This Translation Tuesday, we feature an intricate story told deftly by Guka Han, translated from the French by Catherine Leung. On a morning too cold to leave her bed, Han’s narrator scrolls through her feed. Among the ads and videos, a photo of “her” surprises her: a friendly fellow student from film school, and in a later crossing of paths, a strange albeit familiar face in the country she’s emigrated to. Memories begin to return—of her first summer in this new country, her anomie, her listlessness, and her two strange encounters with this girl. Deep unhappiness lurks in the narrator’s ambivalent, almost benumbed recollection—elusive and obscure, yet instantly familiar to those who know it.
I open my eyes. The day is about to begin, but last night’s dreams and the events of yesterday still surround me and hold me back from a fresh start. My head’s in a fog. The alarm didn’t go off. Curled up under the duvet, I reach out to grab my phone. The cold air from the bedroom immediately nips my arm. I look at the time on the screen and stretch, but don’t manage to shake off the sense of fatigue. I wonder what woke me. The chill in the bedroom feels even sharper than usual and I don’t feel ready yet to face the new day. I curl up again and make the most of the little heat still remaining in the bed.
I turn my phone back on. The bright screen dazzles me, but after a few moments, my eyes adapt. I scroll through the day’s news. An acquaintance is interested in the language of cats; another hates a politician; somebody is stuck at the airport in Moscow; a celebrity has succumbed to cancer; such and such a person is looking for a flat “650 euros max”; a child has choked on a Kinder toy; a girlfriend has eaten noodles with mushrooms; somebody else has felt moved by an extract from a book; and in the middle of all this news, a photo catches my attention. It’s her. She’s wearing a thin dress and is smiling as she stares at the lens or the person who took the photo. Her forehead is glowing in a summer light. It’s a good photo in my opinion—she’s beautiful in this dress, in this light.
With a flick of the thumb, I scroll through the news again. Stories, ads and photos follow one after another, and then suddenly, there she is once more. In this new picture she’s posing with a girl who I used to hang out with at university. I tap on the photo without thinking.
“…”
Three ellipsis points, nothing else. Sixteen people liked this photo, and twelve added a comment. I read one, then another, and suddenly realise she’s dead.
*
That summer I worked as a waitress in a small restaurant. The clients sometimes asked if I was going away in the holidays. I just shrugged. Their questions weren’t really aimed at me—it was more a pretext to talk about their own grand projects. During the restaurant’s annual closure in August, I wasn’t really planning on doing anything in particular. I didn’t have enough money to go away, and I was just beginning to adapt to this new country. I nodded as I listened patiently to the customers telling me about the trips they had planned.
The owner of the restaurant had settled here about twenty years ago when he came to study film, and he’d managed this restaurant for almost ten years. On the walls he’d hung posters of New Wave films which clashed with the vibe of the place. Once or twice we spoke about the cinema and he admitted he’d watched hardly any films since taking over the restaurant. He didn’t seem to have any regrets. I think the cinema simply didn’t have a place in his life anymore.
I never told him I’d also done film studies. I didn’t want him to compare our two paths. It depressed me, the idea of one day having to give up my projects in order to earn a living. I did like my boss though. He shaved his head regularly and when he smiled his face became all round. He often joked with the customers and had a good laugh.
I wasn’t that comfortable with the idea of working in a restaurant serving dishes from my country with a fellow countryman who’d also left, but I tried not to think about it too much. I focussed on the work and told myself that I really did need to earn a living.
I also went to a language school several times a week. I didn’t especially want to improve my knowledge of the country’s language, but my student status meant I could easily get a residence permit. Most of the students in my class had come here with a goal in mind, and were really motivated. When I was asked what brought me to this country, I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t come to do anything in particular. I had left to escape my responsibilities so that I didn’t have to become someone I didn’t want to be. Back home I was considered a fugitive, whereas here I was simply a foreigner. To my mind, neither of these labels really suited me, but at least here I was no longer under the constraint or will of anyone else. I felt freer, but at the same time there was something painful that came with this freedom.
At the language school the teachers often made fun of the keenest students. Each time one of them marvelled at the beauty of this country or the harmonious sound of the language, they smiled condescendingly, as if the students really had no idea what this language and this country were really about. And each time I saw this insidious smile, I was disgusted by this language, but I continued all the same, copying the movements they made with their mouths, in an attempt to articulate as best I could the words they wanted to teach us.
Early on in these lessons, my name threw them completely. Some of them politely asked me how to pronounce it correctly. I carefully articulated it, pausing on each syllable, but not a single teacher managed to pronounce it properly. By repeating my name over and over, I sometimes felt detached from it. It was as if it didn’t mean anything anymore, as if it became a random sound, with nothing to do with me as a person.
When I wasn’t in the restaurant or at school, I mostly stayed at home. I would flick through a few pages of a book and fall asleep very quickly. I don’t know why though, I was always hungry. I was forever thinking about food. Since working in the restaurant, I tended to avoid cooking in my cramped studio apartment. I just ate cold food which more or less gave off no smell: bread and processed cheese, avocados, apples and carrots, chocolate and biscuits. When I felt like something hot, I drank tea or hot water. But I was getting increasingly frustrated with this diet. While chewing and swallowing this cold and odourless food, I thought about hot dishes with a more pronounced taste, and this contradiction upset me.
