Thailand by Haruki Murakami (Part 1)

There was an announcement. Wee are car rent lee ex peer ee en sing turb you lence. Please re mane see ted an far sin your seat bell.

Just then, Satsuki had been lost in thought, and so it took her some time to make out what the Thai steward’s questionable Japanese had meant.

“We are currently experiencing turbulence. Please remain seated and fasten your seatbelts.”

Satsuki was sweating. It was terribly hot. She felt like she was being boiled alive. She was burning up all over and her nylon stockings and bra were excruciatingly uncomfortable. She wanted to free herself of all her clothes. She craned her neck up and looked around, but it seemed like she was the only one feeling hot. The other passengers in business class avoided the air-con and were curled up asleep with blankets pulled up over their shoulders. Maybe she was having a hot flash. She bit her lip. She tried to concentrate on something else and forget about the heat. She opened up her book and started to read. But inevitably, she couldn’t forget about it. It wasn’t a normal heat. And it would still be quite a while before they arrived at Bangkok. She asked for some water from the stewardess passing by. Then she took her pill case out of her bag and swallowed the hormone pill she’d forgotten to take.

Menopause, thought Satsuki once again, has to be a cynical warning (or harassment, perhaps) from the gods to those humans who dare to aimlessly live too long. Only a hundred years ago, the average life expectancy was no more than fifty, and women living twenty or thirty years after their periods had stopped were the exception, not the rule. The burden of having a body whose thyroid and ovaries don’t secrete hormones regularly, and the possible correlation between post-menstrual oestrogen reduction and Alzheimer’s disease, weren’t issues that she was especially troubled over. For the majority of people, simply getting one’s daily meals is a much more pressing issue. Thinking as such, in the end, doesn’t the growth of medicine just make more problems rise to the surface, and then fragment and complicate them?

Shortly afterwards, there was another announcement. This time it was in English.

“If there is a doctor on the plane, could they please make themselves known to a member of the cabin crew?”

Someone on the plane must have fallen ill. Satsuki wondered if she should come forward, but after a brief consideration, she decided against it. She had twice before come forward as a doctor in such circumstances, but both times, she had ended up coming to head to head with a GP who also happened to be on the plane. GPs have the composure of a long serving officer on the front line, but are also able to observe from a glance specialist pathology which Satsuki had no experience in dealing with.

“Don’t worry, I can handle this on my own. Why don’t you go back and relax?” they would say breezily with a smile. She mumbled out a disjointed excuse and withdrew back to her seat. Then she carried on watching some pointless film.

But what if there was no one but her on the plane who was qualified as a doctor? Or what if this person had a serious problem with their thyroid immune system? If so – though it’s hardly probable – then even she could be of some use. She took a deep breath and pressed the button to call over one of the crew.

The International Thyroid Conference was held over four days in the Bangkok Marriott Hotel. Though really, it was more like an international family reunion than a conference. Everyone there was a thyroid specialist, almost everyone knew almost everyone else, and when they didn’t, they got introduced. Theirs was a small world. In the daytime, they would read out their research papers and have panel discussions; in the evenings they would go to private parties around town. Close friends gathered and old friendships were rekindled. Everyone would drink Australian wine, talk about thyroids, gossip, share news about their work positions, tell lewd medical jokes, and sing the Beach Boys’ Surfer Girl in karaoke bars.

Whilst staying in Bangkok, Satsuki mainly went around with her friends from when she was living in Detroit. She was most carefree when she was with them.  She had worked in the Detroit University Hospital for nearly ten years, and it was there that she had continued to study the thyroid immune system. But while she was working there, things went downhill between her and her American husband, a security analyst. His dependence on alcohol deepened over the years, and, to make matters worse, he had another woman. Satsuki knew her well. They separated and had heated exchanges through their lawyers for the next year. “The final straw was that you didn’t want children,” her husband had argued.

Their divorce mediation was finally concluded three years ago. But then a few months later, when her Honda Accord was parked in the hospital car park, someone had smashed the windows and headlights and written “JAP CAR” in white paint on the front bonnet. She called the police. The policeman, a large black man, filled out the damage report and then said to her,

“Doctor, this is Detroit. Next time buy a Ford Transit.”

After all this, Satsuki no longer wanted to stay in America, and started to think about returning home to Japan. She found a position in Tokyo University Hospital. Her Indian colleague and research collaborator tried to stop her, reminding her of how long she’d been honing her research. “If it all goes well, we could get the Nobel Prize. Isn’t that your dream?” But Satsuki’s resolve to go home was not shaken. It was as though something had snapped inside her.

Anthology by Jang Yong Hak

Once upon a time, there was a cave deep, deep in the mountains. There, in a flower-like house of seven colours, lived a rabbit. The rabbit lived unaware that his walls were made of white marble. With no hole out of which to leave, he was stuck deep beneath the earth, not even knowing how deep down he was. It was a mystery how these rocks inside came to be so strangely arrayed, but a thin streak of sunlight seeped through a crevice and cast down resplendent rapids of light, as if it was passing through a prism. The rabbit had grown up completely ignorant of all unhappiness. Because here, there was nothing but these seven beautiful colours of the rainbow.

Those seven beautiful colours poured out of something like a window in the ceiling. There came a time when he would barely notice this, but start to feel itchy, somewhere, and would start to miss something, though not knowing why. That is to say, that he may have been deep beneath the earth, but even so, he had reached adolescence, and his mind that had once wandered out now withdrew back inside.

 “How beautiful the outside world must be, that it can make such lovely light pour in…” he thought.

Could this be an epiphany? Nay, it was a revolution. The stone house, that had had always seemed so beautiful and charming, suddenly appeared worthless. An owl hooted in the Garden of Eden. But no matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find an exit to the outside world. The rocks would not move, no matter how much he beat at them and thrust himself against them, tears streaming down his face. They were the ice-cold walls of a prison cell. Only, he should have realised before that he was trapped down there.

How did he come to live here? He had no idea. He had never even thought about such a complex issue. No matter how much he searched his memory, the only thing he could find was those seven colours. Inside his memory muddled with the seven colours of the rainbow, there was some world that gave him some feeling of something infinite, but he didn’t know if that was why he was feeling as he did about the outside world he was imagining before his eyes.

 “The truth is I can’t have lived here all along.”

This was the only conclusion he could come to. And so, he became certain that there was indeed an outside world.

 “The truth is I came in from the outside world. Just like the light streaming in…”

His ears, flopped down in rumination, started to waver inadvertently, and then sprung up as if in surprise. It was his birthday. He wasn’t even happy about this; he just stared vacantly at the window, no longer even thinking about finding an escape. His long, drooping ears sprung up once in surprise and didn’t know how to come back down again.

Pressing down on his trembling heart, he carefully stood up. With quiet footsteps, he went and stood beneath the window. He stood on tiptoe and tried to reach up as high as he could. His hands touched nothing but thin air. He stuck them out further. But still, they didn’t touch a thing. His heart was beating so loudly it seemed to fill the room.

He thought a strange thought and went back to reaching for the window, looking down behind him. He was terrified and tried to shout but the words wouldn’t come out. The whole room started to spin. Petrified, he drew back and collapsed right there.

For days and nights, he lay there, unable to get up. The thought that had come to him on his birthday had been so terrifying that he was now suffering from a severe fever. “What if I can’t get out through the window?” he had thought. He had finally realised this extraordinary truth.

I Can Hear Your Voice by Kim Young Ha

A rope descended from the sky. That in itself was strange. But it was only the beginning so everyone kept their mouths shut. The solemn-faced magician ordered his young assistant to climb up the rope. Though frightened and hesitant, the young assistant followed the magician’s strict ordered and started to climb up the rope. Up, up, and further up. His small body became smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared from the audience’s sight. The magician shouted up at the sky.

“Right, now come back down!” But there was no answer. The magicians’ voice grew louder.

“Just come down! Can’t you hear me?” No response. The audience’s curiosity was piqued. Where on earth does this rope lead? And what happened to that boy who just climbed up it? Could he have arrived in another world, that [strange] world we call heaven?

The magician tugged at the rope in anger. He started to climb up the rope himself in order to find his assistant. Shortly afterwards, the magician too disappeared from everyone’s sight. The distant sky suddenly started to feel heavy. The audience’s necks began to hurt from looking up at the sky. Then all of a sudden, the young assistant’s arms, legs, head and torso fell down from up high, in that order. There was a [dull sound] and fresh blood came splattering down. The white marble floor looked more like a white tablecloth with wine spilled all over it. It was crimson, intense and nauseating. The audience backed away in shock. A little later, the magician came back down the rope with blood stained hands and calmly began to pick up all the pieces of assistant scattered around and put them into a bucket. After tossing it behind him, he looked around reproachfully at the terrified audience. Do you want something more?

But then a sound could be heard from behind the magician. The boy held out the straw mat covering the bucket and walked forward, rubbing his eyes, as if waking up from a long nap. The magician wasn’t surprised. To him, crossing the line between life and death was the most natural thing in the world. The boy disappeared. The boy died. The dead boy came back to life. He started to do summersaults for all those people who couldn’t believe he had been resurrected. They were relaxed now. The boy was obviously alive. Blood was flowing through his arms and legs and his muscles and joints were all working properly. Only then did the audience give loud applause.

The first person to record this magic trick was Ibn Battuta, the known as the Marco Polo of the Islamic world. He witnessed this surprising trick in Hangzhou and recorded it in his vast travelogue. The secrets to many of these tricks have been revealed now, but this rope trick alone remains hidden under a veil.

There are other tales deriving from China. This magic trick was said to have been performed in front of a Chinese emperor. The young emperor was fooled, and he loved it precisely because of this. But the emperor, completely enamoured with this incredible trick, didn’t stop there. His eyes fell on the eunuch, who stood fanning him. The eunuch was dragged out, trembling. There’s no reason to worry. The magician will bring you back to life.

An old vassal stepped forward and tried to dissuade the emperor. It’s nothing more than trickery. But the emperor wouldn’t listen. We’ll find out if it’s trickery or not when we try it. He looked on with curiosity as a large soldier came towards the eunuch, wielding a knife. A rainbow appeared in the fountain of blood. The magician turned his head away from the gruesome scene and hurriedly climbed up the rope into the sky. After he was safely hidden behind the clouds, the rope twisted down to the ground. He looked just like a dragon that had tried and failed to ascend to heaven.

When I first heard this story, I was curious as to where this magician who climbed up above the clouds could have gone. But now I think of his assistant – what happened to the boy the magician left behind at that blood-soaked scene?