Human Acts

  If you’ll allow me to.

  If you’ll please allow me.

  The street lights lining the road which branches off to the funeral hall and the emergency department, the main building and the annex, all switch themselves off at exactly the same time. As you walk along the straight white line which follows the centre of the road, you raise your head to the falling rain.

  Don’t die.

  Just don’t die.

  6

  The Boy’s Mother. 2010

  I followed you as soon as I spotted you, Dong-ho.

  You had a good head of steam on, whereas I’m a bit doddery these days. Would I ever catch you up? If you’d turned your head just a little to the side I’d have been able to see your profile, but you just kept going, for all the world as though there was something driving you on.

  Middle-school boys all had their hair cut short back then, didn’t they, but it seems to have gone out of fashion now. That’s how I knew it had to be you – I’d know that round little chestnut of a head anywhere. It was you, no mistake. Your brother’s hand-me-down school uniform was like a sack on you, wasn’t it? It took you till the third year to finally grow into it. In the mornings when you slipped out through the main gate with your book bag, and your clothes so neat and clean, ah, I could have gazed on that sight all day. This kid didn’t have any book bag with him; the hands swinging by his sides were empty. Well, he must have put it down somewhere. There was no mistaking those toothpick arms, poking out of your short shirtsleeves. It was your narrow shoulders, your own special way of walking, loping like a little fawn with your head thrust slightly forward. It was definitely you.

  You’d come back to me this one time, come back to let your mother catch just a glimpse of you, and this doddery old woman couldn’t even catch you up. An hour I spent searching among the market stalls, down the alleyways, and you weren’t there. My knees were throbbing something awful and I felt dizzy as a whirligig, so I just plumped right down on the ground where I was. But I knew if someone from the neighbourhood saw me there they’d be bound to kick up a fuss, so I pushed myself to my feet even though my head was still swimming.

  Following you all the way into the market alleys, I guess I hadn’t realised what a distance I’d come; getting back home was such a slog that my throat was soon parched. Of course, I’d gone and come out without so much as a single coin in my pocket, so all I could think of was to stick my head into the nearest shop and cadge a glass of water. Then again, they might think I was some old beggar-woman come to bother them. So I just had to keep on walking, supporting myself against the wall whenever there was one to hand. I shuffled by the construction site with my hand clamped tightly over my mouth. There was dust flying all over the place, and it set me coughing. How had I not noticed it when I’d gone by in the other direction? Somewhere where there was such an almighty racket as all that, where the road was being carved up.

  Last summer the torrential rain made potholes in the alley in front of our house. The kids from the neighbourhood were forever losing their footing there, and if the wheel of a pushchair accidentally went in it was in danger of never coming out again. In the end, the city council sent some people to re-lay the tarmac. This was early September, when some days were still real scorchers. They fetched the boiling tarmac in a wheelbarrow, bubbling like a stew. Poured it down, smoothed it out and gave it a good trampling until it’d firmed up.

  On the evening the workmen finally packed up their stuff and left, I thought I’d just go and have a look at it. They’d strung a thin rope barrier around the newly laid tarmac, though, so I kept to the edges and tried to tread as lightly as possible. I could feel my battered old body slowly absorbing its warmth like a tree sucks up water: first my ankles, then my calves, then my aching knee joints. The next morning the rope was gone, so I ventured out onto the surface. It was much warmer in the centre than the edges had been, flooding into me like a wave. I walked right the way up and down the alley after lunch and dinner, and the next morning too. Your elder brother and his wife were down from Seoul, and I could see her wondering what’d got into me. ‘Wouldn’t you like to sit down, Mother?’ she asked. ‘That tarmac must still be awfully hot …’

  ‘Ah, the cold’s deep in my bones. Do you know how warm this stuff is? It’ll do my joints a world of good.’

  Your brother shook his head, murmuring to himself about how something wasn’t right with me. He’d been suggesting I move in with him for a few years now. ‘Where did she run off to?’ I heard him mutter.

  The tarmac held its heat for three days straight, but eventually it cooled down. Nothing to feel regretful over there, I knew, but I couldn’t help wishing it’d stayed. All the same, I’d wander out there after lunch to stand on it for a bit and wait. After all, I thought, it might still be just that bit warmer than other places. And if I stood there and kept a good look out, who’s to say I wouldn’t spot you again, striding by like the last time?

  I can’t get my head around why I didn’t just call your name that day. Why I just came tottering on behind, struggling for breath and dumb as a mute. If I call your name next time, will you please just turn around? You don’t need to say ‘yes, Mum?’ or anything like that. Just turn round so I can see you.

  But it wasn’t really you, was it?

  No.

  It can’t have been.

  I buried you with my own two hands. Removed your PE jacket and your sky-blue tracksuit bottoms, and dressed you in your dark winter uniform, over a white shirt. Tightened your belt just so and put clean grey socks on you. When they put you in a plywood coffin and loaded it up onto the rubbish truck, I said I’d ride at the front to watch over you. I didn’t have a clue where the truck was heading. I was too busy staring back to the rear, to where you were.

  Those hundreds of people in their dark clothes looked like ants carrying coffins up the sandy mound. My memory’s hazy, but I can recall your brothers standing there, tears trickling down over lips pressed tight together. The words your father said to me before his death, how stunned he’d been when, instead of crying like all the others, I’d pulled a handful of grass out of the turf they’d removed for the grave, and swallowed it. Swallowed it, sank down to the ground and vomited it back up again then, once it had clawed its way out of me, yanked up another fistful and stuffed it into my mouth. Mind you, I can’t remember any of that myself. The stuff that happened before, before the truck carried us off to the cemetery, that’s clear enough. More than clear enough. How your face looked that last time, right before the lid was put on the coffin. How ashen it was, how haggard. I’d never realised you were so deathly pale.

  Later, your middle brother explained that your face was so white because of all the blood you’d lost when they shot you. And that that was why the coffin barely weighed a thing. Not just because you were such a little slip of a thing. Your brother’s own eyes were all bloodshot as he ground the words out. I will pay them back for this evil, he said, and I can tell you that knocked me for six. What are you talking about? I demanded. How could it ever be possible to ‘pay back’ the evil of the country murdering your brother? If anything were to happen to you, I wouldn’t be long for this world.

  And even now thirty years have gone by, on the anniversaries of your and your father’s death, I find myself troubled when I watch your brother straighten up after bowing over the offerings. The thin line of his lips, the stoop of his shoulders, the flecks of white in his hair. It’s the soldiers, not him, that your death should have weighed on, so why did he grow so old before his time, so much quicker than all his friends? Is he still troubled by thoughts of revenge? Whenever I think this, my heart sinks.

  *

  Your eldest brother’s quite the opposite, always sure to keep a smile on his face, and never a hint of anything else. Twice a month he comes down to visit, to slip me a little something for the housekeeping and make sure I’m all set up for meals. Then he’s back up to Seoul the very same day, so his wife will never eve
n know he was gone. Your middle brother lives practically round the corner, but the eldest has always been kindly by nature.

  You, your father and your eldest brother are all cut from the same cloth, you know. Your long waist and sloping shoulders are a family trait. As for your ever-so-slightly elongated eyes, your square front teeth, you were a carbon copy of your brother. Even now, when he laughs and reveals those two front teeth, broad and flat as a rabbit’s, the look of youthful innocence they give him clashes with the lines etched deeply around his eyes.

  Your eldest brother was eleven when you were born. He turned into a teenage girl around you, running home as soon as school was out so he could dandle you on his knee. He cooed over your pretty smile, supported your neck with tender care while he held you in his arms, and rocked you back and forth until you gurgled with delight. After you’d passed your first birthday and he could carry you on his back in a sling, he’d strap you on and proceed to stride around the yard, singing painfully out of tune.

  Who would’ve thought that such a sweet, sensitive boy as that would end up scrapping with your middle brother? That now, more than twenty years down the line, they’d find it so painful even to be in the same room, barely able to exchange more than a handful of words?

  It happened three days after your father died, when the eldest had come back home to join us for the grave visit. I was busy in the kitchen when I heard something smash, and when I ran into the main room there they were going at it, full-grown lads of twenty-seven and thirty-two, panting fit to burst and trying to grab each other by the throat.

  ‘All you had to do was take Dong-ho by the hand and drag him home. What the hell were you thinking of, letting him stay there all that time? How come you let Mother go there on her own that last day? It’s all very well to say you could tell that your words were just going in one ear and out the other, but you must have known he would end up dead if he stayed there, you were perfectly aware, how could you let it happen?’

  An incoherent, drawn-out howl burst from your middle brother; he flew at the eldest and grappled him to the floor. The pair of them were yowling like animals.

  I suppose I could’ve tried to pull them apart, sat them down and straightened the whole thing out. Instead, I turned and went back into the kitchen. I didn’t want to think about anything. I just carried on flipping pancakes, stirring soup and threading meat onto skewers.

  I can’t be sure of anything now.

  When I went to see you that last time, what might have happened if you hadn’t promised to be back that very evening? If you hadn’t spoken to me so gently, setting my mind at ease?

  ‘Dong-ho’s promised to be back home after six, when they lock up the gym.’ That’s what I told your father. ‘He’s said we can all have dinner together.’

  But when seven o’clock came round and there was still no sight of you, your middle brother and I went out to fetch you. Under martial law the curfew started at seven, and the army was due back that evening, so there wasn’t so much as a shadow stirring in the streets. It took us a full forty minutes to make it to the gymnasium, but the lights were off and there was no one to be seen. Across the road, some of the civil militia were standing guard in front of the Provincial Office, carrying guns. I’ve come to fetch my youngest boy, I explained, please, he’s expecting me. Their faces pale and drawn, they insisted that they couldn’t allow us in, that no one was permitted to enter. Only the young can be so stubborn, so decisive in the face of their own fear. The tanks are rolling back into the city as we speak, they said. It’s dangerous, you need to hurry home.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I begged, ‘let me inside. Or just tell my son we’re here. Tell him to come out, just for a moment.’

  Your brother couldn’t stand by any longer; he declared that he’d go and fetch you out himself, but one of the militiamen shook his head.

  ‘If you go in now that’s it, we can’t let you back out again. Everyone who’s stayed behind has decided to do so at their own risk. They’re all prepared to die if they have to.’

  When your brother raised his voice to say that he understood and was prepared to go in anyway, I quickly cut him off.

  ‘There’s no need,’ I said, ‘Dong-ho’ll come home as soon as he gets the chance. He made me a promise …’

  I said it because it was so dark all around us, because I was imagining soldiers springing out of the darkness at any moment. Because I was afraid of losing yet another son.

  And that was how I lost you.

  I pulled your brother away from the Provincial Office, and the two of us walked back home through those deathly silent streets, with the tears streaming down our faces. Neither of us spoke.

  I’ll never understand it. The militia with their faces pale and resolute, did they really have to die? When they were just children, really, just children with guns. And why did they refuse to let me in? When they were going to die such futile deaths, what difference could it possibly have made?

  After your brothers have come and gone my days seem that much emptier, and I mostly just sit out on the veranda warming myself in the sun. The quarry just beyond the yard’s southern wall might have caused one hell of a din, but at least it meant the place felt nice and open.

  We used to live on the other side of the quarry, before we bought this house. The old place was a tiny little slate-roofed affair and could be a bit stuffy, so you and your brothers couldn’t wait for Sundays, when the workers had a day off and the three of you could run riot. The big chunks of granite made it prime territory for hide-and-seek, for shouting ‘the hibiscus has bloomed’ at the top of their voices. I could hear them all the way from where I stood in the kitchen. Such rowdy lads, not that you’d have known it once they had another year or so under their belts, they were quiet as anything then.

  When your eldest brother moved to Seoul, we decided it was high time for a change of scene. Jeong-mi and Jeong-dae were both so quiet and unassuming, and it was nice to think that here were some friends for you, with you being so much younger than your brothers. There was something comforting about the sight of you and Jeong-dae heading off to school in your identical uniforms, side by side like two peas in a pod. At the weekends when the two of you played badminton in the yard and the shuttlecock inevitably flew over the wall and onto the building site, your game of rock-paper-scissors to decide which of you would go and fetch it never failed to make me smile.

  I wonder what became of Jeong-dae and his sister?

  When their father came to Gwangju to search for them and started roaming the streets like a madman, I was in no position to offer comfort to anyone. He quit his job and spent a year sleeping in our annex, hanging around the government offices by day. Whenever he heard that a secret grave had been discovered, or that corpses had risen to the surface of some reservoir, he would spring into action. Didn’t matter if it was the crack of dawn or the middle of the night.

  ‘They’re alive somewhere, I know it. Both of them. They’ll turn up one of these days.’

  I can still picture him staggering into the kitchen after one of his benders, muttering to himself like someone who’d lost their mind. His small face and flat nose. Eyes that used to sparkle with mischief just like his son’s, once, before it all went wrong.

  He can’t have lasted very long after that. When the bodies were exhumed and moved to new graves, the families of the missing set up small cenotaphs; your middle brother went expressly to look for the two kids’ names, but apparently they weren’t there. If their father had still been alive, surely he would have set up a pair of cenotaphs for them?

  Sometimes I wonder whatever possessed us to let the annex out … was it all for such a paltry bit of rent? I think about how if Jeong-dae had never set foot in this house, you wouldn’t have put your own life at risk trying to find him … but then I recall the sound of your laughter on those Sundays when the two of you used to play badminton, and it’s my fault, I’m the only one to blame. I shake my head to try and shake all t
he bad thoughts out. I’m the one with the mark on my conscience, bearing a grudge against those poor kids. I’m the only one to blame.

  How pretty she was … how pretty, I thought, to have vanished without a trace. That lovely young girl stepping into our house with her arms wrapped around the laundry basket, padding across our yard in her trainers, with her toothbrush dripping water. Such things seem like the dreams of a previous life.

  The thread of life is as tough as an ox tendon, so even after I lost you, it had to go on. I had to make myself eat, make myself work, forcing each day down like a mouthful of cold rice, even if it stuck in my throat.

  I’d known about the meetings for bereaved families for some time, of course, but I’d never shown my face there. When I eventually did go, it was because I’d received a phone call from a woman calling herself their representative. Our military thug of a president is coming here to Gwangju, she told me, that butcher dares to set foot in our city … when your spilled blood had barely had time to dry.

  My sleep was shallow and fitful at the best of times, then, but that news plunged me into a fresh bout of insomnia. Your father was equally disturbed, and what with his delicate constitution and gentle nature I thought it best to have him stay at home while I went to the meeting alone. So I went along to the home of the organiser, who ran a rice shop, introduced myself to the other women and stayed there until late at night making banners and pickets. Finally, the host decided that we should each go back home, as whatever we didn’t have enough of yet could be made just as well there. We shook hands when we said goodbye. We were like scarecrows, shells stuffed with nothing but straw. Our farewells were as hollow as our eyes.