Rina

PRAISE FOR KANG YOUNG-SOOK

Young-Sook’s perceptive stories provide an unwavering and honest gaze at human nature.

—Publishers Weekly

"Much as the title of [At Night He Lifts Weights] evokes a kind of physical exertion, so too do the stories within hum with a visceral quality. Sometimes, that quality works to turn the bizarre into something familiar; at others, it magnifies the extraordinary and often disconcerting experiences of these stories’ protagonists."

—Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

"Perceptive and subversive, the stories in At Night He Lifts Weights vary in tone and genre, but each is singularly captivating, swirling around themes of loss — ecological destruction, loneliness, and death. Each has a subtle illusion of calm that conceals what lies below in the unnerving depths."

—Pierce Alquist, Book Riot

The way in which the novel creates a family that accepts members from any nationality, sexual orientation, age, or gender has no precedent in Korean literature. Kang’s unique style of writing is equally radical. Her imagery is bare yet powerful, almost discomfiting in its unfamiliarity, and certainly too innovative to categorize or name.

--Kim Hyung-jung, Hankook Ilbo

OTHER BOOKS BY KANG YOUNG-SOOK

At Night He Lifts Weights

Truck

RINA

BY KANG YOUNG-SOOK

TRANSLATED BY BORAM CLAIRE KIM

AFTERWORD BY SO YOUNG HYUN

Curated by Janet Hong for the 2024 Translator Triptych

Originally published in Korean in 2011 by Random House Korea

Copyright © Kang Young-sook, 2011

Translation copyright © Boram Claire Kim, 2024

Afterword copyright © So Young Hyun, 2015

Published by arrangement w Dslkey Archive Press

First edition published by Dalkey Archive Press, 2015

First Open Letter edition, 2024

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available

ISBN (pb): 978-1-960385-08-6 | ISBN (ebook): 978-1-960385-04-8

Cover design by Eric Wilder

Printed on acid-free paper in the United States

Open Letter Books is the University of Rochester’s literary translation press: www.openletterbooks.org

RINA

Rina has two moons.

One of the moons may be bleeding

but the other one has so many spectra

that it is impossible to fathom.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Rina

Critical Commentary: A Postmodern Epic

1

THE SOLDIERS SLOWLY APPROACHED THE TWENTY-TWO ESCAPEES, guns leveled. One of the escapees, a teenage girl who had been licking her lips with a parched tongue, jumped up and opened her mouth to say something.

We told you not to move! the soldiers yelled. The girl got back down on her knees and watched the soldiers. Although they were carrying guns, they too had hunger written all over their faces.

The girl’s name was Rina¹. She was short and had a thin face with yellow pimples on her forehead. Rina was sixteen years old, and her parents had been coalminers back home. Rina used to go to the youth vocational training center after school and assemble machine parts late into the night. Whenever she got sleepy or bored, she would pick up a screw, hold it up to her face, yell "Die, die!" at it, and toss it to the floor.

One of the soldiers approached the kneeling cluster of escapees. The worn rubber sole of his boot flapped open like the mouth of an angry toad every time he took a step. He crouched down in front of a little boy who sat crying and sniffling next to Rina, and tapped the boy’s head with his finger. Rina could feel the boy trembling against her arm.

Hey, kid, sing us a song. Come on, you must know some. Sing something you learned at school. I’m bored out of my mind here.

I don’t go to school, the boy answered, and burst into a louder refrain of sobs. His father, who sat a few paces away, made a face as he tried to comfort his son, but it was no use. The little boy’s sobs echoed across the darkened border as if they were in a cave. There were rumors that little boys captured while fleeing the country were sold abroad and forced to work 36-hour days with no rest, while girls were circulated from one red-light district to the next and only released when they were diseased or dying. These stories mystified Rina. It was hard to decide which was worse: spending the rest of her life in a cramped house in a mining town pockmarked with graying sheets drying on laundry lines, or becoming a whore, if it meant getting a taste of life abroad.

I’m a pretty good singer, Rina volunteered, but her offer was drowned out by the two toddlers of the group—a one-year-old and a three-year-old—who began wailing. Their hungry sobs dragged on piteously, but all their anxious mothers could do was pull out their breasts and shove them at the babies, like milk machines.

