Vaseline Buddha

“One achieves a kind of serenity when delving into this book. I find that eccentrics like Jung are needed in literature.” —
ACHIM STANISLAWSKI

Author & Translator Biographies

JUNG YOUNG MOON
was born in Hamyang, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea in 1965. He graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in psychology. He made his literary début in 1996 with the novel
A Man Who Barely Exists
. Jung is also an accomplished translator who has translated more than forty books from English into Korean, including works by John Fowles, Raymond Carver, and Germaine Greer. In 1999 he won the 12th Dongseo Literary Award with his collection of short stories, A Chain of Dark Tales. In 2005 Jung was invited to participate in the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, and in 2010 the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Korean Study invited him to participate in a three-month-long residency program. In 2012 he won the Han Moo-suk Literary Award, the Dong-in Literary Award, and the Daesan Literary Award for his novel
A Contrived World
, forthcoming from Dalkey Archive, who also published his short story collection
A Most Ambiguous Sunday and Other Stories
in 2014. His works have been translated into numerous languages, and he is widely read in France and Germany, where he enjoys great critical acclaim and popular appeal.

YEWON JUNG
was born in Seoul, and moved to the US at the age of 12. She received a BA in English from Brigham Young University, and an MA from the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

ALSO AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH BY JUNG YOUNG MOON:

A Contrived World

translated by Jeffrey Karvonen & Mah Eunji

A Most Ambiguous Sunday & Other Stories

translated by Yewon Jung, Inrae You Vinciguerra, & Louis Vinciguerra

Deep Vellum Publishing

3000 Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226

deepvellum.org
·
@deepvellum

Deep Vellum Publishing is a 501C3

nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013.

Copyright © 2010 by Jung Young Moon

Originally published as
in Seoul, South Korea by Minumsa in 2010.

English translation copyright © 2016 by Yewon Jung

First edition, 2016

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-941920-35-0 (ebook)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2015960723

—

Vaseline Buddha
is published under the support of Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea).

—

Cover design & typesetting by Anna Zylicz ·
annazylicz.com

Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio's printing of
De Aetna
in 1495 in Venice.

Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.

Contents

Author & Translator Biographies

Vaseline Buddha

One day, when the night was giving way to dawn and everything was still immersed in darkness, I sat on a windowsill in the house I lived in, unable to sleep, thinking vaguely that I would write a story. I didn't know at all where or what the story, if it could be called a story, would head toward, nor did I want to know in advance, and for the time being, there was nothing that told me where to go or what to do. So for the time being I was right to think that it could turn into a story, but it was possible that it wouldn't turn into a story at all.

Anyhow, something happened a little before I began thinking such things, something so trivial that you could hardly say that anything had happened at all; I heard a very small sound coming from outside the kitchen window, and straining my ears for the sound for a moment, I thought it was the sound of raindrops, but it didn't continue at regular intervals like the sound of raindrops. After a little while, I went to the bedroom windowsill and looked out the window through the curtains but it wasn't raining, and with a certain thought in mind I went to the kitchen where the sound had come from, hid myself behind a wall, and saw someone climbing up toward my bedroom window. It seemed that he was climbing up the gas pipes, and he looked like a moving shadow.
It was an astonishing sight but I didn't cry out because I felt as if I were dreaming. He was taking great care not to wake the person inside, whom he thought was sound asleep.

After a little while, I saw him trying to open the window, and I stuck my face out quietly so as not to startle him, but at that moment he saw my face and was so startled that he fell to the ground. I hadn't had the slightest intention of startling him, so I felt terrible, as if I had made him fall even though I hadn't, and above all, I wondered if he was all right, having fallen to the ground. He picked himself up at once, but was limping slightly, probably with a strained ankle, and went across the small yard and tried to climb over the wall which wasn't so high, which didn't look easy, either. I wished I could help him climb over the wall by giving him a leg-up. After several attempts, he finally clambered up the wall and disappeared into the darkness after throwing one last look in my direction, but I couldn't tell if he looked at me with reproach as he disappeared into the darkness.

Keeping an eye on the spot from which he had disappeared, I wondered for a moment as to what he was. I concluded that he wasn't a robber since I didn't see a weapon in his hand nor a weapon he could have dropped. Nobody but a thief, then, would pay me a quiet visit through my window at that hour. I thought about the great misfortune of the thief who had surely been after something in my house where there was nearly nothing worth taking, if not after me. Everything requires a certain amount of luck, especially in his line of work, but he hadn't had any luck at all. I smiled, thinking about his circumstances as well as my own, not much better than his. Or I should say, I smiled, aware of the smile that spread across my face, thinking that the man who had appeared out of darkness and disappeared back into the darkness was like a beaver that came out of water in the dark of the night and disappeared back into the water.

And although I wasn't in a position to worry about his circumstances I hoped that the man, who had elicited feelings of sadness in me about his misfortune as well as a gentle smile from me for the first time in a while, and who hadn't seemed fit to be a thief and had perhaps had his first experience as a thief that day, would have some luck in the future, and that he, having perhaps chosen a night job because he had trouble sleeping at night as I did, wouldn't be too angry about his experience that early morning, and would be able to smile, feeling somewhat sheepish.

And I thought I saw in the darkness three cats walking with some distance among themselves, on the wall over which the thief had disappeared, but I wasn't sure if I actually saw them, or if I was deluded, or if I was imagining them. Yet it seemed that the cats were taking the route they always took and that nothing had happened in the meantime.

I went back to bed and lay down, and suddenly wondered who was at fault for the fall of the thief, who fell because of me although I didn't throw him down, but who wouldn't have fallen if it hadn't been for me, and as I often did when it wasn't clear who was at fault, I thought I was a little more at fault. But it seemed that no one was at fault for the fall, and I thought that there were things in the world for which no one was at fault, and things that couldn't really be called a fault, and although I thought that the conclusion wasn't adequate, that was the conclusion I wanted to draw.

And I also thought that all he'd tried to do was to obtain something he didn't have, which was quite natural. And maybe it was a good thing that he went away like that, for it also occurred to me that otherwise a strange confrontation might have taken place between the man who came into the house and me in my underwear, leading to unpleasant acts or conversations.

And after a while, thoughts regarding what had just happened faded away, and it seemed that nothing had happened, that it had all been a dream. But as I mused on what had just happened, I gradually became almost glad that he'd come like that, because for some time I'd been staying cooped up at home without seeing anyone. Before he paid me a visit that night I'd been feeling so alone, not having spoken a word to anyone for days, and yet looking at the curtains flapping now and then in the open window and thinking that I wouldn't go outside unless a gigantic sailboat, with a full load and the sails taut with wind, entered through the window. I had no apparent reason for not going outside, but I had to rationalize my not going outside, even if it meant making up a reason like that. It seemed that something left behind by the man who hadn't taken anything from me was hovering around me, having faded without disappearing, like a lingering impression, although it wasn't a lingering impression. The thief, who had come to my place to accomplish something but failed in the end, hadn't done anything to me or left anything for me, but it seemed that something he'd left behind had been left for me.

For some time, I'd been in a constant state of lethargy—so constant that it was amazing when I thought about it—and had been unable to do anything, and hadn't been doing anything. But an urge to write was awakened within me as if the thief, who went away without actually doing anything, had done something to me, had provoked me in some way as I thought about him, and thoughts began to squirm in my mind, like a stiffened body attempting some difficult movements. The vague stories that I'd tried to write down but had escaped me began to blossom little by little, and I wanted to give them a vague form that suited them. And I thought that the story I was to write could be like the experience I'd just had, which was really nothing at all, that I could make it that way, and thus write about intangible things, or about making things intangible.

Now there's no sound coming from outside. I stare for a long time at the darkness outside from which no sound comes, or perhaps I just can't hear the sound that's coming. And staring at the darkness outside from within the utter darkness in the house, I think that thoughts on darkness could shed a certain light on what I'm about to write, to make all that's obscure even more obscure, and if not, make it remain as obscure as it is, that what I'm about to write could turn into something that resembles certain shapes created by light and darkness, and that, although this sounds strange, there are things in life that can be revealed by shedding darkness, not light, on them. And thinking into the morning, I think that perhaps what I'm about to write will be about thoughts on my own thoughts themselves, or things that occur in my thoughts, or various thoughts that come out of thoughts and burrow into other thoughts or disappear, a sort of a daily record of thoughts, something that traps everything in certain thoughts and reveals itself through certain words or sentences.

I think it was one fine morning around the beginning of summer, when I heard a kitten, which seemed to have been abandoned by its mother, crying until it was exhausted, trapped in pumpkin vines in a little patch of ground in the garden that belonged to the strange old couple whose house I was renting, that I began to have more concrete but still vague thoughts about what I'm writing. The meow of the kitten was similar to the sound that comes when you squeeze the belly of certain dolls, certain baby dolls in particular, but the kitten, which never came out of the thick pumpkin vines, no longer made a sound, probably dead.

