*이 소설은
A Centennial of Korean-American Literature 1903-2003,
[SURFACING SADNESS]에 실린 것이다.
*Kyung Sook Park
Born in 1956
Immigrated to the United States in 1992
The Korea Times Literary Award: Short Story Category 1994
Korean American Writers Association New Author Award: Short Story Category 1995
Debuted in Korea as a writer with nomination by Professor Gil-Un Hyun with novella, One Room in 1999
-동굴을 떠난 동굴나라 사람 하나-
Kyung Sook Park
(Translated by Eunhwa Choe)
On very depressing nights, I have decided to select a television program featuring extreme violence. Although it would not resolve my depression, in a strange way, by confirming the shapeless form of violence’s ugliness, it gives me some relief; it becomes an addictive habit. Those who left their own country, like a misplaced pebble rolling along without a destination, are enveloped by the doleful sense of unease, filled with anxiety. On the date of departure, wasn’t I filled with endless relief, leaving the damp and dark cave? These days, the daily newspapers are covered with the stories of boiling contents of the cave. Hopefully, the surge of the boil would reach its climax and lift off the lid of the cave, turning it into light streaming valley and not a cave. Perhaps I should have lived there forever, even if it’s a dark cave or not, as a native stone. Since I wouldn’t know the difference between the cave’s inside or outside environment, I wouldn’t have know the fact that I lived in a cave.
For the iris, which was so used to the pitch darkness, it naturally took some time and effort to adjust to the brightness of this land. At this point, I am too tired of this onset of depression and am seeking for some violent and cruel television programs using the remote control. Tonight, the History Channel has on a documentary about Holocaust. In the dusky black and white film, the Jews who were stripped of their clothing were being led into the gas chambers looking grave and sorrow stricken. Before a very thin old man with his private parts covered by his hand, there was a young stout woman holding a hand of a child with the dark pubic area exposed. It was as if she was asking what is there to be embarrassed before an oncoming death. The next scene showed a pile of decomposing bodies. There was a close up of fluid oozing out of noses and eyes of the bodies, which were stacked like crates. The bodies deplete of fluid looked like roasted sparrows and just as pitiful. At that moment, I had to close my eyes, my body drenched with hair-raising fear. But I couldn’t turn the television off. I couldn’t even figure out why I was still watching the television through slats of my fingers with gooseflesh spread all over my body. Somewhere in my body, current of pleasure, coming from beyond the fear was emerging.
Is this the hidden cruelty in me? There was evil in me enough to find some pleasure from seeing those wretched human beings… As soon as those feelings surfaced, my eyes and nose were overflowing with fluids. Suddenly, unbearable sobs engulfed me. While I am shuddering my shoulders with tears, as when I do watching a sad drama, the television camera was focusing on the image of mustached Hitler. The narrator was saying he is the 20th century’s ultimate evil. Before my dazed eyes, another image came on top of the mustached Hitler. This one had a beard grown as well. Quickly, my head was tangling with all sorts of thoughts. If it were a human fate to be faced with a devil every century, in what form would the 21st century devil show itself. Has time arrived for us cave people, the ones called the second Jews, to suffer? Our homeland, the cave, is still restlessly rioting daily, in turn jarring the lid, which has cut off the light for a long time. Has time come for us to be persecuted? This image became clearer and clearer until he broke through the television, lashing toward me. Unconsciously, I made fists. Yes. You bastard. Now, you are my devil and there’s no guarantee you will not be the persecuting devil of our cave people in the 21st century.
Of all occasions, as soon after coming to this vast land of America, while still dazed in awkwardness due to arriving from the cave country, the April 29th riot of Los Angeles occurred. The cave people were the target of the hatred as the rioters and looters picked through where mostly these cave people had gathered to do businesses. For me, it has already been several months since taking over a piece of white owned business, coming fresh from the cave country, like a dislodged stone relocated to this new land. There was a discord between the employee of mine and I and finally he was coming on to me as an illusion of Hitler, who couldn’t tolerate Jews or other race. It was true, although it is believed to be trendy for young American men to grow mustached and beard, he seemed to look full of menace from the beginning. He had worked for the previous owner for the last five years. It was all right when we had decided to keep him as an employee but problem arose as he looked down upon his new employer, me. Perhaps he could only look down upon this small and yellowish Asian from the cave country. When the clerk, with the blessing of good ancestral genes of fair skin, tall stature, and blue eyes, talks to me by looking down, it easily gave illusion of he as an employer and I as the employee. When he speaks his native English fast without giving much thought to the listener, it does seem as if he is intentionally doing it to put me in an awkward position. It was obvious that he has no respect for me by the way he would listen with his arms folded across his chest as I stutter in inarticulate stammer. To keep my dignity as an employer, I stretched my neck from my small body as much as I can and purposely lifted my eyes to get on his nerves.
The war of the nerves between he and I escalated to the level of how I ran the business. Even though I had no prior business experience, just like Chinese people opening restaurants wherever they settle, I could only open a store with all the capital I had. Furthermore, my husband, who had lost all of his authority, expertise, and ability he had in our homeland, had less language skills than I. He pushed me forward to carry out the business while he stayed in the background. We have accidentally bought into a gourmet frozen yogurt business, which, unbeknownst to us, required some expertise. We realized this after paying off for the store to the cunning white storeowner. It was only natural that I was in a fix with our employee who could manage the ins and outs of the business with his eyes closed. As the days passed he became even more imprudent and managed the store as he wished. As I lifted my eyes further up, his blue eyes got even darker and bluer. His eyes sometimes conjured the night sea’s dark fear in a terribly chilling way. I saw in the deepening eyes of his the fall of my cave country. I was beginning to subtly yearn for my native cave country, the land I have for so long longed to get away.
Even without realizing the land I was living on was a cave, I had wished to find a place of light, joy, and aridness to do away with dull, somber, and irrepressible humidity. Of course, this refers to not of physical humidity but that of mental. With that in mind, I have named my homeland, a cave country. The discomforting moisture has spread wide from close neighbors to the strangers. We cannot remember why and when the unpleasant humidity began. We could only remember from disjointed memories of childhood that we used to live happily in dry air.
