures with soul and turned them into masterpieces. She had wanted to protest, That makes no logical sense, but Hyeon-wu didn’t seem particularly convinced either. The debate ended there. Hyeon-wu usually braved the danger of falling from four stories above the ground for pictures of birds, cats, and subjects like rooftop fans. Recently, he’d switched to plants and animals, and even when he took pictures of the city, he only snapped shots without any people. I’m not trying to find healing or anything. That kind of healing’s not actually a thing. People say that nature brings healing, but the thing is, nature is by definition a constant, cutthroat struggle. Even a peaceful forest with a cool breeze is a life-or-death battle if you get down on your knees and look closely at the ground, he’d said, stating the obvious in that ever-so persuasive way that left Gong with a confused tilt of the head. Sometimes, Hyeon-wu would take closeups of the plants on the balcony. It was almost foreign to see him that way, safely taking safe pictures. Hyeon-wu was supposed to be going from New Zealand to Antarctica, taking the Trans-Siberian Railway to a northern town shivering at fifty below freezing, or racing across the Mongolian deserts to his next remote adventure. At some point he began crisscrossing battlefields. Palestine, when Israel began its offensive; a refugee camp on the border, when Syrian forces began attacking the rebels; Washington, when the Occupy movement was at its peak; Paris, when the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred. That was Hyeon-wu, and Gong, although nervous, did not get upset with him. Finally, Hyeon-wu pulled himself back inside and waved. Then he focused again on something beyond the railings. It was just like him, to be so immersed in his work. Gong wondered what he might be doing, but instead muttered, Hey. Good morning. She paused. Then added: I love you. It was so unlike herself that she chuckled, but no one else would have seen it as laughter because it was so faint that it resembled more a stilted cringe. Being an unsentimental person, Gong never really said things like I love you or even I like you. Hyeon-wu would tease, C’mon, don’t make excuses about personality. You’re just not that into me. She would respond with an awkward smile. Back then, Hyeon-wu had said that he loved how her eyes and lips twisted with those smiles—It’s nice to see a shy smile on you sometimes. Shy. Shy, yes. Yes, it was shyness. But what really, did that mean? Gong didn’t really understand such emotions. So much about emotions still escaped her. The blinding sunshine still spilled in through the windows, and now the balcony remained utterly empty. No longer would she look out at the balcony and mutter quietly, like she did back on that morning. * Gong headed for the ICU, counting the time until her rounds. The patient: Kim Jeong-sik, sixty-five years old. He looked more like a middle-aged man than an elderly one and had a naturally strong build—that is, before he was carried into the hospital. Now, his skin was damaged in multiple places and his body hooked up to all manner of tubes and lines. Kim Jeong-sik had jumped, burning, from the fourth floor. He’d only survived because he’d been caught in the branches of a tree and then landed on a car’s sunroof. His unusually youthful body had shielded him from the worst. You should have seen all the people performing CPR when he arrived, the head nurse had said. Reporters had packed the hospital lobby and spilled all the way out the doors. Vehicles from broadcasting companies came and went. The director’s office instructed staff to be “especially cautious” with the patient, assigning the best of the best to his medical team. Gong was conscripted from neurosurgery, being a specialist in traumatic cerebral hemorrhaging. When Gong first joined the team, the attending physician was a surgeon who had been practicing for two years. They performed urgent treatment like skin grafts. Now, a different doctor was the attending physician: a neurosurgeon with three years of experience. The patient was to be transferred from one department to another, passing through neurosurgery and neurology before being sent off to rehabilitation. That is, if he was lucky. Gong spared no effort, designating the talented and hardworking resident as the attending physician and personally performing daily checkups, even visiting the ICU overnight. Due to subdural hemorrhaging, the patient was at risk of cerebral edemas and spikes in intracranial pressure, which meant they couldn’t let their guard down. No one came to visit. According to the head nurse—who knew everyone and heard everything—the journalists whispered that the patient had lived alone for a long time. He’d run a decently successful chain of VHS and DVD rental stores until just over a decade ago, but sales fell year after year, because he had clung to an obviously dying business model. It was not long before his company failed. It was a predictable end. He’d tried to diversify, opening 24 hours and also offering comic books and convenience store fare like snacks, but to no avail. Other rental stores had long since shuttered their doors, and as restaurants and cafés sprung up in his neighborhood, rents began to rise unsustainably. By the time he liquidated the business, he was left with nothing but debt. What came next, too, was predictable. First, he turned to Ocean Story slot machine arcades, and when that went bust, he got hooked on online gambling funded with loans, and ended up getting divorced. He’d spent a significant amount of time in homeless shelters, more recently circulating dirt-cheap gosiwon room rentals. It was a cruel fate for the man, yes, but a fate so generic and common that no one paid him any attention. At night, the ICU descended into watery silence. Gong stood amidst the faint specks of light and stared at the patient. The patient had regained consciousness, yes, but he was not fully lucid, pumped full of painkillers and a cocktail of drugs. When he was awake, he was capable of some conversation, but nothing that counted as coherent. A nurse would have to lean all the way into his face to hear what he whispered, which were mostly short gasps of water, can’t see, hurts, and where am I. The rest of his nerves still had not recovered. His body did take signals from his brain and moved almost imperceptibly, but his responses were slow and limited. