The Specters of Algeria E-Book

Yeo Jung Hwang

• Herausgeber: Honford Star
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 190

Beschreibung

A group of dramatists that commit what was a subversive act during the South Korean military dictatorships of the twentieth century – distributing copies of Karl Marx's only surviving play, The Specters of Algeria. The consequences of the brutal crackdown by the authorities would set the directions of the lives of two children of the group's members, Yul and Jing. Despite the deep connection between them, Yul would open up an alteration shop in Seoul and Jing would move to Europe. But now, Cheolsu, a dissatisfied employee at a community theatre, is unearthing the truth about The Specters of Algeria and questioning whether the human situation is as absurd as the play asserts.

Leseprobe

The Specters of Algeria

HWANG YEO JUNG

Translated by Yewon Jung

Contents

Part OneYul’s Story

Part TwoCheolsu’s Story

Part ThreeOsu’s Story

Part FourThe Remaining Story

Part One

YUL’S STORY

1

It was probably late summer.

Or maybe it was late spring. It wasn’t late autumn or winter, that I know.

No, I don’t know. I remember only two things for sure: the languorous heat and the feeling that a season was nearing its end. It could have been the room that was so hot, not the season; it could have been a certain period of time, not a season, that was nearing its end.

At any rate, we were talking that day about how the mold that had been spreading out of control on the ceiling and onto a wall had somehow disappeared. To be precise, we were talking about how sad we were that the mold had disappeared, and to be even more precise, we were thinking about a conversation we’d had when the mold had been expanding its territory.

I think it was that summer, or the summer before that—I can’t be certain—but anyway, the rainy season was unusually drawn out, that summer of the growing mold. The heavy rain that pelted down day after day crushed the flowerbed my dad had so carefully tended to, and weeds grew thick and strong, spreading throughout the yard. Humidity seeped into the corners of the ceiling and the walls and wouldn’t lift even after days had passed, and then came the mold. I had never seen mold in the house before. I said it scared me, and Jing said it was just mold. I didn’t care if it was just mold, or whatever else it was. The spreading grayish-black spot seemed to portend that something was rotting, and the thought of rotting things led to thoughts of other dreadful things. Vermin and corpses, for instance. I voiced my thought, and Jing was quiet for a while. He did that sometimes. His mouth shut tight, he would let his gaze wander and become lost in thought. And slowly knit his brows. I found him charming when he did this, though I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He always smiled as he came out of his silence, his eyes on me. Smiling and looking at me as always, he said, “Mold isn’t just mold, you know.”

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“It’s the earth.”

“What do you mean, the earth?”

“Take a good look,” Jing said, pointing to the part of the mold covering a corner of the ceiling.

“Doesn’t it remind you of something?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“Iceland.”

“Huh?”

“It looks exactly like Iceland.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“On a world map, I mean.”

I couldn’t recall. I tilted my head and Jing said, “Bring me your student atlas.”

“It’s not here.”

“Did you leave it at school?”

“No.”

“Well?”

I hesitated for a moment and said, “He burned it. There isn’t a single book left in this house now. You know that.”

“Even your textbooks?”

“They are books.”

Jing fell silent. He let his gaze wander and became lost in thought. Then he smiled and asked me to bring him some paper and a pencil.

He drew a world map in a single stroke. I didn’t have an atlas or a knack for geography, so I couldn’t tell how precise Jing’s map was, but it seemed exactly like a world map, as I remembered it, at least. The contours of the continents, with their fine, distinct curves, the confusing boundary lines on the inside, and more than forty country names all served to raise his credibility. Above all, the effortless movements of his hand, as well as the confidence in his eyes, told me that it was the real thing. I would have trusted his map, in fact, even if it were completely different from the real one. Jing’s map was Jing’s, and anything that was Jing’s was absolutely right. I was stunned, though, because even though I believed he was absolutely right in everything, I didn’t think that he would be good at everything.

“What, are you a genius now?” I said.

“It could just be that you’re an idiot” was Jing’s reply.

He put his index finger on a spot on the map and said, “This is Iceland. Now compare the two carefully.”

I looked from Jing’s Iceland to the mold’s Iceland. I couldn’t say that they were exactly the same, but they almost were.

“Now take a look at the others,” Jing said, and with him as my guide, I discovered many countries camouflaged as mold. The mold continued to spread day by day, and I discovered more and more countries. Some countries had complicated names I could hardly pronounce. We started out by wondering how they had come to have such names and ended up wondering who had named the countries and when, if a country needed a name, if there was a country without a name, what you should call a nameless country, if you could call it a country when you couldn’t call it by any name at all, and so on and so forth. The more we talked, the less afraid I became of the mold.