I felt like this meaningless daily routine could just carry on forever. However, one day, which was much like any other, I received a message from that girl. She was asking to meet up during a short trip she was planning here. Her previous message had been sent on the day I left—she had told me to take care of myself abroad and had wished me luck. I hadn’t replied. This time, I hesitated for quite a while, drafting several messages which I didn’t send, and then I finally arranged to meet her in a café near where I lived.
That evening the sun lingered on the horizon, tracing long red shadows behind the passers-by. On the café terrace, the customers looked really happy as they spoke about the places they were planning to visit very soon, just like the customers in the restaurant where I worked—a certain seaside or mountain, or this or that remote forest. The continuous flow of their words was punctuated by outbursts of laughter and gestures of closeness. I found this animated display painful to watch. It left the impression that these people were actors performing their own roles in a play.
I smoked several cigarettes in succession. I was nervous. I’d thought about this moment throughout the day, without being able to focus on anything else. This meeting, the heat, my presence in this town, in another country, none of it seemed real to me. I thought I’d left my past behind me, and there it was, resurfacing again out of the blue. My home town, university, old friends, the aroma which wafted through my neighbourhood in summer, and the sense of melancholy which often took hold of me at this time of year—this visit brought everything back.
She came into view at the end of the street, with a big bag on her back. I got up and waved to her, but she didn’t notice me straight away. Her hair shone in the setting sun. When she did notice me, her smile was natural, as if it were only yesterday we’d seen each other. I wonder what the smile I gave her back in return must have looked like.
*
At university, we had several lessons together, but nothing else in common. She seemed to get on well with everyone, while I tended to keep my distance. When we bumped into each other in the corridors or at parties, we’d just say hello.
Once though, in winter, we both spent the night in the editing room, on the ground floor of the university. It was damp, with cold white walls and something eery about it. There were wild rumours going round about this place—there was talk of a ghost lurking in the corners of the ceiling. Some students claimed the door opened and closed by itself. Others said this underground space affected the videos they were editing, with white spots appearing on some of the pictures. Of course, no-one took these stories seriously, but I also think no-one felt completely indifferent about them either.
During that period, I was shooting wedding videos. I had to stand for hours on end, with a camera on my shoulder, enduring tedious ceremonies, but the work was well paid. I was surrounded by people singing, laughing or crying with the emotion, whilst I focussed on keeping the camera still as I filmed them. I must have been the only person scowling throughout the whole ceremony.
That winter evening, I was editing the video I’d filmed the previous weekend. It had been exceptionally cold all day and the other students had already left. I wouldn’t have stayed either if I hadn’t needed to finish editing before the next morning. In the video, the young married couple were wearing a very stylish dress and suit and they couldn’t stop smiling. Their world appeared to be completely different from the one I was living in.
At one point, for no apparent reason, the computer shut down, and when I turned it back on, the work I’d completed so far had disappeared into thin air. That was when I realised just how exhausted I was. I’d been so focussed on editing, I’d not realised how tired it had made me, but now all my energy had gone. I emptied my thoughts as I swivelled on my chair. The walls and colours started to swirl and blend into each other. After a few moments I heard the door open, but the chair’s movement meant I couldn’t quite see. When I managed to come to a stop, the door was closed again. I went to open it, but there was no-one there. The room suddenly seemed quieter than usual, and the white of the wall, whiter. I thought again of the stories people told, and said to myself I best go home. At that precise moment, somebody knocked on the door. I asked who it was, but didn’t catch an answer. I hesitated for a moment, then held my breath as I opened the door a crack.
It was her. She had a cup of tea in each hand, and the steam wafted in front of her face. She held out a cup to me before going to sit down in front of a computer. The heat from the cup eased my fear. I felt ashamed to have been so easily scared. I went back to my seat and took small sips of the tea. It had an orange flavour.
I looked at her computer screen out of the corner of my eye. Images scrolled by: vegetation growing between the cracks of a pavement, the foliage of a tree against the light, the rippling surface of an expanse of water, a pine cone lying on the ground, tangled electric wires, a sky at dusk …
We remained in the editing room the whole night, each in front of her own computer. We drank two more cups of tea, ate a box of biscuits, and smoked a few cigarettes. She finished her work first, but she waited for me. We left the room at dawn, exhausted.
Outside, the whiteness of the landscape jumped out at me. The ground, sky, trees, cars, street lamps, electric wires, benches, billboards—everything was white. Even the noises were white, and the stillness too. We stayed silent for a few moments, then gingerly stepped onto the unspoilt snow which crackled softly under our feet. After a few metres, and a brief exchange of glances, we began a snowball fight. As the snowballs smashed against our coats, trousers, and faces, we gradually faded into this white landscape. All we could hear was our laughter muffled by the snow.
*
She came over to my table and said my name confidently. Her voice and accent sounded familiar. I felt slightly surprised to hear my name pronounced as it should be.