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Gong thought back to that movie. The story of a man descending endlessly into the water, stuck in a diving bell. The diving bell was, of course, a metaphor. The movie was about a white man left fully paralyzed due to a stroke. The fall of the cynical, proud, and successful symbol of masculinity. And death. I guess even people like him dream of being butterflies, she had thought while watching the movie, then wondered quizzically, Or is it because he’s like that he dreams about being a butterfly? Plip. Plip. Plip. The intravenous drip continued at steady intervals. The patient was in a lethargic state, his breathing unstable. Gong quietly took in his face. It was an angular visage, so much that it almost seemed to be made of stone. But at the moment, he was completely defenseless. Utterly unprepared for outside intrusion or harm. As fragile as expired tofu. She placed a hand on his neck. Pressed gently on his carotid artery, his weakest point. Eyes narrowing, Gong pressed harder. The artery took clear shape on his throat. One small cut with a razor, for instance, and his blood would drain away rapidly. The life would leak out of him like air from a balloon. Gong knew that people were, above all, physical beings. The human soul was neither holy nor virtuous nor evil. It was all simply the result of physical, genetic, and environmental circumstances and changes. A small injection of specific chemicals would confuse the brain’s neurotransmitters, thrusting the individual into another dimension. It was so easy to change sensations, desires, and personalities. Humans were weak and malleable and controllable. There was no other way to describe them, she thought. She inserted a needle into the patient’s arm. The drug would help staunch hemorrhaging and prevent intracranial pressure from rising. Once the patient’s physical circumstances improved, he would be able to converse. They could lean an ear towards his mouth to hear him speak, or lean into his ear to speak to him. If he improved further, he might even be able to nod in response. Gong returned home and looked out at the balcony. It was steeped in silence. There was no rain or snow that day, no particulate matter obscuring the sun. The balcony was exactly where it had been before. The sun still rose in the east and set in the west. The only difference was Hyeon-wu. And the only change was in the plants on the balcony. The plants’ change, however, had been dramatic. Some died so quickly that there was nothing she could do. At first, she tried watering them, but soon gave up. It was like the plants were rejecting water, sunlight, nutrients, everything. Her heart hardened one night and she tossed them all out. Even the poinsettia and the geranium, making a point of taking them outside at midnight when the garbage truck came by and putting some bills in the garbage collector’s hand. Now only one flowerpot remained, the one where Hyeon-wu’s ashes were buried. A plant was growing out of the soil, but Gong didn’t know what it was called. She didn’t want to know. All she had to do was hold a smartphone in front of it, but what did it matter? The plant had a long, thin stem with unnaturally heavy leaves, which were broad and dark green. The poor stem was struggling to hold up the burden. She couldn’t stand the imbalance. She understood that the world was not sentimental. And that the truth was it was not the world that was unsentimental, but herself. Maybe I’ve been off-balance all this time. Like a heavy leaf clinging to a slender plant. Gong thought back to her intern days, of when she’d been tasked to assess dementia patients. Repeat after me. Apple. Tree. Train. One more time. Apple. Tree. Train. Try to remember, okay? They would then discuss the weather for a minute, then Gong would ask, What comes after “apple”? The patients would stare back blankly. Apple…apple…after apple was…pear? …Mountain? …Home? The lost gazes would eventually land on her face and stop. I can do this all day, Gong had thought when she looked at these people who walked all alone in their landscapes of apples and trees and trains. It was like walking into the deepest, innermost sanctums of their hearts. In those sanctums lived apples, pears, mountains, and homes, but none of that had made her lonely. Or compassionate or sympathetic. It was a satisfying job, bringing some comfort to the gaps in patients’ souls. Gong had no interest in yoga or Pilates, and had never gotten into plants, pets, music, or art. Never met up to chat with friends at nice restaurants or ask how they were doing over text. Only occasionally browsed Twitter and Instagram, but only because they were followers of acquaintances, especially Hyeon-wu. She was neither a drinker nor smoker, only enjoying a solitary Weizen once a week or so, and only a single can over a book or an old movie. Hyeon-wu never understood. Do you ever, like, have fun? I live with you and I still don’t get you sometimes. Gong had stared right back. Fun? Fun, huh. Gong wasn’t used to that word. She knew a bit about Hyeon-wu’s work, of course. How they brimmed with emotion. Each snapshot precarious and impassioned and filled with longing, beautiful or ugly or meaningful or meaningless. Hyeon-wu had only held two exhibits and published one photo essay book, but he was already a rising star not just as a freelance journalist but as a photographer. Everyone agreed that he would someday go mainstream. The photo essay book was already about to join the ranks of bestsellers. Gong’s only interest was in the brain’s neural circuits and the structure of the cranium. The speed and state of the blood circulating the cerebrovascular system. The gunk building up in the blood vessels, whether or not there was subarachnoid hemorrhaging, and cerebral aneurysms. She felt like a simple component in the machine that was the universe. And had no complaints.