송기원 : 월행 A Journey under the Moonlight

월행 007
A Journey under the Moonlight
해설 053
Afterword
비평의 목소리 067
Critical Acclaim
작가 소개 076
About the Author

사내가 눈을 들어 봉분을 바라보았다. 문득 사내의 시선에 아내의 시체가 비쳐왔다. 발가벗은 채, 사타구니 사이에 단도를 꽂고 나자빠진 모습이었다. 만혼의 아내가 처음 가졌던 아랫배 부분이 유난히 불러 보였었다. 사내의 입술을 뚫고 기어코 흐느낌이 새어 나왔다. 봉분을 옮길 때마다 가슴 저 밑바닥에서부터 비롯하여 차츰 차오르던 어떤 것들이 급기야 거센 분류가 되어 밖으로 터져 나오는 것이었다. 사내는 두 손으로 아내의 시체를 파며 울었다. 노인이 길게 탄식을 했다.
“허어, 아무리 인종이 막돼먹은 세상이라지만…….”
낫으로 뒤통수를 찍으면서도 사내는 아내의 시체를 떠올렸었고, 공사판에서 함마를 휘두르면서도, 도살을 하면서도, 도망친 계집년을 찾으면서도, 막소주를 들이켜면서도 사내는 아내의 시체를 떠올렸었다.

The man lifted his eyes up at the mound. In his mind he could see the corpse of his wife. She was flat on her back, stark naked, a dagger stuck in her groin. Because she had their first baby her stomach had looked unusually bloated. The man felt powerless as his lips parted and he began to sob, the feelings rising from the bottom of his heart, building with every mound he had visited, finally gushing forth in a violent cascade. The man wailed as he dug up his wife’s corpse. The old man heaved a deep sigh.
“Hell, for all the misbegotten people in this world, still...”
It was always his wife’s dead body that the man had thought about. When he jabbed the back of that man’s head with a sickle, when he threw the hammer at the official announcement board, when he was working as a butcher, when he was looking for that runaway bitch, when he gulped down shot after shot of cheap soju, he was always picturing his dead wife.
-송기원, 『월행』중에서-