45th Translation Awards Commendation Awards: 'Nana Before Dawn'

Written by Park Hyeong-seo

The following is an excerpt from the translation by Amber Hyun Jung Kim.

Leo stopped and turned around. Someone had touched him on the shoulder, not accidentally but intimately, as if the person knew him and needed to speak to him. But behind him were nothing but rows of flickering neon signs, stray dogs stretched listlessly on the pavement, wads of hot, sticky cash exchanging hands, and the anonymous people he’d just passed on the street. Far beyond lay Thailand’s smoldering night, a greasy swath of ebony that cloaked the street.

Translator Amber Hyun Jung Kim

Author Park Hyeong-seo

Park Hyeong-seo’s “Nana Before Dawn”

Rain, lukewarm and unexpected in the middle of the dry season, was falling softly over the tropical city, turning everything into a muddy mess. The entrance to Sukumvit Soi 4, the street better known as Nana, was crowded with prostitutes wearing plastic smiles vying for the same customers as street peddlers hawking roasted bananas, grilled chicken satay, pad thai and deep-fried water bugs. It was past eleven, and in the dimly lit street corners and leaning against telephone poles were steaming piles of discarded food and half-digested vomit, some of which was still dribbling off the mouths of drunks. Diseased dogs missing patches of fur loitered like a pack of thugs. A Honda cab advertising a local jeweler sped past while an ancient tuk tuk tottered along, followed by a new Porsche that roared down the narrow two-lane street before screeching to a halt. Bars blasting loud music were squeezed into a tight space of fifty meters or so that turned in from where members of a local gang were hanging out. Nana, the street itself, seemed to stretch on forever. Beginning with a massage parlor whose girls in yellow shirts were hollering at two fat elderly Europeans with vitiligo, it snaked past an expensive steak restaurant waitressed by a girl of mixed race, a 7-Eleven, an Indian eatery smelling of tandoori, an internet café with a dozen or so old Pentium PCs, men in Armani suits ducking into a gentlemen’s club lit by a neon pink sign, another 7-Eleven, a tattoo parlor with marijuana smoke billowing out the door, and yet another 7-Eleven. From there, Nana stretched as far as the eye could see, with rows upon rows of mid-to-low-range hotels that charged customers every three hours.

Leo walked into a bar with a terrace. He ordered a beer. He was covered in sweat from walking around for four hours in his search for the girl. After unpacking at his hotel, he’d headed to Sukumvit Nana Nightclub, where he talked to nearly forty drug dealers and prostitutes in the parking lot. Most of these people had spent half their lives there and were unlikely to leave while they were still alive. They’d waited until Leo described the girl as best he could before admitting they had no idea who she was or offering to contact a friend who knew all the whores in Sukumvit if Leo bought their good, cheap Ecstasy. Some pooh-poohed his choice and recommended a twelve-year-old sex machine fresh off the boat from Isan instead. A few prostitutes, drunk off cheap rum, lurched at him and clawed at his belt.

Leo hadn’t shown annoyance or disgust. He didn’t want to stay there longer than he had to, either. It was a mistake to think he’d find her if only he came to Thailand. He was trying to find a girl he met six years ago in Sukumvit, in Nana of all places, where thousands of prostitutes pour out to the street every night. Who was he kidding? But hope can do strange things to people, because for the last three days, from the time he learned his wife was cheating on him to the moment he arrived in Nana, he didn’t stop to consider that his plan might be extremely foolhardy, let alone impossible. Rather, he was preoccupied thinking of what to say and what gifts he should get for the girl. He finally settled on a very boring “happy birthday” as his first words to her in six years, and picked out a bottle of Allure by Chanel at the airport duty free shop. But none of that seemed to matter now. The weather wasn’t cooperating, either. The sticky rain was making this fucked up trip worse. This was the dry season; it shouldn’t even be raining.

A slender girl with dyed brown hair appeared with a bottle of Singha and a glass filled with cylindrical ice cubes.

“Want to play 8-ball?” She asked, her hips turned toward Leo from trying to squeeze between his table and the one beside it. With a slightly protruded forehead and a delicate face, she could have passed for a sweet, innocent girl if it weren’t for the rows of chain link piercings stitched onto her lips. She probably got the piercings to avoid looking too innocent. Suddenly, a sad, terrible image appeared over her face.

There’s a sorcerer, glowering menacingly at something―or someone. In the next instant, he chops off the head of a woman. She’s young. A young Amerindian. Her lips and eyelids, contorted in their last seconds of horror, go slack as her neck explodes in a pink spray of blood. What happened to you, little girl? May I go back and take a closer look?