* A pair of police detectives waited on the bench. One seemed to be in his fifties, and the other early-to-mid thirties. The middle-aged one was utterly relaxed, like he had seen every case in the book and then some. He was the sarcastic half of a buddy-cop movie brought to life, or at least heavily influenced by one. The younger detective asked most of the questions while the older one observed—took in, really—Gong with narrowed eyes. They assumed she wouldn’t cause them problems because she was a woman. But Gong didn’t care, because eventually they would understand: in this particular field, the detectives knew absolutely nothing. Her office was simple and ordinary. The winter sun hung on the drapes. Gong kept the drapes shut when she wasn’t on duty, turning on a lamp instead. The office was dim, just lit enough so that her eyes felt comfortable. “You keep up with the news, Doctor?” “I do.” “How is the patient?” “We’re doing what we can so you can interview him in a couple of weeks, but we can’t guarantee—” “A couple of weeks,” the young detective repeated. This time, the older detective steepled his fingers and also repeated, “A couple of weeks?” Gong frowned. “Again, we can’t guarantee anything. The patient’s condition could rapidly deteriorate at any time.” “So less than two weeks,” the young detective concluded. Gong did not nod. “His respiratory system and cranial nerves are our primary concerns at the moment, but it’s not so simple. He could suffer acute cardiac arrest, or even fall into a coma,” she explained, combining facts with hypotheses. If the patient did indeed improve, they could hand him over to detectives in under two weeks. Yes, a handover. Gong and the team were tasked with restoring him to sufficient health that he was capable of basic conversation by that point. But when speaking with the detectives, Gong was always conservative in her assessments—not because she wanted to avoid getting their hopes up, but because no one truly knew what might happen to the patient. The detectives had to be made aware. It took time for vitals to stabilize, and most importantly, for linguistic functions to recover. Until then, it would be impossible to conduct a simple interview, let alone an interrogation. You are to wait, if only for the sake of accurate testimony. You must wait. You must wait. That was the message from Gong and the team. The media and the internet mostly seemed to acknowledge at this point that it would take time for the truth to be unveiled. Let’s take our time. There’s no need to hurry. The police, too, did not complain about the pace of the investigation, at least not out loud. Take your time. We’re in no rush. But the detectives on the case were brimming with impatience. “We’ve been on standby for a month,” the younger one said. “You stated that he was capable of simple conversation, so why make us wait? There’s nothing more important than figuring out his motives.” Gong was silent. The detective added, “We need to know why he did what he did.” Why he did what he did. That’s right. Why did he do what he did? People were always interested in motives. Motives were important, true. But Gong was not curious. The incident had already occurred, and it could not be undone. It was the police’s role to uncover the reasons, and hers to determine if the patient lived or died. Detectives did police work, and doctors did medical work. That was the nature of the universe. Reporters had pieced together scraps of information slipped by the police and wove up several narratives. Their articles, however, made it hard to tell what was fact and what was conjecture. As if reality and fiction were waging war in their writings. Mainstream news told the story thus: A man in his mid-sixties named Kim barged into a newspaper company and started a fire—not in the lobby or the president’s office, but the editorial office on the fourth floor. The fourth floor was also home to conference rooms and interview rooms. The newspaper also ran a small studio where they recorded content for their video platforms. Kim had strolled down the hallway and walked into the editorial office. It had taken him only two and a half minutes to go from the front doors on the first floor up the elevator to the fourth floor and through the editorial office doors. He had taken the lid off a gasoline container as soon as he was out of the elevator, trailing fuel as he walked past the soundstage. By the time people realized what he was doing and what was about to happen, the fire had been lit. It was an unprecedented act of arson on a major news outlet. The outcome: catastrophic. Polyethylene had been used during renovations on part of the building, which the fire had devoured in a wake of toxic smoke. One person died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and two of suffocation. Seventeen more were injured, three of them in critical condition, meaning the number of dead could rise further. The fire had consumed not just the editorial office, but the studio next door, which had only one exit and no windows. One of the dead was a young journalist intern. Another was an editor-in-chief who had recently won an international prize in journalism, only days away from retirement. Some of the guests who had come to the building for interviews or to make an appearance on the broadcast had also been injured. The building was still smoking when one news outlet reported it as an electrical fire, noting that the metal door up to the rooftop was closed. They claimed that the tragedy had been caused because the door had been locked to deter people from smoking on the roof, basing the hypothesis on testimony from a building caretaker that an indoor smoking room had recently been installed and that the rooftop door had been closed off. Fire prevention codes were hauled up to the chopping block. But the article was purely speculative, based only on one caretaker’s testimony, and turned out to be wrong. It was taken down in less than an hour. The cause of the fire was not difficult to track. The building was indeed a tinderbox, yes, but the flames that day were not caused by a short circuit or a smoke break, but a person with malicious intent: arson. The survivors who regained consciousness gave testimony; the security camera footage clearly showed the arsonist enter the building with a container of gasoline. The day after the incident, some of the footage was leaked online. Clad in grey overalls, the arsonist entered the building through the first-floor entrance with gasoline in hand. There was a security turnstile, of course, but he passed through it with ease. The man simply gave the security guard’s office a wave. The guard waved back and opened the turnstile. Renovations had been underway on the second floor. The young security guard, a subcontractor only recently assigned to this post, had assumed the arsonist was working on the second floor. Then there was the footage that had everyone talking. It had been uploaded to a video-sharing platform, and almost looked like something out of Hollywood. It began with a shot of an indoor space glowing red with flames. The camera panned to the windows, then back indoors. The arsonist must have started