Translated from the Korean by Dafna Zur
Kim Yŏng-ha (1968–) began writing career with his first novel I have the right to destroy myself, which won him the much-coveted Munhak-dongne Prize in 1995. Since then, he has gained a reputation as the most talented and prolific Korean writer of his generation, publishing five novels and three collections of short stories. In autumn 2008, he resigned all his jobs to devote himself exclusively to writing. Kim also translates novels written in English, most recently a Korean adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As a child, he suffered poisoning from coal gas and lost all of his memories from before the age of ten.
Kiss the snake on the tongue. If it senses fear it’ll devour you instantly. But if you kiss it without fear it’ll take you through the garden, through the gate to the other side. Ride the snake to the end of time.
—JIM MORRISON, from the movie The Doors
Want to hear the one about the smoke woman? he asks me.
Sure, go ahead.
He’s smoking a cigarette. Watching the smoke seep out of his mouth, twist, coil, and drift off.
Okay. One day a man’s body turns up. The officer at the scene finds the place littered with cigarette butts. The place reeks of cigarette smoke—it’s so strong it covers up the smell of decomposition.
So? … I look at him wide-eyed, urging him on.
So how’d he die? Good question. The officer investigates different possibilities. First, he schedules an autopsy. Which is more involved than the usual exam—in an autopsy, you actually cut into the body as well as looking around it for clues. And then the officer discovers something very interesting.
What’s that?
The man was naked from the waist down. And there was a large quantity of semen.
I’ve heard that men ejaculate when they die, I say with a shiver.
He shakes his head.
That’s if you’re strangled. But there were no signs of strangulation on this guy. If you’re strangled, your neck is all black and blue. None of that on him, though.
So? …
So the officer starts to suspect there’s a woman involved.
He could have been masturbating, you know.
No he couldn’t. First of all, nobody dies masturbating. Second, the semen was too spread out. Strange as it all seems.
I know nothing about how men masturbate, but he was so confident in his answer that I had to give in. He’s always like that. No doubts about anything. Language seems to come so easy to him. No hesitating, no beating around the bush. Talking to him is like watching a movie or reading a novel. All of a sudden he feels like a stranger. How long has it been since he started coming into my room? How long since he spread himself so naturally over the far corner of my bed? Oh, well. It’s all because of the lizard. I turned to look at my white walls. They’re bare, except for the looming lizard.
What are you thinking about? He’s noticed I’ve turned my head.
I look away from the lizard.
Nothing.
Men are always asking women what they’re thinking. But women don’t think the way men do. Men think with their heads, but women think with their bodies. That’s why they can’t be as articulate as men. Really, it’s something that just can’t be explained. All I can do is feel the traces of the man and the lizard. That’s why “Nothing” is the only answer I can come up with.
Go on with the story, I tell him.
But he just offers me a weak smile and shakes his head.
Later.
He dresses and steps out. And off he goes, leaving me with a lizard, a dead man, and a large quantity of semen. I have no idea where he’s going. He asks no questions, gives no answers.
I first met him in the fall of 1995. It was cold for that time of year, and extremely windy—a street sign blew over on someone’s head that day. I was teaching English to junior high kids at a cram school in Kangnam at the time. I was about to photocopy some handouts and in he walked.
Are you still looking for teachers? he asked.
The funny thing was, I’d seen him get out of the elevator and plod up to the door, and still he took me by surprise. Maybe because he didn’t look like he had any intention of working at a cram school. What was it about him? He was, after all, wearing the cram-school outfit—navy blue shirt and black pants—so what was it that threw me off?
I guess you could say there was something otherworldly about him. There are people like that. People you bump into on the street and come away feeling like you’ve bumped into a ghost. People you walk right up to prepared to pass straight through. People who will turn into a heap of ash if you give them a little nudge. You can see them in the subways, too. They look like they’ve been sitting there for centuries and aren’t about to go anywhere. People who make it seem that the subways will run forever, just for them. There are people like that. And he was one of them.
What do you teach?
Korean.
The way he said it was so awkward it made me doubt for a moment that we even taught it there. Korean … Korean … I mumbled it over and over on our way to the principal’s office. And from that day on he taught Korean.
The Indians say the first shaman invented sex. They call him “the one who makes you crazy.”
—JIM MORRISON, The Doors
You have to transform yourself, he mumbled to me the second time we went drinking. With that, he produced an object wrapped in white paper and placed it on the table.
A present, he said.
I tore the wrapping off, and what I saw made me flinch. A lizard. A black metal lizard. It was so elaborate that if I hadn’t touched it I’d have thought it was real.
