Vaseline Buddha (22 page)

But when I returned home a dead goldfish was waiting for me. The person who watched my house for me while I was away didn't say anything about the death of the fish. At night, I put the goldfish in a plastic bag and went to a cemetery by the river, where I took a walk now and then. Once, looking out at the sea, I thought that the sea was a huge grave for fish—I pictured the countless dead fish in the sea, and the sea was the biggest grave in the world—so I thought that I should bury the goldfish in the pond where it once lived, but I couldn't think of a suitable pond.

The cemetery was a burial ground for missionaries who were beheaded while proselytizing Christianity during a period in the past. I dug up a bit of the soil in front of a missionary's grave and buried the goldfish. The place, where beheaded missionaries were buried, and which overlooked a river, seemed the perfect grave for a fish, and I felt that by burying it there, I gave the fish a proper funeral. I suddenly recalled that the Danish word kierkegaard means churchyard, and I named the dead fish Kierkegaard, which seemed to suit the fish. And I was pleased by the fact that I was the only one who knew that a fish named Kierkegaard lay sleeping in a graveyard for missionaries, and that I could come to a kierkegaard, or a churchyard, whenever I wished and think about Kierkegaard the fish and Kierkegaard the philosopher.

Anyway, there were moments when I felt so dizzy that I really felt as if I would die, and wanted desperately to die for that reason. Or could I say I wanted desperately to die, and felt as if I would die for that reason? At any rate, I learned that a desire to die could be more desperate than a desire for anything else. My consciousness was urging me, badgering me to come to a decision, but I didn't listen, not even to my own consciousness

I still thought about suicide only in a faint, vague way, and in fact, I've never thought properly about it. And my idea of suicide in those days was a quite playful one, regarding the issue of whether a person who committed suicide behaved no differently from usual, or differently from usual.

Still, I had a lethal dose of sleeping pills, which I could use whenever I wished, a part of which I kept in a music box I bought as a souvenir on a trip. From time to time, I opened the music box to check up on the sleeping pills, and when I looked at them, listening to the music box, they always raised some kind of a hope in me, and put me at ease. Perhaps I could take the sleeping pills and wind the spring, and fall into eternal sleep while listening to the music box play.

I didn't see phantoms, but I saw signs, visions, that foretold the coming of phantoms before long. Once, in the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up in bed and saw a large black dog quietly sitting in the darkness of the room, and took it into my sleep and let it lead me to a mysterious place, and before I knew it, we were surrounded by a countless number of other large black dogs. Seeing the vision, I thought about having a chat with phantoms when they actually came.

And what enabled me to just barely endure the depression that seemed as if it would lead to death were the thoughts I had in secret. Thinking those thoughts, I smiled to myself at times. And the smile I smiled to myself in secret, while rereading
Molloy
for the first time in a long time, during days when there was almost nothing to smile about, seemed my only genuine smile, and the smile, which wasn't different from a certain kind of sneer, was directed at strange things. But at times, all kinds of smile, not just that smile, seemed strange, and awful as well.

I applied modifiers, such as corrosive, or sparkling, or coagulative, to my smile, and thought that I could apply them to my dizziness as well. In any case, such modifiers endowed a smile and dizziness with physical characteristics, and I felt that my smile and dizziness were physical states.

But from some time on, I no longer smiled even that smile, and I felt as if I were an empty house where no sound was heard anymore, abandoned by the people who had once lived there, talking and laughing. I also had the vague thought that perhaps my smile, which had vanished like an erased figure in an ancient wall painting, could be found only in the expression of a character in a novel I hadn't yet written.

