dd's Umbrella E-Book

Jungeun Hwang

• Herausgeber: Tilted Axis Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 341

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

What was it they were battling? Their smallness, of course, their smallness. d, a nonbinary gig worker living in Seoul, briefly escapes the grasp of isolation when they meet dd, only to be ensnared by grief when dd dies in a car accident. Meanwhile, the world around them reckons with the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster that left more than 300 dead. As formally inventive as it is evocative, dd's Umbrella is composed of twin novellas. The first is told from the perspective of d, and the second from the perspective of a writer researching a book they may never write. Both figures dwell in society's margins––queer, working-class, and part of nontraditional family structures. As people across Korea come together to protest the government's handling of the Sewol ferry disaster, and to impeach the right-wing president in office, the novel examines how progressive movements coexist with social exclusion, particularly of women and sexual minorities, invisibilised in service of the 'greater cause'. dd's Umbrella is a meditative and off-centre novel about mourning and revolution.

Leseprobe

dd's Umbrella

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There Is Nothing that Needs to Be Said

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Copyright

About Tilted Axis Press

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Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Start of Content

dd’s Umbrella

d

1

d saw lightning strike as the five o’clock assembly was about to begin. The school day over, d had remained behind in the classroom when out of nowhere a pale, slender forearm reached through the dusty black windowsill and touched the floor. d noticed a burnt smell and upon creeping closer saw that the spot was singed.

d was crouched over this mark when dd’s voice drifted in from the door. What are you doing?

Come have a look at this, d said as they beckoned.

dd walked over.

Look. d pointed at the floor. Struck by lightning. Just now.

d reached out and traced the mark with their hand. dd followed suit.

See how only this spot feels warm?

Incredible.

Their heads nearly touching, d and dd ran their fingers over the marred spot again, then got to their feet. d drew the fluttering curtains aside to peer out the window. dd walked over to look. The sky was threatening rain. Kids stood in clusters in the schoolyard, backs weighed down by heavy packs; a handful of teachers were dotted around. Everybody was very still and facing the same direction. Clothes flapped and clung in the relentless wind. The pledge signalling the close of assembly ended. d and dd watched as everyone scattered, heading off in various directions. Closing the window, they made their way outside. They’d crossed the schoolyard and were headed out the gates when the rain started falling. d opened an umbrella. dd held out half a bar of chocolate. They walked together, sharing the chocolate and the umbrella.

They reached d’s house. Bye, d said from the doorway of the dark woodworking shop.

dd continued on home under d’s umbrella.

d remembers the day, remembers seeing the bolt of lightning strike in front of their eyes. It was an extraordinary thing to witness, unprecedented and as yet unmatched. d remembers the exact shape of the mark, how it resembled a small mouth with an upturned corner. They had assumed the pressure of their fingers would gradually rub it out, but it hadn’t. d had looked and looked, completely entranced. Had there been someone else in the room? Possibly. But this is the extent of what d remembers. Apparently the two of them had chatted as they headed home under the same umbrella, but d has no memory of this either. They are gripped with remorse, feeling somehow at fault for misplacing the memory. d has recurring dreams about the day even now.

Then it happened.

d reached for a towel to dry their face, only to let it go — lose hold of it, in fact. This was just before nine o’clock on a Wednesday night. The second hand on the bathroom clock was ticking. Soapy water pooled in the sink while d stood barefoot on the tiled floor. What d had grabbed and hurriedly let go of was a regular old towel, plain and mundane; something that was and always had been to hand. Every day d dried their face and neck on that towel before replacing it on the rack or dropping it in the laundry basket. An ivory-coloured cotton towel, somewhat stiff and threadbare from repeated washing and drying, devoid of distinguishing patterns, marks, or embroidered initials. This banal object had, out of nowhere, developed a palpable warmth, as if the fabric itself was emitting heat.

The bathroom door was open towards the darkened kitchen. Walking past the kitchen table, d knocked off a desk calendar. Groping to retrieve it, d noticed that the thirteen sheets of thick cardboard paper and tightly spaced spiral binding running along their upper edge were warm to the touch. d set the calendar down and placed a hand on the table. Also warm. It didn’t stop there: various items of furniture, plates and cutlery, glass objects, handles, all seemed to give off a moderate heat. That was the day d realised that objects that should feel cooler than air were now in fact warmer, as if they’d developed their own body heat or morphed into some uncategorised subset of living organisms. d found the sensation intolerable, and as far as they could help it, avoided touching all but the most necessary of items. But surely the world can’t have changed so drastically overnight, d thought, which must mean the change is in me.

