A Greater Music (12 page)

As time passed, I became seized with doubt. What could have made me freeze like that? Lying in the bed beside M, I listened
to the night spreading itself around us, feeling like the end of something. I waited until M was sleeping, but couldn't fall asleep myself. There were no questions I could ask, and besides, I didn't even want to listen to whatever she might have to say. So I began to interrogate myself instead. What was this desire for possession that had taken hold of me? Where had it come from, and could I really carry on being burdened by its oppressive weight? Beauty, delicacy, concern and generosity, peaceful seclusion, reading, music, and writing . . . and the union of two souls, found after so long; was it right to have betrayed and destroyed all those things in the work of an instant? Why do humans have this desire for possession, and why do we grow savage when we cannot satisfy it? The strains of a single melody, slowly and agonizingly teased from among a thousand other sounds only for its sublime order to be destroyed by a moment's anger, tearing it down and trampling it underfoot so that it can never be made whole again, calling down clichéd curses on itself and displaying its ugliness to the world as it rends its flesh like a crazed chicken, how can we simply remain indifferent to all this? Why can we do nothing about it? Where does the desire for possession come from? Why does it spit at and ridicule all the ethical questions proposed in the course of long reflection, a journey undertaken within our innermost selves? If it can't be controlled, then what is there that's left for us to do; no, given that it can't be controlled, what else of value can human beings ever hope to achieve? M had managed to come out of the whole thing unscathed—this thing which she claimed had meant nothing, the product of nothing more than a basic and purely physical curiosity—she was still as beautiful as ever, but the same couldn't be said for me. M might have been deaf to the sound of her world collapsing, but not me. Had she been trying to get revenge? Perhaps, so that our positions might be reversed and she would no longer be
the one left behind, she'd decided to be the one to make the break. A further torrent of questions poured forth. If M's soul was with me then why did Erich need to be a problem, if mere flesh, limited and inconsistent, really did amount to nothing, then why did I have to suffer on account of their one-night stand, why couldn't I break free of this permanently unsatisfied desire for possession, when I was only too aware of how utterly base it was? I couldn't come up with a single word of consolation or justification for myself. When its corollary is a hunger to monopolize M's gestures, her shadow, her voice, love soon becomes a hell. This is how M made me suffer. M, M would eventually discover this.

