Chapter 17The First Seam

The bottom chart in the stack lay open on the make-up table, with a pencil pinning each of its four corners.

This make-up room was on the second floor of the old building, and no one used it now. Round the mirror frame ran a row of bulbs. Most were white. Only the two on the far right were tungsten bulbs, warm yellow and very small. Across the top of the make-up table ran streaks of powder, made by thirty-two people. Once dry, some of them shone. Beside the table leaned a white porcelain bowl. Its rim had a small chip, and a little blackened powder was still in the bottom.

Across the top of the chart, five characters were printed: Seam Position Chart. Below it, in smaller print, ran a line: Every correction must be marked with its position and date. The print was black, and the lines were evenly spaced. The paper was thick. Round its edge ran a ring of pressure marks, pressed in over the years by fingers.

In the top left corner of the chart was a number: seven. It was the number of the chair.

In the middle of the chart was drawn the side of a face. Only one stretch was drawn, from the root of the ear to the end of the jaw. The lines were in pencil, very fine. Along the jawline, short lines pressed against the edge of the one before, closing inward layer after layer, so that from a distance they looked like the contour lines on a map. Beside each line was a number, and after the number a date. The numbers were handwritten, one stroke at a time, every digit very small.

The outermost seam was the longest. It lay on the left side of the jaw and was two centimetres long. Beside it the number was one, and the date was March. The digits of the year had been covered by later lines, so only the spring, many years back, could be made out. In the bottom left corner of the chart, a short length of white thread was stuck down with clear tape. The ends of the thread had gone grey.

On this chart the numbers ran from one to one hundred and forty-nine. There were forty-seven charts in all, one on top of another, kept in the drawer of the make-up table. Each sheet had the same stretch of jaw printed on it. When one was full, they moved on to the next, picking up where the last had stopped. When the drawer was pulled out, the edges of the sheets knocked against each other with a very faint sound. On the top chart, the last seam was number seven thousand. Its date was this summer.

To count backwards, you had to go from the seven-thousandth seam down to the first, turning past forty-six charts. Each time a chart was turned, the fingers had to pause on its corner, then slide past.

As the numbers went on, the pencils grew shorter. In the drawer lay a row of sharpened pencils, from long to short, set out in a line. The shortest was only a stub. It was tied with a rubber band to the end of a new pencil, very tightly. In a few places the numbers had been traced over again, in heavier strokes than the originals.

In the drawer was another stack of charts. There were thirty-one, and each had a number in the top left corner too. Most had one or two lines, and some had only a single dot. The chart numbered eight had no lines. The outline of a face was printed on the paper. The jaw was clean, and there was only one date, that February. Chart nineteen had a single line, very short, with no date beside it. It looked as if someone had drawn it in passing.

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That February, this make-up room did the make-up for an audition programme. The make-up tables were set in two rows, each with a mirror in front. The make-up artists walked from table to table, opening and closing their powder compacts, and every time one shut, it made the same sound.

Thirty-two girls stood in one row, with the same hairstyle and the same make-up. A white number slip was pinned to each collar. Each slip was fixed to the cloth with two thin pins, and each pin left a small dot in the fabric. Before filming began, a woman with a plastic ruler went from the head of the row to the end. She measured the distance from each girl’s jaw to her ear and read out a number, not a name. The numbers were written on the back of the slips. On the back of number eight was written: ninety-one. The woman was from the company, and she never came back to this make-up room.

While they waited standing, none of the thirty-two moved. One girl’s knee swayed lightly, and the nape of the girl in front swayed with it. The sway ran down the row, and then it was still again.

The camera moved from left to right, stopping on each girl for two seconds. The lights in front of the camera were very bright, and a patch of white light lay on each girl’s forehead.

Behind the camera stood a person holding a clipboard. A printed chart was clipped to it, with the space after every number still empty. Each time the camera moved past a girl, that person drew a small tick after her number.

Only four were chosen. When the names were read out, she was the second. There was no tick after number eight.

She stood seventh, and eighth was on her right.

Her mother watched in the living room. The television was old. The four corners of the screen were dim, and the sound was a little blurred. Her mother’s eyes were poor. The set stood close to the sofa. She leaned her face in and counted from left to right, then from right to left. She counted twice. Thirty-two.