They said the border was a couple kilometers away. Rina had dreamt of it every night since the day her father had told her about their plans to escape. Every night, the border was flush with the sounds of wind, gunfire, and exploding columns of flames. Escapees captured while trying to cross over were stripped, lined up, executed by firing squad, and finally burned to black ash, all under the sullen gaze of the watchful owls.

Still, Rina had no doubt that the border, which hovered before her like a vast blue levee, would open itself up for her. The blue levee would flow toward her like a colossal wave and open up like a stairway to heaven. She believed that an invisible hand would gather up the escapees safely in a net and magically usher them across the border.

The group of twenty-two escapees was made up of three families and a group of young people who worked at a sewing factory. They were all from a region near the border where they had lived their whole lives. When Rina’s father had first told her in a low voice that he had found some people to escape with, Rina hadn’t believed him. Her father was incapable of even dreaming of crossing a border into a new world. His decision had reminded Rina of something she’d once been told by an ancient auntie who had died a few years back in a famine: Everyone, even the biggest idiot, will face three challenges in her lifetime for which she will stake her life. When those three challenges are over, so is your life. It had been hard to understand the old lady’s toothless mumblings, but that was the essence of her lesson.

The soldiers paced back and forth among the trembling escapees. All of them were still armed and many were smoking. All of a sudden, Rina’s eye caught a round, white light approaching from far away. It looked small at first, but got bigger and bigger as it turned a brilliant blue.

A light! Rina yelled, in spite of herself. It turned out to be a small truck carrying food from the border checkpoint. The women clung to each other tearfully, fearing that this was the end. A man got out of the passenger seat, and was followed shortly by the driver. Together, they walked into the checkpoint watchhouse.

Isn’t that him? the men whispered nervously to each other.

They could see the soldiers smoking through the lit windows of the watchhouse. A few minutes later, the man from the passenger seat of the truck came outside and assembled the fathers of each of the families. After a minute’s quiet discussion, the fathers dispersed clumsily; their legs had fallen asleep. Turning their backs to each other, they pulled out wads of cash that had been secreted away in bundles or in undisclosed locations on their bodies. The man collected their money, licking his fingers to count the bills, and walked over into the watchhouse.

Those sonsofbitches, the sewing factory workers fumed, trembling with rage. For a minute, it looked as though they were about to march into the watchhouse. Instead, they got back on their knees. While the men in the watchhouse enjoyed their feast, all the escapees could do was feed off the sounds of their own mouths watering.

After a long while, the man came out of the watchhouse. He wore tight-fitting pants, a jacket, and a hat that covered the contours of his face so that the subtleties of his features were obscured. Since it was impossible to escape directly to the country of P, their final destination, he was the first of several guides who would lead the escapees to a third-party nation, a number of which they would have to pass through to get to P. Their fates depended on this guide. When Rina saw his tanned face with its defined features, she felt a jolt of elation; she was sure she’d found the man she was destined to love.

Without a single gunshot fired, the twenty-two escapees crossed the border. The border wasn’t on a wide levee stretched out like a blue band, nor was it on a river sparkling with the reflections of silvery lights from a pier. It was merely a part of a hilly path blocked off from an escape route. The moment she crossed the border, Rina felt like she could breathe again, as if a piece of candy that had been stuck in her throat had slipped down into her stomach.

Past the border, the road turned slightly downhill. The twenty-two—including the babies on their mothers’ backs—quickened their pace, waddling like they had just jumped off a pot of burning coals. By now, it was so dark that the silhouette of the road was barely distinguishable, and the occasional pale flash of a sleeve or bundle were the only signs of human activity. The guide went first, quickly and quietly. It wasn’t long before the elderly escapees ran out of breath and began to cough, and the babies let out scattered cries. With each step she took, Rina’s toes burrowed so deeply into the ground that it felt like her feet were planted in the soil, and her ankles tingled, forcing her to stop and rest at intervals. Walking downhill was far more painful than trudging uphill.

