There was a bang on the apartment door. Very unusual,
since I normally live in splendid isolation, five stories up, between
the girls toilet (OK until they come home drunk at midnight), and
my Indonesian neighbour (OK, unless as sometimes happens, he gets
a bit carried away with his prayers). But the knock had happened
a couple of times lately, so its signature was also an announcement
-- two sharp bangs then a silence, which seemed to say "see. I've
tried and failed, but you can't say I didn't try".
As I opened the door he was already retreating. "Ah",
he grumbled, shuffling to a halt. "I was going to tell Choi that
I'd tried and failed but you know I've got a headache and I feel
sick and I ate something last night and somebody made me drink something
and my neuralgia is giving me hell and I can feel hay fever or something
because is it spring yet and when do classes start anyway".
"Hello Knox, welcome to wonderland. What's news?"
I weighed the odds of getting a decodable answer. Pretty slim. Knox
was pointing to a tree in the diminishing distance.
"You know how old that tree is? It's all in the branches.
See you count down from there (chopping the air), then there (chopping
a little lower) and like that and that and that and that and you
have the age of the tree."
The blur of grey branches a parachute jump away listened
impassively, confident of its anatomy, but probably cursing that
with roots under six inches of concrete it couldn't stomp away in
a huff. These American tourists thought they knew everything. Hmm.
"Uh, Knox, you were after something?"
He slumped against the hallway window. "No I'm not
going. Why should I go and I told him that and when do classes start
anyway and I don't have a tie but you know I went to one of these
things once in the other place and it was a drag. But anyway Choi
says you have to be at the ceremony at eleven. Ah I've got a headache
but I told you didn't I."
Yes Knox, you told me, and I think I have a headache
too. Hell, I didn't even go to my own graduation ceremony. Of all
the silly rituals dedicated to the human ego, graduation ceremonies
must rate down at the zombie level along with hair perms, politics,
and the celebrity interview. Remote in a reluctant corner of my
mind though, a small voice said that tolerating this one in Korea
might be a smart survival move.
I was early, feeling silly in an unaccustomed suit.
The new chamber was almost deserted, its spaces cavernous. There
was a parliamentary air about the place, an ambience of crimson
and black surrounds, a raised stage of polished wood for the dignitaries,
rosettes of red, white and blue draped along the margin of the platform.
The audience floor was of pristine white, with neat arcs of white
auditorium seating, upholstered in crimson. On three sides of the
chamber, perhaps seven or eight meters above the lower floor, was
a gallery with extra seating at the back and standing room for the
world's press at the sides. This was bordered by a polished steel
and wood railing, waist high, with large panels of heavy plate glass
between the posts. In short, kings and presidents could come without
embarrassment to the college's ambitious investment in new property.
Geography itself gave these buildings a special grandeur, for the
campus had grown in a narrow valley, high and steep, with its original
constructions filling the upper reaches. Now in a bold architectural
move, a great bridge of concrete had been thrown across the entire
width of the lower valley -- multistories on each wing, and a three
story line of windows between, above an enormous campus gateway
of marble pillars.
Well, there was no point in being a token foreigner
on show until all the pomp and circumstance arrived. I retreated
outside into the weak winter sunshine. Two American colleagues had
already made the same move, so we stood there in imperial glory
at the top of a sweeping flight of plaza steps, surveying the conquered
lands, while an occasional graduating student in bat wings and mortar
board sidled up to say a polite good bye. The plaza was quite painterly,
almost a Renoir. Encapsulated by the bright walls of that great
dam of buildings were small clusters of spindly black figures, sprays
of flowers, three arches of multicolored balloons in front of a
fountain, and several photographer's booths which had magically
appeared at the scent of business... The driveway trees, which would
be a bower of green in six weeks, still stood with stark webs of
twigs pointing at the sky.
We chatted. One was already committed to move to a
university 500km to the north; others had vanished a month ago to
remake old careers in the fabled West, or headed south across continents
to the bars and whorehouses of tropical Bangkok. A handful of new
faces would appear within days, their pale visages catapulted into
a bewildering north Asian culture. Their senses would be sharp with
new experience for a month, they would learn a few funny words,
then give up with just the wherewithal to ask the ajossi for
a glass of beer. They would stumble into a classroom, uttering in
their barbaric tongue, but mostly with no idea of where to begin.
Some would find a way to muddle through, and a few would depart
cursing. They would, for the convocation of Korean professors now
assembling in their academic gowns, merely belong to that revolving
blur of itinerant psychotic labourers who happened to speak English
and were needed on the advertising posters. Each of us quietly wondered
for how many seasons we would stand exhibited in the sunshine on
this flight of stairs, before also vanishing like avatars into the
warp space of other universes.