She turned the volume up to full, then down, then up again. On the screen, thirty-two faces moved, all raising a hand at once and all stopping at once.

Her mother could not recognise which one was her own daughter. After the set was switched off, a white dot stayed in the middle of the screen, shrinking slowly until it was gone.

After that broadcast, she went to a clinic with no sign. The clinic was on the second floor. The chairs were white and the lights were cold. A large photograph of a face was stuck to the wall, and the face in the photograph had no lines. The doctor asked only one question: “Where do you want it changed?” Her fingertip rested on the left side of her jaw for a moment, stopped at one spot, and did not move. At that spot a fine cut was made and closed with three stitches. When the stitches came out, it left a line two centimetres long. It was the first seam on the chart. The short length of thread that came out, she took home and stuck to the bottom left corner of the chart with clear tape.

At the next broadcast, her mother recognised her in the first shot. Her mother turned the volume up one notch and said to the screen, “It’s you.”

The one who touched up the thirty-two girls’ make-up that day was a young man. He worked alone, and he mixed his own powder. He sat on a low stool with a split in one leg, which he had wound twice with a length of wire. When he reached the thirty-second girl, his wrist was still steady.

That girl, standing on her right, had the number eight on her slip. When he reached number eight, his brush stopped on the left side of the jaw. There was a very faint line there, running down slantwise from the ear. It was that girl’s own, and its colour was close to that of her skin. He did not sweep over it. The brush went round the line, and the powder fell only on either side of it.

At the end of the day, he left a brush on number eight’s make-up table, its handle pointing towards her. The bristles were cut on a slant, one side long and one side short. He did not speak. He turned to pack up the next table.

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The second seam was on the right side of the jaw. Once the left had been changed, the right looked flat, and flat in the wrong way.

The third seam was dated autumn. In the blank space beside it was a line of small pencil writing, which read “On camera.” She had not written it. After that broadcast, someone had recorded it on the chart for her. The strokes were short, and none of them trailed off.

After the third seam, she did not go back to the clinic.

She never sat in the clinic’s chair again. From then on, every date on the chart was written by her own hand. When she wrote something wrong, she drew a line through it with her fingernail, pressing hard. One end of the line ran past the edge of the paper. Then she wrote it again beside it. The crossed-out writing could still be seen from the back.

She stood in front of the mirror and pressed her fingers to her jaw. One press, and a new line came up under the skin. The line closed up by itself, leaving no scar, only a line almost too faint to see, cool to the touch. The place of each line was different. Sometimes it was on the jaw, sometimes a finger’s width in front of the ear.

Later lines were not all on the jaw. The ninety-seventh seam was behind the ear, two millimetres long, its number squeezed in beside the line. The hundred and twentieth seam was at the tail of the left eyebrow, also two millimetres long.

The hundredth seam was dated June of the following year. After the hundredth, the dates grew closer together. On some days she wrote three seams, and their numbers were crowded together, so that they could be told apart only by picking out each one with the tip of a pencil. By the three-hundredth seam she had moved on to the third chart. From then on, for every chart, she had to take it to the mirror before she could line it up with the lines on her jaw.

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The last time her mother saw her on television, she leaned close to the screen and looked for a long time, and did not recognise her.

Her mother passed away in winter. On the day she passed away, the television was on, and no one turned it off.

After that, she wanted to change the first seam back.

She looked for the way it had been. A photo frame stood on top of the television. The frame had been changed three times, and each picture put into it was newly taken. Afterwards her mother often leaned her face close to the frame and looked for a long time. When she had finished, she wiped the frame with her sleeve. In the family album too, the faces in every photograph were from later. The early ones, the few from that time, were lost during a move. The box of photographs was soaked by rain on the way. Its bottom rotted through, and only the later ones were left.

So all that was left was her own memory. She closed her eyes and tried to picture that jaw as it had been. The picture she made and the last one she had retouched lay on top of each other, and could not be pulled apart. Each time she tried, it looked more like the result of the last retouch.

The clinic later changed its sign, and different words hung over the door. She stood on the other side of the street for a while, and did not cross over.

She tried it on a sheet of paper. It was the same kind of paper as the backs of the charts. From memory she drew that jaw, three times, and each time it came out different. In the first, the lines were shorter than they are now. In the second, the lines ran up to the root of the left ear. In the third, the lines lay over the place of the seventieth seam, and she did not draw again. The three sheets were kept at the very back of the drawer, with no numbers.