Rina was sure that her father had purposely neglected to tell her the exact date and time of their escape. There was no way he would have left her younger brother behind, and since it would be hard for him to get remarried, he would have to take his wife along. Rina was sure that she was the only member of her family whose abduction or death by firing squad wouldn’t break her father’s heart. Even if Rina had known the exact date of their departure, it was doubtful she would have found a more appropriate pair of shoes for the journey. The only two pairs of shoes she owned had long since deteriorated into an unwearable state, and at this very moment, Rina couldn’t help but think of all of the shoes she’d seen her friends wear to school. If only dad had told me sooner, I would’ve stolen a pair of those comfortable-looking white sneakers with the thick soles.

None of them knew how many borders they would have to cross to get to the country of P, but at any rate, they soon arrived at the mouth of the river leading into the first third-party nation. The guide took his shoes off, rolled up his pants to his knees, and waded into the river. They plodded in after him. The river was low after a drought, barely reaching Rina’s waist. As they stepped into the water, the people turned around to face the border they had just crossed and bowed, rubbing their palms together. Rina had to be carried across on the back of one of the men from the sewing factory. It made her so nervous that she clenched her buttocks the whole way.

The river was crawling with processions of people fleeing the country. No one spoke, no one asked what route you had taken to cross the border, or what your reasons were for fleeing. The night was filled with shadows and the sound of legs slicing through water.

The processions of escapees spread out across the riverbank. Just under the riverbank was a pathway that led through to rice fields, and it was only once they got to that path that they fell back apart into their initial groups. After several minutes of walking, they were back to the original twenty-two. The twenty adults and two infants filed down the narrow path. The guide walked at the head of the line. Rina’s father brought up the rear, and Rina was in front of him. Every so often, Rina had to calm herself by groping in the darkness to feel the back of the person walking in front of her.

Let’s take a break, the guide said. At his words, the twenty-two collapsed to the ground in a row, like magpies on a wire. The elderly were wracked by dry coughs. The babies started whining again, and their mothers stood up to suckle them, murmuring apologies for what was hardly their fault. Not wanting to be stuck in the back, Rina was walking up to the head of the line when she tumbled into a ditch. It was deeper than she had expected, and the guide had to help her out. Her mother, who had been sitting near the front of the line clutching Rina’s brother in her arms, scolded her.

If you don’t stop acting so reckless, we’ll leave you behind in this strange country!

"You’re the one who’s reckless! Maybe they’ll leave you behind."

The others snickered at this, and Rina’s mother glared fiercely at her. She’d had Rina when she was nineteen years old. She would always remind her daughter of this whenever Rina did something wrong, and when Rina lashed out, her mother would laugh and say, That means you’ll be having a baby in three or four years, just like me, you smartass. Rina could never tell whether this was meant as a blessing or a curse. She resented her mother for carrying her little brother close in her arms wherever they went, and she hated her little brother, and this hatred was all she had right now to help her endure her hunger. The babies’ cries grew louder. The guide took a handful of candy out of his jacket pocket, gave one to each of the mothers, and told them to keep their babies quiet.

The incline grew steeper until eventually they reached a low, naked mountain. Clearly, the shortage of firewood on this side of the border was just as bad as it was back home. In the spring, forest fires would break out on the slopes and rage until there was nothing left to burn.

They had climbed over the bare mountain and nearly reached level ground when they heard an explosion in the distance. To them it sounded like a hi-tech tank tearing through a jungle, but it turned out to be a single motorcycle. Even so, they all ran and hid deep in the forest, completely ignoring the guide’s instructions. Rina wondered for a second where her family was, but she was too afraid of being discovered by the white spotlight to get up and look around. So, she lay face down, expecting to be clubbed on the head at any moment and dragged away. Only the smell of the damp dirt on her nose calmed her fear.

The motorcycle flashed its headlight blindly, then disappeared without a trace. The escapees began to grow restless; the babies cried and the adults sighed heavily, pale from what they felt had been a brush with death. They got up and started walking again. No one knew how much time had passed, or what lay ahead. Rina’s eyelids grew heavy, and she kept tripping over her old sneakers, constantly twisting her ankles.

Rina dozed as she walked. Orange lights flared up before her eyes. Bathed in the orange light, cozy blankets and cotton stuffing breathed gently. Small, floury, white balloons grew and grew until they puffed up into warm loaves of bread and embraced her. Wherever she stuck her tongue out, sweet bread filled her mouth. But the next minute, she found herself wearing a pair of elastic pants, walking a tightrope. She felt dizzy and off-balance, like she couldn’t move her feet. All she wanted was for the sun to come up so she could see what was in front of her. She wanted something to lean on so that she could fall sleep.