All the people of the cave country were politicians. Whenever they gathered, they criticized the ruling class, discussed the current events, and showed interest in how much so and so spent on his or her new chest of drawers. They were knowledgeable about which plot of land or stock should be purchased for profit. If you didn’t know about these things, you were treated like an idiot. The powerful ones flared their nostrils, letting out steam and relentlessly stepped on the weaker ones’ starving bellies. Whether their nostril steam rose to the sky and formed the thick clouds, which eventually became a roof like structure covering the whole land like a lid or it began as a cave, I couldn’t discern for sure. However, I was one of those who couldn’t stand the moisture. The cave country people were well known for their adaptability. They adapted well to the stuffy environment but I couldn’t adapt to it. I am not perfect but I couldn’t stand something, which wasn’t so. I was a freak. Everyday, my spirits would be swollen under allergic reaction and due to its itch, I would beat up and scratch and finally have fallen down.
One day, I have decided to leave for a land where the light is brighter and the air is drier; I have left the cave country. There were already many cave country people who came long ago to settle down. Even as they were living here, they let out their own unique steam. Nonetheless, because the land in so immense here, no matter how much steam they generated, it never became dark or humid. I have deliberately settled in a place where blue eyed ones teemed, away from the cave country people. And now, after spending a strenuous war of nerves with a blue-eyed employee, I am looking for a mind numbing violence and cruelty filled television program to forget the strain. So today, I see the decomposing bodies of the Jews and the fact that Hitler also had a mustache makes me want to hate my employee even more. He had to grow a mustache. I have heard that a way before Hitler began the genocide of Jews; a Jew had humiliated him during his college days. If a one miserly Jew, blinded by his love for money, planted a grudge in young Hitler’s heart, and if it caused to reveal gross evil in the future, the defiant blue eyed one in my store, he too in his young heart, can grow grudge against our cave country people. Chill ran down my spine. He was like the young Hitler. He is a young 21-year-old college student on his own. His blue eyes came toward me like the night sea’s whirlpool. In it, my cave country people were falling.
“I heard that the former President got arrested?”
“Well, two at that.”
“What’s the worry? Soon they will be out as if nothing has happened. Well, I am sure they have hidden away a lot of money between the two of them.”
As the young writers and poets got together in this rare occasion and exchanged some words, an elderly poet decides to join them.
“What sort of pathetic subjects arrest the father of the country?”
“What father of the country? We are in the second half of the 20th century. And besides, they are thieves.”
“That’s right! They are thieves. They should just go ahead and kill themselves.”
As the young writers in the back get ready to refute the elder poet raised his voice even higher.
“What nonsense! I was a government employee in Korea! I took in a lot of money as well. That’s how everyone lives over there. Have you seen anyone without any faults?”
That night, those literary figures from the cave country that live in this land were engulfed in talks about the cave country, the boiling political stories. Those who left the cave country earlier had vague, dim and hazy notion of value about motherland. However, they were not the people of this vast land either. In other words, they didn’t stand on either side. They were pretty much like spectators. I myself who left the unbearable humidity of the motherland wasn’t quite ready to be part of this land. One could tell by the way I tire out having confrontations with the blue-eyed one. Ultimately, I have given up a leading role in the cave country in disgust and in a laid back, irresponsible way and have decided to take a harmless minor role in this expansive land. Afterwards, when realizing my minor role through the employee’s eyes, I couldn’t bear it.
“Our immigrant literature will be over in thirty years or so. The 1.5 or 2nd generations cannot carry on literature in Korean language. When our young writers die off, no one in this land will write in Korean. That’s why we have to realize for ourselves how important we are. No matter how many able writers are in our homeland, they cannot know what we have felt and experienced.”
With this statement, the elderly poet created literary mood, which was marred by the talks of the presidential arrests that night.
“Immigrant literature is really terminal. When you think about it, it’s quite sad. Our second generation cannot speak Korean fluently. It’s really impossible to imagine them writing in Korean. Furthermore, the government her is keen on limiting immigration and with the economic boom in the homeland, there is a sharp decrease in immigration. Besides, there’s a trend of immigrating back to the motherland. Then for whom are we carrying on the literary front in this land? In addition, no one in Korea appreciates our literary circles any way…”
I let out a sigh, unable to bear the talk any more.
“Who could we doing it for? We are just moved by our individual needs to write. Immigrant literature did not originate from nationalistic feelings or for our time. Didn’t we start to write to comfort our lonely immigrant life?”
A middle-aged essayist spoke up.
“ No matter how or why we started it, we have to be a source of tonic to this arid immigrant life. To those of us who are just so eager to make a lot of money, in this foreign land, we have to be responsible to our duty of idealizing them through literature. It is a writer’s mission.”
The elderly poet pushed up his reading glasses with his index finger and looked upon the younger members.
“But sir, in the environment where there are no professional writers, there are too many writers who see writing as means of obtaining personal pleasures. For example, there was a review of a poet’s new volume of poetry on the culture section a newspaper but it was obvious that the poet didn’t know who won the literary prize featured in the column just below his interview. He had no idea whether it was a short story or a poem. It just shows how self intoxicated we are and that we have no interest in others’ works.”
By my somewhat offensive utterance, the elderly poet grinned.
“Are you telling your story? Yes! There is somewhat of that. Seeing everything from one’s point of view is one of our culture’s weak points. That’s why events like arresting former Presidents could occur.”
The talk went back to politics of the motherland and the night’s gathering ended that way.
On the television screen, Auschwitz concentration camp appeared as the narrator described the tragedy of that period. ‘They suffered through hard labor. The German soldiers often raped the young women. Without any warning, they were taken from their scene of labor under the auspice of taking shower and clothes were taken off and were killed in gas chambers. Their bodies were cremated in special kilns. There were educators, artists, and man of religious orders.’ There were educators, artists, and men of religious orders…hence many who could have contributed much to the human race were wasted away… I went over the narrator’s statements again. The fact that I am here suffering in this land amused me. I who has not contributed much to even one person let alone human race. Once again, his blue eyes rose up like barely contained bile coming up. For something live was violating me. To him I was stutter who spoke broken English and a cave country idiot who didn’t know anything about running a business. Every day, I increase volume of my voice so as not to lose to my employee and used all my wits to pester him. I directed a lot of work for him so he could treat me courteously as an employer. It was my cunning plan to not to give him any breathing space. Perhaps he has noticed that I am out to make him suffer. But what if that creates grudge in his young heart… Just by looking at his determined poise, he has potential to become a man of power. What if his grudge against me grows into a grudge against my cave country people, like a second Hitler… If so, I am forming a critical condition for the future of my people… I shook my head. No. I was never a nationalist. I have never given a thought to analyze such an extravagant idea. Everything was personal issue to me. I have seen current issues from the personal gain. I am just an irresponsible person. If it wasn’t that I wasn’t even curious how the country was running. It is rather pathetic but no one whoever talked about politics in the cave country without thinking of one’s personal gain.
A few decades ago, my father was responsible for a small portion of the cave country’s politics. Ironically, while my father was advancing well in his political career, my school was next door the Opposition Party headquarters. We had to endure listening to the chant of ‘opposing the third term amendment.’ It was difficult to concentrate on school studies. The third term reform was the vein of my father’s political up wind. I was only a mere child covered in soft fuzz but knew enough about my gain to snub the chant coming from the Opposition Party speaker. My father who had risen due to the third term Presidential reelection bought a huge house with a pond. I was just a girl filled with dreams in that house. Awhile later, under an odd nomenclature of Reformation, the leader fiercely eliminated my father, who was like a loyal dog to him. The family and the wealth became scattered and I have come to gain a heart critical of the politics in my young heart. However, I was only a wordless demonstrator who refused to vote during the elections.
The ones who have tasted the sweetness of wealth and power have a tendency to reflect that illusion all his or her life, making the current life look very shabby. In our time, power was wealth and the wealth was power. In the bitterness of being demoted from the upper crust, I had to spend my youth in loneliness. There was no pleasure when the Restoration movement died away and even when worse political era came, I didn’t care. I was suffering now from my neighbors’ spouting steam but didn’t think to analyze why the wetness was surrounding us in darkness. Just wanting to look for brighter and drier place brought me to here. And now I am just a severe individualist who is itching to scratch the body and mind over aggravating the blue-eyed employee.
“I came here in the 70’s because I hated the Restoration platform of the government. My classmates have more than 50 million. Even though I am poor, living here.”
The dentist talked through his mask without a break from his talks, while filing away my cavities. It was regrettable that I couldn’t talk while his tools were coming and going through my widely opened mouth.
‘Really? You couldn’t have left the cave country simply for that reason. There must have been another reason. I know. It is to find someone who could criticize government without thinking about personal gain or profit. I could honestly tell you that, which I have learned through my own experience. During my college days, I used to know a prodigy. He was an ambitious young man who dreamed of success through passing the civil service exam. He didn’t have any inkling of political agenda held by young men of his days. While his classmates were crying through tear gas chanting for justice, he quietly listened to music at home. While his friends were going in and out of jail, he went to the library and studied. He passed the exam. While he is still in an important position, his friends who had to go in an out of jail is starving under the shadow of the government. Well, who was more sensible? If you have truly come here because of the “Reformation” government, then you are the one starving under the shadow and your classmates are like the prodigy I knew who successfully obtained an important post.’
While I was under his lukewarm breath with closed eyes, my cavities were filed away. He took out all the stuffed tools from my mouth.
“Go ahead and rinse your mouth out.”
He spoke while taking off the blue plastic mask from his mouth and nose. I rinsed my mouth with the water from the paper cup. I absentmindedly looked at him wanting to at least utter a few words I had patiently kept to myself. His small stature looked extremely tired under a white gown. The yellowish face covered in salt and pepper hair represents his twenty so years of difficult immigrant life.
“Mrs. Lee! I enjoyed your short story in the newspaper the other day. Even from the beginning, I thought you had the writer’s mood or shall I say nuance. I don’t just look into people’s mouths; I look into their hearts as well. Keep on trying hard. Although the literary standard isn't much here.”
He opened his dull cheeks wide and grinned. Through his dull grin, his breath spat out unattractively fluttering a few white strand of hair that fell on his forehead. Due to Novocain injection I could only grin with the numbed cheeks.
“There was something of forlornness about you Mrs. Lee. How could one who can’t feel the loneliness work on creating literature? If you are looking to date, how about me? Although I am a bit old, I could at least take about literature with you.”
Embarrassed on his own, he chuckled aloud. After observing his idiotic laugh, I had to force my uncomfortable cheeks to move to say something back.
“If I was looking for someone to date, I could have found one already. You wouldn’t have a chance.”
Embarrassed again by my stinging rebuttal, he tried to hide it by chuckling again.
Between the steps out of the dentist office, the prodigy from my recently recovered memory trudged along. Although it is from long ago, my heart began to constrict.
‘That prodigy, I must have liked him a lot. Was it love? you ask. Who knows! I have never used the word love. His sensibility to reality and his agility, I have liked. Because I do not have any of those qualities. Although people usually love what is similar to them, sometimes people envy what is totally opposite to them. I was obsessed with him because he was so different from me. Yes! It was merely a severe obsession. He taught me how to sneak away to home to listen to music when the streets are overflowing with demonstrating students. Time to time he would tell me how my father’s position would be useful to him when he passes his civil service exam. But you know, when that peculiar “Restoration” movement came along, along with the wind, he disappeared without trace. In the political change of wind, I have become a victim of it. That’s how I know. I know that the politics could have profound effect on individuals. But I don’t know why now and then that state of obsession would lift its head up again. Is it because you joked about dating? Frankly, I may be still dating with the worn out obsession. Perhaps now there will be no daily struggle with that obsession. For lacking the prodigy’s quick thinking, I may be expressing anger towards my weak self.’
While regurgitating the spoken, leftover words, the bitter chemical odor from the repaired molar is causing dry heaves. Yuck. Yuck. The dry heaves bring hollow wind through my bosom.
Perhaps since that time he may have covered over me as an outer layer. Within the outer layer, which resembled his realistic and opportunistic trait, there is porous, useless me. Unable to balance the hard outer layer and the soft inner one, I am suffering in this vast foreign land. If the reason I couldn’t stand my homeland is that I, who with soft layer, couldn’t live in harmony with sturdily armored people; perhaps, in this land I cannot live harmoniously with these people who look soft outwardly but really tough inside. For all these years, it is love from youthful years that is conquering me but it is just my obsession from that period. The obsession for the fallen things causes the despair. No, in earnest, it is the obsession for the sweet life of the upper class before the fall. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let him go like that. Rather than sending him off by wearing his hard shell on me, I should have covered his hardness with my soft layer. In that way, at least one in the cave country, no, the two, he and I, could have been the ones who did not let out steam. Hence, we could have been the one who might have eliminated the humidity. If not, I could have not worn his hard layer and remain a sole being who could have been the eliminator.