Hang it so it looks like it’s crawling down your wall. You’ll get a rise out of your friends the first time they see it.
I felt a bit leery about all this but put the lizard in my handbag nonetheless.
Where’d you buy it?
In the tropics. Lizards are as common as ants down there. From the time you’re a kid you get used to lizards crawling over your belly and your legs. They’re everywhere. There’s even a lizard-worshiping tribe.
Really?
Did you know that a lizard’s tail grows back if you cut it off? That’s why lizards symbolize regeneration and rebirth. People in Europe in the Middle Ages prayed to the salamander. They thought it was a fire-breathing lizard; they believed salamanders lived in fire. Chameleons are lizards too. Lizards have no past. That’s what makes them gods. For them there’s nothing but the present, an eternal present.
I gave him a long, hard look. I just couldn’t figure him out. I’d only been out with him twice, and yet not a word about his past. I couldn’t tell you where he’d gone to school, where he was from, or where he’d worked.
We said goodbye and I went home and dutifully studied the walls of my room, which were bare except for a single coat hanger. My friends tell me it doesn’t look like a girl’s room. Which makes me realize I’ve never bought anything to decorate it. Not even the standard picture frame. A boring education will do that to you.
I hammered a nail into the wall opposite my bed and hung the lizard by the loop in its twisty tail. He was right—it really did look like it was crawling down the wall. And suddenly the wall buzzed with tension.
I saw the lizard in my dreams that night. I knew it was supposed to be hanging motionless but there it was crawling down the wall, slow and sinuous, expanding and contracting. The strange thing was, none of this struck me as the least bit extraordinary. It actually made me impatient to see it moving so slowly. I bolted awake and looked at the wall. The lizard was hanging there, just where it’s supposed to be.
The world is a monster of energy, without beginning and without end. This world is a will to power and nothing besides.
—JIM MORRISON, The Doors
The lizard started coming to me right around the third time he and I went out drinking. I arrived at home that night to discover that the boiler was off and my room was cold. The room looked exactly as it had when I left. When that happens and you live by yourself you lose heart. You come home and open your door hoping for a miracle—but nothing has changed. Then again, it’s supposed to be bad luck if you clean your room at night. So I jumped into bed. The alcohol I’d drunk was leaving an uncomfortable path as it spread through my blood vessels. I turned off the lights and stared at the lizard hanging on my wall. I played with the idea of giving it a name. But I couldn’t come up with anything and in the meantime I drifted off to sleep.
The lizard is creeping down the wall. I can’t move. I feel like I’m tied down. I can’t make a squeak. There’s music. The slow solemn beat of a drum. The rhythm is familiar but I can’t place it. The beat is punctuated by a hiss. Is that what it sounds like when the lizard’s tongue flickers? I keep my eye on the lizard. It’s the only thing I can do. The lizard is creeping toward my bed. And then he’s out of sight. He’s entered my blind spot. Now I’m twice as scared. Scared, but excited. The hissing grows louder than the drumbeat. There, the lizard’s head, at the foot of my bed. Suddenly I’m in a rain forest, still in my bed. There’s bright sunlight all around, and birdsong and the distant beating of drums. The lizard has mounted my leg. I feel something I’ve never felt before, like an electric shock. And then a voice, my father’s voice. I can barely hear it. He’s speaking very fast. I’m frightened. I’ve been bad, I tell him. I don’t know what I’ve done but I beg his forgiveness. He’s naked and his face is angry as it approaches my bed in the rain forest.
The lizard has slithered up my thighs. It’s embarrassing having my father there. His face is red with anger. He’s going to beat me, I know it. I’m scared. The lizard has stopped. Out comes the tongue and it starts licking my thighs. Feels like ice water running down my thighs. Uncomfortably cold, but gently ticklish. In spite of my best intentions the lizard’s tongue awakens sensations long dormant. Father comes closer, looking back and forth from me to the lizard. I can hear my mother’s laughter in the distance. She’s telling him, See, I told you. I told you she’s got spunk. Father doesn’t answer.
The lizard is moving up. It’s reached my vagina. I want to scream. But my father and mother are looking on. Dirty whore. This lizard is yours? My father scolds me. I want to defend myself, but the words don’t come out. Pleasure overwhelms me.
It’s all so strange. Never have I been satisfied by a man. They’re either in too much of a hurry or awkward. So sex is always a drag for me. I don’t understand how men can be so horny and yet so incapable in bed.