It was dawn when they reached the edge of the plains and saw glowing lights. The guide led them to a run-down shack. He opened the wooden door, and there was a dirt floor with two beds up against one wall, and a table in the middle. On the table was a bowl with strands of old noodles stuck to it. In one of the beds lay an old woman with a tuft of hair on her head, still as a painting. Another woman, perhaps the old one’s daughter or daughter-inlaw, sat at the table, sewing. The guide went through the cabinet, taking things out and putting them back, as though he owned the place. The old woman on the bed, the woman at the table, and the twenty-two escapees stared at each other as if trying to figure out who was worse off.

The twenty-two sat in a circle on the dirt floor and looked around, waiting for someone to offer them something to eat. Every now and then, you caught the eye of the person sitting across from you, and you glared at each other for a bit. Some people began to nod off. Rina took her sneakers off and shook the dirt out of them. The insoles were worn and floppy and caked with dirt from her tumble into the ditch.

The guide handed out packets of sleeping pills to the mothers.

We have a long walk ahead of us. The pills are for the babies, so they won’t cry. Hurry up and feed them, so we can get on our way again, he instructed.

Rina began to wonder what other riches might be found in this guide’s pockets, which had already yielded such wonders as candies and sleeping pills. The mothers dissolved the pills in bowls of sugar water, which they fed bit by bit to the tired babies. The babies found the sweet liquid an improvement over their thumbs. The adults gathered round and glared at them.

"Shit, don’t we get anything to eat?" one of the men finally exploded.

You’ll have to learn to curb your temper if you’re to get to where you want to go. This is only the beginning. You only crossed the border a few hours ago, the guide reminded him.

Rina wanted to applaud him for his resoluteness, but held back. The safety of the twenty-two was in his hands, so no one dared talk back after that. The chilly dawn air skimmed their shoulders. Once in a while, the heavy mist shifted to reveal a corner of a roof or the front door of a house. A dog barked for a while, then eventually faded away. Rina hugged herself as the dawn mist seeped into her sneakers and up her whole body.

They walked for some time down a winding road bordered by small clusters of white birch trees. The mist was slowly thinning. They came upon a clearing, and the mist drew back for a moment like a curtain to reveal a brightly colored bus. The guide and the driver spoke for a long time in a language the others didn’t understand. They all sat down by the road, glancing back and forth between the guide and the driver as they talked.

Again, the guide rounded up the fathers. Again, they dug through their bundles and the deepest layers of their clothing and handed over wads of cash. The guide counted the bills, gave some to the bus driver, and pocketed the rest. One of the men pounced on the guide and grabbed him by the collar.

Damn you, you already got our money at the border checkpoint. What’s this for? he yelled. The guide easily extracted himself from the man’s grasp and spat onto the ground through his teeth.

That was for getting you across the border, and this is for bringing you all the way here and getting you on the bus. I’ve done my part, and I’m leaving now. Remember: if you get caught, they may kill you first, but they’ll kill me, too.

You can’t leave us here in a country where we don’t even understand the language. You bastard, you have to take us somewhere safe! the man yelled.

And where would it be safe for you?

No one had anything to say to that. Rina stared after the guide, who was already walking briskly down the misty road away from the bus. She ran after him, feeling like she had an important confession to make, but when he turned around to look at her, she was at a loss for words. She shuffled awkwardly, looking down at the ground. The guide stared at her for a moment, then reached out and touched a strand of hair stuck to her forehead. Finally, Rina managed to open her mouth.

Can I have some of those sleeping pills?

The guide reached into his bulging jacket pocket, took out a few white packets, and handed them to her.

Too many of these at once, and they’ll kill you.