And the thought led to some thoughts on smile or laughter itself. The ability to smile or laugh is probably one of the things that distinguish humans from other animals. I don't know if other animals smile or laugh, but it doesn't seem that they burst out laughing as humans do, or quietly smile to themselves. It seems that animals only make a pleased sound or wag their tails in contentment. But humans smile or laugh when they're having an interesting experience, when they're in an awkward situation in which they don't know what to do, and even over nothing at all. And sometimes, they laugh until their stomachs hurt, or chuckle, or smile reluctantly, about trivial things, or at other times about something huge, or even as they're trembling with anger over life. Smile or laughter is something that's the closest to, or depending on circumstances, the furthest away from, humans. Smile or laughter, which is so familiar to humans, is actually not as simple as it seems, and difficult to understand. For example, let's take a look
at some different kinds and aspects of smile and laughter. They are countless, including a hearty laughter, a wry smile, a sneer, a smile of satisfaction, a dumbfounded smile, a foolish smile, a grin, a loud laughter, a giggle, a quiet smile, a groveling smile, a cunning smile, a smile you put on when you look down on someone or when you're not pleased with someone, just before you're stripped of a smile, a nasty smile, a big smile that spreads across your face, a big nasty smile that spreads across your face, and so on. And then there's a crooked smile. I'm not sure what a crooked smile is exactly, but my smiles always have the feel of one.

There's no other expression of human emotion that has as many qualities and aspects to it as does smile or laughter, which can be preceded by many descriptive words. Laughter can easily arise in inappropriate situations, and in fact, it often arises from the discrepancy between a person and the situation he's faced with. Smile or laughter itself, of course, doesn't function as a full emotion, nor is it something that can be categorized as an emotion, but it reveals the complexities of the heart, being linked to various emotions, and establishes the workings of the mind, interacting with the senses. In addition, smile or laughter, which is the most complex emotional reaction, exerts a powerful influence on emotion and thought. For instance, a person can smile or laugh while deep in sorrow, or when his anxiety reaches its height, and such smile or laughter can change or dispel the sorrow or anxiety. Smile or laughter is the most innocent yet cunning at the same time, the most frivolous yet just as profound, and the most naïve, yet evil. But it's difficult to contemplate evil sorrow, frivolous emptiness, or cunning solitude. The smile or laughter
of a newborn baby is probably the most innocent and beautiful thing in the world, but the smile or laughter of someone taking pleasure in abusing someone is evil beyond measure. Perhaps the reason why smile or laughter can so easily change in nature is because unlike emptiness or boredom or such, in which state you can't help but stay for a while once you're in it, smile or laughter is a state in which it's difficult to stay, because smile or laughter is something so unpredictable that it can betray itself. Smile or laughter, which is actually a subtle and complex movement of facial muscles and the mind, is an anthropological object of study as well as a psychological phenomenon (I vaguely imagine that the decisive factor in the human evolution from apes was the human smile or laughter, and humans' awareness of their own smile or laughter). In addition, smile or laughter is a philosophical topic, and many philosophers, in fact, considered smile or laughter from a philosophical point of view.

But one of the problems surrounding laughter is that today, there's an excess and abuse thereof. Laughter, in fact, has become a sublime virtue as well as a sublime vice of the day. Laughter, of course, didn't become such on its own. People seem to be suffering from an obsession to laugh, and steeped in the wrong belief that they can forget past hurts and present sufferings and move forward only by doing so. Fundamental human emotions, such as a sense of emptiness, boredom, loneliness, anxiety, sadness, and unease have become something negative that should be avoided as much as possible, and laughter rules in splendor in the place from which they have been cast out (I picture laughter looking down on the sadness of the emotions it has driven out, without even
hiding its nastiness, which, in a way, seems to be the self-portrait of the day). In short, the idea that laughter is desirable, no matter what, is prevalent, like a superstition. But is it true that laughter is just desirable? It's true that laughter has a great power that makes it possible to endure a difficult life, brings the hope that you can break away from an oppressive condition, purifies the mind the way profound sorrow does, assimilates you with the object of laughter, just as when you experience something beautiful, and that the more painful the present situation is, the more necessary is laughter. But the negative effects of laughter are just as serious as the positive. Laughter, by its inherent nature, can cunningly make an individual turn his eyes away from his life and the situation with which he's faced, and make him think less or give up on thinking, thus making him stupid. What good is it to laugh in a futile, unnatural way in the face of a reality that won't change much at all through a little laughter? You could be even more miserable when you face your real self after laughing in vain. In a way, laughter exercises an oppressive ideological function in this era, just as an oppressive system did. I think that the laughter forced upon you by the many soap operas, shows, and movies that you couldn't possibly watch if you had any refinement at all, that drain you of all energy if you watch them, is putting everyone in a state of insensibility and numbness. What those shows, which tell you to laugh in whatever way you can, to laugh until you're in a daze, but aren't funny and only make you sad and furious, really propagate is that you should laugh a lot, for that will keep you from thinking, and your troubles will be covered up by laughter, and won't exist when covered up, and even if they still exist, you're happy as long
as you're laughing. (There's nothing more grotesque than a group of people having dinner, laughing as they watch a vulgar comedy program on television.) Genuine laughter always has its beginning in proper humor, and is not separate from the intellect and the reflective power of the intellect. Genuine laughter has enduring strength, but vulgar laughter is strongly volatile, and lacks humor. Sadly, laughter arising from humor, founded in good sense and requiring a natural process, is growing increasingly scarce.

