Violets

by Kyung-Sook Shin

For countless generations women have suffered and wasted away in strange rooms just like this baby’s mother.

San wears an expression of melancholy, perhaps, but also of loneliness. It is an expression that is not hers alone. A young woman on an escalator, a young man silently walking from building to building with a résumé in hand, salarymen on the subway at dawn—the same expression appears and disappears from their faces.

Anyone with a bit of insight might have guessed that Su-ae’s personality came from some kind of lack. Just as San’s endlessly hesitant personality was a different kind of lack. And that excessive hesitation and excessive boldness were really part of the same story.

Memory is an unannounced visitor. It lies crumpled in some corner of the body, then suddenly knocks on the door of reality and makes you scream.

Not everyone can say such things so baldly. Such words can only be said by someone who has never known pain.

Her already slow speech slows even more, and she answers the simplest questions with vague mumbles. She seems to be looking at something but isn’t really looking at anything. On those occasions, her dark eyes seem sad but also absent.

Through the years that loneliness took root inside her, and whenever she tried to approach anyone, it screamed, Get away, get away.