It was surprising. Already the appointed hour had
passed and there was no sign of the convocation. With a sudden suspicion,
we pattered back in through the big glass doors to recheck the assembly
chamber. Ah, abracadabra. Mysteriously it was packed. The worthies
were assembled in their glory on the lofty platform, and the President
was intoning benedictions, or whatever college presidents do at
graduation ceremonies. Clearly we had once more reconfirmed our
reputations as untrustworthy vagabonds. There was no help for it.
A charge to the stage at this point would be as welcome an invasion
of Visigoths. "To the gallery", I muttered. We clattered up the
stairs. At once I could see that this gallery was a wonderfully
civilized innovation. The waxwork figures on their polished stage
dare not move a muscle. The credulous flock of graduates in their
black gowns below waited, frozen under the gaze of proud parents,
to be plucked forth for a moment's recognition. But up here in the
clouds there was a steady hum of irrelevant conversation, bodies
came and went, shoulders jostled for a peek at the circus, then
went outside for a smoke. In short, it was the perfect way to be
there without being there.
With mild puzzlement, a wayward Korean professor greeted
me. "Not invited?" he asked. Slightly rumpled, in an open neck shirt,
he was more of an enigma than we were. At my return question mark,
he looked wry. "Declined the invite", he said dryly. An unusually
westernised approach... Now the Honorary Doctor was speaking, and
we all fell silent. The Honorary Doctor was without question the
only seriously important person in our little campus valley. It
was her tough business sense which had built the textile empire
which built the assembly chamber, built the new buildings, built
the old campus, put the worthies on display below, and put me on
a plane from Australia fifteen months ago. "What's she saying?",
I asked, sotto voce. "Saying?" The Korean glanced
sideways at me, as to one who is slightly simple. "She's asking.
She wants cash contributions from the alumni to cover this extravagance."
Hmm, silly me.
Third off the rhetorical rank came the Wizard. The
Wizard, in his grey Buddhist monk's habit, with his solemn shaven
head and gravelly voice, is a fixture at all college ceremonies.
He is undoubtedly a fine and reverent gentleman, but generations
of disreputable foreigners have taken one look and christened (?)
him with the epithet, so The Wizard he remains. I did not dare ask
what the Wizard was intoning, but it was a fair bet that it had
to do with blessings and good fortune for the college's impressive
new additions, not to mention prayers for transition from a lowly
two-year institution to the coveted status of four-year university.
Our futures and our respect, we all understood, turned on this enterprise.
We were at a delicate juncture. ... All of which makes what happened
next a bit chilling. Maybe the Local Hill God wasn't invited.
On a cold, wet night long ago I was standing amid
the looming shadows of a ship repair yard. I was tired, and caked
with filthy grease from the bowels of a gaunt cargo ship whose innards
we had been extracting on a double work shift. Now above me a dimly
seen gantry crane was lifting our handiwork up through the dark
hatches of the ship. A nearby tractor would drag the massive machine
parts to hangar of sparks and forges and giant lathes. But my job
was done. My mind was slipping to rest. So I hardly sensed it coming.
Somewhere high on the wire of that gantry crane, a U-bolt suddenly
crystallised. Five tons of death, a steel shaft thicker than my
body, rushed past my shoulder and crunched into the slimy concrete
with a dull whoomp which made me more scared than anything before
or since. Sometimes I still wake in fright, and remember that there
are moments when Fate makes a very close visit.
I know the sound of breaking glass. This was quite
different. Toughened quarter inch plate glass doesn't break. From
seven meters up it shears, and slices as it hits the floor with
a finger nail-tearing rasp, then a reverberating clang. The awful
interruption caught in the back of the Wizard's throat, and choked
him to silence. There was a tumultuous, soundless fifteen seconds.
The air froze as Fate waited to decide about death; then there came
a rush of breath as several hundred people exhaled at once. Death
had passed by, miraculously and inexplicably, for the murderous
edge of that glass panelling, as it left the gallery railing, had
almost nowhere to go down where there wasn't a mortar board and
a black gown waiting. Almost nowhere, and it found nowhere.
What happened next was characteristically Korean.
Nothing happened. Nothing was seen to have happened. The Wizard
resumed in mid-sentence, the wax figures on the stage remained waxed,
the graduates remained immobile under the fixed gaze of their parents
and friends. Not a glance slid sideways to the dully gleaming sheet
of delinquent glass. Later the disreputable foreigners would add
it to their jokes, but what Korean could be so insouciant ? No,
nothing had happened. Maybe time would help us to forget that anything
might have happened, even in a rumour. But it was, we all secretly
knew, too late. An icy splinter was lodged into the heart of every
alumnus. There had been an Omen.
.
* Note on personal
names: all names in this Diary have been changed to protect the
privacy of individuals, unless stated otherwise.
"Omen"... copyrighted to Thor May
2002; all rights reserved
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