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Mokpo, and: Mr. Jeon of the Chinese Restaurant, and: A Snail, and: Bak Yeong-geun, and: The Last Day of the Lunar Year, and: No Shadows

2015; University of Hawaii Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/man.2015.0039

1527-943X

Kim Sa-in, Brother Anthony of Taizé, Susan Hwang,

Japanese History and Culture

Mokpo, and: Mr. Jeon of the Chinese Restaurant, and: A Snail, and: Bak Yeong-geun, and: The Last Day of the Lunar Year, and: No Shadows Kim Sa-in Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (bio) and Susan Hwang (bio) mokpo “The boats can’t leave today,” they announce. So I lie down in the inn on the warmest part of the floor, half asleep, listening to the sound of a boat’s engine chugging. I imagine the seagulls screaming and wheeling around it. Their round white bellies and red feet. Leaving white, round, red things behind, the boat in my mind chugs away following an unseen path toward an open ocean with glittering sunlight on the waves. I wonder if my old sweetheart is doing well this winter. Perhaps at this moment she’s rummaging through drawers of old clothes, wearing her baggy pants, and lying on her white, round belly watching television. Perhaps she’s laughing, arching her white neck, opening her mouth wide and showing her red lips. Memories that are sweet and smooth as a seagull’s glide. If my wife knew what I was thinking about, she would give me hell. Unable to put up with it any longer, she’d slam down her spoon and bang the door shut behind her, no doubt about it. But, my dear wife, is it really so reprehensible to wonder as one ages how an old sweetheart is doing? Outside, the wind blows too hard for the boats to depart. At the foot of Mt. Yudal, a square window still catches the sunlight. I part a watery way through my half-lit drowsiness. I must make it at least to Udo, the island of silver magnolia groves across the wintry sea, under a dazzling sky. I must board the chugging boat and make my way, if only once, across the ocean of sleep, even though I’m stouter, my belly thicker. Even if my nose and ears freeze crimson. [End Page 45] mr. jeon of the chinese restaurant Suppose I could pull noodles as swiftly as he can, his big eyes smiling at the street urchins peeking in, tall and shambling with head thrust forward, untying his dirty apron and throwing it crumpled into a corner, I suppose I would talk in a strange accent, like Mr. Jeon of the Chinese restaurant. As for the future, I would not have minded becoming a president or a general, or becoming a wealthy businessman or a pilot, but he was dazzling. Mr. Jeon of the Chinese restaurant, who chewed gum so well, whose lips made a clacking noise every time he moved them. When he whistled, the passing girls always giggled. The man who caught a snake by the neck with his bare hands, who one autumn got beaten up by Mr. Kim from the upper town and wept, whose nose was bleeding—that widower Mr. Jeon. Though I did not want to have his ragged undershirt and sorrowful ribs, and though I did not want to have a little son like the one who followed him and cried standing behind a pillar (though like him I cried sometimes, too). About the time cherry blossoms fell Mr. Jeon from China and his little son disappeared. With the lady from the cosmetics shop? With the daughter of the shop owner? Did he take the road back to his own star? Has he set up another Chinese restaurant there, chewing gum in his undershirt? My childhood idol, skillfully pulling noodles. a snail I’ve always wondered about the inside of the ear. I’ve heard that there’s a snail living there. Starved for sounds from the outside, it must have forged a lonely path. With mouth pressed forward, it must have sated itself on the few sounds that made their way inside. Not a snail—then was it my sister from long ago, who was carried off to a cave by bandits? Was it my blind maternal grandfather, [End Page 46] who spent his entire life in a tiny backroom? Once forced into that sad, narrow place, anyone would become a snail. But inside that hole, the snail has gone on...