But perhaps my problem wasn't solely the desire for possession. I couldn't forgive myself for having been so rash, couldn't believe I'd been foolish enough to show the composition to anyone else, let alone Erich. With hindsight, my sense of shame was overwhelming, and perhaps this shame was the real reason that I couldn't bring myself to forgive M. She too had played a part in Erich's mockery, albeit unintentionally. I saw them from within my shame, saw her mouth hanging open as she laughed at the stream of filthy words issuing from his. I saw M mince up to Erich, swaying her hips like a streetwalker, and perch on his knee to read my composition, assuming an obscene position with the easy air of long familiarity. I read all this in M's sleeping face, in the even cadences of her breathing, and all that I'd once found there, universal grammar and the language of barbarians, all that beautiful, sublime meaning which had been transmuted into sentences and songs, thus to find its way to me, had disappeared without the slightest flicker of protest. After that, all that was left behind was a shriveled, barren face, the face of a stranger. My shame made me blanch and shiver in the darkness. I was still breathing, but in every other sense I was no different from a corpse. I was buried, my heart was buried
deep underground. But that sense of shame was still as strong as ever. Surely it was this that was causing me such anguish, my own painful awareness of this feeling within myself. In other words, that keen sense of shame was exacerbated by my continually dwelling on it, my belief that it was inevitable. That swamp of shame eventually subsumed me, rendered me null and meaningless, so all that existed was shame reflected between two mirrors, the infinite repetition of that image. My own actions were the root cause of this shame, having directly prompted the event that was causing me such agony; naturally, this made me feel ashamed, painfully aware of my own shamefulness, still more ashamed by my inability to conceal this feeling, the shame itself strangely less unbearable than the fact of my feeling ashamed, and eventually, within all that senselessness, I discovered that I'm the kind of person who is ashamed of shame itself. Taking it one step further, the other thing I found out was that of the three of us, the truly sickening, unforgivable and incomparably superficial one was neither M nor Erich, but me. I lay awake the whole night, trembling with the burden of this knowledge. At one point it occurred to me that perhaps it was all a lie, that M had lied about sleeping with Erich because she was angry at my determination to return to Korea. But then I realized that no, this idea of mine was the only lie, something I'd dreamt up in an attempt to preserve my self-respect. The look in M's eyes when she'd said those words—purely out of basic physical curiosity, she'd said, and her eyes had confirmed the truth of this. Purely out of basic physical curiosity. This phrase clearly hadn't just popped out on the spur of the moment; rather, it must have been planned in advance, the wording carefully calculated to inflict the deepest wound. “Basic physical curiosity” served to emphasize Erich's masculinity, the fact that he, or more specifically his penis, could provide the regular pleasures sought by regular women.
But I knew M too well for those words to succeed in making me envy Erich. She never had, and she never would. Penetrative sex with a man was not where M's inclinations lay, and she couldn't trick me into thinking otherwise. M was far too independent, far too asexual, far too strong, far too defiant, to get much from the simple pleasures of male-female sex. Even now, when I've already forgotten so much, I can at least remember that about her. In the bedroom, Erich would have been nothing more than a vibrator for M, whatever words he might have whispered having no more import than the machine's quiet hum. Of that much I was certain. At least, that was what I claimed to believe, what I desperately tried to convince myself of. And still I slipped back into despair, and started confronting M over her moral stance. But when you slept together, purely out of this basic physical curiosity, didn't you feel a sense of shame? Some kind of moral aversion? Did you consider, at all, the estrangement of mind from flesh? It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that at all. I see no reason for physical relations to be held sacred, especially when pleasure is their sole purpose. This was a long-held belief of mine, dating from my teenage years. I've never been able to understand relationships where the couple's intimacy depends on the merely physical. With all that in mind, why did I feel unable to go on living with M?

M looked to be sound asleep that night, but perhaps she was only pretending.

9)
I refused to open the door even after M had rung the bell several times and begged me to let her in. M spent the whole night huddled on the doorstep of the house I'd moved back into, and the next morning an ambulance had to come and pick her up. By the time she arrived at the hospital, one of her knees had
apparently swollen to almost double its usual size. I'd stayed inside the house the whole time, listening as she hung on the bell and pounded on the door. At first I thought that this was the perfect way to part from her, but at the same time I wanted to stay with her forever, just like this, as was only possible like this. If I opened the door and let her in that would already be to admit defeat, and once I allowed her to engage me in conversation there would be no going back. It would all end in disaster, as much of a mistake as the one I'd made in submitting that composition to Erich. In your haste, in your certainty, you'll often find yourself betrayed by the most extraneous, superficial facts. Besides, I was angry with her. More than anything else, though, I simply couldn't forgive myself, any more than I could forgive M. At the time, it seemed like the suffering I'd brought down on M had been turned around and was punishing me, too. But after that long night was over, the world was restored to its previous form. I made the conscious decision to stop obsessing over happiness, satisfaction, passion, my ego. Clinging to unanswerable questions, getting lost in endless chains of logic, wasn't the way to end this suffering. Instead, I gave myself over completely to the circumstances in which I found myself. I was standing in the middle of a sea of dark red soil. The soaring pillars which lined both sides of the road were inscribed with records of some ancient victory, part of a triumphal highway now lying forgotten somewhere deep in the desert. But the deadly sandstorms, the wars of past millennia left me unmoved. It was neither hope nor despair that impelled me along the road, but the simple desire to leave that place. Nowhere was there even the slightest trace of human life. I walked between those dreary, crumbling pillars, each bolstered by an equally dreary temple, past Palmyra's Roman theater, its marble-clad splendor long forgotten, replaced by a scene of decayed grandeur currently being scoured by a
great dust storm whose fine-grained winds were torched red by the last faint rays of the setting sun. I walked on all the way to the valley of the tombs, when suddenly, so suddenly that I was shaken out of my composure, the road vanished from underneath my feet. After breaking up with M I'd somehow been transported, finding myself in the middle of that incomparable desert vista, then shortly afterward I'd turned a corner that didn't exist, stepping out of the ruins of ancient Palmyra straight into a bustling shopping center at Christmastime. The temptation to start plaguing myself with questions was there, but I resisted.