I see Tel Aviv of Israel bombarded by PLO on the television screen. The Jews, having survived through Hitler’s persistent genocide, built Israel and established financial success throughout the world but their land faces endless terrorism and slaughter. Hasn’t the Biblical Exodus reached the land filled with milk and honey led by Moses?
Our cave country doesn’t have to worry about terrorist from other nationals but the daily newspaper reports other horrors. When the employee brought in the Los Angeles Times featuring hundreds perished under the collapsed department store building, in the cave country, I didn’t have anything to say. He sarcastically asked whether my homeland had an earthquake. He looked down hard on me with his sparkling blue eyes. That day, I saw my small body and my cave country endlessly falling down in his undulating blue eyes. Needless to say, my mental allergic reaction reached its peak that day. I sat absentmindedly under his blue gaze, feeling my mental sneezes flowing up continuously up into the air. No, I have disappeared before his eyes. He acted in freewill having forgotten my existence. From the extinction of my existence under his blue eyes, the department store building’s horrific collapse becomes clearly focused. The humidity of the cave, which was unbearable for me, wasn’t actually the physical nature of it but something that could generate fearful power. Ultimately, all the steam generated by each individual in the form of mistrust and selfishness, covered the sky and seeped into the ground. The structure built on that foundation was bound to collapse. A stream of tear rolled off. My store was bright with only white customers and noisy with the words I couldn’t understand. Seeing the scene through the reflection from the glass window, standing in the back, caused heartache of loneliness.
“If living was grand at home, why did we come here? Only the ones with nomadic bug would gather here. Working so hard all our lives and now we have passing on to our middle ages. When we finally take a breather, our children can’t read Korean or even speak Korean. It’s only natural they forget how to speak Korean. We were so busy living that we didn’t take time to talk to our children. Did you run away after being in debt? This is the land, where everyone who doesn’t have reason to live in motherland, gather to live. We are, we are becoming people who forever wants to live in the cave country but can’t do that any more. Rarely when we do go back for visit, we are faced with rudeness, starting at the airport, and the traffic jams… When we leave there again we promise ourselves that we won’t ever go back there again. But when the time passes, we yearn to go back again… There’s no one more stupid. Ultimately we become idiots who can’t belong anywhere. Although our hearts are in the motherland, we are becoming totally immersed in the more developed culture. Can’t figure out whose country man I am…”
This woman, who is nearing her senior status and I have just met in the supermarket, is talking to me just because I am a Korean. She even dropped the polite form of speech after gauging my younger age.
“Do we really need to distinguish which nation we belong to? We are all the same human beings on this earth. Shouldn’t we just live, giving all we can on wherever we are?”
She pranced upon my words, which were spoken out of embarrassment of being too quiet.
“You are talking like that because you are still young. Wait until you get older. As time passes, your yearning for your homeland gets greater. But we become idiots who can’t manage to live in our homeland. It it’s to be like this we should have remained there. Having needlessly come here, we got Westerners as daughter and son in-laws. Although the grandchildren have trace of our genes, but by the time we see our great grandchildren, there will be no trace of us. As if we never came, there’s no trace of us… If you think about it, it just feels so hollow.”
Sadness fills her wrinkled face.
“Oh, that is true. Never thought of it up to there. I used to think of belonging somewhere as a burden. I was one of those who struggle to be free from belonging to a family or to a nation. I used to think the belongingness places restraint on people, causing selfishness. Perhaps I came here to be free. To be free from all the system and memories from there. But even after leaving the homeland, all those things put greater pressure on me than ever before. In other words, should I say that living with other cultures makes me more aware of my ethnicity? All the things from the past, which contribute to formation of myself, were being remembered more sharply. So in the end, I have become someone who lost the freedom.”
I let out a sigh over her graying head.
“Right. Don’t they say the exiles become great patriots.”
She lightly tapped my shoulder once and pushed her shopping cart toward a cashier. I would never become someone who would want to go back. And I would never regret it. I silently screamed towards her back. Her gait looked strong even in her late years. It was difficult to find a trace of immigrant life’s hardship as she had complained…and I walked without strength. Totally different from my statement saying that I would never regret…
The Holocaust documentary came to its end by filling the screen with the view of the city of Jerusalem. I made a pot of coffee while looking out the window seeing the new dawn come up. I wondered if the scent of coffee is stronger in dawn when it is silent all around. I poured especially strong coffee into a mug and brought it under my nose. My eyelashes become moist. Probably because of the hot steam. I took a sip of coffee. But I swallowed some other liquid along with the coffee. I was still crying. From the confused tangle of thoughts suddenly his blue eyes popped out. The unresolved past love’s pain created a deep whirlpool in my heart. And I could feel the moist air of the cave country on my skin. It was unbearable loneliness created by the fearfulness and strangeness of the new land and the yearning for the past times. I looked out the dawn ensuing window while wiping away the tears with the back of my hand. The color of the early morning, which hasn’t fully arrived, looked like me in its awkwardness of haze. I could never be totally free any where. Is freedom something that is out of reach as one seeks it more? I gained a shackle of the cave country, from my departing the cave country, seeking my personal freedom. Yes. I was a part of the cave country. I was not I for my personal gain. Now, I shall cast off the hard shell of false love. If I live as my self without struggling between something that is not I and the one I want to be, perhaps I could use more tolerance dealing with the blue-eyed one. In that way. Perhaps his blue eyes wouldn’t be seen as fearful night sea but as a sun pouring, breezy sea. When after getting rid of the shell of the love and the obsession of my heart fills with unbearable exhaustion, I shall make sweat pouring love with the literature. If it is a way for me to continue to live on this land…
The hazy dawn light, which filled the window, became stronger. From the tree branch, cutting across the window, chirping of the birds tore the dawn open. With the empty mug in one hand, I was still gulping something down the throat. Through the tear of the dawn, by the bird song, the blade of the light slew the world.
