One Hundred Shadows Read online

  Introduction

  There is an unforgettable, curious beauty to be found here, in this short book. The novel has elements of fantasy, but it is also at the same time extremely controlled, and realistic in its depiction of its world.

  This is a world in which those living on the edges of society, at the very bottom of the social scale, are being brought to the limits of what they can endure. When they reach this point, their shadows rise up, startlingly sudden, and start calling them away from their lives.

  It is a world in which, however they choose to deal with these shadows, which seem to offer death an invitation, they find themselves only just barely able to go on with the business of living.

  In this dark and dangerous world, a man and a woman are just beginning to love each other. This love, which is so delicate and subtle a thing that at times it seems trembling on the point of shattering, comes to be felt as almost an ethical force, a moral necessity set against the leaden weight of violence of the world which hems these two young people in.

  — Han Kang, July 2016

  The Woods

  I saw a shadow in the woods. I didn’t know it was a shadow at first. I saw it slip through a thicket and followed it in, wondering if there was a path there, and thinking how familiar it looked. The woods grew more dense the deeper in I went, but I kept on going deeper and deeper because the deeper I went, the more the shadow drew me in.

  Eungyo. I turned around at the sound of my name, and found Mujae standing there. Where are you going? he asked.

  I was just walking.

  Walking where?

  I was following someone.

  Who?

  Them, I said, and turned back to point, but the person I’d been following was nowhere to be seen. Mujae came towards me, pushing aside some branches, and asked what the person had looked like. I’d only seen them from behind, and as I was about to answer it occurred to me that there had been nothing remarkable about the way they’d looked. Small head, narrow shoulders, dark skin, I said.

  Like you, Eungyo?

  Yeah, like me, I said, and then it hit me. I looked down at my feet, and sensed something odd about the way they were outlined, against the pine cones and white oak leaves splayed over soft soil. My shadow, spread out thin, very thin, stretched out from the little toe of my right foot all the way into the thickets.

  My shadow.

  And then I understood.

  —

  Don’t go following shadows, Mujae said, and I narrowed my eyes to bring him into focus, thinking he looked oddly hazy. Yeowoo-bi, I realised, slender as spiders’ silk. I stood there unmoving, feeling my eyelids grow heavy with the weight of water. Droplets formed on the tips of my ten drooping fingers. The rain tasted salty on my lips. I stood for a while, despondent.

  Shall we head back? Mujae said, turning to leave.

  I followed him, the tall grass snapping and crackling as I pushed my way through it. The thickets were so dense that I wondered how I’d managed to come so far in. Now, retracing my steps, the grass and branches are even tougher because they were wet. My trousers and shirt were damp. I rubbed my eyes, wiping away the rainwater that was gathering on my lashes.

  Are you crying?

  No, I’m not crying. We walked for quite a while like this, but we still couldn’t find our way out of the woods.

  What should we do?

  Mujae stopped and turned to me.

  Seems like we’re lost.

  Should we keep walking?

  I don’t think we have a choice.

  Then let’s keep walking for now.

  The top layer of the ground, swollen with rain, was so slippery that if you slipped at all, it seemed you’d slip forever. My legs were stinging; I looked down and saw that they were covered with grass cuts. The longest cut was green with sap. Once I was aware of the cuts, my legs stung every time I moved. With my shadow drooping so far behind me I had a hard time just moving my feet, first the left and then the right. Seeing that I was having trouble walking, Mujae came over and took a look at the cuts.

  I’m cold, Mujae.

  That’s because you’re standing still.

  I feel like I could die.

  What do you mean, you could die?

  I’m just saying, I feel like I could die.

  Is that just your way of talking?

  I feel like I could die, that’s all.

  Mujae wiped away the sap with his sleeve, then straightened up and looked me in the eye.

  Should we die, then? Right here, he added, so quietly that I was frightened. I looked at Mujae as if seeing him for the first time. His black eyes peered down at me. His hair, usually somewhat disheveled, had been subdued by the rain.

  Eungyo, he said. Don’t say you feel like you’re going to die, if you don’t really plan on dying.

  Okay.

  Let’s keep walking then, Mujae said. He walked on ahead and I followed him. My eyes welled up with tears. Mujae was so heartless, I wanted to let him go on ahead so I could be on my own, but I couldn’t do that in these woods, especially when my shadow had risen, so I just kept walking, wiping my eyes.

  Are you crying?

  No, I’m not crying.

  As we were walking our surroundings grew lighter. Mujae stopped and spread out his hands palms-

  upward.

  The rain has stopped.

  Yeah.

  Do you want some gum?

  Okay.

  Mujae took out a bent stick of gum from his pocket, tore it in half, and handed me one piece. I removed the dampish double wrapper and poked the green-grape gum into my mouth. It was sweet, so sweet that my jaw tingled and my mouth watered. I folded the wrapper neatly and put it in my pocket. I walked on diligently, chewing gum. Each time my wet feet pushed against the ground a deep chill leached up through my soles. I imagined melting away into such a deep chill, becoming a part of these deep woods. Round mushrooms were growing near sinewy tree roots that poked above the leaf mold.

