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GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA a way of waiting for someone who is not coming. There are times when losing love feels as hopeless as losing everything. Not all human beings experience this.There will be those who get over it easily and those who grow old without ever knowing that there even was such a thing. On rare occasions – though I dread to even imagine such a thing – there will be those who experience nothing but this until the day they die. It’s impossible to say which life is better. What is possible to say, though, is merely that I had such an experience three years ago. At the age of thirty-five, it is nothing to be proud of, or anything to keep secret. I once believed in love, and I suffered as much as I believed.When I think back on it now, it feels absurd to admit that I once believed in love. Love and believing, they are quite a difficult combination. Even if we set aside hope, it is hard enough to handle just one of these two, faith and love, and yet I have linked them together as predicate and object. It would be as bewilderingly vague and abstract to say that I had once loved faith. Such a timid and cautious person as I, so stingy with my emotions, once believed in something? Isn’t that as pitiful and ridiculous as a teacup-sized puppy daring to take on a dragon? There are times in life when something that seemed so far out of reach unexpectedly appears to be easily within reach. I was merely caught in one such moment. Even more amazing is that there is no guarantee that these things might not happen again in the future.Yet that doesn’t mean we can prepare for them as we might pack an umbrella or bring along some medicine.This is because this strange experience of believing in love is a personal experience that does not follow the rule of “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”, an experience that barges in on us like a door suddenly swinging open. It is a pain against which we are helpless and must suffer in full. But there is something even more amazing. And that is that I once swung open the door to someone’s life, left her with this pain, and then quietly slipped out again. At the time I had no idea what I had done.Yet that does not make my sin any less serious. Because I didn’t know, my sin is doubled by the addition of my ignorance. The sin of not knowing of her love, a sin for which the soles of my feet should be beaten. As far as I remember, she wasn’t bad-looking and she wasn’t unattractive. This is just the way I talk, so clumsily and stingily. It isn’t 192 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
page 195
KWON YEO-SUN easy for me to say that someone is beautiful or attractive. The moment I say that someone is beautiful or attractive, I grow uneasy, worried that some tiny part of my description might not fit that person. So I am more comfortable if, instead of saying that someone is beautiful or attractive, I use a sloppy double negative like a footnote, saying that it isn’t that they are not beautiful or it isn’t that they are unattractive. But there is one thing I can say for certain about her – that although my first impression of her was plain, the groove running from the tip of her nose to her upper lip is so straight that it looks as if it were carved, and it captures the eye like a target. That people then concentrate on the movements of her upper lip – in other words, on what she says – might have given her numerous advantages that a vaguely pretty face would not have had. She was of medium height and slender build. Like her figure, her personality left no aftertaste at all but was as refreshing as peppermint. She wasn’t dim-witted or lazy. That isn’t to say that she came off as being sharp, only that she was gracefully shrewd and clever, like an antelope ewe. After thinking this much about her I was momentarily bewildered. I thought maybe the alcohol was making me too generous toward her.That might be true. I knew that she was just as clumsy and timid a person as I. I also knew that hers was a stingy character, one that would choose a shred of pride over the earnestness of overflowing emotions. But what can I say? The way she has existed in my mind since the last time I saw her brings to mind the silhouette of a ceramic jar, always elegant yet lonely no matter where it’s placed, no matter what it holds. That might be because of the curious story she told me back then. It is a story of when I saw her again for the first time in three years, a story of the time when my heart was broken by another woman three years ago. It is also a story that involves a threestorey building, so the law of threes seems to hold. As soon as we met, she said that we had to walk about fifteen minutes to the bar where she had reserved a table. “That’s okay, isn’t it?” I said that of course it was. She had no make-up on, and her complexion was dark and her cheeks were slightly swollen, making her look as if she came from Southeast Asia. She wore a hooded jacket and sneakers, and her quick stride fitted her outfit. She turned to- BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 193

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GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA

a way of waiting for someone who is not coming.

There are times when losing love feels as hopeless as losing everything. Not all human beings experience this.There will be those who get over it easily and those who grow old without ever knowing that there even was such a thing. On rare occasions – though I dread to even imagine such a thing – there will be those who experience nothing but this until the day they die. It’s impossible to say which life is better. What is possible to say, though, is merely that I had such an experience three years ago. At the age of thirty-five, it is nothing to be proud of, or anything to keep secret. I once believed in love, and I suffered as much as I believed.When I think back on it now, it feels absurd to admit that I once believed in love.

Love and believing, they are quite a difficult combination. Even if we set aside hope, it is hard enough to handle just one of these two, faith and love, and yet I have linked them together as predicate and object. It would be as bewilderingly vague and abstract to say that I had once loved faith. Such a timid and cautious person as I, so stingy with my emotions, once believed in something? Isn’t that as pitiful and ridiculous as a teacup-sized puppy daring to take on a dragon?

There are times in life when something that seemed so far out of reach unexpectedly appears to be easily within reach. I was merely caught in one such moment. Even more amazing is that there is no guarantee that these things might not happen again in the future.Yet that doesn’t mean we can prepare for them as we might pack an umbrella or bring along some medicine.This is because this strange experience of believing in love is a personal experience that does not follow the rule of “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”, an experience that barges in on us like a door suddenly swinging open. It is a pain against which we are helpless and must suffer in full.

But there is something even more amazing. And that is that I once swung open the door to someone’s life, left her with this pain, and then quietly slipped out again. At the time I had no idea what I had done.Yet that does not make my sin any less serious. Because I didn’t know, my sin is doubled by the addition of my ignorance. The sin of not knowing of her love, a sin for which the soles of my feet should be beaten.

As far as I remember, she wasn’t bad-looking and she wasn’t unattractive. This is just the way I talk, so clumsily and stingily. It isn’t

192 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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