I felt a peculiar excitement as I pictured the kitten, though I couldn't see it, trembling in fear among the pumpkin vines which must have seemed to the kitten like a jungle without an exit, so I wound up a music box that was on the table by the windowsill, and as I listened to the short melody, which sounded sad because it was in a minor key—I have several music boxes, and I like to play two or three of them at the same time and listen to the sound—I thought that what I wanted to write was becoming a little more concrete. But actually, it wasn't concrete at all, and all I could think was that I could think about entering a story in which you'd get lost, like setting foot in a world from which you can't extricate yourself.

Or perhaps this story had its beginning, insignificant as it was, during my stay in a small town in France very long ago, when I was struggling through an unbearable boredom that was, in its own way, desperate. The little town where I stayed for several
months was an extremely boring place where the typical French bourgeoisie lived, with royal villas of the French royal family of the past nearby, and I usually managed to wake up only in the afternoon because of the wine I'd drunk through the night, and spent my time taking a walk in a park or sitting still on a bench in the park, where there were many old people, as there are in any park in Europe, sitting still on the benches and staring fixedly at something. I couldn't tell what the people, who seemed to be sitting there with all the strength they could muster, almost desperately, but were in reality barely managing to sit there, exhausted, and whom I felt exhausted just watching and yet couldn't easily take my eyes off, were watching, or not watching, or if they were watching something without seeing it, or imagining something they couldn't see to be something else, but for a long time, I'd watch the people sitting on the benches, who had become one with the benches, and the benches that had become one with them, and the benches that were left on their own because the people left at a certain hour, the benches, to speak from the position of the benches themselves, that were allowed to be left on their own because the people had left.

And at a certain hour of the day, I'd see an old woman walk over, dragging her feet, to the bench in the park—the park was in a quiet area on a residential street where no tourists came—where she always sat, which other people left empty for her or avoided sitting on for that reason, and sit there knitting a little sweater for someone. She knitted so slowly that it would've been impossible to do so on purpose, and it seemed that she was trying to postpone the end of her life, or the end of the world, which didn't have that much to do with herself, which would come the moment the sweater was finished, even though she had no real reason for doing so.

I would sit across the bench where she was sitting, eating little pieces of a baguette I'd brought, either the part that was left over after I gave some to the pigeons or the part that was left over after I ate some and then gave to the pigeons, or the part that was left over after we ate some together, or slowly eat a boiled potato, peeling the skin off bit by tiny bit, or eat corn, one grain at a time, pulling the grains out with meticulous care—when I did, I felt as if I were a jeweler setting tiny stones in a piece of jewelry—and from time to time, she, too, would lift her eyes, and without any change in her expression, look in my direction, as if to see how fast or slow I was doing something. I wasn't sure if she could see me, sitting a little distance apart, and was thus able to tell what I was doing, or if she were merely turning her eyes to a form that she presumed to be human but didn't look human.

I always went to the park unless I was too depressed or couldn't get up because I was hung over from drinking too much, and took part in that strange game, perhaps a game I alone imagined we were playing, and each time, I imagined one of us winning or losing or the two of us drawing a tie, and always, it was the old woman whom I rooted for in my heart, and who thus won in my heart.

One day in late autumn that year, I saw her for the last time, attaching an arm to the body of the sweater, after which she no longer came out to the park, and I never found out if she had died without finishing the sweater, or quit just before she finished because she got tired of knitting the sweater, or became angry that she had spent so long knitting the sweater and burned it or unraveled it, or stopped coming outside just because it was cold. Nor did I find out if she really had someone for whom to knit a sweater. The only thing I'd seen by her side, in fact, was her dog.

The old woman had a little dog that took after her in many ways. The dog sat motionless before her while she sat knitting, and it had to sit motionless like that. The old woman didn't like it when the dog moved or wandered around. She could have let the dog roam about freely, without going far, within a range where her short vision reached, but she didn't. But the dog, not having an easy time staying still, just like humans—it's difficult for both humans and dogs to stay still, and probably more difficult than anything else—did all it could to move around while studying her face, but the woman did all she could to make the dog stay still, as if she bore a grudge against it. If the dog actually made to move, even slightly or sometimes even before the dog actually moved, the old woman would stop knitting and glare at the dog, and when she did, the dog became frightened and sat motionless like a well-trained dog. From time to time, when other dogs passed before the old woman and the dog, the dog, wanting to express how it felt to the other dogs, which were of its own kind, but knowing it wasn't allowed to do so, expressed unutterable pain, for all it could express was unutterable pain. The dog opened its mouth as if to say something but didn't bark or anything, and expressed its unutterable pain by digging in the ground with its paws, which was far from enough.