어쩌다가 골른 이 책을 시작하고서 보딩스쿨 얘기가 계속 나오길래 설마 지금 내가 성장소설을 읽어야 하는건 아니겠지 했는데. 삼분의 일 정도 읽었을 즈음 라천에서 이동진기자가 네버렛미고 영화를 리뷰해 주는 걸 듣고서 아. 이런 내용이었구나. 계속 읽었다.
절반을 넘기기까지 계속 지루하면서도 sci-fi 소설인데도 과학얘기는 하나도 안나오는 게 신기하여 쭉 읽다가 주룩주룩 눈물을 흘리기도 하고 마지막 장을 - 덮은건 아니고, 킨들로 읽어서 버튼을 클릭클릭하여 - 넘기고서. 이틀이 지났는데 마음이 아직도 허.... 하다. 헛헛.
복제인간이라는 것이 아직은 생소하기도 하고, 또 내가 결단코 공감할 수 있는 감정이 아니기에 멀뚱멀뚱 안타까운 마음만 들면서도, 21세기 클론이라는 이슈에 대해 좀 더 구체적으로 고민해보게도 하기도 하지만. 네버렛미고에는 인간이 대상화 시킬 수 없는, timeless한 측면에서, 운명, 시간 이런거가 간접적으로 강조되기도 한다.
다른(?) 인간들의 욕망에 대한 수단을 위해서 만들어진 Kathy, Tommy, Ruth를 바라보는 진짜(?) 인간의 시선에 애처로움이 듬뿍 실릴 수 있지만. 그들에게는 주어진 시간이 제한된 반면에 보통 인간에게는 인생의 시간에 대한 개념이 제한적이기에, 사는 모습을 놓고 볼 때 누가 누굴 보고 동정심을 갖는게 자연스러운건지는 아리송이다.
캐시와 토미의 마지막 대면,
언젠가 내가 사랑하는 사람과 보내는 그 마지막 날이 딱 이랬으면 좋겠다.
Then I came in one day and it was the last time.... Tommy didn't look any different either, but when we started talking, it
was hard to pretend this was just another visit. Then again, we'd talked
over so much in the previous weeks, it wasn't as though we had anything
in particular we had to get through. And I think we were reluctant to
start any new conversation we'd regret not being able to finish
properly. That's why there was a kind of emptiness to our talk that day.
캐시와 토미와 루스 -- 이젠 너를 보내게 해 줘 =_=
more quotes from the book:
I can see now, too, how the Exchanges had a more subtle
effect on us all. If you think about it, being dependent on each other
to produce the stuff that might become your private treasures--that's
bound to do things to your relationships.
"It's all part of what made Hailsham so special," she said once. "The way we were encouraged to value each other's work."
"True,"
I said. "But sometimes, when I think about the Ex-changes now, a lot of
it seems a bit odd. The poetry, for instance. I remember we were
allowed to hand in poems, instead of a drawing or a painting. And the
strange thing was we all thought that was fine, we thought that made
sense."
"Why shouldn't it? Poetry's important."
"But we're
talking about nine-year-old stuff, funny little lines, all misspelt, in
exercise books. We'd spend our precious tokens on an exercise book full
of that stuff rather than on something really nice for around our beds.
If we were so keen on a person's poetry, why didn't we just borrow it
and copy it down ourselves any old afternoon? But you remember how it
was. An Exchange would come along and we'd be standing there torn
between Susie K.'s poems and those giraffes Jackie used to make."
-- 출판사가 사업자 등록을 할 때 사업종목을 "제조업"으로 하는 것 만큼 우스꽝스럽고 아이러니 하다. 인간의 분류시스템의
한계, the realm of the-inexpressible-by-human-beings 을 단적으로 보여주는.
But
by the time we were ten, we'd grown more ambivalent about it. The
Exchanges, with their system of tokens as currency, had given us a keen
eye for pricing up anything we produced.
We rummaged around those
shops, and in all honesty, after the first few minutes, I think Judy
Bridgewater had more or less slipped from our minds. We were just
enjoying looking through all those things together; drifting apart then
finding ourselves side by side again, maybe competing for the same box
of bric-a-brac in a dusty corner lit up by a shaft of sun.
Then of
course I found it. I'd been flicking through a row of cassette cases, my
mind on other things, when suddenly there it was, under my fingers,
looking just the way it had all those years ago: Judy, her cigarette,
the coquettish look for the barman, the blurred palms in the background.
I
didn't exclaim, the way I'd been doing when I'd come other items that
had midly excited me. I stood there quite still, looking at the plastic
case, unsure whether or not I was delighted. For a second, it even felt
like a mistake. The tape had been the perfect excuse for all this fun,
and now it had turned up, we'd have to stop. Maybe that was why, to my
own surprise, I kept silent at first; why I thought about pretending
never to have seen it. And now it was there in front of me, there was
something vaguely embarrassing about the tape, like it was something I
should have grown out of. I actually went as far as flicking through the
cassette on and letting its neighbour fall on it. But there was the
spine, looking up at me, and in the end I called Tommy over.
"I am please d for you, Kath, It's just that, well, I wish I'd found
it." Then he did a small laugh and went on: "Back then, when you lost
it, I sued to think about, in my head, what it would be like if I found
it and brought it to you. What you'd say, your face, all of that."
It was like she was willing her eyes to see right inside herself, so she
could patrol and marshal all the better the separate areas of pain in
her body--the way, maybe, an anxious carer might rush between three or
four ailing donors in different parts of the country.
"... We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your
souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at
all."
"You know why it is, Kath, why everyone worries so much about the
fourth? It's because they're not sure they'll really complete. If you
knew for certain you'd complete, it would be easier. But hey never tell
us for sure."
"Kath, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. But I've been
thinking it over a lot. Kath, I think I ought to get a different carer."