I’m twenty-five and I’ve slept with three men. The first one was just a boy. He’d kiss like he was trying to suck my tongue out, then tear my clothes off and penetrate me as fast as he could. I guess I should feel grateful he took the time to kiss me. The second one would make a dash for the bathroom to wash himself as soon as he ejaculated. He made me feel as if I had soiled him. And then he’d conk out for the night while the foreign substance was still wiggling inside me. The third one was just plain scared of sex. He’d go through with it, but he obviously wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. He kept asking, did he come too soon, was his penis too small, was I really satisfied? It was so tiresome. No, he never gave me an orgasm, but it would have been worse to disappoint him so I just lied. Oh yes, it was lovely—absolutely wonderful. And then he’d go to sleep. I don’t think he really believed me.
But this is different. A sharp wave of pleasure spreads through me. I can’t bear it! I don’t hear the drumbeat anymore. Can’t see Mom or Dad, either. And then I see the face of the man who gave me the lizard. He stands there in the dark, a faint shadow, smiling. And then I’m awake. But I still can’t move. The sun is coming out. I desperately force my eyes open and stare at the wall. The lizard is nowhere in sight. I shake my head violently, I trying to clear my head. I feel along the wall for the switch and my eyes return to where the lizard should be hanging.
And there it is, exactly where it’s supposed to be.
I’m a fake hero. A joke that God’s played on me.
—JIM MORRISON, The Doors
I lost contact with most of my friends the year I taught at the cram school. Most cram school teachers go to work in the afternoon and don’t head home until well past midnight. My friends worked different schedules that made it impossible for us to meet. But I was used to odd hours. Father was a minister in a small church, one he had established himself. It was on the third floor in an apartment complex, and none too big—maybe a thousand square feet or so. Mother was busy from sunup to sundown doing the things you would expect a minister’s wife to do—keeping in touch with the parishioners, cleaning the sanctuary, helping Father with his sermons, and keeping up with the housework. She was even busier the days there were early-morning and late-night prayer meetings. Father was always somber, Mother was always obedient, I was always bored. We lived in a small room off the sanctuary; I felt like we were surrounded by hymns. Very rarely I’d catch a glimpse of Mother and Father having sex. Father’s heavy breathing would wake me and I could hear Mother moaning from somewhere inside the blankets. Her moans sounded like the inarticulate recitations of the parishioners. I never could understand what she was trying to say. Sometimes she’d cry out. When she did that, Father scolded her.
And once in a while he beat her. The house was dirty; or where had she put the sermon? Mother took her beatings silently, the big wooden cross looming over his head.
A large sign hung at the entrance to the sanctuary: Faith, Hope, Love. But neither Mother nor Father seemed to have any hope for me, or faith or love for that matter. I spent my days playing on the swing in the neighborhood playground or poking around the shops nearby. I hated church.
Years went by but Father’s church failed to grow. And then Mom disappeared. She left no word, just up and vanished. The parishioners talked about her whenever they could, their gossip revolving about Satan, snakes, and running away. At the time I was in the habit of drawing snakes in my diary. I’d be staring off into space and then realize I’d filled the page with coils of snakes. I’d write Mommy, I miss you and decorate the words with writhing reptiles.
Father remarried a churchgoer some ten years his junior and moved the church. I transferred to a university in Seoul, able finally to leave home. I lied to my father when I spoke with him on the phone: Yes, I go to church every day; the minister’s sermons are great, they’re really inspiring; and I’m in the choir. At school I majored in mathematics. I spent four years struggling with differential calculus and integral calculus. The innocent and straightforward world of mathematics appealed to me. The first midterm I ever took in differential and integral calculus asked me to “prove that 1 is larger than 0.” I did it using epsilon and delta. I even managed to produce a complex drawing of a flower as part of a calculus problem. That’s how I spent my early twenties, hovering between 1 and 0.
Even now I draw the occasional snake. I was never afraid of them, maybe because I never actually saw one in the flesh. I remember the adults whispering into my young ears that a snake had wrapped itself around my mother. What a joke. I knew what they said was all a lie. I think I was jealous of my mother. I wanted to run away from that church and its oppressive hymns, too. To a place where I wouldn’t have a cross looking down on me all the time.
The first time I did it, I saw God.
—PAMELA, The Doors
The lizard entered me a few days after I had that dream. I think it was late in the afternoon and I was sitting in front of the VCR with a cold beer, watching a Hollywood action flick, when I dropped off to sleep.