A Centennial of Korean-American Literature 1903-2003,
[SURFACING SADNESS]에 실린 것이다.
*Kyung Sook Park
Born in 1956
Immigrated to the United States in 1992
The Korea Times Literary Award: Short Story Category 1994
Korean American Writers Association New Author Award: Short Story Category 1995
Debuted in Korea as a writer with nomination by Professor Gil-Un Hyun with novella, One Room in 1999
-동굴을 떠난 동굴나라 사람 하나-
Kyung Sook Park
(Translated by Eunhwa Choe)
On very depressing nights, I have decided to select a television program featuring extreme violence. Although it would not resolve my depression, in a strange way, by confirming the shapeless form of violence’s ugliness, it gives me some relief; it becomes an addictive habit. Those who left their own country, like a misplaced pebble rolling along without a destination, are enveloped by the doleful sense of unease, filled with anxiety. On the date of departure, wasn’t I filled with endless relief, leaving the damp and dark cave? These days, the daily newspapers are covered with the stories of boiling contents of the cave. Hopefully, the surge of the boil would reach its climax and lift off the lid of the cave, turning it into light streaming valley and not a cave. Perhaps I should have lived there forever, even if it’s a dark cave or not, as a native stone. Since I wouldn’t know the difference between the cave’s inside or outside environment, I wouldn’t have know the fact that I lived in a cave.
For the iris, which was so used to the pitch darkness, it naturally took some time and effort to adjust to the brightness of this land. At this point, I am too tired of this onset of depression and am seeking for some violent and cruel television programs using the remote control. Tonight, the History Channel has on a documentary about Holocaust. In the dusky black and white film, the Jews who were stripped of their clothing were being led into the gas chambers looking grave and sorrow stricken. Before a very thin old man with his private parts covered by his hand, there was a young stout woman holding a hand of a child with the dark pubic area exposed. It was as if she was asking what is there to be embarrassed before an oncoming death. The next scene showed a pile of decomposing bodies. There was a close up of fluid oozing out of noses and eyes of the bodies, which were stacked like crates. The bodies deplete of fluid looked like roasted sparrows and just as pitiful. At that moment, I had to close my eyes, my body drenched with hair-raising fear. But I couldn’t turn the television off. I couldn’t even figure out why I was still watching the television through slats of my fingers with gooseflesh spread all over my body. Somewhere in my body, current of pleasure, coming from beyond the fear was emerging.
Is this the hidden cruelty in me? There was evil in me enough to find some pleasure from seeing those wretched human beings… As soon as those feelings surfaced, my eyes and nose were overflowing with fluids. Suddenly, unbearable sobs engulfed me. While I am shuddering my shoulders with tears, as when I do watching a sad drama, the television camera was focusing on the image of mustached Hitler. The narrator was saying he is the 20th century’s ultimate evil. Before my dazed eyes, another image came on top of the mustached Hitler. This one had a beard grown as well. Quickly, my head was tangling with all sorts of thoughts. If it were a human fate to be faced with a devil every century, in what form would the 21st century devil show itself. Has time arrived for us cave people, the ones called the second Jews, to suffer? Our homeland, the cave, is still restlessly rioting daily, in turn jarring the lid, which has cut off the light for a long time. Has time come for us to be persecuted? This image became clearer and clearer until he broke through the television, lashing toward me. Unconsciously, I made fists. Yes. You bastard. Now, you are my devil and there’s no guarantee you will not be the persecuting devil of our cave people in the 21st century.
Of all occasions, as soon after coming to this vast land of America, while still dazed in awkwardness due to arriving from the cave country, the April 29th riot of Los Angeles occurred. The cave people were the target of the hatred as the rioters and looters picked through where mostly these cave people had gathered to do businesses. For me, it has already been several months since taking over a piece of white owned business, coming fresh from the cave country, like a dislodged stone relocated to this new land. There was a discord between the employee of mine and I and finally he was coming on to me as an illusion of Hitler, who couldn’t tolerate Jews or other race. It was true, although it is believed to be trendy for young American men to grow mustached and beard, he seemed to look full of menace from the beginning. He had worked for the previous owner for the last five years. It was all right when we had decided to keep him as an employee but problem arose as he looked down upon his new employer, me. Perhaps he could only look down upon this small and yellowish Asian from the cave country. When the clerk, with the blessing of good ancestral genes of fair skin, tall stature, and blue eyes, talks to me by looking down, it easily gave illusion of he as an employer and I as the employee. When he speaks his native English fast without giving much thought to the listener, it does seem as if he is intentionally doing it to put me in an awkward position. It was obvious that he has no respect for me by the way he would listen with his arms folded across his chest as I stutter in inarticulate stammer. To keep my dignity as an employer, I stretched my neck from my small body as much as I can and purposely lifted my eyes to get on his nerves.
The war of the nerves between he and I escalated to the level of how I ran the business. Even though I had no prior business experience, just like Chinese people opening restaurants wherever they settle, I could only open a store with all the capital I had. Furthermore, my husband, who had lost all of his authority, expertise, and ability he had in our homeland, had less language skills than I. He pushed me forward to carry out the business while he stayed in the background. We have accidentally bought into a gourmet frozen yogurt business, which, unbeknownst to us, required some expertise. We realized this after paying off for the store to the cunning white storeowner. It was only natural that I was in a fix with our employee who could manage the ins and outs of the business with his eyes closed. As the days passed he became even more imprudent and managed the store as he wished. As I lifted my eyes further up, his blue eyes got even darker and bluer. His eyes sometimes conjured the night sea’s dark fear in a terribly chilling way. I saw in the deepening eyes of his the fall of my cave country. I was beginning to subtly yearn for my native cave country, the land I have for so long longed to get away.
Even without realizing the land I was living on was a cave, I had wished to find a place of light, joy, and aridness to do away with dull, somber, and irrepressible humidity. Of course, this refers to not of physical humidity but that of mental. With that in mind, I have named my homeland, a cave country. The discomforting moisture has spread wide from close neighbors to the strangers. We cannot remember why and when the unpleasant humidity began. We could only remember from disjointed memories of childhood that we used to live happily in dry air.
All the people of the cave country were politicians. Whenever they gathered, they criticized the ruling class, discussed the current events, and showed interest in how much so and so spent on his or her new chest of drawers. They were knowledgeable about which plot of land or stock should be purchased for profit. If you didn’t know about these things, you were treated like an idiot. The powerful ones flared their nostrils, letting out steam and relentlessly stepped on the weaker ones’ starving bellies. Whether their nostril steam rose to the sky and formed the thick clouds, which eventually became a roof like structure covering the whole land like a lid or it began as a cave, I couldn’t discern for sure. However, I was one of those who couldn’t stand the moisture. The cave country people were well known for their adaptability. They adapted well to the stuffy environment but I couldn’t adapt to it. I am not perfect but I couldn’t stand something, which wasn’t so. I was a freak. Everyday, my spirits would be swollen under allergic reaction and due to its itch, I would beat up and scratch and finally have fallen down.
One day, I have decided to leave for a land where the light is brighter and the air is drier; I have left the cave country. There were already many cave country people who came long ago to settle down. Even as they were living here, they let out their own unique steam. Nonetheless, because the land in so immense here, no matter how much steam they generated, it never became dark or humid. I have deliberately settled in a place where blue eyed ones teemed, away from the cave country people. And now, after spending a strenuous war of nerves with a blue-eyed employee, I am looking for a mind numbing violence and cruelty filled television program to forget the strain. So today, I see the decomposing bodies of the Jews and the fact that Hitler also had a mustache makes me want to hate my employee even more. He had to grow a mustache. I have heard that a way before Hitler began the genocide of Jews; a Jew had humiliated him during his college days. If a one miserly Jew, blinded by his love for money, planted a grudge in young Hitler’s heart, and if it caused to reveal gross evil in the future, the defiant blue eyed one in my store, he too in his young heart, can grow grudge against our cave country people. Chill ran down my spine. He was like the young Hitler. He is a young 21-year-old college student on his own. His blue eyes came toward me like the night sea’s whirlpool. In it, my cave country people were falling.
“I heard that the former President got arrested?”
“Well, two at that.”
“What’s the worry? Soon they will be out as if nothing has happened. Well, I am sure they have hidden away a lot of money between the two of them.”
As the young writers and poets got together in this rare occasion and exchanged some words, an elderly poet decides to join them.
“What sort of pathetic subjects arrest the father of the country?”
“What father of the country? We are in the second half of the 20th century. And besides, they are thieves.”
“That’s right! They are thieves. They should just go ahead and kill themselves.”
As the young writers in the back get ready to refute the elder poet raised his voice even higher.
“What nonsense! I was a government employee in Korea! I took in a lot of money as well. That’s how everyone lives over there. Have you seen anyone without any faults?”
That night, those literary figures from the cave country that live in this land were engulfed in talks about the cave country, the boiling political stories. Those who left the cave country earlier had vague, dim and hazy notion of value about motherland. However, they were not the people of this vast land either. In other words, they didn’t stand on either side. They were pretty much like spectators. I myself who left the unbearable humidity of the motherland wasn’t quite ready to be part of this land. One could tell by the way I tire out having confrontations with the blue-eyed one. Ultimately, I have given up a leading role in the cave country in disgust and in a laid back, irresponsible way and have decided to take a harmless minor role in this expansive land. Afterwards, when realizing my minor role through the employee’s eyes, I couldn’t bear it.
“Our immigrant literature will be over in thirty years or so. The 1.5 or 2nd generations cannot carry on literature in Korean language. When our young writers die off, no one in this land will write in Korean. That’s why we have to realize for ourselves how important we are. No matter how many able writers are in our homeland, they cannot know what we have felt and experienced.”
With this statement, the elderly poet created literary mood, which was marred by the talks of the presidential arrests that night.
“Immigrant literature is really terminal. When you think about it, it’s quite sad. Our second generation cannot speak Korean fluently. It’s really impossible to imagine them writing in Korean. Furthermore, the government her is keen on limiting immigration and with the economic boom in the homeland, there is a sharp decrease in immigration. Besides, there’s a trend of immigrating back to the motherland. Then for whom are we carrying on the literary front in this land? In addition, no one in Korea appreciates our literary circles any way…”
I let out a sigh, unable to bear the talk any more.
“Who could we doing it for? We are just moved by our individual needs to write. Immigrant literature did not originate from nationalistic feelings or for our time. Didn’t we start to write to comfort our lonely immigrant life?”
A middle-aged essayist spoke up.
“ No matter how or why we started it, we have to be a source of tonic to this arid immigrant life. To those of us who are just so eager to make a lot of money, in this foreign land, we have to be responsible to our duty of idealizing them through literature. It is a writer’s mission.”
The elderly poet pushed up his reading glasses with his index finger and looked upon the younger members.
“But sir, in the environment where there are no professional writers, there are too many writers who see writing as means of obtaining personal pleasures. For example, there was a review of a poet’s new volume of poetry on the culture section a newspaper but it was obvious that the poet didn’t know who won the literary prize featured in the column just below his interview. He had no idea whether it was a short story or a poem. It just shows how self intoxicated we are and that we have no interest in others’ works.”
By my somewhat offensive utterance, the elderly poet grinned.
“Are you telling your story? Yes! There is somewhat of that. Seeing everything from one’s point of view is one of our culture’s weak points. That’s why events like arresting former Presidents could occur.”
The talk went back to politics of the motherland and the night’s gathering ended that way.
On the television screen, Auschwitz concentration camp appeared as the narrator described the tragedy of that period. ‘They suffered through hard labor. The German soldiers often raped the young women. Without any warning, they were taken from their scene of labor under the auspice of taking shower and clothes were taken off and were killed in gas chambers. Their bodies were cremated in special kilns. There were educators, artists, and man of religious orders.’ There were educators, artists, and men of religious orders…hence many who could have contributed much to the human race were wasted away… I went over the narrator’s statements again. The fact that I am here suffering in this land amused me. I who has not contributed much to even one person let alone human race. Once again, his blue eyes rose up like barely contained bile coming up. For something live was violating me. To him I was stutter who spoke broken English and a cave country idiot who didn’t know anything about running a business. Every day, I increase volume of my voice so as not to lose to my employee and used all my wits to pester him. I directed a lot of work for him so he could treat me courteously as an employer. It was my cunning plan to not to give him any breathing space. Perhaps he has noticed that I am out to make him suffer. But what if that creates grudge in his young heart… Just by looking at his determined poise, he has potential to become a man of power. What if his grudge against me grows into a grudge against my cave country people, like a second Hitler… If so, I am forming a critical condition for the future of my people… I shook my head. No. I was never a nationalist. I have never given a thought to analyze such an extravagant idea. Everything was personal issue to me. I have seen current issues from the personal gain. I am just an irresponsible person. If it wasn’t that I wasn’t even curious how the country was running. It is rather pathetic but no one whoever talked about politics in the cave country without thinking of one’s personal gain.
A few decades ago, my father was responsible for a small portion of the cave country’s politics. Ironically, while my father was advancing well in his political career, my school was next door the Opposition Party headquarters. We had to endure listening to the chant of ‘opposing the third term amendment.’ It was difficult to concentrate on school studies. The third term reform was the vein of my father’s political up wind. I was only a mere child covered in soft fuzz but knew enough about my gain to snub the chant coming from the Opposition Party speaker. My father who had risen due to the third term Presidential reelection bought a huge house with a pond. I was just a girl filled with dreams in that house. Awhile later, under an odd nomenclature of Reformation, the leader fiercely eliminated my father, who was like a loyal dog to him. The family and the wealth became scattered and I have come to gain a heart critical of the politics in my young heart. However, I was only a wordless demonstrator who refused to vote during the elections.
The ones who have tasted the sweetness of wealth and power have a tendency to reflect that illusion all his or her life, making the current life look very shabby. In our time, power was wealth and the wealth was power. In the bitterness of being demoted from the upper crust, I had to spend my youth in loneliness. There was no pleasure when the Restoration movement died away and even when worse political era came, I didn’t care. I was suffering now from my neighbors’ spouting steam but didn’t think to analyze why the wetness was surrounding us in darkness. Just wanting to look for brighter and drier place brought me to here. And now I am just a severe individualist who is itching to scratch the body and mind over aggravating the blue-eyed employee.
“I came here in the 70’s because I hated the Restoration platform of the government. My classmates have more than 50 million. Even though I am poor, living here.”
The dentist talked through his mask without a break from his talks, while filing away my cavities. It was regrettable that I couldn’t talk while his tools were coming and going through my widely opened mouth.
‘Really? You couldn’t have left the cave country simply for that reason. There must have been another reason. I know. It is to find someone who could criticize government without thinking about personal gain or profit. I could honestly tell you that, which I have learned through my own experience. During my college days, I used to know a prodigy. He was an ambitious young man who dreamed of success through passing the civil service exam. He didn’t have any inkling of political agenda held by young men of his days. While his classmates were crying through tear gas chanting for justice, he quietly listened to music at home. While his friends were going in and out of jail, he went to the library and studied. He passed the exam. While he is still in an important position, his friends who had to go in an out of jail is starving under the shadow of the government. Well, who was more sensible? If you have truly come here because of the “Reformation” government, then you are the one starving under the shadow and your classmates are like the prodigy I knew who successfully obtained an important post.’
While I was under his lukewarm breath with closed eyes, my cavities were filed away. He took out all the stuffed tools from my mouth.
“Go ahead and rinse your mouth out.”
He spoke while taking off the blue plastic mask from his mouth and nose. I rinsed my mouth with the water from the paper cup. I absentmindedly looked at him wanting to at least utter a few words I had patiently kept to myself. His small stature looked extremely tired under a white gown. The yellowish face covered in salt and pepper hair represents his twenty so years of difficult immigrant life.
“Mrs. Lee! I enjoyed your short story in the newspaper the other day. Even from the beginning, I thought you had the writer’s mood or shall I say nuance. I don’t just look into people’s mouths; I look into their hearts as well. Keep on trying hard. Although the literary standard isn't much here.”
He opened his dull cheeks wide and grinned. Through his dull grin, his breath spat out unattractively fluttering a few white strand of hair that fell on his forehead. Due to Novocain injection I could only grin with the numbed cheeks.
“There was something of forlornness about you Mrs. Lee. How could one who can’t feel the loneliness work on creating literature? If you are looking to date, how about me? Although I am a bit old, I could at least take about literature with you.”
Embarrassed on his own, he chuckled aloud. After observing his idiotic laugh, I had to force my uncomfortable cheeks to move to say something back.
“If I was looking for someone to date, I could have found one already. You wouldn’t have a chance.”
Embarrassed again by my stinging rebuttal, he tried to hide it by chuckling again.
Between the steps out of the dentist office, the prodigy from my recently recovered memory trudged along. Although it is from long ago, my heart began to constrict.
‘That prodigy, I must have liked him a lot. Was it love? you ask. Who knows! I have never used the word love. His sensibility to reality and his agility, I have liked. Because I do not have any of those qualities. Although people usually love what is similar to them, sometimes people envy what is totally opposite to them. I was obsessed with him because he was so different from me. Yes! It was merely a severe obsession. He taught me how to sneak away to home to listen to music when the streets are overflowing with demonstrating students. Time to time he would tell me how my father’s position would be useful to him when he passes his civil service exam. But you know, when that peculiar “Restoration” movement came along, along with the wind, he disappeared without trace. In the political change of wind, I have become a victim of it. That’s how I know. I know that the politics could have profound effect on individuals. But I don’t know why now and then that state of obsession would lift its head up again. Is it because you joked about dating? Frankly, I may be still dating with the worn out obsession. Perhaps now there will be no daily struggle with that obsession. For lacking the prodigy’s quick thinking, I may be expressing anger towards my weak self.’
While regurgitating the spoken, leftover words, the bitter chemical odor from the repaired molar is causing dry heaves. Yuck. Yuck. The dry heaves bring hollow wind through my bosom.
Perhaps since that time he may have covered over me as an outer layer. Within the outer layer, which resembled his realistic and opportunistic trait, there is porous, useless me. Unable to balance the hard outer layer and the soft inner one, I am suffering in this vast foreign land. If the reason I couldn’t stand my homeland is that I, who with soft layer, couldn’t live in harmony with sturdily armored people; perhaps, in this land I cannot live harmoniously with these people who look soft outwardly but really tough inside. For all these years, it is love from youthful years that is conquering me but it is just my obsession from that period. The obsession for the fallen things causes the despair. No, in earnest, it is the obsession for the sweet life of the upper class before the fall. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let him go like that. Rather than sending him off by wearing his hard shell on me, I should have covered his hardness with my soft layer. In that way, at least one in the cave country, no, the two, he and I, could have been the ones who did not let out steam. Hence, we could have been the one who might have eliminated the humidity. If not, I could have not worn his hard layer and remain a sole being who could have been the eliminator.
