A Greater Music (15 page)

When I got back to Seoul my financial situation was much worse than I'd thought. My bank balance had long since hit rock bottom, there was absolutely no possibility of my finding any other source of income and, on top of that, the rent had been pushed up by the skyrocketing value of real estate. I had to abandon for good the idea I'd had of wintering in Norway or Finland. When I'd first mentioned the thought to M or Joachim they'd tried to dissuade me from such a foolish undertaking, but it had been a
long-held dream of mine to sit out the winter in some snow-bound northern port town. I sold my car, but this was no great help. My relatives lent me some money in exchange for the use of my house. It wasn't enough—no, to be frank the whole situation was horribly uncertain—but all the same it was helpful when it came to writing, because I ended up even less attached to my present self. I'd encountered Zimmerman at exactly the right time, because just then, as he puts it, the definite “present” didn't strictly exist for me. I'd simply stopped for a while in a certain fluid place between past and future, these two states giving direction to my present situation, and through writing I would reappear as myself in given moments from the past or future. This is how I thought of M. Inside me M was already dead, and the thought of her no longer caused me any sadness or anger. If anything, I felt closer to her. Representing her like this, as someone who may or may not exist, ultimately became my reason to write. Rather than there being any sense of loss or fulfillment, this was an anaesthetized, factual, dispassionate state of affairs. I forgot the time and place I was in.

Or perhaps I began to write this piece at a certain place that winter. There's a strong possibility that it began as a letter to M. Only while it was still possible, in my mind if nowhere else, for me to write something to M did my desk, the potential site of such an act, seem the most wondrous spot on this earth. And while I was writing I acted as though entirely oblivious to the disappearance of all that had once existed between M and I, a way for me to forget my own forgetfulness, and gain some measure of solace. In order to forget my sadness, I had to forget that I'd already stopped being sad. As I begin to write, I experience the same heavy languor, the same unplaceable sense of loss, and of illusoriness of all things, as when I wake from a long afternoon nap. The soft, far-off light of
evening, making a pale square of the window in the unlit room; the hard wooden chair and desk, the empty room. I walk over to the desk. The dreams that reveal me for what I am still linger, though my waking self has already forgotten them. Now is the time of the setting sun, blazing in the sky above the darkness of the earth. The time when things have individual voices, and speak to me. Relying on the last light of the evening sky, I begin to write.

One day a letter came from Joachim, saying he hoped I could stay at his house over January and look after Benny while he took a trip to Schleswig-Holstein. And that if I wanted to take a break from work I should come with him on his trip. I recalled how the idea of traveling north always used to have such a hold on me. My default response was one of apathy, and I drafted a letter of refusal. From a certain point onward, I'd stopped wanting to go anywhere at all. But I soon changed my mind.

12)
Now, to put it as Kundera might, we enter a secret world, populated by a cast of nameless characters. It is a kind of dream world. Hunger, disease, confusion, separation, curses, forgetfulness, ignorance and superficiality, all human suffering is there in that world just as it ever was, only now it no longer has a name. My walks gradually lengthened as January came to an end, eventually taking me all the way to Cité Foch and the edge of the lake. Cité Foch was the area where French officers had lived after the war, and had retained the atmosphere of a small, self-contained city within a city. You could still come across street signs for Rue Racine and Rue Diderot. But by then, aside from several restaurant signs in French, it wasn't all that different from other areas on the edges of the city center. The sun had yet to go down,
but the day was dark. The gloaming, a dark gold like the old light of a forest's inner fastness, hung suspended over streets, houses and roads, over a small stream which flowed out of the woods and into a canal. Pink clouds shimmered on one edge of the sky. But the darkness, washed in strong red light, robbed all earthly things of their true form, their self-assurance. An abandoned railway lay at the edge of the woods, its tracks overgrown with dried grasses. Warehouses barricaded with enormous padlocks, gardens that had been left to go to seed, and vacant lots piled high with abandoned goods, flanked both sides. The dirt road leading into the woods was churned up with snowmelt. Dried vines that had sprouted up haphazardly were straggling over the timbered walls enclosing the vacant lot. The musty smell of damp was faintly discernible, as was the metallic tang of gasoline. There was a motorway nearby. It wasn't the kind of place that anyone would call a beautiful spot for a walk. That place, where no one lived any more, was desolate. Here and there in the distance you could make out the rectangular forms of yellow-daubed apartment buildings, but they looked strangely sullen squatting there in the gathering dark, as if all life within them had died. The path was hard to make out among the snow and grass and fallen leaves, and I frequently stumbled. After a while, I came to the place where the railway ended. The path had been blocked off; there was no way to go any further. M might still have been living in Cité Foch for all I knew, but then again she might not. She might just as easily have been ill. In any case, it wasn't thoughts of M that had brought me there. I'd changed at Alexanderplatz to whichever tram had been going furthest out of the city, and it was entirely by coincidence that the tram happened to be going to Cité Foch. I stayed on the path until night had completely fallen. The clouds glided apart, revealing the huge red disc of the moon. On the main road, the late-opening cafés
were packed with customers, raucous with music and laughter. At the Mexican restaurant on the corner the staff were barbecuing in the yard. The faces visible through the frosted glass window were flushed with excitement. The candlelit tables were overflowing with plates of food and teacups, cigarettes and wine glasses. Eventually I discovered an empty seat, in a café on the corner, sat down and ordered coffee with a tomato and mozzarella sandwich. The interior was humid, a thick fug of cigarette smoke, and felt chilly despite all the customers. Those sitting near me were all drinking beer, their high-pitched voices rattling on without a pause, and gesticulating so wildly they sometimes found themselves half out of their seats. The waitress weaved skillfully between them with her tray, shouting out so they wouldn't knock into her, these people going to the bathroom or to buy cigarettes or simply wandering about drunk on conversation. Through the window I could see the last lingering light from the setting sun, scarring the black sky as sharply as knife wounds. It's the only light that comes from the earth, rather than being suspended from some overhead canopy; it knows no hesitation or guilty conscience, and its red majesty brings your heart close to bursting, boring into you like a unique epiphany. Like something that will not come again; like something that will not come twice, that is. That winter evening of deserted roads, with the snow still lying on the ground but with another blizzard yet to come, I sat at a small, one-person table in front of a window that seemed it would never be clean, and grew slowly faint, receding into the glass. After drinking the coffee and eating the sandwich I, nameless I, went and got on the tram, let it take me away from that place. It was the only time I ever visited Cité Foch.