recording and propped up the phone on the windowsill to film himself. For a moment, he peered into the camera to check that it was running, then he leapt into the flames. He raised his hands high into the air, triumphant. The composition was dramatic, a shadowed man standing with arms defiantly raised to a backdrop of fire. Almost satanic. The arsonist streamed it all live on social media. The video was quickly deleted by administrators, of course, but by then it had been circulated all over the internet. The arsonist not only streamed the act of arson, he even gave a determined performance in the flames. The clip spread almost as quickly as the fire, with the title “demon_irl.” People claimed it was a copycat attempt to mimic hate-based terror attacks across the world, kind of like those terrorists who streamed themselves shooting down civilians with machine guns. The only difference was that this arsonist was holding a container of gasoline. Many people wondered if “demon_irl” was a hate crime or some sort of cultist attack. The newspaper he attacked happened to be serializing an in-depth investigative feature on the negative effects of religion on Korean society. How in contemporary times, religion had turned into a sort of spiritual service industry, what method religions used to amass wealth, both within and without the system, why people were so prone to faith, why Koreans tended to be so fervent, and how diehard fandom—religious, political, and social—had become so mainstream in Korea. Some partisan readers and religious organizations protested, but the editorial staff had refused to bend. One of those investigative features had been found in the arsonist’s hand. But as it turned out, the arsonist was a single man aged sixty-five with no connection to any religion. He had attended church many years ago but had been an ordinary parishioner who had never tithed or showed signs of having suddenly fallen to religious fervor. Searches of his home turned up nothing of note, save for all the signs of an impoverished man living alone. No signs of mental instability, not enough evidence of antisocial psychopathy. Circumstances made it difficult to conclude that the newspaper feature was the reason for the attack. Journalists investigated the man’s past and learned that he had gone from one cheap gosiwon to the next, and when he could no longer even do work as a day laborer, he resorted to theft. The record was from two years ago. The man had stolen a box of donuts and a bottle of whiskey from a convenience store while the cashier was briefly away. As the man had already been on probation for another crime, the judge had followed protocol and sentenced him to eighteen months’ imprisonment. The chaebol patriarch who had been sentenced the same day had been given a six-month suspended sentence. He had been connected to corporate corruption totalling at approximately 1.5 trillion won, but had been let off easy for “fear of the impact his imprisonment might have on the economy.” The petty thief in his sixties had stolen one box of donuts and a single bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a total of approximately 45,000 won. Although the whiskey was a small blemish on the narrative, progressive media had blasted the criminal justice system, labeling the man a “modern-day Jean Valjean.” One conservative newspaper published a column that argued progressives were comparing apples to oranges, as the chaebol patriarch had the national economy riding on his shoulders. People on all sides raised their voices, but the system never changed. The people dispersed. That was how the universe always worked. But not for the single man in his sixties who had committed theft and been sentenced to eighteen months in prison. His sentence was shortened and he was released three months early. That was half a year ago. Ironically, he chose to set fire to the progressive news outlet that had compared him to Jean Valjean and criticized the justice system. No one could confirm if he had really read that article in particular, but whatever the case, his actions simply did not make sense. Supposedly, the man had once run a blog for promoting his video rental stores. Someone claimed that he had made far-right political comments on his message boards. Testimony emerged claiming that at the time, his interest had not been in films but political propaganda. Fact-checking revealed that such claims were not entirely true. The man’s “far-right political comments” were simply copied sections of editorial columns from the best-selling conservative newspaper in circulation, which were far-right in nature but not necessarily antisocial. The arsonist had not posted any original content save for those promoting his video rental business. The assertion that he had been obsessed with propaganda, too, turned out to be baseless. Back when the business was still running, YouTube had not been mainstream in Korea. It was a time before such political content was produced and consumed in video form. One daily published a column that speculated that perhaps all the possible motives proposed so far were true. Perhaps by assigning a singular motive, we consciously or subconsciously attempt to dismiss all other issues, the columnist claimed. Is this not the willful act of sweeping under the rug the rampant hate and rage and indiscriminate vengeance in our society? When this hate, rage, vengeance, and inequality balloons on and on until it finally bursts, what will we do with the aftermath? The column went on and concluded: This is a quintessential antisocial act by an individual hostile to society as a whole. We must examine every facet of this case and commit ourselves to addressing. . . The column, however, failed to explain why the arsonist had chosen that particular newspaper, why at that particular time, why the fourth floor specifically, why the fiendish livestream, or any of the myriad whys behind the case. Why the particular man in his mid-sixties committed such an act. The arsonist’s testimony and confession were crucial, but matters were complicated by his jumping from the fourth-story window while ablaze. He had survived, but was left with catastrophic damage to the brain and the entire nervous system and was incapable of giving an account of any sort. The case could only be fully understood and the facts properly uncovered if the arsonist survived. That was apparent to all. To the journalists and the public and the doctors and the police. The police had made an additional