I must have grown colder.

d’s father Yi Seung-geun was a woodworker. Yi Seung-geun, his wife Goh Gyeongja, and d lived in the attic room above his woodworking shop. After removing their shoes at the door, the family climbed three cement steps in the corner to reach the single room where all three slept and ate. There was a wardrobe, a low table, and a Braun-tube television. A kitchenette had been fitted to one wall but the room was windowless, and anytime Goh Gyeongja made soup or steamed meat, the strong, savoury vapours wafted through the room and down into the shop. The wood pile was steeped in the smell of soup, rice, and banchan topped with red chilli powder, while the room they shared was fragrant with wood scent. Years before, teachers and classmates had turned to d for answers when they wanted to know about trees for the sole reason that d lived in a woodworking shop, but in truth d knew next to nothing about trees. You don’t find trees in a woodworking shop — wood and lumber were what filled up a woodworking shop, not trees. Timber sawn and cut into boards and planks, then cut a second time and set aside until selected, altered in shape and form, and stuck fast with either nails or hide glue; sticks and smaller fragments of wood stripped of bark: these were not trees, certainly they looked nothing like a tree. Next door there was a small shop selling kids’ stationary and toys — thin sheets of faded craft paper and rubber balloons grey with dust — and a butcher’s that left darkened, dry meats in their display fridge. The woodworking shop was as cramped and tucked away as these two neighbouring shops, and as bereft of light, no matter the season or time of day. The air was sharp with sawdust, and stale wood pieces rotted and swelled in a sour heap.

Yi Seung-geun wasn’t much of a woodworker. Sometimes people dropped by the shop to complain about the shoddy job he’d done. Having encountered more than a few dissatisfied customers over the years, Yi Seung-geun had developed an attitude that was polite, fawning, and apprehensive. When the inevitable occurred, he accused his clients of contriving to lower his fee. People are so predictable, so shamelessly transparent, he’d gripe, but even d could tell their pa’s woodwork was mediocre. Yi Seung-geun produced objects that were neither meticulous nor well-proportioned, and fell woefully short of being practical or beautiful or original or even outlandish. d couldn’t figure out why their pa didn’t simply admit this; why instead of owning up to his lack of skill, he pretended otherwise. Yi Seung-geun never raised a hand to d, never complained about his wife’s cooking, always finished his food, and wasn’t at all interested in drinking or betting. Instead, he kept up a litany of his own importance, reciting how his woodwork kept the three of them fed and clothed and how this made his labour sacred. Makita, Hitachi, Lexon, and Bosch power tools, chisels, hammers, planes, folding saws and fret saws: with these Yi Seung-geun cut, drilled, shaved, and sanded, and the acoustics accompanying this work constituted, for d, the soundtrack of the day-to-day world.

The blurring of work and home space made it impossible for d to escape this harsh, jarring noise. d ate, napped, watched TV, and did their homework to its insistent track. The grating of the rotary saw cutting into wood was particularly gruesome. Sometimes, when there was no work to be done, the shop was quiet, but once the commotion resumed, which it inevitably did, d would sit in the dim family room with a pencil, either doing their homework or doodling, their ears growing hotter every minute, and remind themself, That rotating saw is what keeps me alive, the cost of woodwork that’s neither honest nor pleasant to look at is what feeds and clothes me. Or they’d imagine sticking their little finger in the rotating disc-like blade of the saw and bide their time. Waiting for the moment when the blade, stained with their pa’s blood, might splutter to a stop. Waiting for the moment their father would halt his sacrosanct work and the workshop would fall silent. Then, in shame and guilt, d would glare at their pa in a fit of rage — or ignore him out of a deep disenchantment. There was nothing d considered sacred. Their ears burned and echoed with the din of timber being shredded, thin sheets of metal being torn up, a rustling as though tiny lint balls were rolling around inside their ears. Whenever d found themself in a quiet place, they were keenly aware that the apparent absence of noise had nothing to do with stillness or silence. The remnants of sound and static were a permanent presence. d grew into a taciturn adult who found no pleasure in speech. The world was clamorous enough as it was.

d met dd again at a school reunion. It had been raining all day. As old friends emptied their glasses and made small talk, d’s left knee suffered the inevitable spilled drink, but it wasn’t anything tissues and time wouldn’t take care of. d headed out around midnight, only to find their umbrella had disappeared from the stand by the entrance. dd, who happened to be standing next to d, offered their umbrella. Here, take mine.

That’s okay.

No, I insist.

d tried to refuse, but dd mentioned that they’d once borrowed an umbrella from d and failed to return it. d had no memory of this. It was back in the day, dd said, we were only kids. Remember when we saw the lightning? d couldn’t recall this either. The lightning, yes, but not dd. So you were there? d said, holding on to the umbrella and looking flustered. Eventually the two of them decided to share the umbrella and take a rather circuitous but manageable route that would first bring them to dd’s house. d carried the umbrella. dd stepped in and out of the umbrella’s orbit each time they came across a puddle. It bothered d to see dd’s hair and face getting drenched in the rain.

Bye, dd said from the doorway of their house.

d waved and continued on home with dd’s umbrella. The fabric was blue with a red camellia printed on it, and the handle was a deep chestnut. It looked clean, but the sheen on the handle suggested lengthy usage, and a couple of ribs had been patched up. d left the umbrella out on the enclosed balcony. Once dry, the umbrella was neatly folded away and left hanging on the frame of the balcony window, next to d’s own umbrella. The balcony was where the laundry basket and the washing machine were kept, so that each day, as they stopped to throw dirty clothes in the hamper or to hang up freshly laundered clothes, d would spot dd’s umbrella. How strange, d thought. Each time d glanced at it, the thing seemed to stare back at d. As though it weren’t inert, a mere object, but was in fact a smaller version of dd — as though d had borrowed a part of dd and had left it hanging there.

d worked at the Food Production Center at Gimpo Airport, where waterproof workwear and gumboots were mandatory. With each arriving flight, carts brimming with food waste and discarded packaging were wheeled over to the centre, where the employees would sort out the trash and wash down the carts. At the end of each day, their pockets and hats were inspected for smuggled bottles of alcohol and food items from the meal trays. Then a bus took d home.

One day d heard the bus radio forecasting rain and, once home, picked up dd’s umbrella and immediately set out again. dd was waiting in front of their house. The two chatted for a short while before saying goodbye. And that was how the umbrella vanished from d’s balcony: by being returned. Every day d went on the balcony with the day’s washing, but now, instead of the umbrella, an empty metal hook dangled above the window. How strange, d thought. It was gone, yet there was such a haunting sense of it still. The palpable presence of that absent object made d feel such a gaping emptiness inside that they had to laugh and say, This won’t do. So they arranged to see dd again.

In dd, d had found their sacred object. dd was the words that must continue, the body that must remain intact. It was through encountering dd that d learned how sacred their own labour could be. How a person who has love could be beautiful, how one could, simply by finding an object of beauty, experience sadness and joy. The noise that filled the world and occasionally troubled d no longer irked. I want to be happy, d decided. I want to be happier. The life d and dd shared was shoddy, exhausting, and lacking in many ways, but they had their private jokes, their shared laughter and sorrow, their clasped hands. Thumbs tracing knuckles, fingertips caressing napes and knotted shoulders; holding each other’s perfectly small and ordinary ears, kissing each other’s necks, helping with coat sleeves when the days turned chilly. I’ll be happy, d thought. I’ll be happy alongside dd’s happiness.

d and dd lived in flat B02 at 505 Mok-2-dong in Yangcheongu, Seoul. The area was a world apart from the sprawling apartment complexes: here all the residences were either twenty-year-old multi-units or detached houses. Being right at the edge of Yangcheongu, one only had to cross the big road by the bus stop to find oneself in the next district, Gangseogu. The homes in Mok-2-dong were predominantly brick red and encircled by low, ageing walls. The front door of flat B02 was tall and heavy and had been fitted with a frosty pane at eye level. Stepping over the rusty threshold revealed an entryway about an ankle’s depth lower than the ground outside, followed by a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom all arranged single file and in that order, as on the horizontal space of a train. The B is there more for convenience’s sake, the estate agent had said, as you can see it’s not very deep, hardly qualifies as a semi-basement really, so in fact it’s more a ground-floor flat? The inflection in his voice seemed to dispute this even as he declared it as fact. But the flat was located on a subtle incline, and from the front door to the bedroom one could trace a gradually declining, and definitely subterranean, slope. The wide bedroom window was level with the ground outside, so that side of the flat was definitely a semi-basement. But this flaw was not reflected in the rent. What swayed dd and d’s decision in favour of the place was its being equidistant from their workplaces, and its nonetheless markedly lower price.