M's knee was still full of pus at our final meeting, making her walk with a limp. Her voice was calm, but the deep shadows below her eyes told of sleepless nights. All those long hours she'd spent huddled outside my door. A sub-zero night, and with despair pushing her to the brink of exhaustion, yet somehow she got away with nothing more serious than a swollen knee. They told her she'd have to use a wheelchair for a while, and rest up until she recovered her strength. She was in the hospital for a month, and as soon as she was discharged she came to see me, hobbling on her crutches. We drank tea together. According to the lunar calendar we were already in spring, but the days were still cold. I opened a window to let the air circulate, hung my laundry up to dry in the bathroom, and the whole house seemed instantly refreshed. We spoke about music, our comments brief and desultory. A beautiful, light Mendelssohn piece came on the radio, and afterward I put on Bach's “canon” suites, a recent purchase. The suites were based on a single musical theme given to Bach by King Frederick as a challenge for improvisation, when he'd visited the king at Potsdam in 1747. This “Musical Offering,” made up of canons, fugues, and a trio of sonatas, was the first of Bach's many compositions that really appealed to me. Later on, though, I was incredibly disappointed to learn that it was an “offering”
in the religious sense of “sacrifice”—this, apparently, was where the word derived from—with the king as its recipient. Bach died in 1750. He composed this “Musical Offering” in his final year. The records say that he knew his death was approaching so decided to put the finishing touches to his life as a musician by revising his works for publication. I wrote a short essay about Bach and the “Musical Offering.” I'd always longed to write something about music, if the opportunity ever arose. When I discussed it with M, she suggested that I could look at some of her own articles on Bach's final works, and even offered to bring me the relevant magazines, but I told her firmly that there was no need. I explained that I wasn't intending to write a specialist article about music, like hers. I began the piece with a general-interest discussion of Wittgenstein—a great fan of Bach's—and planned to finish it with the visit to King Frederick's Sanssouci Palace. Still in its incomplete form, I made a rough translation into German and read this out to M. The translation was clumsy beyond belief, but still M gave it her full attention, listening patiently all the way through to the end. And then, at the end, she burst into a short peal of laughter. Sanssouci? Why Sanssouci, of all places? Never mind whether Bach went there, it's like something you'd find in those tacky cover notes they always sell with records! M was at least half joking, but she still sounded somewhat put out. It's true that the place was something of a cliché, a favorite haunt of lovers when they're out for a romantic stroll. In fact, I'd suggested to M that we go and visit the palace that coming summer. The imperfect translation meant my intention hadn't come across particularly well, but in mentioning Sanssouci I'd wanted to express my deep dissatisfaction with reducing such beautiful, meditative music to a mere “offering” to King Frederick. But M shook her head. Music transcends its so-called “creator,” rising above whatever motivation—whether individual fame,
avarice, or even pure egoism—lay behind its so-called “creation.” Music is itself that spirit of artistic creation that can't be compassed by the human, which simply chooses the body of an individual as its temporary vessel. That was M's belief. If that was the case, then dedicating their “own” music to a given individual would be beyond the power of the composer. All the same, I still couldn't bear the fact that Bach had dedicated this wonderful music to King Frederick, any more than if he'd degraded it by an association with the object of some brief, shallow love affair, scrawling a crude dedication: “To the village swine-wench.” I refused to tone down these criticisms.