I opened the door and entered the room. M was standing by the desk. The light slanted in through the window, so that M's figure
was half illuminated by golden light and half sunk in shade. As soon as she saw me she strode forward, hand outstretched. We shook hands, and M introduced herself: “M.”

We went over to the sofa and sat down. M was wearing a gray wool skirt and a pullover with lots of folds at the neckline. A black leather belt encircled her waist. Only when she shifted a little closer to me could I see her face in detail. My first thought was of how pale she was, and that I'd never seen such a strikingly androgynous face. Our eyes met. I wanted to look away, but couldn't.

“First I want to hear what your reading's like. Could you read for me? Any page, and take your time.”

M went to the bookcase, swiftly brushed her fingers over the spines, extracted one of the volumes and brought it over to me. I couldn't understand the words on the cover. I opened it somewhere in the middle and tried to read. The page I'd opened it on had a black and white photograph of a man with glasses and a beard. To me he looked like a doctor, a journalist, perhaps a physics teacher.

“The sequence of past, present, and . . . that time we call the future, exists in this . . . successive form only as . . . it appears . . . to the eye.”

After stumbling through that first sentence, I looked at M. My eyes said: I should stop here, right? That sentence was completely incomprehensible to me.

M's eyes said: Why did you stop?

“I don't understand what these words mean.”

“Even if you can't understand, you can still make me understand. Look at it that way, and as time passes you'll come to understand it too. Are you thinking of taking formal lessons?”

I shook my head. And continued, as best I could, to read.

“Such a sequence has no real existence in our mental world. The only thing that truly communicates real, intimate existence
to us is the fact that, strictly speaking, the present does not exist. Time becomes a stale model of itself . . .”

I closed the book. Aside from some basic verbs, the whole thing remained an enigma, and I couldn't help but think that this was a rather unwise and ineffective method of teaching. M remained perfectly silent, waiting for me to either continue reading, or else put the book down and leave. We sat there and looked at each other. M was never the type to break my heart. If such a type had existed, that is. But there was something about M that aroused my curiosity, which set her apart, permeating her movements, her gaze, her attitude. Something in her nature awakened both compassion and the desire to be overpowered, revealing a freely willed carnal desire and, at the same time, the spontaneous restriction of this will. She'd clearly been living on her own for some time, relying only on her own standards. Even while doubting the validity of her teaching method, I was slowly drawn to M. This bafflement and uncertainty was all there in my expression, plain to see. But M's apparent composure never faltered. Later, though, she confessed that she too had been seized by an awful trembling, which she'd had to clench both hands to suppress, and had even sensed that we would end up having an intimate connection. Sitting up straight and with her hands resting on her knees, her posture never changing, M finished the sentence from where I left off.

“. . . mutually penetrating and acting.”

I remember the Icelandic girl I met when I visited the Zwinger, a little while before returning to Korea. She was short, and wore her hair in the cropped style popular among teachers. She came straight up to me and, without any preamble (and in really elegant English), asked my name. Bundled up in a black wool coat, she looked cold, and seemed somewhat naive. She genuinely wanted to
know my name. Apparently she thought I might be an ex-girlfriend of hers, whom she'd broken up with several years ago. This was all she said, so I wasn't sure whether she meant there was some facial resemblance, or if there was some other reason making her think I might be the ex-girlfriend she'd lost. I also didn't know what country her ex-girlfriend was from; the only thing I knew for certain was that she wasn't me. I'd never met this Icelandic woman before. She was almost certainly going to be disappointed when I told her my name. There was absolutely no way that she was M. But then, how can we ever really expect to be completely certain about what a person is? When I eventually told her my name she made a face and, looking resentful, turned and walked back across the palace yard, which had a thin crust of ice, flouncing away like a schoolgirl. Why can't she remember her own ex-girlfriend's face properly? She doesn't recognize me; I mean, what real meaning is there in a name, which is merely an optional identifier? Might she have been M after all?

At my desk I continue to write. As Peter Handke says, “Only when I'm writing do I feel that I've become myself and am truly at home.” Where it comes from and where it goes, on that its lips are sealed.