As soon as the rainy season came to an end, my dad tore off all the wallpaper in the house and painted the walls. It wasn’t because of the mold. Or maybe it was. If it wasn’t for the mold, he wouldn’t have paid attention to something like wallpaper, and wouldn’t even have realized that the walls had been papered in the first place.

My dad was afraid of paper. At first he was afraid of books, then he was afraid of paper with words written on it; in the end, he grew afraid of paper itself.

Before the rainy season began—on a day that was just before the rainy season, or much before, I can’t say—he up and left home; then, he returned one day out of nowhere. I don’t remember how long he’d been gone. It was quite long—I’d waited and waited and waited, and then waited some more— but I’m not sure if long was the time I spent waiting, or the feeling I had in my heart. Or were they the same? At any rate, it was the first time that he’d done something like that. When he came home, he just lay curled up in his room, looking sapped; then one day, he took down all the books from the shelves and piled them up in the yard, then poured kerosene on them and set them on fire. All my storybooks, textbooks, reference books; workbooks were thrown into the fire as well. He trembled all over, watching the raging fire. I burst into tears. Dad, what’s the matter? I said over and over, and he finally turned around to look at me. Books frighten me, he said. You’re frightening me! I wanted to say, but the words were buried in my sobs.

All the paper in the house was gone; the wallpaper was the last to go. Only after the wallpaper had been burned and the walls painted did I realize that even the box containing Jing’s letters was gone. Jing had fashioned the box out of blue hardboard, and more importantly, the box had held his map. I’d kept the box hidden in a corner above the kitchen cabinet. There was no telling when and how my dad had discovered it.

I chose crying over demanding to know why he’d done it. He gently patted my head. “Don’t worry, your mom will be home soon, too,” he said irrelevantly, which made me sob even harder. “Do you want to go to the zoo?” he asked. “You love the zoo. The animals at Changgyeong Park have all moved to Seoul Grand Park, I hear. They say it’s much bigger and better than the old park, with a lot more animals, too.” I went on crying.

Jing said that he could draw me any number of world maps. When he said that, I felt somehow that the letters were an even greater loss. He said that he’d write me more letters than he ever had before.

“But what about the mold?” I asked.

“What about it?” Jing asked in return.

“My dad sprayed mold cleaner on it. And that paint, it’s not just any paint. It’s mold proof. It doesn’t matter how much of a genius you are—you can’t bring mold back to life.”

Some time passed, and one day late that summer, or late spring the next year, or maybe even late autumn or winter— which would surprise me—we calmly reflected on the process in which the mold had formed and led to the burning of the map. Then we stopped talking. We stared and stared at the wall with a faraway gaze, like old people longing for their prime which exists only in their minds. The wall looked fresh and clean, as if nothing had happened, and I got goosebumps for some reason. I said so and Jing nodded, saying, “That’s entirely possible.”

I nodded in reply, though I couldn’t tell whether he was referring to the wall or the goosebumps, and whether he was saying it was a good thing or bad.

I went to the front door to see him out but stopped by the bathroom before he left. I had opened the door and was about to come out when I heard my dad’s voice.

“I slept with your mom” were the words.

I froze, my hand on the doorknob.

He repeated the words, enunciating them slowly and clearly as if speaking to someone hard of hearing.

“I, slept, with, your, mom.”

Jing stood at the door with his shoes on, looking up at my dad, who was standing in the living room with his back to me, looking down at him. The bathroom faced the front door, slightly at an angle, so I could see Jing’s face, but I don’t remember the look on that face.

Jing’s eyes turned to me. Only then did my dad realize that I was there and turned his head a little to the right, then stopped and turned it to the left; then, he turned around and went into his room.

I don’t remember how long Jing and I stayed standing there like that, either.

Jing raised his arm and urged me to come to him. I opened the bathroom door all the way and did as he asked, and put my shoes on. He took my hand in his as we went out the door.

At the gate, Jing kissed me. It was my first time, but I wasn’t flustered. His lips felt cold and rough. Jing had to lower his head even though I was standing a step above him, and I was a little surprised, after our lips separated, to realize how tall he was. I had been taller than him at one time.

“When did you get so tall?” I asked.

Jing grinned, placed my right hand on his left palm, then looked down at my hand for a long time.

“It’ll be all right,” he said.

“What will?”

“Everything. Everyone.”

He stood at the end of the alley, waving and smiling more brightly than ever, then disappeared out of view. I stood at the gate longer than usual. Then I darted off into the alley and turned the corner. He was gone.

*

Two years passed before I saw him again.