request to the hospital: to not disclose to the culprit the extent of the damage he had wrought. Revealing the fact that multiple people were dead or injured could cause problems, they said. That it could affect his mental stability, which came with the risk of the man refusing to testify, which in turn meant the truth of the incident would be lost forever. He must not know the truth, for his knowledge would distort his truth forever. Gong did not argue. Even in something as mundane as a car crash, the truth was a real, tangible thing. Unyielding. Singular. Extant in physical time. Why did the accident happen? Whose mistake or fault caused the accident? What kinds of intentions and decisions were involved? What universal logic was at play in those intentions and decisions? Once the confession was made and the truth brought to light, the culprit would likely be sentenced to death. He would appeal, and finally be delivered a life sentence. In prison, he would do push-ups and keep himself fit. He would write letters of contrition, be designated a model prisoner, and be permitted a brief leave upon the death of his mother at her nursing home. Gong could see it all unfold, as if it had already transpired. She did not forget that she was a vocal opponent of the death penalty. Human institutions must not sentence a human being to death, as it is tantamount to an act of murder… But one who has done something deserving death must be put to death. . . She quietly watched the conflict waging in her thoughts. Hyeon-wu had died in a car accident. Gong did not think he had jinxed himself or sentenced himself to that fate with, Common-law couples don’t have legal status. What if one of us gets into a car crash? We’re not considered family, so we can’t be each other’s guardians. And if I die in an accident somewhere, they wouldn’t let you see my body. . . Sorry, I know it’s a serious topic. . . His words echoed on and on. Hyeon-wu had clearly been thinking about ducking through conflict zones on the borders of Afghanistan or Syria, or clambering up and down some wintry mountain slope. Not a fatal left turn at an intersection in downtown Seoul. Hyeon-wu had rushed out of the house that day to make an interview. He had been running five minutes late because Gong had come home for lunch that day. He had been grinning over the meal, pretending to answer questions like, What’s the secret to publishing such a successful photo essay book? He would reply, The secret is to respect the subject, not the camera. Then he said they would ask, You used to be a wilderness photographer in remote areas. What made you pivot to conflict zones? He asked Gong what she thought might be a good answer. She advised that an answer like, A bit of risk adds a real pinch of soul to a picture, would sound too corny. It was only a twenty-five-minute drive to the newspaper office. Hyeon-wu had been nodding loudly along to “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” in the driver’s seat. Traffic was light, so he would make it just in time. His car was at the very front of the left lane, waiting for the left-turn signal. Flames burst from a building ahead to his left. It was about two blocks off, and the windows about halfway up the building were glowing red. That was Hyeon-wu’s destination. The old song was reaching its climax. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, Life goes on, bra, La,-la, how the life goes on. Instinctively, Hyeon-wu reached into the passenger seat for his camera. The yellow light went dark, and a millisecond before the left turn light came on, he floored the gas pedal. One hand on his camera, one hand on the steering wheel. His tires left skid marks on the pavement, and momentum pushed him sideways. An SUV on the other lane was roaring towards him, speeding up to catch the yellow light before it changed.Hyeon-wu’s death was pure coincidence. It just so happened that he had an interview at that exact time, that his car had been the first one in that lane, that the arsonist set fire to the newspaper at that moment. Hyeon-wu had known that the next signal would be the left turn arrow, and that the turn would get him straight to the scene of the fire. He had grabbed his camera by instinct and stepped on the gas pedal precisely when the left turn light came on. So generic was the accident that no one gave it a second thought. The dashcam footage only solidified the banality of the case, and because it was a simple traffic accident, there was no “truth” to uncover or fight for. Gong was the only one who understood the chain of causality between the rising flames and the accident, and the only one who cared. She thought about the distance between the fire and the intersection. About the angle between them. About the abyss. Into the abyss she plunged, trapped in the diving bell. The ICU had no windows. Gong stood there and watched the patient. The patient watched her. They watched each other with eyes unmet, as if gazing into the distance past each other. Eventually, the patient moved his lips, as though trying to speak. No words were formed. Foam formed on the corner of his mouth, then dissipated into a small patch of moisture. It slowly dried white. He did not seem to be asking, Will I live? Yes. You will. You have to. Gong did not answer. She simply had her eyes on him. Watching silently. What good is it, clinging to life? They’ll interrogate me, then the world will condemn me, the patient did not seem to say. You have to live. Otherwise. . . how am I supposed to I kill you? Gong did not say. That’s right. Kill me. As soon as you can, the patient did not say. If he did, she could never kill him. It had been ten days now since Gong started personally administering neurotransmitter treatment injections into his arm. In proper doses, it would heal the patient. But an overdose would cause catastrophic side-effects such as cardiac arrest or circulatory failure. It was a doctor’s job to maximize a drug’s effects while minimizing its side effects. She couldn’t remember how many times she emphasized this at guest lectures. All drugs—whether chemotherapy agents or cold medications or painkillers—cause both effects and side effects. The Greek word pharmaka, where we get the word “pharmacy,” refers not just to medicine and toxins, but to all drugs, no matter their effect. The truth is, the rest of the world also consists of countless interactions between effects and side effects. . . At least, that was Gong’s understanding. If there were no side effects, it