The renter, Kim Gwija, was an older woman who couldn’t read or write. When the agent asked for her bank details, she seemed uneasy and said the tenants could always pay her directly, in fact she’d come and knock on their door, yes, she’d knock, like so, and all they’d have to do is open the door and hand her the money, they wouldn’t even have to step outside. Right in here, she said, showing an upturned palm. Her hand looked small, pale. d looked at the hand waving inches from their face with alarm. Something about the woman’s face seemed familiar, the cloying smile perhaps as she chattered on about this intrusive method of rent collection. d was irritated and offended, but decided the place itself would do.

dd had wanted a well-lit space and in this respect the flat failed to live up to their expectations, but they settled in well enough nonetheless. dd slept, ate, washed, got ready for work, came home after a day of work, watched films, listened to music, talked about getting a cat, collected small pots of succulents, spoke of a specific coat they wanted to get next winter, fretted about how watertight d’s work boots were, caressed d, slept in late, worried about bills, had the occasional insomnia, was neither excessively hopeful nor excessively despairing, and generally acclimated to their life in the flat. dd would frequently cut their hand on the edges of curled-up wallpaper or on ancient door handles where the paint had peeled off, and oddly, on Sundays, and only on Sundays, muddy water would drip from the bathroom ceiling and trickle down the grooves in the tiled wall. During the months when the boiler was switched off, it wasn’t uncommon for them to startle awake in the middle of the night because of the chill creeping up through the floor and the bedding.

It was on their way back to this room that dd was killed.

Hurled to their death.

d could not shake this thought. Other thoughts jostled in their head, but in the end this was what d kept coming back to. Hurled to death. Out of a packed bus. As though in the impact of the collision a delicate and merciless pair of tweezers had plucked then flung dd, and only dd, onto the hard road the two of them had walked together every day.

Since becoming aware of the dull heat that had seeped into most everyday objects, d had stopped leaving the flat. They stopped going to work, stopped making phone calls, barely ate and drank. Holed up, they proceeded to smash, shred, destroy, and trash the things around them. It was painstaking work and after a while d’s hands started to burn from the heat. To dispel the sensation, d would scratch their head or rub their palms against their body as they worked. Sometimes there would be a knock on the door, a neighbour coming to complain about the rubbish piling up in the alley, but d carried on, ignoring the intrusion. Boxes were filled, items binned, yet more boxes filled. Everything d disposed of went on emitting its low-grade body heat like some strange living creature, and with every contact d felt sickened. But d couldn’t leave them be, because they lied, these objects.

d had waited, perplexed, for a good long while. After all, most of dd’s belongings were still there: the baseball cap they pulled on down to their ears when they had to rush out sat in the closet, the slippers were exactly as they had left them on the doormat, and even the cup of tea from that morning remained on the table, dark with the residual dregs. Inside the shoe cabinet the cherished umbrella stood, neatly folded, while in the bathroom the toothbrush with its flattened bristles and a bottle of half-full hair product waited, as did the desktop calendar on which dd had jotted down reminders, and the pillows and blankets carrying their smell. It really did look as if dd had only popped out for a minute. They must be out there somewhere and would be back, whether this evening or tomorrow morning or perhaps even in a few days’ time, undoubtedly, they would return as if nothing had happened. But when exactly? Not now, not yet, but soon. Soon: that elusive moment teetering into the next, the next now. Every second d felt sure it was just about to happen, and every second found their hopes dashed. Objects were behind this illusion, this anticipation that only circled back as intensified loss and betrayal. In ridding the space of its things, d rid both this deception and its accompanying false sense of reality.

