Human Acts(28)
—
Outside the window, a pale fluttering trembled the curtain of gathering dark.
It was time for her to get up and leave the office, but instead she remained where she was, unmoving. The flakes of snow silently sifting down looked as soft and white as freshly ground rice flour. Nevertheless, she could not think of them as beautiful. Today was supposed to be the day for her to forget the sixth slap, but her cheek had already healed. It barely even hurt anymore. When the next day dawned, then, there would be no need to forget the seventh slap. There would never be a day when she would forget the seventh slap.
Snowflakes
After the set change, the lights come up again slowly. In the center of the stage stands a tall woman in her thirties, her white hemp skirt recalling the kind of homespun item worn by mourners. When she silently turns to face the left-hand side of the stage, this appears to be the cue for a tall, slim man dressed in black to emerge from the wings. He comes walking toward her, carrying a life-sized skeleton on his back. His bare feet tread the boards with carefully measured steps, as though he fears he might slip in the empty air.
The woman turns now to the right, still silent as a marionette. This time the man who steps out from the wings is short and stocky, though in his black clothes and with the skeleton on his back he is identical to the first. The two men glide toward each other from their opposite sides, like images from some old-fashioned film, proceeding in slow motion as their projectionist laboriously cranks the handle. They reach the center of the stage at the same time, but they do not pause. Instead, they simply carry on to the other side, as though forbidden to acknowledge the other’s presence.
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 plainclothes 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 dreamlike 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 recognizes 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 toward 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 gray sneakers, and clutching a small skeleton to his chest, hugging it to him as though he is cold. When the boy begins to walk toward 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. 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 overtakes him and is first to reach the steps to the stage.