meant no effect had taken place. That understanding was the bedrock upon which her knowledge of pharmacology, love, and life was built. Gong had once seen a feral cat catch a mouse. I thought cats these days didn’t care about mice. Maybe ferals are different. Hyeon-wu’s face fell. The cat was literally tearing into the mouse. Probably intending to toy with it for a long time before finally letting it die. With bloodied teeth and gleaming eyes, the cat looked up at Hyeon-wu. Hyeon-wu looked at the cat. In that instant, Gong looked not at the cat, but at Hyeon-wu. She knew he would watch the cat for a long time. Hyeon-wu said that he was exhausted. He was sick of recreating such scenes. The world was already unfathomably violent and aggressive and sadistic, and reproducing them in photography or words felt like empty repetition, he said. Gong thought he was being too emotional. Hyeon-wu was always true to his emotions, always running straight towards his next destination, always risking danger, and frequently hurt in the impact. That was both his weakness and his charm, Gong had thought. She knew that thoughtful people who examined both sides of an argument and tried to take all the multifaceted aspects of a situation into account were the lethargic ones. I don’t believe I’ll be going back to the wilderness or to conflict zones, Hyeon-wu was supposed to say clearly and persuasively at the interview. I’m more drawn now to the peacefulness of a quiet life, the quiet struggles within that serenity, and the love and death that eventually follow. That new direction in my life guided the direction of my new book. . . The morgue did not permit her to see him, because according to regulations, only family were permitted to view bodies. I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. And the body was. . . severely damaged when the car caught fire. Not just the epidermis, but. . . The manager trailed off, knowing that Gong was a doctor. She didn’t have to hear the rest. The external force of the crash would have broken his body and ravaged his skin, his organs, and his nerves. There was no nuance or subtlety there. Gong pictured the scene as if looking at an ultrasound or an MRI. With eyes shut, she played it back in her mind in monochrome. How could she not? And how could she possibly stop? This too will pass, Gong did not think. She opened her eyes. Silently looked at the patient. She had a needle in hand. His eyes were shut. The blood vessels in his neck looked more prominent than usual. It only took a little effort to administer an injection. She simply had to insert the needle and put pressure on her thumb. The drugs in the syringe would flow into the vein. It would circulate through the patient’s blood. This man had no idea what a diving bell was, let alone what it meant to sink into the abyss in one. This man would live. Still trapped in her bell, still sinking into the depths, she watched the man. The room was a quiet, bottomless aquarium. Down and down the diving bell sank, and Gong’s body and soul were slowly warped. Poison slowly spread through her heart, but she did not realize it. The ICU had no windows. As it had one simple purpose, the room was a space without an outdoors. With herculean effort, the patient opened his eyes. His gaze pointed at Gong. Who is this person, and why am I lying here, he seemed to wonder. But soon he seemed to get his bearings and his lips twitched. Gong watched, eyes narrowed, before leaning her ear close to his mouth. The patient’s voice reached her ear. Gong’s face slowly went rigid. Translated by Slin Jung
Stranger than Paradise Vol.44 Summer 2019

Chapter 1 : Jeong’s Story Fear Eats the Soul I create a tiny room in my head. There, I put away emotions like fear, loneliness, and gloom. Every time I leave the house, I make sure the room is securely locked. I’m on my way out after all. When I go outside, an adequate amount of sunshine, noise, and a destination are all I need. Back home, I unlock the door and enter the room alone. It still brims with things like fear, loneliness and gloom. I fall asleep squeezed in among them. I wake up. I fall asleep again. Then I wake up. I pass a few days this way inside the room. One morning, I find myself lying alone in an empty room. There’s nothing else. The wallpaper looks clean, and there are windows that I can open to let a fresh, crisp breeze blow in. After a little while, I step out of my mind’s room. When I come outside . . . I can start everything all over again. I’m fond of the small room inside my head. It’s long been a habit of mine to go in there to fall asleep. There were times when I got help from prescription drugs. I started off with some sort of mild antihistamine, but later resorted to taking Aktivan occasionally. Gim caught me popping pills at home several times. Yet, he never asked what they were for. He must have thought I was getting my daily dose of vitamins. Rain falls outside the dark-tinted car windows. Each raindrop falls in its own way. The same goes for people on the streets opening their umbrellas. They open them with different postures, different facial expressions, and at different angles. That’s how scenes from everyday life unfold themselves to me. I like that, I think. I saw a passer-by run with his hand covering his head and bump his shoulder against a middle-aged man. The man, who had been standing absentmindedly, smoking a cigarette, quickly shouted after the runner. Was it an insult or a cry? His voice scattered into thin air. Seemingly oblivious to the shouting, the passer-by vanished into the darkness. ‘That’s a scene for sure’, I muttered to myself. I’m not particularly well-disposed towards the word ‘life’. Even so, there’s not a shred of doubt in my mind that no life deserves contempt, and each is worthy of respect in its own way. If life is worth respecting, then so is the end of it. Therefore, we must express our condolences for the dead with courtesy. It’s a task we cannot avoid after having gone through the same passage of time together. I fully understand that such an act in itself is one of the formalities of civilisation. Besides, she’d had an unforgettable presence in the life of both Gim, who was now driving the car, and Choi in the back seat, as well as in my own life of course. Paying life all the respect it was due; as far as I was concerned, it meant sitting in the car dressed in black for the time being. I tried my best to suppress the weird sensations filling up my heart. Gim, our driver for the