Bae Suah
TRANS. BY Janet Hong
The Dream of a Child before She Was Set on Fire
I found myself standing before a truck, as if the earth had opened and heaved me out.
The truck, originally a horse trailer, looked as big as a mountain. Then cargo area was already filled with people. Still a hand reached out to pull me up—a yellow hand, sticking out from a wide sleeve, with gold rings on all ten fingers. But I couldn’t see whose hand it was.
Everywhere thick fog came together in the shape of a hawk’s head and scattered, repeatedly. It was cold and dank inside, as if the truck could not escape the mist, and the stench of ash and horse manure was made worse by the dampness. I realized only after I’d climbed on that my big black suitcase was already on the truck. I clambered onto it, since there wasn’t any room to sit. The leather was slippery from the rain, and as the truck built speed, I bounced up in the air like a light bone. I reached for the railing and held on. A film of moisture covered the rusted railing. The earth was spewing heavy drops of water, which the wind ferried up.
The people sat on the floor with their backs against the railing. Those in the middle held onto a rope strung across the length of the truck, but each time the wheels sped over the steppe rocks, their bodies pitched wildly in the air. On their heads were scarves or triangular blue silk hoods trimmed with yellow fur, so I couldn’t see their faces. Occasionally when they raised their heads, dark gray clouds hovered over their faces in the shape of a hawk’s head.
The truck raced along the roadless steppes for a long time. A river appeared. I heard it first, before I saw it. The truck rushed headlong into the gray current, as murky as steel and so rough it looked as if big rocks would fly out. The river was shallower than I had thought. Below the railing, the truck’s large wheels churned the water into a seething whirlpool of froth and spray. The smell of gasoline made it hard to breathe. Everywhere I looked, a dark wet cloud formed in the shape of a hawk’s head, then scattered. The moisture from the air mixed with the river. I bounced up in the air like a light bone. The truck stopped on the other side of the river. A wide, low hill littered with rocks and white bones spread before us. At the top of this hill stood a hut of stone and moss, with pointed, cone-shaped crags soaring behind it. I asked where we were.
“We’re at the Scythian tombs,” said a faceless voice.
They got off the bus. These people lived scattered throughout a vast region, but made the long journey to the tombs once a year by truck, gathering on the day of the festival. Today was that day. I struggled along the rocky path with my suitcase—someone had already unloaded it from the truck. My wet coat dragged heavily on the ground. Water dripped from my hood. I was now forced to use both hands to lug the suitcase up the path, which sloped more steeply as I neared the top. With each labored step, the suitcase grew heavier from the rain.
When I finally made it to the top of the hill, the wind whipped in gusts, as if it meant to shred the air apart. The green leaves and branches of the Japanese cypress covered the ground. Because of the lashing wind these trees grew close to the ground, twisted and bent. The circular patterns on the bark stared up at me like eyes. Small yellow flowers bloomed secretly below, hidden from every gaze, and beneath their frail stems, light green moss carpeted the ground. I sat down, clinging to my suitcase to keep from flying away in the wind. At last, I lay down crookedly, as if I’d become a young Japanese cypress. I smelled its fragrance on me. White smoke rose in the air, together with a strong odor of resin, as if a cypress tree had been set on fire. Someone stepped on my back as he walked past, mistaking me for a tree. At the base of the crags covered by rain and fog I heard the singing of people with faces like hawks.
Mountain soaring above clouds of white,
its peak covered with pure white snow,
like the beard of my dear father
who left for that mountain yonder.
—
The last time I saw my father was at the carnival at the height of summer. It was one of those traveling fairs. I realized he was gone only after I woke up. We’d been staying in a plastic shipping container that had been converted into a house.
