E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten
Yujoo The Impossible Fairytale
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-911284-08-6
Verlag: Tilted Axis Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-911284-08-6
Verlag: Tilted Axis Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Han Yujoo is the author of The Impossible Fairytale. She was born in Seoul in 1982, studied German literature at Hongik University, obtained a master's degree in aesthetics from the prestigious Seoul National University, and is currently working toward another master's degree in comparative literature from Seoul National University. She is also a noted translator, whose works include translations of Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table, and Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful and The Ongoing Moment , among others, into Korean. In addition, she runs her own micro-press, Oulipo Press, focusing on experimental fiction.
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3
The child is lucky.
Before we talk about her good luck, because several other children will soon be entering the scene, we need to address the matter of her name. The child’s name is Mia. It could be Min-a, Mi-na, or Min-ha, or it could be A-mi, Yu-mi, or Yun-mi, but since she thinks of herself as Mia, let’s just call her Mia.
Mia is lucky. One day, she receives a set of seventy-two German watercolour pencils from one of the two men who consider her to be their daughter. Mia has two fathers. One is not yet aware of the other’s existence, or pretends not to be, and the other is aware of the one’s existence, but chooses to turn a blind eye for some unknown reason. When a person discovers a truth that no one else knows, every surrounding relationship will change drastically. Nevertheless, even though they both function as fathers to Mia, only one of the two had given her a set of seventy-two German watercolour pencils. Because these pencils were manufactured in Germany and were not cheap ones made in China, they satisfied her taste and interest, enabling the father who gave the gift to gain leverage over the other father. Red, fuchsia, crimson, blood red, rose, yellow, orange yellow, citron, tangerine, flesh colour. And light green, emerald, forest green, grass green. With such an overwhelming array of colours spread before her, lucky Mia gains the innocent and childish confidence that she’ll be able to draw every object around her with seventy-two colours. When Mia traces the outline of an object with a gray pencil, when she is colouring the skin of an object with a blue pencil, Mia’s mother realizes that her daughter has become larger than her own shadow. Mia’s mother loves Mia, and Mia was sick often, and each time she got sick, five shades of colour would appear on her face—red, yellow, violet, green, and black—and Mia’s mother made herself absent during her husband’s absence. There would be a square of chocolate and a glass of orange juice by Mia’s pillow, but not Mia’s mother. Wet with sweat, in bed with a cold, Mia would rouse herself briefly to drink the orange juice and fall asleep again under the damp blanket. When her mother would return late at night and gaze down at her sleeping daughter, because Mia is lucky, she would stir awake and ask her mother for a glass of cold water. After this sequence was repeated several times, Mia’s face would once again turn white as milk and smooth as a baby’s bottom, but when Mia’s face turned dark as water and red as fire, when she recognized vaguely that the scene she was witnessing was losing some unknowable thing, the colours of objects became unfixed and began to waver. Therefore the early morning would become dark-blue rage, the afternoon would become crimson resignation, the evening would become gray silence, and the colours would, all at once, turn dark as night. These things happen whenever Mia is sleeping, whenever she is opening her journal, whenever she is engrossed in watching television, whenever she is climbing a jungle gym, whenever she is being warned that she is too young to drink coffee, whenever she is passing a note to the student sitting in front of her. And whenever she distractedly looks away, the objects return to their original colour in perfect order.
When I grow up, I’m going to buy a fountain pen, says Mia. Do you know you can kill someone with a fountain pen? she asks. I got that from a book. If you drop the pen from high up at the right angle, the pointy tip will pierce right into the person’s head. It’s because of acceleration. It was in a detective story.
But of course, Mia has no desire to kill anyone; in fact, she doesn’t understand the words death or kill. She is a lucky child, and she lacks the passion, let alone the opportunity, to kill someone; she doesn’t yet know that people kill even in the absence of emotions such as hatred. She doesn’t yet know that rather than trying to aim the tip of a fountain pen at someone’s skull from a tall building, it is far more effective to drive the pointed metal tip into someone’s throat, a fact she would have learned if she had read more books. But she is interested only in detective novels, and because there are more things she doesn’t know than she does know, her world is simple; and for that reason, she is lucky. Anyhow, I’m going to buy a fountain pen when I grow up, she says. I like the way it sounds. Fountain pen.
