We Do Not Part

by Han Kang

If, as various ancient faiths say, there exists in a celestial realm or a netherworld an immense mirror that observes and logs everyone’s movements, I’m sure the last three to four years of my life as recorded there must resemble a snail coming out of its shell to push along a knife’s edge. A body desiring to live. A body pricked and nicked. A body spurning, embracing, clinging. A body kneeling. A body entreating. A body seeping blood or pus or tears.

But when the wind picks up again, the snowflakes swirl wildly as if inside a giant popcorn machine. As if snow did not fall from the sky but instead sprang up infinitely from the earth to be sucked into the void.

As ever, pain isolates me. I am trapped in the torturous moments my own body generates second by second. I am dislodged from the time prior to pain, from the world of the not-ill.

After surviving that hell, would he still have been the kind of person who made choices we could understand?