The night before, Father had read me a book as he always did. We had travelled to the carnival by car, a battered two-seater parked outside, which we could see out our window. The dusty windowsill was decorated with artificial flowers. A giant Ferris wheel stood at the center of the fairgrounds over a green-tiled floor. Never in my life had I seen anything so big. It was perhaps as big as the earth itself, possibly even bigger. If you climbed into one of the buckets at the bottom of the wheel, it seemed it would take at least several years to reach the top. I couldn’t even see the highest part of the wheel, since it was hidden in the clouds. Though no one got on or off, the wheel whirled at the same speed all day and night. When evening fell, the wheel was lit in red, transforming into a fiery, blazing eye. We always left the window open, since the summer nights were oppressive and made me feel feverish. In my dreams the Ferris wheel turned and turned, engulfed in flames.
The book Father read to me was called The Snow Child, about a rebel girl captured by enemy troops and burned at the stake. All winter, her charred remains hung from a rope in a school playground white with snow. “Look!” he’d said, thrusting the book at me. In one picture, her long neck was twisted sharply to the left. Her eyes were closed, as if she were sleeping, and the playground glittered with snow and ice. Even from the black-and-white picture I could sense the sharpness of the ice; it seemed keen enough to cut. In the other picture she was no longer a girl, but just a block of scorched wood.
The book dropped to the floor. I fell asleep.
When I woke, I was alone. The window was open as usual, but our car was gone. I heard the circus drum. Boom boom boom. I even heard the thin, high note of the bone flute. Pi-riri pi-riri. Children laughed, people talked, the fountain sprayed water, and cellophane wrappers were ripped off lollipops—all these sounds were loud and amplified.
I lay in bed for a long time, but Father didn’t return, and no one brought the breakfast tray. No one woke me or helped me wash. Many times I must have woken and fallen asleep. The size and position of shadows changed rapidly. The artificial flowers at the windowsill withered and then bloomed once more. Clouds covered the peak of the circus tent, and in the next second, the sun shattered the fountain spray into dazzling grains of whiteness. At last, it hailed and thundered. When I finally got up from the bed, my head emptied and I felt dizzy. Night was already falling outside the window. But which night? Of which day? Outside the window, the Ferris wheel turned slowly, lit against the reddish sky. It was only then that I realized the wheel from which no one ever got on or off was, in fact, a clock without hands.
Outside my window stood an officer in uniform. He was the carnival security. With his hands on his hips, he was watching a peacock strut slowly on the tiled ground, so it took some time before he noticed I was gesturing at him.
He walked toward me even more slowly than the peacock and propped his elbow against the windowsill. “What is it?” he asked.
“My father’s gone,” I said in a small voice.
“Oh? Since when?”
Though his voice was friendly, it was obvious he hardly considered this a serious dilemma.
“After he read to me last night, we turned out the light and went to bed, but he was gone when I woke up this morning.”
“Now that’s a big problem.” He glanced into our container home, looking lost in thought. “Could he have stepped out for a bit, since you’ve been asleep the whole day? Maybe he went to a restaurant or went for a walk.”
“But I’ve been waiting all day and he hasn’t come back.”
“Now that’s a big problem.” This time, his words sounded like a sigh.
“I’ll try to find him then. What’s your father’s name? Can you describe him for me?”
I said his name and described his appearance.
“That’s going to be tough.” He let out a big sigh. “His name is too common. And even his looks are common. I might have to stop every man on the street to ask if he’s your father.”
Before I realized what he was doing, he called out my father’s name in a loud voice. Instantly, from every corner of the carnival, men of all different shapes, sizes, and colors, each holding the hand of a child, turned to stare at the police officer, as if to say, “Did you just call me?”
“See? What did I tell you?” The officer looked as if he wanted me to understand the impossibility of his task. “And all those men look just like the person you described.”
He wasn’t completely wrong.
“But what’s your name?”
“My name is Snow Child,” I said, fixing my gaze on the floor under the bed, where the fairy tale book about the partisan girl had fallen.
Without a hint of suspicion, he took out his notepad and jotted down my name with a pencil. “Well now, isn’t that the strangest thing?” he said, and then stared intently at my face. “That was also my daughter’s name.”
