Night at the Frontier (Part 1)

Abstract

Night at the Frontier (Part 1) Kim Tong-Hwan Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé (bio) 1 “Oh, has he gotten safely across? Has my husband safely crossed the Tuman River in dead of night? “Out there, in the dark, sentries pace, in their greatcoats, guarding the frontier marked by the riverbank— they march intently, up and back. Has he got across safely without being seen?” Having parted with her husband and the cartload of salt they were smuggling, all night long the young woman waits, tense and anxious. Her hands tire from turning the spinning wheel and all night she stares into the fish-oil lamp she fuels with her sighs, and the northern winter’s night slowly deepens. 2 A sharp sound breaks the silence: O–i! like a cry from under the earth. Taking it to be a password called between soldiers, and thus as a warning [End Page 164] that they are coming from the west, the stunned villagers shudder in fear. Only the young wife reckons it to be the sound of her husband being arrested. She strikes her breast, sighs deeply. But it was only the voices of forest rangers coming back late, delayed by the snowstorm. 3 From out of the mournful soughing of wind that sounds like a sick man’s last groans, a loud cracking splits the night air, then the noise of running footsteps. The villagers turn pale and hold their breath, expecting the arrival of another disaster. Only the young wife reckons it to be the sound of her husband being struck down before he could cross the river. Grasping the doorframe, she sobs and grieves. But it was only the noise of fishermen, in this coldest time of winter, cutting through the ice by starlight. 4 By the sentry post on the river’s opposite shore, flames flare upward from burning cornstalks. In the light from the darkly crimson bonfire, the guards, drunk on rye liquor, are singing poems by Yi T’ae-baek, “Moon, O Moon!” 5 Oh, the night grows even darker. Slowly, the night at the frontier becomes the darkest of all. From the clear night sky, great snowflakes fall, a few pale stars shine, [End Page 165] blink, like the moist eyes of a girl who has lost her mother. And on the snowswept riverbank, the bare trunk of a white poplar stands alone, dancing in the arms of the wind. Every cracking sound of its branches makes the woman’s heart leap, leap with dread. 6 The electric lines are weeping sorrowfully, across nations, telegraph lines cry bitterly. Houses, poplars, mountain valleys, donkeys in stables— all cry with them. The night is so cold almost no one attempts to reach Manchuria. None of the people from Hamgyeong who, night after night, smuggle bundles on their backs across the ice-covered river, are on the move. In Hoiryeong, the sound of the last car has died away. 7 In the far hills where no flowers blossom even in spring, cold wind blows the snow down into the middle of the river where it forms banks as high as the tomb of Qin Shi Huang. Then the wind scoops out depressions deep as Anapchi Pond before blowing away. Sky, earth, all wrapped in darkness, only moonlight like platinum stretches away: snow for five hundred li, moonlight for three thousand li. The winter night over the Tuman River is so cold, so silent. [End Page 166] Brother Anthony of Taizé Brother Anthony of Taizé has published more than thirty volumes of translations of Korean poetry. Recently, he published ten volumes of work by Ko Un, along with volumes by Lee Si-Young and Kim Soo-bok. Born in Cornwall in 1942, he has lived in Korea since 1980 and was naturalized as a Korean citizen in 1994. Brother Anthony has received the Republic of Korea Literary Award (Translation), the Daesan Award for Translation, the Korea PEN Translation Prize, and the Ok-gwan (Jade Crown) Order of Merit for Culture from the Korean government. He is also emeritus professor of English at Sogang University and Chair of the International Creative Writing Center at Dankook University. Copyright © 2015...