In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • The Bone Thief
  • Hwang Chŏng-Ŭn (bio)
    Translated from Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
Keywords

Korea, Hwang Chŏng-Ŭn, translation, homosexuality

You'll likely find this in the snow.

Along with me, however far I got.

Call me what you will — the man, this evidence of the man, that S.O.B., that thing, it — but from this point on, I'll be he.

By the time he arrived at the house he'd lost many faces. And those that remained? He had trouble calling them up, his own included. It was winter, and at the turnoff to the house the car got stuck in the mud, the right front wheel hollowing out a rut. From the passenger seat he heard the whine of spinning metal and rubber. The Realtor jerked the steering wheel back and forth, then downshifted and stepped on the gas, spraying mud in all directions. Dogs were howling. The Realtor left him in the car and tramped thirty yards ahead to a house sitting all by itself, where he scrounged an armful of spent coal-briquettes tossed out in the snow. He got out to help, grabbing a handful of desiccated weeds and mashing them into the coal briquette husks with his foot. Crushing more briquettes into the mud and layering the ash about the tire, they finally managed to free the vehicle. They drove to safe ground, left the car, and went the rest of the way on foot. But the Realtor couldn't find the key to the house, and back to the car he went, unleashing obscenities along the way.

His back to the front gate, he looked about. A few steps ahead of him the land fell away in an arid field that stretched out in all directions. Unlimited visibility. Half a mile off was a dwelling, its roof a flat, thick-blue presence, whether tin or tile he couldn't tell. It made a sharp contrast with the drab field.

The wind stung his face and he turned back to the gate, sticking his hands in his coat pockets. Except for the gentle wooded incline behind the house there was just the bare land. Next door was the only other dwelling in the immediate vicinity. It had no gate or wall, and across the exposed yard he could see a faucet sticking out of the ground, the pipe bundled up against the cold, and behind it an old-fashioned kitchen and [End Page 541] the veranda. Where the front gate would have been was a pen — the source of the vicious frenzy of barking. He counted five huge dogs, murky steam billowing from their mouths. They didn't seem to be pets or watchdogs; maybe they were sold for meat? He was still regarding them when the Realtor returned. In through the gate they went, and the dogs in the pen stopped barking. Inside, not bothering to remove their shoes, they stepped up from the entry to the living room, and he followed the Realtor through two bedrooms and then to the kitchen. The kitchen was a paltry affair, with a faucet sticking waist-high out of the wall. It was originally a cowshed, explained the Realtor, and to him that's still what it looked like, the floor, walls, and ceiling plastered with cement and lacking the tiles you would expect in a space with running water. And there was something peculiar about the floor beneath the faucet. There had to be a drain, but when he bent over to check, he saw no opening, only some cabbage leaves stuck to the floor, and only their fringes dried up, suggesting that the faucet had been used not so long ago. When he asked if someone was living there now, the Realtor considered him with an expression he read as What a weird question. He turned on the faucet to a trickle, and when he turned it off it squeaked. Rusty water pooled and grew still, a few speckles of something or other rising to the surface.

________

I'll take it, he said, and the Realtor's face lit up in a smile. A ten...

pdf

Share