Soon after, I found myself sitting on a long wooden bench at the police station. Next to me was a large suitcase. There were dozens of children in the room. Though some were older, most were younger than me. There was even a crying baby in a baby carriage. Written on the glass door were the words Lost & Found—Missing Child Center. Tears rolled down the children’s cheeks, and they stamped their feet and pounded the door with their fists. If they grew tired of crying, they sniffled and hiccupped and eventually fell asleep. But as soon as they had regained some of their strength, they started to cry again. All the children cried, except for me and a blind girl with a large ribbon in her hair. Perhaps because she was sitting up with her back straight as a rod, she seemed to be the oldest girl in the room. Her eyes were closed. My head hurt and my ears rang from the children’s cries. A policewoman came in, carrying a tray full of bottles containing some sort of pink liquid. When she handed one to each child, the crying died down. She even spooned the pink liquid into the baby’s mouth with a plastic spoon.
Shortly after, people swarmed into the police station. They rushed in, their steps synchronized like those of marching soldiers. Chaos broke out in the Lost & Found room. People shouted, wailed, and even tumbled about on the ground. The women’s hair hung loose and wild, and the men’s eyes became bloodshot and drool dripped from their mouths. Someone took the blind girl by the hand, and even the baby carriage was wheeled out of the room. One by one, the children disappeared. The room soon stood vacant, except for the empty bottles, abandoned toys, drops of pink liquid that had dripped on the floor, used diapers, and the smell of children.
I ran to the door and pounded the glass with my fists. A very tall woman walked past, followed by the police officer who had brought me here. It was then I saw the blind girl leave the police station. Her neck seemed even longer than before. All I could see was his back, but the man pulling her along by the hand seemed like my father. I shouted to try to get them to stop. My father had made a mistake, I was sure of it. In some confusion, he believed the blind girl to be me and was taking her instead.
The clock hanging on the wall had no hands.
The glass door opened, and the tall woman and the police officer stepped inside. Up close, she was much taller than I had thought, taller than two meters. Her high heels and twisted-up hair made her appear even taller. Her face was pale and lusterless, and as dry as paper, and there was a purple blemish on her left cheek.
“Snow Child, we’ve found a way to take you to your father,” the police officer said, wearing a happy expression. “So there’s no need to worry anymore.”
I could see he was a very good man. The corners of his eyes, which turned down a little, made him appear tired and lazy, but his eyes were gentle and warm. Before I could say anything, the tall woman clasped my hand. I remembered to grab my suitcase.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at my luggage.
“It’s my suitcase, Ma’am.”
“You should call her Teacher, not Ma’am,” the police officer said, correcting me. “She’s a child psychologist for the police department.”
The tall woman’s expression didn’t change. She only stared at my suitcase.
“Do you intend to go to the Scythian tombs with that big suitcase?” she asked earnestly. Each time she spoke, her neck, long and thin as a stork’s, twitched.
“Where’s that?”
“It’s a place very far away,” said the police officer. “We received word your father might be there, so we asked around and found people who can take you.”
We walked down the corridor.
“But we should talk before you go,” the tall woman said, opening the door to what seemed like her office. She let me in first. “After all, it’s my job to talk to children who’ve come to the station for reasons out of their control.”
She sat down behind a large desk. The old chair creaked as her tall body settled uneasily into it. I climbed onto the tall round stool across from her. My feet didn’t even touch the ground. I stood the suitcase next to the stool. There was no other furniture in the large office, besides the desk and chairs. There were no bookshelves, cabinets, not even a flowerpot. The top of her desk was completely bare, and the four walls were as white as those of a hospital ward. The only thing that could be described as decoration was a framed picture of a wind-swept hill, which hung on the wall behind her. On top of the hill where white clouds drifted like fog, there was a small hut made of stone and moss. Sharp crags rose behind it, peculiar in their symmetry. The tops of the crags were hidden by clouds and could not be seen.
“Is that a picture of the Scythian tombs?” I asked.