Rina stared at the guide as he walked away from her. He seemed fated to a life of traveling back and forth across borders. Eventually, he disappeared into the mist. The enraged fathers fell upon the foreign driver, even though he didn’t speak their language, and begged him to find another guide for them. The driver ignored them and started the car. He gestured for them to go relieve themselves before the long drive, pointing first to his own fly and then to the rice field, making sure to look each of them in the eye as he did so. As if we’ve been eating and drinking enough to piss, they grumbled as they headed down the fields. Rina tumbled down the steep embankment and joined one of the older girls from the sewing factory who was squatting with her bare buttocks exposed. Both of the girls were pitifully bony, but neither was ashamed. Rina pinched the girl’s butt cheek and they both giggled. As she shook herself off after peeing, a blade of grass grazed Rina down below. It felt like the tickling of raindrops on her face, and a shiver coursed through her entire body.

The twenty-two members of the group barely managed to fit into the small bus with its colorful coat of paint peeling off in curls. The driver gave each of the men a cigarette and talked at them loudly.

The bus chugged along an endlessly winding road. They all fell asleep—the men who had smoked the foreign cigarettes, the women who had inhaled the secondhand smoke of those cigarettes, and the babies who had taken the sleeping pills—and the bus moved along.

Rina was awakened by the blinding sunlight pouring in through the window. The bus had stopped in front of a little marketplace. The driver was gone, and a smoky odor, along with the smell of meat, wafted up into the bus. Others around here were also waking up and looking around as they stretched their limbs. There were people near the market entrance sitting in twos and threes, gambling or eating noodles. They were wearing not-quite-white button-down shirts, their unwashed hair sticking out in every direction. Here, babies were strapped to their mothers’ backs with their legs stretched out straight, like some form of punishment.

I don’t want to keep going. We don’t even know if the country of P will let us in, the girl from the sewing factory said, leaning on Rina’s shoulder.

You’re a big whiner, aren’t you? Rina leaned over and tickled the girl’s armpits, damp with sweat. The girl didn’t laugh.

The driver returned, looking like he’d had something to eat; his nose and forehead were slick with grease, and he had changed into a short-sleeved shirt.

Don’t we get anything to eat? someone asked.

The driver, of course, didn’t understand the question. One of the men made the gesture of spooning food into his mouth. The driver pointed to the bus door, crossed his wrists, and pretended to be handcuffed and dragged away. No one could argue against this skillful pantomime, so they all stared stonily out the windows.

The bus started up again. It rocked so heavily as it passed through a high, narrow mountain pass, that Rina was hardly able to sit still in her seat. On one side of the pass was a steep precipice. It was an unpeopled landscape; only herds of black cows and old sheep with bells hanging from their necks sometimes blocked the road.

On its way down, the bus abruptly stopped and the driver got out. They all clambered to the front to see what was going on. A landslide was blocking their way. The driver came back and pulled several men out. The men cleared away the dirt and rocks while the driver sat and smoked. When the road was clear, the bus started up again. The men who had been forced into sudden labor passed out, exhausted. A small triangle of brown river appeared between the mountains. The triangle got bigger and wider until it was cut off by an enormous cement dam. The river wasn’t wide, but its yellowish waters wound around the high mountains like a giant serpent.

This is no place for people. It’s no better than where we came from, somebody remarked, breaking the silence. The river grew muddier. Rina pressed her face against the window. Even if all twenty-two of us fell into the river and died, that water wouldn’t bat an eyelash. The river swallows everything without leaving a trace. No one would even know we were here. It’s like we’re floating in the air.

1 The name derives from the Chinese characters li (俐), meaning clever, and na (娜), meaning beautiful, pretty, slender, or supple.

2

IT WAS ONLY AS THE SUN WAS SETTING THAT THE BUS TURNED ONTO a road teeming with traffic. They had been stacked and layered on top of each other for so long that they had lost feeling in their legs and buttocks. As the bus rolled into the heart of the city—where cars, bicycles, and exhaust curled into one big bundle and lurched forward—the twenty-two pairs of eyes shifted their collective gaze onto the splendid city night draped in lights. The whole place seemed to be suspended above a layer of gray air. Steeped in dust and fatigue, the squalid foreigners clambered off the bus, stood in a circle, and looked around.

Their second guide was a tall woman with a long, aged face. The bus driver spoke with her briefly, handed out another conciliatory round of cigarettes to the men, then exited smoothly through a bustling alley. Famished, the twenty-two congregated in front of a hamburger joint and stared through the window at the food on the tabletops. Although it was hard to tell where the guide was from, she spoke Rina’s language well.

"We don’t have much time here. You all