57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards Kevin O'Rourke Award: Giraffe Is the Name of the World

Written by Danyao

Translated by Ku Bon-seung

Excerpt from 'Giraffe Is the Name of the World'

The story I am about to tell is of the Giraffe, and also of myself.

If I were asked to name the animals familiar to me, would name the meerkat that swivels its head this way and that from behind a rock, and the hyena whose eyes curve into a grin when it opens its mouth to tear at its prey, and the jackal whose ears and face and thighs
and tail and every part of its body are triangles. And if I were to name the animals unfamiliar to me, I would recite the memory of slipping quietly past the shadows of lion and rhinoceros and hippopotamus. As for the plants, I would call to mind the acacia that spreads its branches
like the cap of a mushroom, and the ebony blacker than the night sky, and the gloriosa flower that soars as though aflame. Should you wish for something more amusing, I would tell you that the baobab's branches are stunted, as though a great weight had pressed them down, because the tree grew its thick trunk upward without knowing how low the sky hung and realized only too late that there was no room left for its branches. But for all that, this grassland and this sky began with the Giraffe, and belong to the Giraffe.

The Giraffe's neck is as long and as thick as the baobab, so that from far off she looks
like a tree that stands rooted in the earth. A tree that bears no sharp fangs and no great tusks, and looks down upon all by her lofty height alone. A tree that veils eyes as large as my head behind her graceful lashes, and is solemn and quiet even as she drinks. A tree that nonetheless runs faster than any living thing, and looks as though she would linger at your very side and then, in a blink, is already far away. So swift and so strong are the Giraffe's legs that they made the day and the night. Or so it is told.

Before the grandmother of my grandmother's grandmother's grandmother was even
born, in the time when humans did not yet know to call themselves human, there was neither day nor night upon the grassland. Only the stars and the moon shone on every side, and time flowed on with no one able to tell whether it was dawn or dusk. Then one day, a mother giraffe who had lost her young to a male lion sought that lion out and kicked him. With rage and grief. Hard enough to drive him up through the clouds.

The clouds were damp and cold, and so the lion took the light from the stars and the
moon, and wrapped it about himself to overcome the chill. That is why the stars and the
moon turned pale. As for the lion's mane, it tossed every which way in the wind, and seen
from the earth it looked for all the world like a wavering flame. That is why the sun wears its ring of blazing light. And time after time the lion would try to push his way down through the clouds toward the grasslands, only to give up and climb back to the sky, for the clouds were so very thick. That is why night and day came to be. Whenever the lion longs for the earth, the sun hides within the clouds; when the lion gives up, worn out by hunger and cold, the sunlight comes down upon the earth. And when the lion weeps in his loneliness, rain falls upon the earth. So we each owe our lives to the lion's greed and his solitude. Life is all things. It is breath and time and thirst and longing.

But since, in the end, it was the Giraffe who made that life, we tell more stories of
giraffes: some giraffes have legs so very long that they can climb up and tread upon the sky with ease. When such a herd gallops through the empty air, all across the sky there rise clouds dark and yet shimmering with a vivid yellow, and the lion, at the sight of them, bursts into tears and begs to be forgiven. Rain comes rushing down where the clouds run. Plants drink the water in and grow. We eat the fruit the plants have borne, and we give thanks to the giraffes. And when it is not the lion above the clouds but the lions upon the earth that make trouble, we hide behind the corpses of giraffes.

Some people raise towers from the necks of giraffes. They drive a tall iron rod into
the ground around the village, then gather up the neck bones bleached white and slide them onto the rod as one strings beads. At the topmost place they set a stark white skull. What emerges then is the shape of a dead giraffe buried in the earth with only its neck thrust out, and this they call a ghost giraffe. In the largest and oldest village there stand as many as forty-five ghost giraffes, and whenever the wind blows, a whistling rises all at once from the holes where once the tendons ran. The whistling drives the fierce beasts far off, and in idle hours it becomes the music of festivals. To the singing of the ghost giraffes, everyone dances, and rejoices, and embraces one another.

Then there are those who fit the bones of a giraffe together and bind the joints with
threads, making a puppet whose left shin jerks up when one rope is pulled and whose neck bends when another is pulled. This puppet, too, bears the name ghost giraffe. The people of the puppet live in small houses set upon its spine, and they touch the ground only when they have need of food and water. Some never come down at all. These are the ropepullers. The work of the ropepuller is to sit among the ribs and pull the ropes that bind the framework of bone together.

Because they must hold the ropes in both hands at all times, those calloused hands
grow hard as bone, and so the ropepullers come to believe that they themselves are the
giraffe's bones, its pounding heart, its full-swollen lungs, its burning veins. When the ghost giraffe runs at its fullest, the blood of the ropepullers races just as hard.

I was once a ropepuller, and in my whole body I felt how swiftly the giraffe could run. Now I am no longer. My family all died of sickness. What lies before me now is no giraffe
but fragments of bone tangled in threads. I turned my back and began to walk.