On the back of the chart was a line of pencil writing, pressed very hard: Left jaw, the way it was. The rest of the back was blank. The lead broke on the last stroke of the word ‘way’, leaving a black dot.

One night that winter, she stood in front of the mirror and held the lines on the chart against her jaw, one line at a time. She looked until dawn, and not one line matched.

She retouched it once, from memory. Once it was retouched, it was further away. She pictured it again, and retouched it again. Each retouch added one more line to the chart. From a single line to a small cluster, and from a small cluster to a wide patch, one layer pressed on another.

After the seven-thousandth seam, nothing more was written on the back of the chart.

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When she came home from dancing as a child, her mother would press her untidy temple hair back behind her ear with a thumb. One press, and it lay flat. The thumb rested on the root of the ear, paused, and then let go. Her mother’s thumb was cold.

Back then, when she danced, her temple hair came loose. She did not press it back. She waited until the dance was over, and only then let her mother press it back.

The pause stayed with her. The practice mirror covered a whole wall. When she finished a sequence, she stood in front of the mirror, raised a hand, pressed her thumb to her temple, paused, and lowered it. When she finished practising, she did the same.

Later, what she pressed was the seam on her cheek. Her fingertip rested on the seam and paused. A small patch of mirror surface lifted at the side of her cheek, and she pressed it back down with her thumb.

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Later she no longer stood in front of the mirror. She sat on a chair in the last row, holding a pen. The pen was black. Round its cap ran a ring of pressure marks, pressed in over the years by fingers. Each person stood in front of the mirror, and she looked at them for three seconds, in this order: jaw, eyes, hands. One touch of the pen tip on the paper made one mark.

People outside called her the Perfect Mirror. Those three characters were not on the chart.

The first person she rejected was that girl.

That girl had not been chosen that time, but the company still kept her. It let her live in the dormitory as a trainee, and she stayed for several years. On the day of the end-of-month assessment, it was held in the practice room at the far end. The curtains were drawn. Only the row of cold white lights above the mirror frame was on. The lights shone only on the mirror side, and the wall behind was dark.

That girl paused at the door as she came in, one hand on the frame. The paint had come off a patch of the frame, and her fingers rested on the exposed wood.

She stood in front of the mirror, her jaw aligned with the lower edge of the frame, and did not move. The one sitting in the last row looked at her for three seconds, put the pen to the paper, and wrote four characters. Then turned the sheet round and pushed it across the table in front of the mirror.

The paper said “Too uneven.” The four characters were written in the remarks column, in heavy strokes. On the back, the paper had a ridge that could be felt with a finger.

That girl glanced at it and did not pick it up.

Beside the paper lay a plastic ruler, for measuring jaws. Its edge was straight and its markings were new. The one sitting in the last row did not stand, and did not look at her again. The ruler stayed on the table, and no one put it away.

That girl walked over and picked it up.

The next day, a new list went up on the notice board in the corridor. That month, twenty-three people had stood in front of the mirror, and the pen had touched down twenty-three times. Seven names had lines drawn through them, and that girl’s name was one of them. The lines were straight, and the pen had pressed hard. The words under the lines could still be read.

Later that girl came back to this practice room. This time she came in through the door, holding the roll book.

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From then on, that ruler belonged to that girl.

The desk in the dormitory had an iron frame. The paint had come off in three places. One drawer handle had broken once and was tied on with a length of wire. Every night at this desk she measured her own jaw with the ruler. The zero sat at the root of her ear, and the other end lined up with her chin. Her thumb pressed on the zero and left a shallow hollow. When she had finished, she read out a number to a room with no one in it. Then she put the ruler back in her bag, beside her keys.

The edge of the ruler had been worn round. It was the keys that had worn it. They had kept touching it for many years. On the first day of every month she took the ruler out of her bag, wiped its edge with a cloth, and put it back.

The brush belonged to that girl too. The make-up man that year had left it on her table, and she kept it in the side pocket of her bag. The wooden handle was old. Where the hand gripped it, there was a ring of pale wear. At the end of the handle was a shallow scratch, cut as a straight line. She had swept powder with it many times, and the powder did not sweep clean, so a layer of white collected in the cracks of the handle.

On the day she moved out of the dormitory, she did not take the ruler. She put it in the desk drawer, on top of an old timetable. The writing on the timetable was her own. Every square was a practice slot, and the writing stopped in the second week.

Later, a boy moved into this desk. He pulled open the drawer, and the ruler was inside.

That girl moved to a room outside. It had a bed and a small table, and no drawers. On the small table she put a water glass. The water mark on the base of the glass had dried and left a white ring.

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The old practice room in Seoul was on the third floor of the old building. The room at the end of the corridor had a wooden door frame. The paint had come off a patch, and dark wood showed beneath. There was an old scratch on the frame. The tungsten bulb by the door was warm yellow. It reached the frame but not the threshold. The corridor smelled faintly of mop water.

That girl now teaches children in this room, and she also takes the trainees’ classes. The morning children’s class had left. Only a few empty water bottles and a chair were left in the room. One bottle had a sticker with no writing on it, its corners lifting. A thin layer of fine dust lay on the windowsill. In the dust were several rows of small finger marks, left by children who had leaned at the window to look at the ground below. They lay one beside another, of different sizes. Outside was the hill. The trees were a deep colour, and the tower on the hilltop showed a short length from behind them.

The wall was a mirror. Along the lower edge of the frame ran a line of black tape, which she had put there, level with the height of the jaw. It was where her jaw had stopped on the day of the assessment. When she put it up, she measured it once with the ruler from the practice room drawer. One edge of the tape had lifted, and she pressed it flat with a fingernail.

On the whiteboard, today’s order was written in three lines, in fine writing. The first line was eight beats. The second was in pairs. The third was the end-of-month assessment. Only the date was written, not the time. The writing on the third line had been wiped and written again, smaller than the two lines above.

Before rehearsal, she took the brush out of the side pocket of her bag. She used it to brush the dust from the mirror frame, from left to right. Where it reached the line of tape, the brush went round it and swept only on either side of the line. When she had finished, she put the brush back in her bag with the bristles pointing up.

In the corner, the left speaker made no sound. The music came only from the right, tilted to one side. The barre by the wall had come loose at one end. It was bound with tape, one turn over another, and the tape on the hanging end had gone grey. She did not repair it.

That ruler was not here. The one in her hand came from the practice room drawer. Its markings were newly printed, and its edge was straight.

In the afternoon the sun came in slantwise through the window and fell on the third board. There was dust in the gaps between the boards. Counting from the window, the third board was a shade lighter than the rest, worn that way by years of feet. A thin film of moisture lay on the window glass. It had condensed there from people who had stood in the room for a long time. She drew a line through it with a fingertip, and the mark was soon covered over.

That afternoon, the thin boy stood in front of the mirror. His left shoulder sat half a finger lower than his right, and the cuffs of his hoodie were one long and one short. He had chosen a sequence of eight beats. He sat on the floor and stretched his legs for a while. When his left knee pressed down, there was a very faint click inside it. Before he got up, he looked at the sticker on the wall, which had been torn half away. His first beat landed on the third board from the window, with a dull thud. That was his beat.

In the first eight beats, his hands opened out from his chest. His fingertips went out first, and his arms followed. In the second eight beats, his toes touched the floor first, and then his foot came down.

She did not look at the boards. She looked at him in the mirror. The order in which she looked was jaw, eyes, hands. She stood by the window with her arms hanging, and her clothes had rubbed a patch of dust off the windowsill.

That dance belonged to someone else. The sticker on the wall was that person’s. That person had practised in this room up to the last week, coming in each time half a beat behind the music. She had taught that person.

In the third eight beats, the boy’s fingertips drew back first. His body moved after them, and his foot came down half a beat behind the music. That half beat was the moment his fingertips drew back first. In the fifth eight beats, his arm sat a little lower than that person’s. He had changed it himself. No one had taught it to him.

She lifted a hand and pressed her palm down, once.

The music stopped.

“Too uneven.”

She said it with her eyes still on the mirror.

“Change it back.”

When she had finished, she did not turn at once. She stood where she was, her hands hanging and her thumbs pressed to the seams of her trousers. It lasted about as long as eight beats.

In the old practice room, that girl watched the boy’s dance to the end, said “Too uneven,” and then stood in the same place for a while.