Reflecting thus, I laughed bitterly. And laughter, though weak, found me again before long, but it seemed like the laughter of an idiot I met on the street, a stranger, directed at me.

I continued to be in a poor condition in many ways, but I hadn't yet reached a state in which the poor condition had continued for so long that I didn't care, but I wasn't in a state in which I could do something in a new, bad mood, either.

Anyway, what kept my poor condition from growing worse, no, kept me, to an extent, from completely crumbling, was my son. Or I should say that the thought crossed my mind. But I wasn't sure if that was really the case. I kind of thought that my son wasn't able to keep me from growing worse by thinking worse thoughts. I didn't have the kind of relationship that most fathers have with their children with my son.

My son didn't live with me, and when vacation started, I brought him home and we spent several days together. I tried to spend as much time with him as possible, but it wasn't easy for me to spend time with him.

My son, who, as most children do, let me down, by being born as a boy even though I wanted a girl, and let me down again by looking like a girl at first but growing more and more into a boy, seemed bright but somewhat slow in a way, and as for myself, I tried not to be someone he didn't need, at least, or was better off without.

Once I taught him how to catch rabbits using a wire snare, not because I thought it was something that all the fathers in the world should teach their sons in all ages, but because we didn't really have anything to do together when we actually met, and I happened to think of snares. We lay a snare on a path that no one used, on a mountain at the back of my house where no rabbits lived, and when we returned later, there was nothing in the snare, of course, let alone a rabbit.

And once I bought him a slingshot. It seems incredible now, but as a boy, I made slingshots out of branches and rubber bands and caught birds with them, and I thought about making him a slingshot myself, but didn't want to bother. (I don't know about anything else, but I just can't bring myself to do bothersome things, and although I did unpleasant things even while thinking I didn't want to, I couldn't do the same with bothersome things. So when there's something that I must do, I do it thinking, if possible, that it's something unpleasant rather than bothersome.)

With the slingshot we went to the mountain to catch a magpie, since there were only magpies there. I demonstrated how to use the slingshot, but that didn't go so well, either. (It seemed that there was an eccentric old man in me, as old as could be and willing to lose all his judgment, as well as a boy around ten years of age wanting to remain in the peace of childhood, and the two appeared alternately, and the problem arose when the old man and the boy, who usually got along pretty well, looked down on each other, and a bigger problem arose when the old man
and the boy faded away, and an awkward adult who found everything bothersome appeared, and that was the case when I was dealing with my boy.) Nevertheless, he practiced how to use the slingshot as I taught him, but he wasn't very good at it, just as expected. And yet, after we climbed a steep hill, both gasping for breath because my liver was damaged from smoking, which I couldn't quit, and his wasn't fully developed yet, something amazing happened, and a stone he threw casually at a magpie sitting on a branch, which missed the target, hit the wing of a magpie that was flying up into the air, which wobbled for a moment, then steadied itself and flew away, and seeing that, he got excited and jumped up and down for joy. Seeing his great delight, I thought that it wasn't something to get so excited about that you had to jump up and down for joy. Still, I told him something that wasn't far off, that with a slingshot, you could make something like a roe deer, which lives in bigger mountains, black out for a moment although you couldn't kill it, and my son, who already has a problem believing most of what I say even though he's only nine, said with a twinkle in his eyes that we should go to a bigger mountain right away and catch something bigger, and I told him that I knew how he felt, but he should wait a little longer, until he was a little bigger.