“If that’s what you want to think,” she replied, without even glancing behind her. She scratched the purple blemish on her left cheek. “To be honest, I haven’t been there, so I don’t know what it looks like, but the important thing is that it’s just the name of the site. So there’s no need to worry about what the place looks like.”
“Why did my father go there?”
“Good question.” She pulled open her drawer and took out a notebook and pencil. She fished out a glasses case from her pocket and placed a pair of small-rimmed glasses on her nose. “How about you let me ask the questions?”
“Well, what do you want to know?”
“Please.” She stared at me over her glasses and said in a serious voice,
“It’s a very bad habit to answer a question with a question.”
“Then how do I answer if I don’t understand?”
She looked very angry. “Now, for the first question,” she said, staring into my eyes and ignoring what I’d just said. “I was curious as soon as I first saw you, so this isn’t an official question, but Snow Child, are you a boy or a girl?”
“...”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“I’m a boy until I turn seven. I become a girl after that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
With a stern eye, she glanced at my hair, which had been cut short like a boy’s, at my blue shirt and cargo shorts that came down to my knees.
“It’s because of the Queen.”
“The Queen?”
“She takes little girls and turns them into birds, because she loves their singing most of all. So Father said I had to disguise myself as a boy. That I had to cut my hair short like a boy’s, and wear trousers like a boy, and talk like a boy. But when I turn seven, I won’t have to worry about the Queen anymore, so I can live as a girl. There’s still a week left before I turn seven, so I’m a boy right now.”
“I understand. Now, for the second question.” She pushed up her glasses and glanced at the notepad scrawled with writing. “If you lived with your father, where is your mother?”
“She works at the circus. Father doesn’t have a job, so she’s had to hide the fact that she has a child, even after she had me. Because a woman with a child can’t work at the circus. Father used to be a trainer of a snow leopard. You see, Father and Mother first met at the circus. But one snowy day, the circus’s only snow leopard died. A police officer shot it when it leapt out of its cage. That was the world’s last snow leopard, since snow leopards are now extinct, and Father can no longer work as a trainer. So he’s been the one to take care of me ever since I was born. Mother was there, but she was invisible. He always talked about her, but I’ve never even seen her face.”
“Are you talking about the circus that’s performing at the carnival right now?”
“Yes, the circus stays in one place from a week to a month, and then travels to another location. Then Father and I follow in our car. We never know ahead of time where it’ll go. When the weather is bad or too cold, there are no performances, and the troupe pitches a tent on a vacant lot. Father and I set up where we can see the circus tent, but not too close. At night when I fall asleep, he meets Mother secretly. He always leaves after I fall asleep, after I slip into my dream world. He can’t take me, because it’s too dangerous. Because if anyone sees Mother, that’s the end of our livelihood. So she can exist only in my dreams. Then when I wake up, Father is back by my side.”
“What does your mother do in the circus? Is she an acrobat?”
“No, she’s a sorceress, who can perform a disappearing act. It’s a trick she’s been doing since she was my age. She goes on stage, dressed all in black. The big black hood covers her face, so no one can see her. People wait tensely, barely breathing. She slips off her hood, but her head is missing, and the hood flops down. She then slips off her thick coat, but her whole body is missing, and the coat flops to the stage floor. The hooded coat is all that remains of Mother. People are speechless. Shortly after, her assistant comes on stage and drapes the coat over Mother’s invisible body and places the hood over her invisible head. Then she becomes Mother again. She waves at the audience and then walks off stage. It’s a simple trick. There are no funny stories or words that go with the act. The magic trick is our only means of livelihood, and that’s why Father can’t help but worry. A disappearing act uses up all your energy, so each time Mother performs this trick, she fades away a little, which means it’s harder for her to come back. She’s a gifted sorceress, so she has no trouble disappearing, but as she gets older, it’s more difficult to return. You see, disappearing has to do with technique, and returning with energy. Because she’s been performing this act almost her whole life, she’s faded away a lot. If she takes too long to come back, the audience will get bored of waiting for my invisible mother, and then they’ll just leave with a yawn. Then just like Father, she won’t have a job at the circus anymore and we won’t have any money. But what Father is scared of more than anything is that one day, when Mother is old and all her energy’s gone, she will never be able to return. Then we won’t have money, or a mother. So I can’t grow too fast. Because Mother will have aged as much as I’ve grown older.”
