[51st Korea Times Translation Awards] Fiction Grand Prize: Jab

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51st Korea Times Translation AwardsFiction Grand Prize: Jab

Posted : 2020-11-11 19:07

Updated : 2020-11-11 20:03

Cover of Kim Un-su's "Jab" Courtesy of Munhakdongne

Written by Kim Un-su
Translated by Hannah Quinn Hertzog

I have an old punching bag. It's about 120 centimeters long and made of genuine cowhide, one of those top-quality bags meant to hang in a boxing studio. I've still got it tied to a branch of the persimmon tree in my backyard. Years of exposure to rain and wind have damaged the bag to the point that one touch might make it puke out all its sand and sawdust filling. I haven't punched it since graduating high school. There's been plenty of opportunities to give the bag a slap whenever I walked past, but no. So, what happened?

If you could see me, with my scrawny body and utter lack of muscle, you'd never believe that I used to box. I did. From autumn of 10th grade until graduating high school. I was no athlete, but that's not to say I learned boxing just as a hobby or a workout. Edouard Manet once said that fourteen is "an age when you want to blow the world up with dynamite," and that's exactly how I felt. I was always filled with rage, but most of the time, my anger was due to either something entirely unreasonable or something I myself couldn't understand.

I hated everything about school. The thing I hated most was the bronze Have Ambition, Boys! statue. If I'd been lucky enough to find some dynamite by the side of the road, that statue would've been my first target. It stood in front of our school's main gate and, at almost two and a half meters tall, towered over regular people. They said it was modeled after our high school's founder, a self-made man who went from rags to riches. Like Erwin Rommel standing atop a tank and giving the final order to his invincible Panzer Division to charge into battle, the statue held its arm 45 degrees towards the sky in a pose exuding determination. The marble beneath the statue's feet had large letters that read Have Ambition, Boys! But because of the artistic decision to make the statue look as much like the founder as possible or maybe some mistake while casting the bronze, the statue's face was full of wrinkles and seemed to be in a perpetual scowl ― a far cry from anything that would inspire ambition in boys. The statue looked annoyed, as though it was moodily thinking, I should be in the Rodin Gallery! Whose damn idea was it to make me stand in front of a school and tell these little morons to have ambition? I, too, thought moving it to pose elegantly in the Rodin Gallery would be much better for both the statue and for the boys.

I always felt intimidated when passing beneath the statue. Our school had a ridiculous rule that you had to close your eyes underneath the statue for a few seconds and think about your ambitions every morning before class. The dean of students would stand in front of the main gate holding a stick before school started and every boy who walked under the statue would close his eyes, much like an old elephant blinking slowly before succumbing to death, and think about his ambitions. As though each boy had at least one ambition to think about. It didn't matter if it was realistic or not. Now that I think about it, two thousand boys contemplating their ambitions every morning in front of the school dean's beating stick is a pretty strange sight.

Sadly, I had no ambitions. I went through the motions and closed my eyes beneath the Have Ambition, Boys! statue, but each time I wondered if my life had gone wrong at some point. All the other boys had ambitions like becoming a doctor, becoming a lawyer, or getting into a good college, but I didn't understand how becoming a doctor or a lawyer or whatever was an ambition that us boys were supposed to have. I once asked my friend if he had any ambitions. He was an outsider who didn't fit in with the rest of our classmates and was always extremely quiet, almost like he'd forgotten how to talk. I thought we might be in the same boat. But without a second of hesitation, he firmly replied, "Of course. Mine's to be a doctor," looking at me as if it was natural for all boys to hope for something along those lines. He saw my confusion and, maybe taking it as me not hearing him properly, continued.

"A doctor. You know, fixing patients and all that?"

"A doctor is just a job. Aren't jobs and ambitions kind of different?" I asked.

My friend tilted his head like I was speaking gibberish. "Are they? I'm not getting what's so weird. Anyway, it's way better to be a doctor than a janitor," he said flatly.

It did seem that way. But he wasn't even saying he wanted to do something as a doctor, so why was it better to be a doctor than a janitor "anyway"? I didn't understand.