  Mujae, I said. Do you think we’ll make it out of here?

  I’m not sure.

  What will happen if we don’t?

  We’ll die, won’t we?

  Will we?

  We’ll die anyway, sometime, somewhere, but if we don’t make it out of here, we’ll die in these woods.

  I’m scared.

  You are?

  Aren’t you?

  Yes, I am.

  Really?

  Yeah, Mujae said, still striding forwards. I’m scared too, Eungyo.

  We walked in silence for a while. The rain had stopped, but the humidity of the sodden woods was stifling. My stomach felt cold even as I walked, moving my body vigorously, and I thought, what do we do if it gets dark before we make it out? Mujae, I said. Tell me a story.

  What kind of a story?

  Any kind.

  I don’t know any stories.

  Go on, just one.

  Hmm, Mujae said. Shall I tell you a story about a shadow?

  Why a shadow, of all things?

  The mood is right.

  I don’t want a story about a shadow.

  That’s the only I story I know.

  Well, go on then, tell me.

  Hmm, Mujae began.

  —

  There was a boy.

  Okay.

  His name was Mujae.

  Hey, Mujae?

  Yeah?

  Is this story about you?

  It’s about Mujae.

  About yourself, Mujae?

  It’s about Mujae, I
said. Should I go on?

  Okay.

  There was a boy named Mujae. Mujae’s family lived in a large room without a single picture hanging on the walls. There were nine people in the family. A mother and a father, and six older sisters.

  Six sisters?

  Mujae was the seventh child, the youngest.

  That’s so many.

  Is it?

  Why so many, I wonder?

  Well, Mujae said, tilting his head a little to the side. They must’ve liked doing it.

  What?

  Sex.

  I blushed a little, still walking after Mujae.

  Eungyo, Mujae said. Is this story too racy?

  It isn’t racy at all.

  Isn’t it?

  Anyway, it’s fine if it is.

  Do you like racy stuff?

  I said it’s fine. My voice sounded tense, and Mujae chuckled.

  In any case, for that reason, Mujae’s parents had seven children.

  So then what happens?

  The parents of the boy Mujae probably get into debt.

  Probably?

  Or inevitably, you could say.

  How is it inevitable to get into debt?

  Is it possible to live otherwise?

  There are people who manage it.

  Well, Mujae said, then broke off to concentrate on negotiating the slope, holding onto tree roots, and went on. I don’t really like people who go around saying they don’t have any debt. This might sound a little harsh, but I think people who claim to be in no debt of any kind are shameless, unless they sprang up naked in the woods one day without having borrowed anyone’s belly, and live without a single thread on their back, and without using any industrial products.

  Are industrial products bad?

  That’s not what I’m saying. A lot of things can happen in the manufacturing process, can’t they, when it’s the kind of mass production that uses all sorts of materials and chemicals? Rivers could get polluted, the payment for the labour could be too low. What I’m saying is, even if you buy so much as a cheap pair of socks, that low price is only possible because a debt is incurred somewhere along the line.

  I see.

  In any case, the parents of the boy Mujae get into debt.

  Okay.

  In this case, the debt is incurred by them signing their name on someone else’s document. This is a story about how eventually, after labouring to support a family of nine at the same time as paying back the interest on the debt, only the interest, because the debt itself is far too big, the shadow of the boy Mujae’s father rises. It happens on a rainy Friday evening. The boy Mujae is sitting on the edge of the wooden-floored hall, watching the rain drumming pockmarks into the small yard. At that moment, the boy Mujae’s father walks into the yard, his shoes muddy and his face pale. The boy Mujae greets his father, but his father just stares at him, then goes inside and lies down. He lies there in silence, even when someone speaks to him, staring up at the ceiling until night falls, then opens his mouth and says that his shadow has risen. He says that he saw the shadow, which had risen before he knew it, as he opened his umbrella in front of a tavern. The boy Mujae hears his mother gasp in fear. Your shadow rose, she says, and did you follow it? Did you follow the shadow? Her voice trembles with fear and the boy Mujae’s father nods. How far, how far did you follow it? she asks. Just a little ways, just a little ways. The boy Mujae’s mother turns her face away, wiping her eyes. Don’t cry, dear, says the boy Mujae’s father. I’ll be careful. Will you? I won’t follow it too far if it rises again. Far or not, you shouldn’t follow it in the first place. Alright, I won’t. Will you promise? And the boy Mujae’s father does promise, but from that day on he grows ever thinner, the words wasting away in his mouth, as though he has secretly started to follow his shadow. He blurts out things like, If you spot someone who looks just like you, it’s your shadow, and once your shadow rises it’s over for you, because shadows are very persistent, because you can’t bear not to follow your shadow once it’s risen. And then, looking like a ghost, he died.

  He died?

  He died.

  Just like that.

  Sometimes, people do die just like that.

  Do you think my shadow would also be that dangerous?

  I’m not sure, Mujae said, and I made an effort to keep up the pace, so as not to fall too far behind.

