영어소설 (넌픽션) 시리즈: 이야기 2/5
지난 이야기에 이어 이번에는 두번째 에피소드입니다. 바로 아래 링크는 제 Youtube 에 올린 영어 voice 영상입니다. 예전에 올렸던 한국어 소설 version 은 맨 아래 걸어놓았습니다. 한국어나 영어나 이들 이야기들을 통해 제가 느끼는 감정은 같은데, 여러분들은 어떤 느낌이 드실지 궁금하네요. 한국어와 영어를 비교하시면서 듣고 읽으셔도 좋겠습니다.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcJXgXLwOzU&t=23s
The winter break of 1988, which began on December 1st, had me excited from the very first day. The magical city of Manhattan, commuting alongside true New Yorkers, bagels and coffee becoming part of my daily routine, a pretty generous weekly paycheck despite being a high school student, and the fact that I got to work alongside a wonderful young lady named Holly — all of it had me buzzing with excitement. Of course, she was 26, ten years my senior, but just as a teenage boy’s foolish imagination knows no bounds, I felt as if she were someone incredibly close to me. Of course, this was rooted in her consideration and kindness towards a Korean-American boy who didn’t know the city well — no, who knew it far too little. But like everyone else, I was just a naive kid, full of silly thoughts, imagining that the musicians on MTV or VH1 were simply cool, and that if I just mimicked their songs, I too could look cool like them.
Leaving our house in Queens at 7 a.m. and taking the №7 subway, I’d enter Manhattan about 45 minutes later through that famous tunnel under the 59th Street Bridge. The subway station where 59th Street met Lexington Avenue was the one I passed through every single day. Stepping out, steam billowing from manholes here and there created a peculiar urban atmosphere. It was almost identical to Gotham City in the Batman movies, but unless you experienced it firsthand, it felt very different from the actual sensation. You might recall that Die Hard 1, starring Bruce Willis, was playing in theaters back then. Seeing posters of him — still quite handsome for the time — all over the subway platforms made me feel like I was some “ordinary New Yorker” in my early twenties, not a high school kid. Of course, this too was just another branch of a teenager’s endless imagination.
Holly and I spent almost all our time at the store starting at 8:30 AM, and we organized and managed the inventories in the basement storage twice a day. We adjusted the humidity and temperature in the morning and repeated the same tasks around 8 PM when closing time came. Then, one afternoon less than ten days before Christmas, following my uncle’s advice that “we need to prepare because many customers come starting ten days before Christmas,” we began restocking the old inventories to the back and stacking new arrivals in the front shelves in the basement warehouse and removing dust from them. True to my uncle’s words — he’d run the store there for twenty years — this pen shop, which had been so quiet until the late November, suddenly became bustling from the next day onward, with over a hundred visitors coming and going daily. Most of the visitors and customers were from the affluent neighborhoods east of Manhattan, specifically the area spanning from 65th to 90th Streets east of Central Park. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was located less than ten blocks away. While it was easy for these residents to access works by famous artists due to the proximity of such a museum, I learned then that they also greatly enjoyed and purchased works by mid-career or emerging artists quite frequently ay nearby galleries as well. The art of writing with the use of fountain pens and calligraphy pens was also in fashion back then by the same crowd who bought fine paintings.
I believe it was December 20th. Holly and I were working late organizing the warehouse. The building was over thirty years old, so whenever we worked in the warehouse, the sound and vibration of the 4, 5, and 6 subway lines running north-south right beneath us on Lexington Avenue felt quite close. That night was no different. Even as Holly and I sat side by side on chairs inside the warehouse, taking a brief break, the vibration felt quite strong. Suddenly, Holly grabbed my hand tightly and looked at me. It happened so suddenly I didn’t even have time to be startled. I just stared into her eyes — those beautiful brown eyes — holding my breath. A few seconds passed… Then she laughed, “Ha ha!” and said:
“I didn’t mean to startle you, but apparently you seem quite frightened. I’m so sorry.”
“No, no… it’s just that…. you held my hand, so…”
“Alright. Now, I want you to try this with me. Come.”
She said this as she led me to the only empty wall among the four walls of the warehouse. Of course, my hand was still held in hers, and the sensation I felt through her fingers… was cold. “Her hands are really cold…” I thought to myself, while a random thought also popped into my head: “They say women with cold hands aren’t kind-hearted. Does that apply to white women too?”
The warehouse wasn’t just an ordinary warehouse. To preserve the pens perfectly, quite expensive equipment and devices meticulously controlled the temperature, humidity, and even the scent. The smell there… well… it was best described as the pleasant aroma of paper that had been thoroughly dried, crisp and fresh. The walls were made of wood, and the wall Holly led me to was also covered in light oak-colored wooden panels. The unique scent of wood, the clean smell of specially treated chemicals, and the various aromas of the papers blended together, filling my nostrils with an exotic aroma.
Holly led me to that wall and stood facing me. Then she said:
“Alright, put your ear against the wall and stand there.”
“Okay, got it.”
“Alright, and when I say ‘closer’, press your ear and hands really tight and close to the wall. Got it?”
I nodded, then stood in a slightly awkward posture, my right ear pressed close to the wall and both hands placed fairly close to it. She stood in almost the same position. After a moment, a slight vibration began, as if the subway were approaching.
“Now, try — put your ear and your hands really tight and close to the wall.”
Shortly after, the subway’s sound and vibration came through the wall strongly. The sound of the train’s wheels passing over the tracks was transmitted in a consistent pattern through sound and vibration. The only difference from other subway sounds was that these sounds and vibrations felt as if they were being transmitted and amplified through some other space. Like an echo, it felt as if there was another empty space somewhere between the tunnel the train was passing through and the basement where Holly and I were.
Holly, who was facing me in the same position, feeling the same sound and vibration, probably read my expression and asked:
“I think you know exactly what I felt from the sound and vibration. I can see it in your face.”
“I suppose so. So, what’s out there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sounds like there’s an echo passing through right between the subway tunnel and this place.”
She smiled and told me this story. Long ago, very long ago, before the current subway system was in use, due to an urban planning mistake, tunnels built incorrectly were left behind in various places in Manhattan. At the 59th Street subway station, there are a few doors that lead into these secret tunnels. The city maintains them, but they’re structurally unsuitable for train cars to pass through. She also mentioned that if you look closely at the tunnel route while riding the 6 train from 59th Street to the 80th Street elevated station, you might catch a glimpse of these secret tunnels. Manhattan was already a place of wonder and mystery, but this story made me fall even more in love with the city.
I still haven’t figured out whether the story Holly told me was an urban legend, or a real story. Doesn’t matter then and now. But what is still precious is that, leaning against the wall like that, gazing at each other, she and I listened to the sound of passing trains at least five more times. Laughing, we simply let about thirty minutes slip by, wondering what was so amusing.
That night grew late, and by the time I finished my backlog of work, it was 10 PM… Lexington Avenue had quieted down too, and I remember the steam billowing from the manhole I’d seen that morning rising even whiter against the night’s darkness. It was late, so Holly hailed a taxi for me. I remember getting into the taxi she called and waving goodbye out the window… the sight of Holly through the rear window of the yellow cab… her face, wearing a red half-coat, waving at me and smiling brightly, remains vividly etched in my memory even now.
- continues on the next post
https://brunch.co.kr/@acacia1972/53