day, turned on the car stereo, which brought forth a melody sung by a familiar voice. Susie Suh. I’m not exactly averse to her music either. There was something gloomy yet mellow, mellow yet rich in the rhythm of this Korean American singer-songwriter. But then we were in the middle of driving to a friend’s funeral. I was starting to realise that, having raised the volume, Gim was slowly sinking into languor. As long as an emotion is only tolerably intense, music helps us overcome it. However, had that been all that music could do, my aversion would have been just as acceptable as the raindrops falling outside the car windows. That’s right. There are some tragedies that even rhythm cannot soothe. I know it’s not rhythm’s fault. But nor are those tragedies to blame. In the back of the car, Choi stared out the window in silence. I reached over to turn the music down. Since it would be impolite to switch it off completely, I chose to turn it all the way down instead. Right away, I sensed Gim casting a sideways glance at me. I remained still with my eyes looking straight ahead. The moment Gim let out a grunt of disapproval, I leaned over slightly towards the driver’s seat and whispered in the quietest voice possible: ‘This is no time for music.’ I knew he would be displeased, but I also knew he would never openly express his feelings. Lately, I’d been taken aback by moments when I realised I could read his mind. We’d begun dating towards the end of our final year at university and had been married for three years, so maybe that was only to be expected. I first met Gim through the university film society, and our graduation was soon followed by talk of marriage. I joked that Gim just happened to be the guy standing next to me at the altar, which pretty much summed up how I felt about the marriage. Our friends were unanimous in congratulating us, and I thanked them politely. The whole time I couldn’t help but think that something strange was happening to me. I felt as if I’d been dropped into an unfamiliar world somewhere, where I was now looking around for a way out. There was nothing wrong with Gim. He was obviously a friendly, hard-working and well-built man. His handsome face with its fine features attracted the attention of girls. Sometimes he looked like Gregory Peck from Roman Holiday, or Clark Gable from Gone with the Wind. Often, when my eyes fell on his face contoured with longing and regret, I felt as though there were a camera observing us from somewhere. Actually, as his wife I wasn’t drawn to his physical features. My attraction to Gim had nothing to do with his rueful expression or handsome face. Whenever we had a group discussion or made a short film during a holiday, I got the impression that he was somewhat empty. One day, we decided to shoot a short parody of Fritz Lang’s M in black and white. We borrowed a camcorder from the university and secured enough money to just about cover our food budget. Just like Lang, whose work conveyed the anxieties of post-war Germany, our aim was to capture the fears haunting our contemporaries using expressionist cinema. Choi was the one who’d suggested it. Bright ideas seemed to sprout inside his mind all the time. As for the script, A was put in charge. She was always writing something. Naturally, everyone looked at her the moment the question of scriptwriting came up. I was no exception. Once, in the university computer room, I had watched her gently typing away with her long, slender fingers as they glided effortlessly across the keyboard. I kept staring, unable to take my eyes away. I’m not sure whether it was the angle at which she held her fingers or their rhythmic movements that I found so enchanting. Poems, novels and scripts poured forth from her fingertips. I think I convinced myself back then that I was more attracted to her fingers than her writing. Her script was passed around to everyone in the film society. It was succinct and had little dialogue. Still, our film was likely to turn into a black comedy. We were all amateurs. Instinctively, we all understood that the more seriously we applied ourselves to acting, the more comical the film would become. Gim was the clumsiest actor among us. He couldn’t lose himself in his character at all, not even for a single scene. To act means to enter another world. To escape from the world in which we live. To become a soul that belongs to an entirely different world - a parallel universe perhaps. For that to happen, a kind of immersion was required. Since we had become far too immersed in our characters, we ended up looking comical. On the other hand, Gim’s acting was comical precisely because he couldn’t let go of himself. We were all comical, but Gim was comical in his own way. His lines were hollow and seemed to come from outside the world the rest of us were immersed in. He kept bursting into laughter, frequently delaying the shooting as a result. Gim would smile awkwardly and explain that he was an economics major and that English literature was only his minor. He enjoyed reading Shakespeare, but his taste in literature by no means guaranteed good acting. Above all, he was not a big fan of expressionist films. He claimed they were irresponsible works that took advantage of our fears and anxieties, creating nothing better than a vague ambience. His argument was stilted. Our project manager Choi and scriptwriter A regarded him in silence. I was probably the only one who found the look on Gim’s face attractive. Things were no different when we studied complicated film theory. Though Gim did all the reading diligently before each meeting, he wasn’t half as glib as Choi. Without even finishing the assigned books, Choi used his effortless eloquence to explain the theory of Andre Bazin, whereas Gim would often misinterpret the essays he’d read just the night before. When Choi gave a passionate speech about the conflict between Bazin’s realism and Sergei Eisenstein’s montage theory, Gim assumed an expression of surprise and said, ‘Oh, so these two theories oppose each other, do they?’ Whenever we ran into a situation like that, Gim would give a good-natured chuckle and readily admit, ‘Ha-ha! I got it completely wrong.’ There was something oddly infectious about his laugh that made everyone else burst out laughing. He didn’t seem at all bothered by our laughter. I liked that about him. ‘There must be quite a few empty rooms inside this man’, I concluded. Empty rooms deep within. It’s the kind of thing I fall head over heels for. If I had one such room, I would invite a lonely, taciturn guest to come inside. I would spend some quiet time with that stranger. I would expect nothing in return and ask no questions about his future plans or past experiences. Because the sole purpose of the room would be for us to exist amidst the air of calm and hours of peace. Because the room would be devoid of colour, with only the fragrance of freshly washed blankets floating inside. I imagined a place where kind-hearted strangers of few words would spend the night in silence. As the rooms increase, the place might turn into a big hotel. I would welcome a string of silent guests and pass my days in peace. Then one day at dawn, I would walk out of the hotel’s dilapidated hallway and hit the road again. Taking nothing but a small suitcase, without looking back, I’d set off to build another small, shabby room. There must be many spacious rooms inside Gim, filled with an air of optimism and diligence. I would take in the air with small, shallow breaths and let the hours flow past me. Instead of being a host, I would become a silent guest and spend night after night there. That was pretty much all that I hoped for. When it comes to hope, the humbler the better. That kind of hope doesn’t lead to despair, leave us shaken by a sense of betrayal, or kill us. I hope my life runs its course with a degree of optimism. Whenever it strikes me that the world I belong to has a sharp air of hostility, I yearn to slip into another world, far away in a parallel universe. Perhaps I’ve begun writing because that universe doesn’t exist, because my pessimism has led me to conclude that it doesn’t exist. An effort to cling to my last thread of hope. Yet, even within the walls of my own sentences, pessimism often seizes me by the collar and drags me around. To me, pessimism is not a state of mind. It is closer to a physical force that grabs my throat before hurling me down. The quality of the air in my world felt different from that of Gim’s. The latter, if I may put it this way, seemed to consist of the serene and conscientious ether. A world where fear did not eat the soul. A world that knew nothing of and was thus curious about fear and pessimism . . . Perhaps it was a matter of course; not long after our wedding, I came to believe I was mistaken about everything. That gut feeling came to me out of the blue. It was the day when our Infiniti, which we’d bought despite the hefty price tag, had a minor malfunction. An old friend of ours had sold us the foreign car on a long-term instalment plan. Barely a month after we had congratulated ourselves on making this worthwhile expense, we started to notice mysterious noises and vibrations. Gim opened the car bonnet and took a long, hard look inside. His face fell. ‘Ah, it’s no big deal’, he said at last, as if trying to put my mind at ease. It was a perfectly trivial, everyday remark. Yet, strangely enough, I was immediately seized with a conviction. The odd conviction that Gim did not have any empty rooms typically found in those who truly accepted their fate. This conviction, born out of nowhere, etched itself in my soul in the most undeniable way. Sitting in the passenger seat I mumbled absently, ‘That’s right. No big deal.’ I wasn’t sure whether I was answering him or reassuring myself. After university, Gim faced some challenges but soon landed a job at a securities firm and began rising in the world. The expression ‘rising in the world’ came from him of course. In any case, it was quite possible that he’d finally discovered where his talents lay. As he continued ‘rising in the world’, however, the number of times he said ‘Ah, it’s no big deal’ increased noticeably. Though I couldn’t put my finger on it, his face began to show subtle changes. Even then, I detected no sign of an empty room in his face. I frequently found myself wallowing in familiar sadness. I knew I would eventually be overcome by pessimism that I’d never be able to escape that sorrow. I left him behind and spent more and more time alone in my cramped room. When A’s name popped up on my phone I was in the middle of dinner, chewing on rice as if I were checking every single grain in my mouth. I stared at the screen flashing ‘A’, and pressed the answer button, thinking how inappropriate it would be to discuss anything in depth on the phone. But the voice on the other end of the line was not A’s. An unfamiliar male voice spoke to me. Without mincing words, he asked me directly if I knew A. ‘Sure. Why do you ask?’ ‘She’s dead.’ I stopped chewing. The voice continued talking. It was some time before I got my head around what he’d just said. I only managed to decipher his words long after they’d been spoken. He added he was A’s cousin and that he was calling everyone on the ‘friends’ list on her phone. According to him, she died in a car accident while driving through a tunnel in the middle of the night. Her body was now in City K, where visitors could go to give their condolences. From his brisk and hurried tone, I could tell he must have made several calls already. He explained that he was late in passing around the news because things had been so hectic. The funeral service was scheduled for the following day, which meant today was the last day available for visitors to pay respects. Once he’d said all that, he hung up, muttering under his breath that he had to call a few more people. I put my phone down on the table. Across from me, Gim was enjoying a can of beer, his eyes fixed on the television. As he wiped the foam off his lips, his face looked perfectly ordinary, fittingly so for a peaceful evening. I remained silent and stared into the air. There’s nothing to be said about the void inside a three-bedroom apartment under a long-term lease located in a new commuter town. It’s the kind of void that anyone living in the same town can easily see through. A long time passed before it occurred to me that I should share the news of A’s death with Gim. I was about to open my mouth when his phone coughed up the all-too-familiar ringtone. I sat still and watched him check the name of the caller. I quietly observed how he stopped chewing, stole a quick glance in my direction and went into the big bedroom with the phone held against his ear. I knew the call was from A, or, precisely speaking, from a man claiming to be her cousin. I could hear the weather forecast on TV: ‘Expect mostly clear skies tonight . . .’ (Excerpt from pp. 9–21.) Translated by Helen Cho

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