It was the first day of my mom’s funeral. The funeral was held at home, as my dad wished. His theater colleagues arranged and oversaw all the proceedings.

Jing and his mom bowed to my mom’s portrait, and then we stood face to face. We bowed to each other, and Jing’s mom took my dad’s hands in hers. He dropped his head on her shoulder and wept.

Jing and I stood looking at each other without a word. I’d grown quite tall, but so had he.

My dad calmed down, and Jing and his mom left.

Three years later, I saw him again. It was at his dad’s funeral. Jing alone greeted my dad and me. After the mutual bow, my dad asked, “Where’s your mom?”

“She passed out … We put her on an IV,” he said.

His voice was thick and low. It sounded unfamiliar, but it suited him.

My dad squeezed his arm lightly, then let go.

Jing passed in front of me three times while my dad had a bottle of soju. Once, he glanced at me. He stopped for a brief moment and smiled at me. I wanted to smile back, but couldn’t.

My dad and I left the funeral hall without seeing his mom.

Jing and I were twenty, and that was the last we saw of each other.

*

I imagined running into Jing. There he would be—on a subway, on a bus, in a bookstore, in a café, on the street— when I casually turned my steps or my head. What we would talk about, what we would do, where we would go, I couldn’t say; and the scene—or the scenes—would always stop at us running into each other, because I couldn’t really imagine what would happen next.

And—

I also imagined that I would never see him again. Jing was running as far as he could. He would run so far that even if he wanted to return, his life would come to an end before he could; and in the hour—or the hours—searching for one another, we wouldn’t find even a trace of each other, not anywhere.

And—

Days went by as I didn’t imagine anything.

2

I didn’t go to college. I couldn’t. My head ached whenever I read a book for more than three minutes—whether it was a textbook or a workbook, or whatever it was. I don’t remember when that started happening. After my dad burned all the books, there was nothing to read at home; at school, I would sit staring off into space all day. I was made aware of my symptoms by my homeroom teacher in my second year of high school. After I submitted my answer sheet for the monthly exam with the same numbers marked over and over for three months in a row, he had my dad come see him.

“She won’t make it to college at this rate,” he said.

“It’s up to her,” my dad said—according to himself.

My teacher remembered differently.

“You need to take more interest in your daughter,” he had said.

“I’m not interested” was my dad’s reply.

My homeroom teacher asked me if he was my biological father. I said yes, and he looked at me with great sympathy.

Every Saturday afternoon, my teacher held a make-up class for me and five other kids. I still just stared at the desk or the blackboard, textbook or workbook, at my teacher’s face or his finger holding a chalk, or just off into space. He tried various methods in an attempt to get us to focus but gave up in the end and just had us read the textbook out loud. Before I made it to the end of the second page, I had to grasp my head with my hands because of the ringing in my ears and a splitting headache. My teacher said that he wanted to see my dad again. He was away on a trip, though.

“On a trip where?” my teacher asked.

“He was in Gangwon-do three days ago. I don’t know where he is now,” I said.

“What is this world coming to?” he mumbled to himself, then declared:

“Your life is yours! You can live the life you want if you set your mind to it!”

A life of reading nothing, that was what I wanted.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, nodding my head, meaning that I’d made up my mind to quit school and live the life I wanted, as he’d suggested.

“Will you go to college?” he asked.

I was thrown off guard.

“Or will you give up?”

I kept silent, not knowing what he wanted me to do.

“What matters is your own will. Your own will!”

My silence stretched on.

“Let me know when you’ve made up your mind. I’ll be waiting.”

I told my dad about the exchange after he returned from his trip.

“My teacher’s a little nuts,” I said.

He nodded slowly and said, “Yes, he does seem a bit inconsistent. But …”

“But what?”

“That was a nice thing he said.”

“What was?”

“That he’ll be waiting.”

I gave him a blank stare and said, “What is this? Were you secretly hoping that I’d go to college, too?”

He gave me a blank stare in return and said, “I mean, I like how he said he’ll be waiting. Waiting, waiting for something, you know.”

Something dropped with a soft thud in my heart. It wasn’t heavy. It felt as if it had gently landed somewhere.

*

We moved in the autumn of the year Jing’s dad died. My dad’s theater colleagues helped with the move. After everything had been loaded onto the truck, my dad took a careful look around the house. I did the same, feeling somehow that I should. The house had been handed down to my dad from my grandfather. My dad had been born and raised in the house. So had I, and my mom had come to live in the house after they got married, and she died there. Could you say that we were connected through the house? I suppose. But I’ll never know how they each had spent their days there. And they would never know everything about the days I had spent there. Only the house had been witness to all the moments we’d lived through inside. I stared at each and every corner of the house more deliberately than did my dad, as if I were searching for something, anything. The house remained empty and silent. It was just a house, after all.