I didn’t utter a word. The muscles in my face were tense, but she didn’t seem to notice my awkwardness. My embarrassment went away after several beers. We were soon recalling our years at university. We talked about the rabbit which lived in the courtyard of the main building. From what I remembered, it was one of my friends who found it in the woods, but according to her, it was a boy who brought it to university. I think somebody had given it a name but we just tended to call it ‘rabbit’. When it arrived it was still really tiny and everybody loved it, but then it got really fat on everything the students fed it. It ran up to the students as best it could, squealing and sometimes peeing on their shoes. When it died, some students dug a small grave in a corner of the courtyard. They placed a stone on top with its name.
We talked about everything else too: the forsythia at the entrance to the building, the cynical tutors, the locals who came for a walk on the campus, the cafeteria where the drinks were all as awful as each other. She was still in contact with several students. Most of them had gone into careers which had nothing to do with film. Some had got married, others, like myself, had gone overseas. Each time she mentioned somebody’s name, the face of that person would briefly flash up in my mind. I also had a vague memory of the videos presented by all these people, the voice they assumed when speaking about their work, the smell of the tobacco they smoked, the way they held their cigarettes, or even the clothes they wore during filming. Her memories seemed very different from mine. It was as if, rather than a shared past, our two separate pasts rubbed shoulders without reconciling around this table.
I didn’t dare ask her whether she remembered the morning we had left the editing room and had discovered the outside world covered in snow. I was afraid she might alter the memory I had of this moment by recalling it quite differently. She also didn’t speak of it. Perhaps she harboured the same fears as me. Or she’d quite simply forgotten that morning.
By the time we left the café, we were both slightly drunk. We headed towards the river. Night had fallen, but the humid heat still hung stubbornly around the streets. For a long time, we walked side by side, and I showed her the town as if I’d been living there for years. We passed in front of some old buildings, fountains, churches, and luxury boutiques, and we came across stray dogs and homeless people, but still I didn’t see the river. I hardly ever roamed the town by night, and I couldn’t find my usual landmarks. Trying not to show my embarrassment, I got out my phone to see where we were. I zoomed in and out of the map and compared the world around me with the one shown on the screen.
At that moment, after giving me a pat on the back, she took my hand and pulled me along with her. Her gesture immediately unsettled me. Nobody had touched me in this way since I’d lived in this town. It was as if this brief contact soothed an absence I’d been unaware of until then.
Our hands were sweaty by the time we arrived at the water’s edge. The river seemed vast to us. The orangey light from the streetlamp was reflected on the water which looked motionless. She let go of my hand and I felt a breath of air across my palm.
A tourist river cruise headed towards the spot where we were standing. The boat let out a long deep sound which gave the scene a touch of melancholy. She started waving at the passengers. Somebody saw her and waved back, then somebody else, and then a whole group of passengers. They seemed overexcited.
The boat passed in front of us, leaving behind a wide trace of ripples across the water’s surface. She lowered her hand and watched it gradually move away.
*
She’s dead. Eyes fixed on my phone screen, I continue to scroll through the posts as if nothing ever happened—as if this news had passed unnoticed. Her death is followed by a recipe, then a photo of a dolphin and an article on the harmful effects of salt in the diet.
Still curled up under the duvet, I wonder if I’ve woken up properly and if all this is actually real, or if it’s a bad joke. But the tone of the comments leaves no room for ambiguity.
I’m not able to express my shock or sadness. It seems there’s no rhyme or reason for her death as it appears on my phone. She died far from here, in a totally abstract world, and I don’t know how to react.
I start to read her posts. Some I’ve seen already, others are new to me. A photo taken during her visit here catches my attention. I recognise my neighbourhood. She must have taken it just before arriving at the café where we met. Her words and pictures suddenly have a very strange effect on me. I feel like I’ve entered a house where the owner is away. I stop scrolling. My face is reflected on the screen before it turns off.
I get out of bed and go to open the window. It’s still dark and there’s nobody outside. I notice a snowflake which flutters towards me. I hold out my hand to catch it, and when I open it again, my palm is slightly damp.
Translated from the French by Catherine Leung
Published with the kind permission of Les éditions Verdier
Guka Han is a South Korean author born in 1987. She studied fine arts in South Korea, before moving to Paris at the age of 26. She later graduated from Université Paris 8 with a Masters in Creative Writing. Le jour où le désert est entré dans la ville is her first book in French. Guka Han is also a translator of French into Korean. Recently she has translated books by Olivia Rosenthal, Monique Wittig, and Edouard Levé. She has also co-translated Cent Ombres (One Hundred Shadows, Tilted Axis Press) by Hwang Jungeun from Korean into French with Samy Langeraert.
Catherine Leung is a literary translator. She was longlisted last year for her pitch to Pen Presents for a translation from French to English of On ne put pas tenir la mer entre ses mains by Laure Limongi. She has translated sample chapters for French publishers Gallimard Jeunesse and Scrineo and has recently attended the BCLT literary translation summer school at the University of East Anglia. As a regular contributor to the WorldKidLit blog, she has written a number of reviews on children’s literature in translation. She is also a published flash fiction writer, children’s picture book author, and editor, having worked for a number of years at Oxford University Press.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: