Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Wounded

1999; University of Hawaii Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/man.1999.0030

1527-943X

Ch'ongjun Yi, Jennifer M. Lee,

The Wounded Yi Ch’Ongjun (bio) and Jennifer M. Lee For several days I hadn’t been able to add anything to my new canvas; it overpowered me completely. After the students were gone and the studio grew quiet, I stood back from it and lit a cigarette. Something peculiar was preoccupying me. My older brother was suddenly writing a novel, and the business seemed to be profoundly connected to an incident that had occurred a month ago, when his scalpel had carved the soul out of a ten-year-old girl. The operation’s failure had not been entirely my brother’s fault. No one blamed him—neither the girl’s family nor I, who had been watching him operate without incident for nearly ten years. For that matter, my brother didn’t think he was entirely responsible either. From the beginning, the operation had had less than a fifty-percent chance of success, and the girl would have died for certain without it. Moreover, operations of this sort fail all the time—even in large hospitals. Still, the girl’s death was a terrible blow for my brother. After it happened, he began to neglect his work. At first, he would occasionally go downtown and then return home drunk at night. But then he closed the clinic for good. He would shut himself in his room all day long, not allowing even his wife near him. In the evenings, he would go out and then come back so drunk he could hardly catch his breath. Then I heard that while he was shut up in his room during the day, he supposedly was writing a novel. At first I was not particularly interested in this so-called novel. As literature, the thing would be incomprehensible to me—a mere art student running a studio for a living. I was curious, though, to know why the girl’s death had caused him, a doctor, to start writing a novel, of all things. Then one evening, having come across the manuscript in his room, I was startled by what I read: my brother was writing about his experiences as a straggler during the war—which had ended ten years earlier—experiences he had kept to himself for all too long. My brother always described himself as having led a quiet life during his decade as a surgeon, “cutting open, cutting off, opening up, and sewing together.” A man who seemed to have no doubts about his present life nor any memories of his past, my brother never tired of his work, taking care of his patients diligently at all hours. But despite the many patients he treated [End Page 128] successfully, giving new life with his skilled hands, he was not satisfied. He desired more and more patients, as if it was his mission to save as many lives as possible. Cautious and precise as a surgeon, he had not had a single mishap until the incident with the girl. Apart from these facts, I knew little about my brother. But I could perhaps say a few things about my sister-in-law. I am sorry to say this about her, but she is a woman who is talkative and not too bright. Nevertheless, my brother had carried on a long and exhausting rivalry for her with another man. I didn’t think my brother would win her, given what I considered his lack of tenacity, but he did. After the marriage, his calmness and her colorlessness meant they had few serious disputes. When minor problems did arise, it was not due to personality differences, but to their lack of children. Childlessness can cause friction in any marriage, however. All in all, I was inclined to think that he was able to get along so well in life because of his positive attitude toward all humanity, though I could not say this with certainty. And that was all I knew about him. I had always been curious about my brother’s being caught behind enemy lines near Kanggye during the Korean War. At the time, a brutal battle was underway near the thirty-eighth parallel. I knew that he killed...