“So you’re saying you need to find your father, even if your mother may
be close by?”
“Yes. To be honest, I don’t know her. She won’t recognize me anyway. I’ve never even seen her. It’s always been my father who looked after me.”
“They say he’s far away.”
“At the Scythian tombs—”
“That’s just a name. You mustn’t forget that’s just the name of a location. Make sure you don’t picture actual Scythian tombs.”
“But why did my father go there?”
“Good question,” the woman said, closing her notebook. “It’s already late, and you’ll have to leave first thing tomorrow morning. You can spend the night here, since your lease at the place you’ve been staying is up.”
“Spend the night here?”
“Yes.”
She pulled open her drawer again and put the notebook away. She took out a soft floral blanket, a fluffy pillow, and an air mattress, and spread them out on the desk. In an instant, the desk was transformed into a bed.
Outside the window, night had already fallen. At last she handed me a bottle containing a pink liquid.
“Drink this before you go to sleep. People will come early in the morning to take you to the tombs.”
I heard the circus drum. Boom boom boom. I even heard the thin, high note of the bone flute. Pi-riri pi-riri. Children laughed and people talked.
“The performance is probably starting.”
I stood by the window and tried to see the circus lights. But the room faced the opposite direction, so I couldn’t see anything, not the circus tent, not even the Ferris wheel.
The psychologist covered me with a blanket up to my neck. She opened the drawer once more and pulled out a long dark hooded coat. She draped it over her shoulders. Her face disappeared inside the hood. She became a shadow, buried in the folds.
“Good night then.”
As she left the room, she flicked off the switch and turned off the light. I wasn’t sleepy. I stretched my hand out from under the blanket and tried to touch the suitcase I’d left beside the desk, but I couldn’t reach it. It was buried in darkness.
I was not at all tired, but for some strange reason, I fell asleep at once. As soon as I did, the psychologist came and shook me awake, and so I opened my eyes without dreaming once. It was still dark outside my window. She was dressed in the same hooded coat she’d been wearing before she stepped out of the room.
“It’s time to go,” she said, rushing me. “They’re here. The truck that’ll be taking you is waiting outside.”
“Is the dream starting now?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“So I’ll be going by truck?”
“That’s right.”
I followed her out of the police station. Mist was falling. Clouds seemed to have engulfed the whole world. I could see the faint lights of the Ferris wheel, whirling inside the thick fog. It seemed the whole world was made of fog and Ferris wheel. I could hear nothing else. Though it was summer, the day was unusually cold, and the air was gray and heavy. The psychologist took off her coat and draped it over my shoulders.
“It’s raining, so put this on.”
Her coat was ridiculously big, so I almost disappeared in it. The bottom half dragged on the ground.
“But it’s too big for me.”
“It’s going to get colder, so keep it on.”
She folded the sleeves halfway up and pulled my hands out so that I could carry the suitcase.
“Hurry, they’re waiting outside.”
Even before she could finish speaking, I found myself standing before a truck, as if the earth had opened and heaved me out. The truck, originally a horse trailer, looked as big as a mountain. The cargo area was already filled with people. Still a hand reached out to pull me up—a yellow hand, sticking out from a wide sleeve, with gold rings on all ten fingers. But I couldn’t see whose hand it was.
Bae Suah is a highly acclaimed Korean author and translator of German literature, described as “Korean literature’s most unfamiliar being.” She has introduced authors such as W.G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, and Jenny Erpenbeck to Korean audiences. She received the Hanguk Ilbo Literary Prize, as well as the Tongseo Literary Prize.
Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver. Her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale was a finalist for both the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and the 2018 National Translation Award. She has also translated Ancco’s Bad Friends, Seong-nan Ha’s Flowers of Mold, and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass.