We called it the essay that had circumnavigated the globe. You sent quite a few letters even after we’d broken up. At the end of the final letter, you recommended a film, urging me to see it. You also wrote that I should go and visit the second writer, as you’d told him who I was. At this point, the second writer was already ill. A magazine carried his last interview, which he gave just before he died; in the photograph that appeared with it, his melancholy and ill health were evident in his face, in his huge sunken eyes. He wore suspenders to hold up his trousers, and his hands gripped the straps where they ran over his shoulders. As if they were a slender lifeline still tethering him to existence, the last such bond remaining.
Mr. H, how do you feel about these articles that talk about your cancer? Does it cause you to lose peace of mind, or start panicking?
I’m not exactly pleased about it, of course. It’s true that such articles make you shudder when you first see them. But all the same, I don’t start panicking or anything like that. The only one who panics is my wife. And so, I try to comfort her, you know. Saying “Darling, this is all a part of nature.”
The first writer and I watched the film together.
There was a scene in which the man said, my whole life, I’ve been afraid of being alone and being unable to write, those two things.
We were sitting in the theater. Once the male protagonist finished delivering those lines the first writer grasped my hand. He turned to me and said, “Those pitiful lines could have been spoken by me. I’ve spent my whole life failing to break free from them.” “But I envy you. You’ve accomplished everything there is, both as a writer and as a human being, and you’ve managed to keep yourself free from some things—economic necessity, for example. It seems there’s nothing left for you to fear. Your world is insanely enviable.” “For god’s sake please don’t say ‘accomplished everything.’ It sounds like ‘finished with everything.’” “All lives come to an end, including those with no such accomplishments. I could write a great deal about that other kind of life.” “You’re so pessimistic about your future!” “And you aren’t?” “I’m aware that there’s no further future for me. But that doesn’t make me a pessimist.” “There’s only one kind of future I wish for. One where I can free my soul from the mud suffocating it to death! But the more time passes, the clearer it becomes that both a soul and freedom are equally impossible.”
“If only you knew what an uncertain, indeterminate thing the ‘soul’ is, that it leaves us helplessly ignorant of how to look after it, even at our final hour!” He brought his face closer to mine and lowered his voice, speaking almost in a whisper. “Come and see me like this once a year.” The faces on the screen undulated in the uneasy darkness, a composite of light and dust. The dream’s wavelength spread. Bright white ekstasis flashing like lightning. That metallic dream pierced through me as it passed, and I felt a kind of pain that no longer hurt. “Come and see me once a year. For your sake, and for mine. Each year, around this time, come to this city and see if my name is still written by the door to this house. If it is, that will mean I’m still here. Then open the door and come right in, put down your bags, and spend a couple of weeks here. I have an old typewriter you can use for translation work. The kitchen is pretty cramped, but you can make yourself a basic breakfast, or something simple like soup. In the alley directly below there are lots of restaurants for tourists, and you can buy fruit, bread, dumplings, and delicious coffee in the shops, whenever you like. You can keep the windows open all year round here. Go for a walk around the ruins in the evenings. You can keep your orchid in this room if you like, or a bird. Even if you give them names in your language and speak to them every morning, I won’t mind in the slightest. I’ll sit with them for hours, waiting for that moment when you address them in your mother tongue. You’ll give water to the orchid, food to the bird, and your language to me. To me, it will sound like a love song without lyrics. And you’re welcome to leave your bags here between visits. Do you know those kinds of popular songs? If you come back to visit after leaving your bag, even if a year has passed . . . We won’t have that much time together, but there’ll be so much else for you to share in. And at night the two of us will sit side by side drinking lemon tea and I’ll read my writing to you. So you will be my first reader. Just a small gift that I can give to you. Come and visit me once a year, like that. Take a vacation in this city. And while you’re here, dream of the other cities you’ve not been able to go to. Write something about them. Travel together through dreams. Then, one year, when my name is no longer outside the door, think, then, that I am no longer able to welcome you, that I cannot even remember you any more. Cannot read to you, cannot listen to you. After that, there will be no more need to come and visit, not even the following year, as I will have ended up unable to write. I will be truly alone, and so, I will no longer need you.”
I get out of the taxi and enter the house with its small garden. The house is at the far end of the church tenement block; it stretches back quite far, but has a narrow facade. The front door has recently been painted. Next to the house is a spruce, and on that tree a young owl sits with its eyes half closed. For several weeks already, at around this time of day, that owl has flown from the nearby wood of Chinese thujas to this spruce right by your house. It is dusk.
I remember the day we were together on the boat. In the ashgray air, dense with murky fog, the harbor scene spread out as a wet painting. There weren’t many tourists on the boat; though it wasn’t especially cold, it was constantly sleeting. We were the only ones on deck. You were wearing a baseball cap you’d bought at a Busan street stall, and I had the hood of my coat up over my head. The coat’s waterproof material and the flag of the company that ran the sightseeing trips both produced a rough flapping sound. The flag bore writing in the shape of a shield. The whistle announcing a cargo ship’s departure hung heavy and drawn-out in the fog. Gulls cried as they wheeled in the gray air, and lights flickered on the hill near the harbor, the windows of rich people’s houses. It was the middle of the day, but it was as overcast and dusky as evening as far as the eye could see. The boat was making directly for an orange lighthouse visible up ahead, producing the monotonous repetition of water splashing then sucking each time it passed a hulking cargo ship. It occurred to me that I needed the bathroom. When I made to go down below deck, you told me you would never forgive me if I left you up here alone. Not meaning a quick trip to the bathroom, of course. You laid particular emphasis on “if you leave me alone.” My dear, if you left me alone in this desolate place I would never forget it. And I would never forgive you, you said, with a faint air of theatricality, standing tall on the deck behind me as I, heading to the stairs, tossed out over my shoulder that I was just going to the bathroom and would be back in a moment. I thought how strange it was that I wasn’t angered by your words. Hadn’t you always been the one to leave the other alone? The blue iron stairway was slippery with water. The smell of boiling coffee seeped out from the boat’s empty bar. On the other side of the window, its glass blurred with condensation, the bar worker was leaning against the wall in the small galley, smoking a cigarette. The boat pitched and rolled, and a damp mouthful of coarse-grained fog rushed into my throat and lungs. I coughed. It was the kind of weather that called to mind extreme sadness and impulsiveness.
You go up to the first floor and open the study window. And, perching on the windowsill, stare fixedly at the branch where the owl is sitting. The owl is still as a statue, stuck fast to a branch of the tree. The light breeze fails to ruffle a single feather, not even a single one. Where had the young owl learned to hold so still, as still as the sleep of kitchenware, lying unused in the dead of night? As the owl was almost the same color as the tree, and largely concealed by a fretwork of twigs, it would have been difficult to pick out had you not been aware of its daily visits, the fact that it came to that tree at the same time each day and perched there for a while, facing your room. Keeping your eyes fixed on the owl, you get an old film camera out of one of the drawers. You point the camera at the owl, zooming in as close as possible, and take the photograph. You didn’t even enjoy photography as a hobby, never mind being skilled at it. It simply wasn’t your kind of thing. You didn’t even own a digital camera, like almost everyone else these days. But in that one vague yet revelatory moment, that moment,