The dream begins with the lizard’s familiar movement. It’s darting down the wall. Doesn’t scare me one bit. The lizard is coming toward the bed. I remember that if you cut off a lizard’s tail, it starts to grow back right away. I’d like to talk to the lizard. The lizard climbs onto the bed. Mom is going somewhere. I’m sorry, Mom. I beg her forgiveness, not really knowing what I’ve done wrong. The lizard has climbed up on my foot and it’s coming closer. Its tongue is caressing my every curve. Oh, please. I can’t move, I bite down hard on my lip, I cry out.
I’m younger now. I’m lying down. I’m wearing a short skirt and there’s a ribbon in my hair. The lizard is presenting me with an image. I’m a little girl and I’m playing with myself as I gaze at the naked images of Adam and Eve. Excitement rushes over me. The scene changes. I’m in Sunday school, the minister’s daughter, touching the penis of one of the boys in my class. I slowly lower his trousers, staring, wanting to put his penis in my mouth. It’s suddenly bigger. And the boy is taller—he’s an adult. A lush forest of hair rings his penis, and I delight in running my fingers through it. I put his penis in my mouth and feel it harden. My mouth starts to hurt. His penis has turned into a block of wood and I can barely extract it from my mouth. But now it’s a neon cross. I kneel piously before this red, glistening cross. My saliva is dribbling from it. I wonder who he is. I raise my head and look into his face. I’ve never seen him before.
The lizard closes this image and proceeds to prowl my crotch, its tongue and tail teasing my vagina and inner thighs. I’m sweating all over. The lizard’s head is coming closer and closer. Suddenly my legs are wide open. The lizard is gazing at my sex. I’m embarrassed—it’s inspecting a part of me that I myself have never examined. He draws his tongue in and starts to enter me. I thought it would hurt but it doesn’t. I am wet enough and this knowledge both shames and excites me. I can feel the lizard wiggling into me. My head feels like it’s going to explode. Now only its tail is visible. Something inside me is trembling violently. It could be the lizard, but I’m not really sure.
What are you up to? Mom asks. Suspicious, she examines my bed from the corner of her eye. I pray that she won’t see the lizard. Deeper, I beg it. She mustn’t see its tail. I urge it all the way inside me, but its tail is still showing. Mother hasn’t discovered the lizard yet. Even with her looking on, my excitement slowly reaches a climax. The ice-cold lizard is making its way deeper inside me. I grimace and try to contain my excitement. Mother looks on, dispassionate. Mother. I hurt terribly. She looks like she doesn’t believe me.
Mother wants to take the lizard away from me, I know she does. I tense my muscles to keep the lizard in. The lizard crawls deep inside me, so deep that its tail isn’t showing anymore. Mom can’t see the lizard now. The lizard is mine, all mine. I grin at my mother as that ice-cold lizard wiggles and turns inside me. Mother is grinning back at me. Her grin grows wider. The head of a snake appears at her mouth, and the body slithers out. She bends over to help it out. It looks like she’s vomiting. Mommy, I ask her, where’s the baby? It died, you know that. I mean, we killed it, don’t you remember? Mommy, no. I didn’t kill it. I never saw it. The snake that crawled out of my mother has vanished. I awake from my dream and look at the wall. The lizard is gone. I shut my eyes again. The dream resumes. The lizard starts wiggling inside my belly again. My anus throbs with pain. Please, no. The lizard starts to slither out my backside. I want to have a baby. Mother. I’ll have your baby for you, Mother. I entreat her, fighting back my pain, but she leaves without listening. The lizard exits me. I am overcome with pain and exhaustion. I slowly wake and look at the wall. The lizard is nowhere to be seen. Of course not. Because it’s still with me, asleep. The phone rings, clearing my head a bit more. Wrong number. I look up again at the wall.
The lizard is there, exactly where it’s supposed to be.
Lizards have no past. That’s what makes them gods. For them there’s nothing but the present, an eternal present.
—KIM YŎNG-HA, “Lizard”
Since the lizard entered me that first time I’ve had sex a few times; an old boyfriend got back in touch. But it was business as usual when I slept with him. Which is to say I felt nothing. The whole time we were having sex I kept thinking about the lizard. I wish your penis was colder, I told him. He sat up and said, You’ve really changed. He had a very solemn expression on his face.
That was the end of that. He never came back. Maybe I really had changed, like he said. I snorted. And what if I had? The man who gave me the lizard told me I had to transform myself. Well, isn’t that what you’d call changing? I remembered his words when I looked at the lizard. It was showing up regularly in my dreams. It would enter my anus and exit from my mouth, or enter through my vagina and exit through my eyes. Either way the sensation was almost the same. The days after I had the dream I was too tired to talk. I did feel refreshed and energized, though.
Once in a while at the cram school I’d see the man who had given me the lizard. He’d pass by with a mysterious smile. I wondered sometimes if he was there in my dreams, watching. I felt like his eyes could see right through me. Maybe that was why I felt myself blush whenever I spotted the nape of his neck. Why it was the nape of his neck I can’t say. But once I saw him in the cram-school cafeteria in the basement. He was all by himself, spooning hot soup and rice to his mouth. I stood at the door, my eyes fixed on his back. He ate silently, his head lowered, while I focused on the nape of his neck. There was a stubborn tenacity in those clenched neck muscles. They made him seem lonely. Something about that neck, I don’t know what, reminded me of the lizard. I wanted to embrace him. It wasn’t even about sex. I just wanted to rush up to him, put my arms around him, and press my lips to the nape of his neck. I couldn’t eat at the cafeteria that day.
I often saw him after that. He’d come over to my place once a month or so. We listened to music, shared a drink. He didn’t want to have sex. I wasn’t interested, either. And so we’d sit together talking quietly and refreshing each other’s drink. He said he enjoyed traveling. Working at the cram school was for him an ideal arrangement—no relationships to commit to, and the freedom to leave at any moment.
And here we are. I’m waiting for him to come back and finish the story about the smoke lady. Then again he may never come back. Maybe I’ll have to finish the story myself. I even started to imagine that he was back.
Come on, finish the story.
The detective discovers the dead man’s diary at the scene.
He starts talking. I light a cigarette for him. The smoke seeps deep into my lungs.
The diary tells of a most captivating woman: Will I see her tonight? She overpowers my senses. I spend the whole day just waiting for this woman.
He goes on with the story.
The detective does some detecting and learns that the man graduated from college but was unemployed and spent his days doing god-knows-what in his room—he was a vagrant, friendless in Seoul. His few acquaintances said they never saw him with a woman. A prostitute, perhaps? He didn’t exactly have the means to buy a woman. So who was she?
Didn’t you say he scheduled an autopsy? I ask.
He answers: He did, and the result was that the victim had had a fatal heart attack. The detective then resumes his search for evidence, but finds nothing he can connect to the woman. So he gets to thinking. He goes back to the scene, does yet another search, and a second diary turns up. This diary contains the following entry: My one pleasure is making creations out of smoke. Yesterday I made a car and I made an alcoholic beverage. I drank my smoky drink and drove my sporty car. I shut the windows tight to keep the smoke inside my room and to keep the air still. And yet it lasts only a moment. I need a woman. The detective closes the diary and concludes his report. Direct cause of death: heart attack. He rules out homicide and suicide. This was a case of death by natural causes.
I understand now, I say. The man created a woman out of smoke. He was caressed by her, and they had sex. But he’s not allowed to touch her. She’ll disappear if he does. She slowly drifts down and embraces him. His every sense is overwhelmed.
He nods in agreement. That’s right. But the detective keeps that part of the story to himself. Who will believe him? And it makes little difference if no one does.
Cigarette smoke can be very comforting, I say, smoking a cigarette myself. I look up at the lizard. It looks bigger than usual today. I crawl into bed, craving sleep. The man keeps his distance as usual. I turn off the lights and drift off to sleep.
As I sleep, I sense someone opening the window to my room and climbing in. I think it’s him, but my head is heavy. I hear him taking his clothes off. We’ve never slept together, and yet he calmly climbs into my bed as if he were my husband. His hands move gently from my feet up my knees and thighs. His hands are cold. I feel goose bumps all over. He climbs on top of me. His cold hard penis pushes inside me. Mustn’t shout. I steady myself. And I mustn’t touch him. If I do he’ll vanish. His penis moves slowly. Violent pleasure explodes inside me. I tremble with a satisfaction I’ve never felt with a man. A neon cross flashes in the distance. He’s thrusting more strongly now. His cold penis slides all over my body. I’m soaked through. I’m afraid his cold penis will pierce me. You must transform yourself, I remember him telling me. His words reverberate. Ahhh, I’m going away—go past the tropical sunshine, through the forest of crosses, and you’ll arrive at the playground. I want to scream but nothing comes out. My ears ring with the rhythmical beating of the tribal drums. It feels like his penis is coming out my ears. My eardrums are about to explode.
I’m languishing. He gets up and dresses. And then he’s gone, like smoke. Carefully I open my eyes and look toward the wall. The lizard is gone. I don’t bother to turn the lights on to make sure. I simply close my eyes again. And fall asleep. A most tranquil sleep. I never want to wake up.