  What would happen to me, Mujae, would I die just like that?

  Mujae stopped in his tracks and turned to face me. Just don’t follow your shadow, he said. You have to be careful not to follow, even if your shadow does rise.

  —

  We carried on walking.

  Now and then twigs snapped beneath our feet, sounding like wet bones breaking.

  Mujae, I said, about sex. Do you think it’s really that good?

  It must be, don’t you think?

  Do you?

  It must be, since some couples have so many children. I wonder.

  Are you curious?

  I just wonder.

  Should we try it, when we make it out of here?

  Do you think we really will make it out?

  The woods won’t go on forever.

  I want to do it with someone I like.

  Like someone, then.

  Who?

  Me.

  Well.

  I like someone.

  Who?

  You, Eungyo.

  Don’t joke around.

  I’m not joking. I like you. I like you, Eungyo.

  We pushed on and arrived at an animal shed. The sun had nearly set.

  Look, Mujae said, and I turned to look in the direction he was pointing, and saw my shadow, which had become itself again, stretched out alongside Mujae’s towards the woods from which we’d just emerged.

  The sound of our approach sent a pair of deer skittering to a corner of the shed. We circled the shed, getting a whiff of the fur and excrement of herbivorous animals, and found ourselves in a small yard. A bulb hanging from the eaves of the house illuminated the faces of a middle-aged couple, looking up at us from their meal. Since the darkness was already thickening, they offered to put us up for the night. We washed our faces, put on the clothes they gave us, and ate a meal of steamed rice wrapped in blanched mulberry leaves. Night fell as we ate. The man, who introduced himself as ‘just a farmer’, told us the name of the village and its rough whereabouts. He called it a village, but said that his was the only house for several kilometers, and that in the morning he would take us in his truck to a place where we could catch a bus. Mujae and I thanked him. A fat moth was stuttering around overhead, now beating its wings against the bulb.

  Mujae stood up and tucked his flat rice-bran pillow under his arm.

  See you in the morning, Eungyo.

  After the two men had gone into the room next door, the farmer’s wife and I got ready to sleep. The walls seemed very thin, as I could hear murmured voices coming from the other side. The farmer’s wife turned off the light, and the abrupt darkness was like someone had cast a cloth over my eyes. I couldn’t see a thing. My vision didn’t improve even after some time had passed. I slowly brought my hand towards my face, but I still couldn’t see a thing . The farmer’s wife snored quietly. Whoo-whoo, owls cried outside.

  Mujae, I called out quietly. There are owls here.

  He must have fallen asleep already, or just not have heard me, as no answer came from beyond the wall.

  The owls are crying.

  I let the words hang in the air, lying quiet in the pitch-black darkness, distrusting even my own eyes.

  A Whorl and a Whorl

  and What Isn’t a Whorl

  I said goodbye to Mujae at the subway station, where we each took different trains. By the time I got back to the area where I lived it was noon and the sun
was blazing down as I dragged myself down the street. My stumpy shadow slanted to the right, bulging like a soft-boiled egg, its movements mimicking my own. When I thought about how it had risen now and then, the familiar shops and familiar alley didn’t look familiar at all. I turned into the alley and heard the sound of television leaking out of a window. It sounded like a volleyball match, with a voice saying spike, very clearly enunciated, sounding more electronic than human. Spike, spike, spike, and I turned another corner. Fancy hearing a voice saying spike, I thought, then put my hands in my pocket, unable to recall what had come after. A sharp piece of paper pricked my finger. I pulled it out and saw that it was the wrapper from Mujae’s gum. I bent it with my thumb, and it rustled like a shrivelled ear.

  I took down the pizza and fried chicken flyers that had been stuck to the door and stepped into the house. Inside it was dark, and seemed exactly how I’d left it even though I’d been gone a whole day. I took off my clothes, which smelled of soil, and went into the bathroom. I positioned myself beneath the naked bulb that dangled from the high ceiling, and looked down at my shadow. It looks a little bigger, I thought, and more thinned-out. I lifted my left foot up for a moment, then set it back down. I raised my right foot this time, put it down and lifted my left once more, then jumped up lightly so both feet were off the ground. The shadow spread out, a little thinner and wider, and definitely touched my feet when I put them down on the floor. I did a couple of jumps in my bare feet, examined the light bulb, then turned on the hot water and washed my hair. Wiping the suds from my eyes, I thought to myself that even if my shadow had drawn me deep into the woods, so deep that I never returned, someone would still have stuck flyers on the door, and pizzas would still have been sold. I went back into the main room, lay down and pulled a blanket over myself. The weather was sultry, but my toes were cold. I wondered if this was because I had my feet pointing north, and shifted them a little to the east, my head a little to the west. But this didn’t feel comfortable so I kept on shifting, again and again. I moved around so much I ended up back in my original position, but something still wasn’t right. I felt as if my lower back had lifted up off the floor, the whole of me trembling like a compass needle. Falling in and out of sleep, haphazard thoughts flitted through my mind.