Take dd’s brown shoes. There was no other pair in the world like them. They had stretched to fit the shape of dd’s feet, their uppers creased and lined, their soles worn down in the manner of dd’s gait. Boxing the shoes, d thought: Now they’re in this box, they can’t be in any other box. Since a single object can’t be in two places at once. They’re in here now, meaning they’re not in there. What’s here can’t be there. At least that’s how it is for inert matter, but as for the wearer of these shoes ― well, people aren’t quite the same as things and can exist both here and there. Didn’t I read or hear that somewhere? That even when someone’s gone, as long as there’s another person who remembers them, it’s like they’re still here? Are they though? The hell they are. People are too similar to objects in that respect: once they’re gone, they’re gone. They no longer are, certainly not here. d carried on sorting in silence, emptying entire boxes out periodically and putting things back in. It occurred to d that the stuff that refused to be discarded required sending on to dd’s family, but after a while they stopped being able to determine which items they themself should hold on to. But they kept going, working slowly and methodically, until everything had been binned or boxed. Four days of ferrying back and forth to the post office and d was able to send the boxed belongings on to dd’s family. After the last of the boxes were delivered to the post office, d returned home. And remained there, in flat B02.

2

The house at 505 Mok-2-dong had a simple exterior wall covered in glazed dark red bricks, no decorative features, and was topped by blue roof tiles. Inside, it was divided into two basement units, two units at ground level, and a single unit on the second floor, and this last was where the elderly Kim Gwija lived. In the yard there was a flower bed made with soil Kim Gwija had gathered herself and a row of bricks, and that by now was full of salvias, cockscombs, cosmos, gardenias, crown daisies, and a still-young Korean cherry tree that bore yellow fruit. And poppies — these Kim Gwija had nurtured from the seeds she’d collected when a single plant sprouted up one day, out of the blue, in her yard. The poppy flowers were red or yellow or white with dark centres, and their single set of petals fell away to reveal olive-like seed pods.

The neighbourhood women came, parasols in hand, to look at Kim Gwija’s poppies. So this is aengsok, is it? … The best thing for bellyache and toothache and chest ache I tell you, it’s the real thing… The stalk in the centre of the clumps of toothed blue-green foliage was extremely thin, and, once the flowers had fallen away, would dry as it stood, neither bending nor breaking. Kim Gwija jabbed at the unripe seed pods to collect the latex, and when the stalk and pod were both thoroughly dry, she uprooted the plants and bundled them for storage. The older women who gathered at Kim Gwija’s drank decocted poppy water and lay in the yard, chatting and idling. d would receive rice cakes and persimmon punch from the women as they were wont to unroll their straw mats in the shade outside flat B02. Here, here, try this cake… Here, youngster, have a sip of this too won’t you, boiled it myself with plenty of cinnamon, it’s good and spicy and the best thing for your lungs… Kim Gwija and her visitors wore summer rayon and waved fans with boughs or vines inked on them as they extended these treats to d. Accepting the plates through their window, d noticed how the women’s hands, one holding a plate and the other a fan, looked both soft and sinewy.

For as long as the sun was out the women lounged in the shade and discussed their children, the weather, their ever-decreasing appetite, how nobody made their own fermented pastes anymore — and the war. Kim Gwija spoke of how just yesterday afternoon the sound of sirens had broken her nap and, knowing it wasn’t the day for civil defence drills, she’d assumed a real attack was imminent and had fallen to the ground wailing for her ma. It took a while for her to realise that the blaring came from a loudhailer on a passing flower truck. The women nodded and commiserated, spoke of all the times their hearts had dropped to their feet from the same mistaken assumption. Still, they said, their fears had been warranted that one time, hadn’t they, and that told you they weren’t entirely off the mark. This was in reference to the defection of Lieutenant Lee Woong-pyung on 25 February, 1983, and the chaos and commotion triggered by false reports that Incheon was under attack by North Korea.