Mia, who more or less has everything, who was always told she could have anything she wanted, thinks she could construct her world exactly the way it is with seventy-two colours, that she could fill in the shadows of already existing objects, each with its own shade, that she could erase even the shadows, that she could perhaps kill a person. If she has the power to kill, she equally has the power to save. Therefore, nothing is impossible. Mia, who has everything, or could have everything, thinks she is able to do anything. Of the two of Mia’s fathers Mia’s mother alternates between, one father is unaware of the other’s existence while the other father is aware of everyone’s existence. Mia moistens her lips with the tip of her tongue. Because she doesn’t yet have a clear understanding of acceleration, she has no concept of the speed at which an incident breaks down once it takes place, no concept of the velocity at which emotions expand once they begin to swell and, ultimately, explode. She remembers seeing on television a reenactment of how space came to be; the Big Bang, that beautiful, round thing like a wreath. She tried to draw the scene with seventy-two coloured pencils, but no matter how many lines she drew, there were always two colours missing and she, who had no concept of the colours she lacked, proudly showed her drawing to her fathers, and perhaps even to her mother, and one father thought Mia had drawn a flower bouquet and the other thought she had drawn the entrails of a beast. While she moistens the tip of her forefinger with saliva and erases the light’s outline, the smear of colours and their shadows become submerged in darkness. Naturally.
It’s not yet known if Mia will receive a set of 120 German-made coloured pencils next year, or a pair of leather shoes adorned with exquisite ribbons instead of a pair of running shoes illustrated with a cartoon character. She has two fathers, enough people to give her presents, and so the piano, silver bracelet, doll, fountain pen, wool coat, her bright, sunny room, and the large window with mold growing in its every crevice will remain hidden, overtaken by the shadows of all that she will receive. Not even the speed at which the white-blue-and-black mold is infiltrating the room will be seen, not yet. She can have everything, and because she is merely twelve years old, there is indeed time yet to have everything. She must always prepare for the future. Just like they say, she must become the main character of the next century. Because she is important to everyone, Mia’s mother may take her as a hostage in court, one of the two fathers may use Mia to gain leverage over everyone else, and the other father may want to use her as an excuse to turn an affair into a nonaffair, but, apart from these, Mia is involved in an infinite number of scenarios, and until the number of all these scenarios becomes null, she must not die or disappear.
Soon the emotions that are being launched in Mia’s blood vessels, eyes, mouth, joints, and bones will rise and fall simultaneously, but when? How? A thirteen-year-old Mia may want, as the other girls do, to cut her hair in a bob like that of a middle school student, or to go to school in Adidas running shoes. Bobbed hair, Adidas shoes, and things like this will be given to her easily enough. While her mother pulls back Mia’s long hair in a ponytail, Mia grimaces, despite herself, and doesn’t forget to mention that she wants a new sweater—the one hanging in a store window that had caught her eye the previous afternoon; the one she saw as she passed the shopping arcade on her way home from her after-school academy; the one with five different shades of green and five different shades of blue; the one with a small deer knitted on the chest. White psoriasis blooms around Mia’s mouth while Mia’s mother, who has now pulled Mia’s hair in a tight knot, turns Mia around to place a kiss on her cheek. Mia’s mother tells Mia that it will soon be spring, that there will be no need for sweaters; and because she’s a growing girl, she won’t be able to wear it for long anyway. She pleads with her mother. Her mother says no. Mia writes in her journal: Mother tied my hair too tightly. So my head hurt. Mia says, I’m going to ask Ageosshi to buy it for me, because it might be gone ten days from now, by the time Dad comes home. The sweater that is still hanging in the window, the sweater that is much too large to be a child’s sweater, the sweater that Mia will get or will not get, will be blacked out from her memory in several weeks in any case, blacked out even if it’s not black or red or yellow. Since there is no lack of substitutes and there is more than enough to substitute for even the substitutes, Mia could have anything, as long as there is time.
Mia pulls her left arm out of her sleeve and hides it under her pajama top. She sits at the breakfast table with the empty sleeve dangling from her still-flat chest when her mother asks, Now what are you supposed to be? Mia responds by saying, My arm disappeared. It ran away, because there’s no deer sweater.
Toast, milk, and apples...