I see Tel Aviv of Israel bombarded by PLO on the television screen. The Jews, having survived through Hitler’s persistent genocide, built Israel and established financial success throughout the world but their land faces endless terrorism and slaughter. Hasn’t the Biblical Exodus reached the land filled with milk and honey led by Moses?
Our cave country doesn’t have to worry about terrorist from other nationals but the daily newspaper reports other horrors. When the employee brought in the Los Angeles Times featuring hundreds perished under the collapsed department store building, in the cave country, I didn’t have anything to say. He sarcastically asked whether my homeland had an earthquake. He looked down hard on me with his sparkling blue eyes. That day, I saw my small body and my cave country endlessly falling down in his undulating blue eyes. Needless to say, my mental allergic reaction reached its peak that day. I sat absentmindedly under his blue gaze, feeling my mental sneezes flowing up continuously up into the air. No, I have disappeared before his eyes. He acted in freewill having forgotten my existence. From the extinction of my existence under his blue eyes, the department store building’s horrific collapse becomes clearly focused. The humidity of the cave, which was unbearable for me, wasn’t actually the physical nature of it but something that could generate fearful power. Ultimately, all the steam generated by each individual in the form of mistrust and selfishness, covered the sky and seeped into the ground. The structure built on that foundation was bound to collapse. A stream of tear rolled off. My store was bright with only white customers and noisy with the words I couldn’t understand. Seeing the scene through the reflection from the glass window, standing in the back, caused heartache of loneliness.
“If living was grand at home, why did we come here? Only the ones with nomadic bug would gather here. Working so hard all our lives and now we have passing on to our middle ages. When we finally take a breather, our children can’t read Korean or even speak Korean. It’s only natural they forget how to speak Korean. We were so busy living that we didn’t take time to talk to our children. Did you run away after being in debt? This is the land, where everyone who doesn’t have reason to live in motherland, gather to live. We are, we are becoming people who forever wants to live in the cave country but can’t do that any more. Rarely when we do go back for visit, we are faced with rudeness, starting at the airport, and the traffic jams… When we leave there again we promise ourselves that we won’t ever go back there again. But when the time passes, we yearn to go back again… There’s no one more stupid. Ultimately we become idiots who can’t belong anywhere. Although our hearts are in the motherland, we are becoming totally immersed in the more developed culture. Can’t figure out whose country man I am…”
This woman, who is nearing her senior status and I have just met in the supermarket, is talking to me just because I am a Korean. She even dropped the polite form of speech after gauging my younger age.
“Do we really need to distinguish which nation we belong to? We are all the same human beings on this earth. Shouldn’t we just live, giving all we can on wherever we are?”
She pranced upon my words, which were spoken out of embarrassment of being too quiet.
“You are talking like that because you are still young. Wait until you get older. As time passes, your yearning for your homeland gets greater. But we become idiots who can’t manage to live in our homeland. It it’s to be like this we should have remained there. Having needlessly come here, we got Westerners as daughter and son in-laws. Although the grandchildren have trace of our genes, but by the time we see our great grandchildren, there will be no trace of us. As if we never came, there’s no trace of us… If you think about it, it just feels so hollow.”
Sadness fills her wrinkled face.
“Oh, that is true. Never thought of it up to there. I used to think of belonging somewhere as a burden. I was one of those who struggle to be free from belonging to a family or to a nation. I used to think the belongingness places restraint on people, causing selfishness. Perhaps I came here to be free. To be free from all the system and memories from there. But even after leaving the homeland, all those things put greater pressure on me than ever before. In other words, should I say that living with other cultures makes me more aware of my ethnicity? All the things from the past, which contribute to formation of myself, were being remembered more sharply. So in the end, I have become someone who lost the freedom.”
I let out a sigh over her graying head.
“Right. Don’t they say the exiles become great patriots.”
She lightly tapped my shoulder once and pushed her shopping cart toward a cashier. I would never become someone who would want to go back. And I would never regret it. I silently screamed towards her back. Her gait looked strong even in her late years. It was difficult to find a trace of immigrant life’s hardship as she had complained…and I walked without strength. Totally different from my statement saying that I would never regret…
The Holocaust documentary came to its end by filling the screen with the view of the city of Jerusalem. I made a pot of coffee while looking out the window seeing the new dawn come up. I wondered if the scent of coffee is stronger in dawn when it is silent all around. I poured especially strong coffee into a mug and brought it under my nose. My eyelashes become moist. Probably because of the hot steam. I took a sip of coffee. But I swallowed some other liquid along with the coffee. I was still crying. From the confused tangle of thoughts suddenly his blue eyes popped out. The unresolved past love’s pain created a deep whirlpool in my heart. And I could feel the moist air of the cave country on my skin. It was unbearable loneliness created by the fearfulness and strangeness of the new land and the yearning for the past times. I looked out the dawn ensuing window while wiping away the tears with the back of my hand. The color of the early morning, which hasn’t fully arrived, looked like me in its awkwardness of haze. I could never be totally free any where. Is freedom something that is out of reach as one seeks it more? I gained a shackle of the cave country, from my departing the cave country, seeking my personal freedom. Yes. I was a part of the cave country. I was not I for my personal gain. Now, I shall cast off the hard shell of false love. If I live as my self without struggling between something that is not I and the one I want to be, perhaps I could use more tolerance dealing with the blue-eyed one. In that way. Perhaps his blue eyes wouldn’t be seen as fearful night sea but as a sun pouring, breezy sea. When after getting rid of the shell of the love and the obsession of my heart fills with unbearable exhaustion, I shall make sweat pouring love with the literature. If it is a way for me to continue to live on this land…
The hazy dawn light, which filled the window, became stronger. From the tree branch, cutting across the window, chirping of the birds tore the dawn open. With the empty mug in one hand, I was still gulping something down the throat. Through the tear of the dawn, by the bird song, the blade of the light slew the world.