At the time the women had been living either in Seoul or in Osan or Gwangju in the greater Seoul area, and upon first laying eyes on Lieutenant Lee Woong-pyung in the newspapers and on TV, they were astonished to discover how tall and handsome he was. For hadn’t they always imagined people in the North, whether civilians or soldiers, to be underfed, underprivileged, and ugly — your typical commie puppets? But here was this North Korean army pilot in his sophisticated fighter jet, looking less like a member of a puppet army and more a man of attractive qualities, and that got one thinking, didn’t it, that maybe the situation up there wasn’t quite as puppety as they’d imagined… But these doubts were doused by remarks of how, at the end of the day, that handsome soldier had chosen to depart the North in his fighter plane and fly here nonstop, all in a bid for freedom, and wasn’t that proof of how puppety the situation in fact was up there and how good and free things were here where we lived? Yes, yes, surely it was, they said in assent, eager to complement one another. Yes, but even so, we know, don’t we, how the good and free here could with one instance of war, a day or even half-a-day’s bombing, be reduced to nothing, end up as rubble and ashes. You may not realise this, young neighbour, but we know, know it in our core… Having experienced their first war at a young age, the women said they’d lived expecting, or not so much expecting as unconsciously dreading or intuiting, that a second war would break out in their lifetime; hence these sudden involuntary flashes when they would feel once more how the past was still very much present, which suggested that within themselves, that is, in their core, the war had never wholly ceased, not for a moment. So they heard air-raid sirens in a truck vendor’s loudhailer and wondered if it was real or a dream…

Listen, d heard one of the women say, the first time I saw people being slaughtered was in June of 1950, when they bombed Hangang Bridge. Back then I had a husband and two children. My husband was carrying one child on his shoulders, the other child was on my back, and we walked through the night with everyone, gripped in terror, carried forward by the surging crowd. But before we made it over the bridge, there was a loud boom, I fell flat on my face, and then I felt something slip and scatter over my hand. I managed to pick myself up but the tide of people kept coming, and I straggled on in a daze, my wits gone. It was unbelievably slippery underfoot, I kept stepping on something slimy as I walked. But I carried on walking and walking and walking, there wasn’t time to look back in all that forward momentum. It was only when I’d crossed the river and reached the darkness on this side that I realised my husband was gone, and my eldest too. They must have crossed before me, I thought, they’ll be somewhere up ahead. Going back was no longer a possibility as the bridge was destroyed, so I put my faith in these thoughts and stumbled on. Without food or water, my feet dragging, or else running like folk around me were doing. At one point someone spoke to me as they walked past, and that’s when I realised I’d been carrying a dead child on my back. I opened up the blanket and saw the child’s scalp was scorched. I could see the red bone of the skull. If I’d tied the blanket to my front, my back would have burnt off instead…

I may speak of this now, but I won’t cry. I can’t. Not then and not now. I was terrified, far too terrified to look back, all I could do was get away and by then I had nothing, I was all alone. Terrified and lonely to boot. So I met someone quick as I could and we started a family, had one daughter. That daughter has a daughter of her own now and they live, safe and sound, in Susaek. The grandchild takes after me. But the little one and her mama are always nagging me about my place, asking why I hoard all this stuff, that it looks a right mess, saying I need to get rid of the junk. What junk? They’ve all got their uses as far as I can see, but no, they say they’re ashamed to run into my neighbours. You there, downstairs neighbour, why don’t you name me two things you need? Because I have it all, whatever you need I have it. Will you have more rice cake? Well then, listen some more.

I kept going down the country. Days I walked, nights I slept standing, leaning against walls or trees so men couldn’t climb on my belly, and once the sun came up, I would set off again on foot… Eventually I came to a small rural village where the other folk fleeing south had just begun to arrive, a place that hadn’t seen the full extent of the war, where nothing had been razed or destroyed, not yet. It was so peaceful in fact that I thought my mind might finally quieten down. So there I was one afternoon, leaning against a wall and resting my eyes. The wall felt nice and cool and I was so exhausted, I began to think how wonderful it would be to drift into a never-ending sleep… But then I came to and noticed a gourd growing out of a cleft in the wall. A bottle gourd, still young and tender enough to eat. A lovely thing, pale and greenish. I grabbed at it and pulled. Not to eat it per se but because they were so pretty and tantalising like, the dozen or so hanging off the vine, and I simply had to pluck one. That was when a woman ran out of the house quick as lightning, screaming, Thief! Don’t you steal our gourds, you thief woman! You bitch! and snatched it out of my hands. She didn’t look a day older than me, her hair and face were all neat and proper, but her mouth went on spouting thief and bitch… And all at once, in all that bright daylight, I was overcome with so much sorrow and shame that my eyes started to water. I couldn’t believe it. I was crying! I thought, I’m feeling shame of all things, well, well, so I am alive after all. Then I cried out of happiness and out of desolation. I have to live, I thought, I’ve made it this far, I might as well make it to the end. I knew it in my core. That sense of clarity, it came out of shame. Shame is what saved me. Now that I’m… how old? Let’s see, one, two, three, four… Yes, it may well be a hundred years ago now, but in all those years it’s stayed with me. That certainty in my core. My grandchild and daughter say I live in a scrapheap and they’re ashamed of it, but I don’t see the shame. I know shame, and this isn’t it. It’s natural, not shameful, for the living to be surrounded by life’s scraps, natural and unavoidable… 

As afternoon deepened the sun shifted, reshuffling light and shade. The rays fell upon the glass container of persimmon punch by Kim Gwija and her visitors’ feet, and the refracted light found its way down to d’s basement room to ripple against the wall. Watching the sparse net of that light, d thought of many things, and while d was deep in thought the women addressed nearly everything under the sun, from pollen and soil and war to salting and curing… Now and again, as they half-listened to these tales which seemed to be narrated at times by one voice and at other times by all three alternating voices, d wished that the women would either move away from the window or cease the movement of their spotted purple lips, only to realise they were hooked on the women’s stories. In those moments, d wanted to hold tight to their words. But the memory of Kim Gwija offering to come to their door to collect rent and the jarring image of her pale, outstretched hand encroaching on their space would inevitably resurface, and d would shudder and wish the women would simply fuck off… And always there was a nauseatingly insistent urge to ask Kim Gwija if her possessions weren’t warm too, and at times this urge would build and d would get worked up to the point of feeling violent, and wanting to scream, but even then their face remained, as they sat staring at the wall or at the veil of light dancing over the room, the very picture of serenity, and their eyes were, much like the women’s, quiet, unfocused, and dull. And so, that summer, folded into the women’s afternoon and existing as a mere outline like an empty, elongated sack, d watched as night crept in and the last of daylight daubed the walls in ever brighter hues, before yielding, incrementally, to the dark.

Where is the core.

d thought a person’s core must be located at the jaw, because that was where their own pain was located.

d went entire days without opening their mouth, except for when they occasionally tasted blood and unsealed their lips. But no amount of prodding with their tongue revealed the source of the bleed, and it wasn’t until later that d would realise the strain on their jaw and how tightly they’d been gritting their teeth. At night, as they lay staring at the dark with their lips clamped, the rest of their body seemed to fade away entirely until only the jaw remained. Then there was nothing to see or hear or miss or touch or be sad about, but only the chin, and the thought: This is it now, the chin is all there is. Then the core has to be in our jaws, ultimately. Because the core always comes last, it’s always final. And if the jaw is last, the core has to be there too. Holding on, barely, between the upper and lower jaw — the one crushing the other, the whole thing stuck fast like magnets. In a mouth that feels like it’s been bolted shut with a rusty lock, between the stiff tongue and the metallic saliva.

That was where the core was.

Kim Gwija had said that on 28 June, 1950, as she escaped off the Hangang Bridge, she’d glimpsed a slimy fragment underfoot in the afterglow of the bombing and recognised it as a human face. Though it was at most the size of half of a half of a bowl and stuck fast to a fragment of bone. The image haunted d. They couldn’t stop thinking of the partial face that was once whole and attached to a skull; an intact, enclosed skull, with twenty-eight beautifully interlocking bones. A brain had resided inside that skull, a thinking, remembering, forgetting brain. A spherical brain. Brains are spherical because human skulls form a closed circle, a beautiful and firm round orb. This structural frame, and the solid interlocking of each skull according to a particular pattern, allows the brain to retain its round form. One might say its life form. Outside that structure the brain would simply uncoil like a jumble of rope, entirely defenceless. Each skull is one of a kind. When one skull breaks, the world loses what had existed singularly, its distinctive pattern undone. Irrevocably. But so what? d thought. What’s a bit of loss in the scheme of things? Shit happens. It just does. It can and it does. dd’s particular pattern, though, that must have been beautiful, joined in its own distinct way inside the face I could pick out in a sea of faces… Unique and therefore irretrievable, never to be held in this life. When that disappeared from my side, silently fell away to shatter on the black road, the road that had seethed and boiled with the falling rain… I wasn’t holding on to dd, not the instant before, nor in the moment everything screeched to a stop on that road we’d walked together every day. But why wasn’t I? What was the cause? Was it even a matter of causality?