Jung-Il Jang - When Adam Opens His Eyes

TITLES IN THE LIBRARY OF KOREAN LITERATURE
AVAILABLE FROM DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS

1. Stingray
Kim Joo-young

2. One Spoon on This Earth
Hyun Ki Young

3. When Adam Opens His Eyes
Jang Jung-il

4. My Sons Girlfriend
Jung Mi-kyung

5. A Most Ambiguous Sunday, and Other Stories
Jung Young Moon

6. The House with a Sunken Courtyard
Kim Won-il

7. At Least We Can Apologize
Lee Ki-ho

8. The Soil
Yi Kwang-su

9. Lonesome You
Park Wan-suh

10. No One Writes Back
Jang Eun-jin

LIBRARY OF KOREAN LITERATURE
3

When Adam Opens His Eyes

Jang Jung-il

Translated by
Hwang Sun-Ae and
Horace Jeffery Hodges

I was nineteen years old, and the things that I most wanted to have were a typewriter, prints of Munchs paintings and a turntable for playing records. Those things alone were all that I wanted from this world when I was nineteen. But so humble were my desires that, in comparison, my mothers wish for me to enter Seoul National University, or my younger cousins dream of joining the Samsung Lions baseball team when he grew up, seemed even more out of reach.

If my desires hadnt been for such trivial things, but for something larger like becoming the president, I could easily have fulfilled that desire by driving a tank or randomly firing an M16. Or I could have fulfilled it deep in the night by ejaculating in a wet dream. Or by giving up completely. I mean, I could have fulfilled my dream simply by throwing it away. In the sense of being freed from the desire, completely giving up might be nothing but my desires fulfillment. So whoever discovers how to empty himself of all desire will become a free person, one who controls himself so perfectly that he becomes his own master.

That year, I failed to gain admittance to the university my mother wished for me in the major that I wanted to study, and I began cramming for the next years entrance exam. Sending a child to university was hard for a poor family, and supporting him for an extra year of cramming was even harder. Not only was the cost of repeated tutoring hard to bear, but even worse was the gossip of close relatives who sometimes dropped in or neighbors who lived in the same one-story building paying monthly rent for cramped quarters. At that time, my mother was working downtown as a cleaning lady in an underground shopping area.

After I failed by only seven or eight points to gain admission to the English department at the university, I briefly considered going to any of the provincial universities in my hometown that would offer a scholarship, but I decided to accept my older brothers advice. The reason that I found his advice persuasive was that an extra year cramming for the entrance exam had gotten him admitted to business school in the university that I had applied to. Besides, I was hardheaded enough to insist on meeting my own stubborn goal. Even if that aim was first expected of me by my mother, why shouldnt we do a favor for our parents, who gave us life?

Cramming an extra year for another test means becoming a lonely student. Theres an old saying that women in olden times had to live for three years mute, three years blind, and three years deaf while living with their in-laws. An extra year of cramming is not much different. I realized this acutely upon seeing that my exam number was missing from the list of successful candidates. From that moment of failure, I was estranged from the world.

For a month after the announcement, I could not face my friend Eun-sun. I even feared getting a call from her. My fear, I admit, was a kind of shame, but a teenagers fear of the other sex often stems from shamefulness, so the fear is easily understood. Although we had been friends from the eleventh grade and were close enough to overlook each others faults, I still could not free myself from the shame of failure. In fact, for the first month, I tried especially hard to avoid everyone close to me. I could hardly even sit at the dinner table with my mother.

The very day after successful candidates had been announced, I registered at a cram school in an area downtown that was thick with these institutes devoted to helping students cram another year for the university entrance exam. I had become so used to this style of learning in my past three years of high school, so deadened to everything else in life, especially during my senior year, that I would have felt crippled if forced to live differently. Just looking away from my books and notebooks for a brief moment was enough to give me feelings of insecurity and anxious helplessness. As I later discovered, those who failed the exam and immediately registered at a cram school were usually people suffering from delusions of persecution, just like me.

At the cram school I attended, many other students who had become crammers the day before were registering for courses. Only then was I able to escape from my shame that I alone had failed the university entrance exam. I felt freed from that desolate sense of failure, of groundlessness, of having stumbled at lifes starting gate and been left behind by others at the first step.

Only into the second month of cram school did I get Eun-suns phone call and take up her suggestion to meet. I had grown so sick of cramming after barely a month and a half that I found myself cursing unconsciously. High school might have resembled a cottage industry to ready us for university, but the cram school was a large, mechanized factory with conveyor belts running continuously. No humanity existed there. For the first time, I grew skeptical about learning. What kind of learning was this in which memorizing facts and repeating exercises would get one a perfect score?

I met Eun-sun at a tearoom. Since wed last met, shed learned how to drink coffee in quite an elegant manner. Like an actress in a television ad, she lifted her cup delicately, drank with poise, and smiled softly.

Could you have a look at this? she asked. Id like to be a published and recognized poet no later than the end of this summer.

Eun-sun and I had first met in the eleventh grade at an exhibition for poetry and painting hosted by her schools literary club. Now, as well as then, a high school exhibition of poetry and painting was one of the few officially acknowledged places where students could meet members of the other sex. It was there that I discovered a lovely poem that immediately caught my eye. It had been written by Eun-sun.

Did you write the poem An Inferior Student? I had asked.

Yes, I did.

I was meeting Eun-sun for the first time, a girl with a face and name unknown to me until the club president, who had invited me to the exhibition, pointed her out when I asked who had written that poem.

Its not bad, your poem.

People think that I copied it.

When I had approached her that first time to talk, she had responded indifferently. She seemed to have little interest in the exhibition, even appearing a bit irritated.

You mean the The Inferior Student, by Prvert? I asked.

Yes.

I could understand her irritation. Her poem was similar to Prverts only in the title. No, actually in their nuance, the one Eun-sun had written and The Inferior Student by Prvert were also somewhat similar. But Eun-suns poem was more honest and intense. Maybe more modern. I had that impression not only in comparison with Prverts poem, but also compared to the scribblings by all the other high school poets. Together with her, I returned to her poem and read it again: