The Cabinet by Un-su Kim; translated by Sean Lin Halbert
A large purchase of alcohol
The Cabinet by Un-su Kim; translated by Sean Lin Halbert
Angry RobotOctober 2021Selected by Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
Whether it’s Squid Game, Parasite or Booker International nominee Cursed Bunny, anyone familiar with Korean art and media knows that it is often brilliantly surreal, darkly comic and anti-capitalist. With its thinly veiled criticism of work culture and social roles, we can also add The Cabinet by Un-su Kim to that list. Office worker Mr Kong struggles to look after a filing cabinet, “Cabinet 13”, containing files of people’s strange abilities and bizarre experiences. As the narrative switches between the files in Cabinet 13 and Mr Kong’s daily life, a tone which starts off relatively light becomes increasingly dispirited as the novel proceeds. Much credit is due to Sean Lin Halbert for his skilful translation. – Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
For 178 days, I repeatedly woke up, opened a can of beer, drank the beer, crumpled the beer can, and cracked peanuts until I collapsed from exhaustion. Sometimes I would pee into the toilet and watch the urine stream out of my body with a blank stare. Sometimes the sun outside my window would glare like a tropical blaze before tripping on the powerlines over the sunset, and the hazy sound of car horns would soar into the sky faster than a speeding bullet. But just like the laundry hanging from the townhouse balconies opposite my apartment meant nothing to me, these things also meant nothing to me. The wind would rustle the laundry on the opposite balcony, the sun would dry it, then someone would come out and air out the clothes before folding them. What was it they were trying to air out? I would ask myself while watching a woman from the townhouses air out grains of sunlight. Perhaps she was trying to get rid of her husband’s sundried sperm – those desiccated spermatozoa that were beyond resurrection. But I wasn’t really that interested in what the woman was trying to air out. The only reason I was merely imagining such fanciful things was because it was what was in front of my eyes. Sometimes I would get a call from utilities pressing me to pay my bills, but I would just half listen to them or say I didn’t have any money. I also got a couple calls from what I think was the tax office. I found it laughable that buying 450 boxes of canned beer was grounds for getting an audit.
“We’re aware that you’ve recently purchased a large amount of beer. Such a large purchase of alcohol needs to be reported. We’ve had instance of undocumented illegal distribution before. So, was the beer for some event? If so, could you give me the name of the event. We need it for documentation.”
“There’s no event, nothing like that. I’m just drinking it by myself.”
“Come again? You mean to say you’re drinking 450 boxes of beer by yourself? That’s impossible.”
Click!
I drank those cans of beer for 178 days straight. To be honest, I might have been more interested in crumpling the cans than I was in drinking the beer. Inside me, there was a silent churning riverbed of violent despair and helplessness that could not mend itself. Or at least I thought there was. Come to think of it, I’m starting to wonder if it was ever there at all. Can people really die from a broken heart? † Probably not. Humans can’t die from love – at least, not me, apparently. I stopped on day 178, even though there was still some remaining beer and peanuts. There was no reason for my stopping, just as there was no reason for my starting. You either keep doing something or you stop doing something, that’s life. Anyway, by then, strewn about my apartment were enough beer cans to make my apartment an aluminium deposit. On the last day, I threw away all the cans and said to myself:
“I guess I have nowhere else to run. Maybe it’s time to get some fresh air.”
I’ll never forget the taste of the seolleongtang I ate that day after leaving my house for the first time in 178 days. I cried to myself over that bowl of seolleongtang, ‡ but it wasn’t in reflection or regret. I realise now they were tears of joy – joy brought about by those delicious hot mouthfuls of soup. ◉
† To this question posed by poets and physicians for centuries, there is a simple answer in the form of “taktsubo cardiomyopathy” known colloquially as “heartbreak syndrome”. First diagnosed in Japan in 1990, and extremely rare, taktsubo cardiomyopathy – which resembles the effects of a heart attack – is caused by a massive rush of adrenaline relating to a stressful or traumatic event, such as a broken heart.
‡ Seolleongtang is a cloudy off-white Korean broth made from ox bone and brisket. Its name is said to derive from sacrifices – or Sŏnnongje – made to ancestors during the Joseon dynasty which lasted from 1392 to 1897.
