˝Because you hear one thing a...

"Because you hear one thing and another," Mrs. Green said. "You hear that sometimes a woman might take some pills. They get these pills to take for when their period is late and if they take them just like the doctor says and for a good purpose that’s fine, but if they take too many and for a bad purpose their kidneys are wrecked. Am I right?" "I’ve never come in contact with a case like that," Enid said. - P31

Mrs. Quinn was going to die, at the age of twenty-seven. (That was the age she gave herself—Enid would have put some years on it, but once an illness had progressed this far age was hard to guess.) When her kidneys stopped working altogether, her heart would give out and she would die. - P32

Enid had been in the same class as Rupert, though she did not mention that to Mrs. Green. She felt some embarrassment now because he was one of the boys—in fact, the main one—that she and her girlfriends had teased and tormented. - P33

Impossible that he would have forgotten. But he treated Enid as if she were a new acquaintance, his wife’s nurse, come into his house from anywhere at all. And Enid took her cue from him. - P33

Lois and Sylvie were seven and six years old, and as wild as little barn cats. - P34

그 생각이 처음 떠오른 건 내가 이혼을 겪고 있는 동...

그 생각이 처음 떠오른 건 내가 이혼을 겪고 있는 동안이었다. 나는 마흔일곱 살에 과체중이었고, 외롭고 조용한 나날들을 채워줄 자식은 없었다. 나는 일찌감치 아기를 낳지 않기로 결정한 독립적이고 현대적인 여성들 중 하나가 아니었다. 아기를 갖고 싶었지만 남편은 그럴 수 없었다. 정자부족증 때문이라고 그는 내게 말했다. 나는 인공수정을 시도하고 싶었지만 남편은 그 과정 전체가 너무치욕적인 일로 느껴진다며 거부했다. 나중에 우리의 이혼이 마무리되기 한 달 전 남편이 자신보다 열두 살 어린 새로운 여자와 강남의 한 유명 불임 클리닉에 이미 등록한 사실을 알았을 때, 나는 분노가 치밀었다. 몇 주 동안 남편을 망치로 때려죽이는 꿈을 꾸곤 했다. 물론 내게는 그런 폭력을 휘두를 용기도 없었고 그럴 만한 성향도 아니었다. 그러나 아침 드라마에 등장하는 화난아줌마처럼 바람난 남편을 공격하기 위해 광화문에 있는 그의 사무실로 난입하는 상상을 하기는 했다. 드라마 속의 아줌마는 남편의 외도를 상세히 적은 전단지를 손에 쥐고 허공에서 열심히 흔들며 동료들 앞에서 남편이 지은 죄의 목록을 큰 소리로 읊는다. 그녀의 남편은 자신이 한 짓 때문에 동료들에게 따돌림을 당하게 될 것이다. 물론 나는 이런 판타지를 결코 실행에 옮긴 적이 없다. 그런 히스테릭한 일련의 행동에 굴복하는 것은 너무치욕적인 일일 것이다. 그러나 그런 생각을 하는 것은 무척 짜릿했다.

-알라딘 eBook <이름 없는 여자의 여덟 가지 인생> (이미리내 지음, 정해영 옮김) 중에서 - P13

나는 정신과 의사와의 상담을 기다리며 여성 잡지를 휙휙 넘기다가 그 기사를 보게 되었다. 죽음을 앞둔 환자들이 죽기 전에 본인의 장례식을 준비하고 부고 기사를 쓸 수 있도록 돕는 싱가포르 호스피스 의사에 관한 내용이었다. 그 의사는 일반적인 믿음과 달리 많은 시한부 환자들이 죽음을 두려워하지 않는다고 했다. 죽음보다는 죽음 이후, 그러니까 자신의 사후에 사랑하는 사람들이 견뎌야 할 슬픔과 혼란에 대한 걱정이 더 크다고 했다. 그의 새로운 프로그램은 놀라울 정도로 뜨거운 반응을 얻었다. 많은 환자들이 본인의 장례 준비에 참여하면서 정신적, 신체적으로 상태가 더 좋아진 것 같다고 했다. 그것은 통제감과 안도감, 그리고 지구별에서의 짧은 여정으로부터 자신만의 의미를 이끌어낼 소중한 기회를 제공했다.

-알라딘 eBook <이름 없는 여자의 여덟 가지 인생> (이미리내 지음, 정해영 옮김) 중에서 - P13

The idea came to me while I w...

The idea came to me while I was going through my divorce.
I was forty-seven and overweight. I had no child who would occupy my lone, silent days. I wasn‘t one of those independent modern women who decided not to have babies early on. I wanted to have one but my husband couldn‘t - due to his oligospermia, he told me. I wanted to try IVF treatment but he refused, saying the whole process felt too demeaning to him. I was furious later when I learned that he had already signed up to a famous fertility clinic in Gangnam with that new girl, twelve years his junior, a month before our divorce was finalized. For weeks I had the occasional dream of hammering him to death. In reality, of course, I possessed neither the courage nor the penchant for violence to do it. Yet I did imagine myself bursting into his office in Gwanghwamun,
like an angry ajumma in Korean Morning Drama might do to attack her cheating husband, hands busy filling the air with leaflets that detail his treacherous deeds, all the while shouting the list of his sins in front of his coworkers, who would ostracize him for what he‘d done. Of course I never executed this fantasy: submitting to such a hysterical course of action would be too demeaning to my dignity. Entertaining the thought of it, though, was quite thrilling. - P2

˝You got blood all over your ...

"You got blood all over your arse." - P24

She had taken off her shoes to walk on the window carpet. You could see the rosy plump cushions of her heels through her stockings, and when she stretched you saw the back of her knee through the slit in her skirt. Above that was a wide but shapely behind and the line of her panties or girdle. - P25

Stockings and underwear, even clean female underwear, had a faint, private smell that was both appealing and disgusting. - P25

Words that were once as pleasant to hear as the tinkle of dimes and nickels had now turned slyly shaming. - P26

A weight hitting dark water, far down. - P26

Colonel Box would be there—in fact, they could already hear the wheeze he made, the long-drawn-out aftereffects of his asthmatic laughter. - P26

Run the gauntlet. - P27

"GLOMERULONEPHRITIS," Enid wrote in her notebook. - P31

The fact was that Mrs. Quinn’s kidneys were failing, and nothing could be done about it. Her kidneys were drying up and turning into hard and useless granular lumps. Her urine at present was scanty and had a smoky look, and the smell that came out on her breath and through her skin was acrid and ominous. And there was another, fainter smell, like rotted fruit, that seemed to Enid related to the pale-lavender-brown stains appearing on her body. Her legs twitched in spasms of sudden pain and her skin was subject to a violent itching, so that Enid had to rub her with ice. She wrapped the ice in towels and pressed the packs to the spots in torment. - P31

Her name was Mrs. Green. Olive Green. (It had never occurred to her how that would sound, she said, until she got married and all of a sudden everybody was laughing at it.) - P31

[오늘의 한문장] 검은 사슴

그녀는 햇빛과 정을 통했다.
달아오른 옥상 한가운데 웅크려앉은 의선이 햇빛과 정을 통하는 것을 명윤은 잠자코 바라보고 있었다. 명윤이 책상다리를 하고 앉은 곳은 나지막한 콘크리트 난간이 만들어준 옹색한 응달로, 그 다세대 건물의 삼십오 평 옥상에서 햇빛을 피할 수 있는 유일한 곳이었다.

-알라딘 eBook <검은 사슴> (한강 지음) 중에서 - P33