The White Book

by Han Kang

Now and then she finds herself wondering, and not out of self-pity, but with a detached, almost idle curiosity: If you could add up all the pills she’d ever taken, what would the total be? How many hours of pain has she lived through? As though life itself wished to impede her progress, she was brought up short again and again. As though the force that prevents her moving forward to the light stands always at the ready inside her own body. All those hours when she had lost her way, in hesitation and in doubt. How many would there be? How many small white pills?

Looking at herself in the mirror, she never forgot that death was hovering behind that face. Faint yet tenacious, like black writing bleeding through thin paper. Learning to love life again is a long and complicated process.

Before turning back from them, she asks herself: Do you want to go on? To push forward? Is it worth it? There was a time when she had answered, trembling, no. Now she walks, holding any answer in reserve. She leaves that semifrozen marsh, between dreariness and delicacy.