The new house had an unusual structure. We rented the half-basement floor of a two-story building standing on a slope; seen from the bottom of the hill, where we lived was on the ground floor, and the building appeared to have three stories. In other words, half of our house was underground, and the other half above the ground. Inside, the house was in the form of a long, horizontal trapezoid. In the space aboveground was a corridor that served as a veranda, and there was also a kitchen and a bathroom; in the space below were two small rooms, a large room, and a living room. I used the large room and my dad one of the small rooms. The other small room was full of stuff such as a refrigerator and a vacuum cleaner, and the living room was furnished with a low sofa and table and a television. The large room was bigger than the living room, so it looked empty even with a wardrobe, a bed, and a dressing table. I said I would use the small room, but my dad wouldn’t allow it, saying the large room had a window facing the corridor where some light came through, but the small room had no windows and was always dark. I insisted that I could go outside for some sun, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

“When you’re awake you can be in a room a hundred floors underground, but when you’re sleeping, you need to be somewhere the sun has touched.”

“But what about you?”

“I’ve slept in a place like that for fifty years.”

“So?”

“So I have plenty of sun already in me.”

“Twenty years is a long time, too.”

“Yes, it’s a long time.”

“Well?”

“Well, it’s long but not nearly long enough.”

“Why not?”

“Because, that’s the way of the sun.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you don’t know, just be quiet and listen to your dad.”

I thought the room would go on feeling empty and dreary, but to my surprise, I got used to it in just one month. I slept an average of eight hours every day without ever waking during the night.

Before the move, I always woke up a couple of times while sleeping, sometimes for no reason and sometimes from a nightmare. The nightmares were varied: the entire house would be on fire, burning furiously; my mom would be staring at me, while standing upside down; people in uniforms would march in step toward me, their pace growing faster and faster; or the world would be covered by glaciers everywhere. Sometimes I had trouble falling asleep for fear that I would have another nightmare. In those moments, I sat up and called out, Jing! Jing! Jing! He made no reply, but I felt relieved just calling out to him.

I slept longer and longer. Once, I slept through the entire day, plus a quarter of the next; when I woke up, my dad was sitting in the middle of the room, with a meal prepared on a portable dining table. I started, then climbed hesitantly down from my bed and sat across from him. He put a spoon in my hand.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Just have a little bite,” he said.

My hand, holding the spoon, dropped to the table. He took the spoon from me, scooped up some steamed rice, and held it before my mouth. I resisted for a while, but opened my mouth in the end. As I slowly chewed the rice, my mouth watered and I felt a pang of hunger. Only then did I notice the side dishes. There was beef radish soup, salt-dried corvina, steamed eggs, seasoned bean sprouts, seasoned spinach, salted pollack roe, and cubed radish kimchi—all things I loved. I gobbled up my bowl of rice. Then I grew drowsy again.

“Will you try and do something?” my dad asked.

“Do what?”

“Anything.”

I slipped back into bed. He said something more, but I drifted off to sleep.

When I opened my eyes, he was still sitting there. After some dawdling, I went and again sat across from him.

“What do I have to do?” I asked.

“What you want to do.”

“Like what?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Whatever?”

“Whatever.”

From the look of him, he wouldn’t stir, it seemed, unless I said something. If I didn’t, I would have trouble sleeping again. Once I decided to give it some thought, though, something did come to mind: an image of him sitting in front of a sewing machine, and my mom sewing. He was making costumes for the theater actors, and she was working on a quilt, or mending our clothes or bags. The scene was familiar to me, something I had often seen since I was a child.

“Mending,” I said.

“What do you mean, mending?” my dad asked.

“Mending clothes, I mean.”

“You’re saying you want to mend clothes?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not as easy as it seems.”

“You said I could do whatever I wanted.”

“You really want to try it?”

“Yeah.”

He left the room at last, and I crawled back under the blanket.

When I woke up again, he led me out to the living room without a word, and showed me a desk-type sewing machine, saying that he had found it at a market in Jongno. It was secondhand but cost quite a bit, he said with pride. I stared at it, puzzled.

“You said you wanted to mend clothes,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“Here, have a seat.”

Feeling awkward, I sat down; to my surprise, though, I felt comfortable, both in body and mind. I sat still for a moment, then gently stroked the desk and the machine. The dry, smooth surface felt familiar to the touch.

“Yes, you always wipe the worktable clean before you get down to work. Preferably with a dry towel, not your hand,” my dad said, giving me my first lesson in sewing.