Jeong-dae, who nonchalantly slid the blackboard cleaner into his book bag.
‘What’re you taking that for?’
‘To give to my sister.’
‘What’s she going to do with it?’
‘Well, she keeps talking about it. It’s her main memory of middle school.’
‘A blackboard cleaner? Must have been a pretty boring time.’
‘No, it’s just there was a story connected with it. It was April Fool’s Day, and the kids in her class covered the entire blackboard with writing, for a prank – you know, because the teacher would have to spend ages getting it all off before he could start the lesson. But when he came in and saw it he just yelled, “Who’s classroom monitor this week?” – and it was my sister. The rest of the class carried on with the lesson while she stood out in the corridor, dangling the cloth out of the window and beating it with a stick to bash the chalk dust out. It is funny, though, isn’t it? Two years at middle school, and that’s what she remembers most.’
You slowly pushed yourself up, palms braced against the cold paper floor. Walked to the door, slid it open, put your slippers on. Shuffled across the narrow courtyard and stopped in front of the annex. You reached down into the glazed jar, thrusting your arm in all the way up to your shoulder, and rummaged around. The key clanked and scraped against the earthenware; your fingers closed around it, and you fished it out from underneath the mallet and hammer. The lock on the annex door clicked open. You slid off your slippers and stepped inside.
The room showed no signs of recent disturbance. The notebook was still lying open on the desk, just as you remembered it from Sunday night, when Jeong-dae had been close to tears and you’d thought to calm him down by making a list of places Jeong-mi might have gone to. Evening classes; the factory; the church she occasionally attended; her uncle once removed in Ilgok-dong. The next morning, the two of you had called in at all those places, but Jeong-mi was nowhere to be found.
You stood in the centre of the room, the day darkening around you, and rubbed your dry eyes with the backs of your hands. You kept on rubbing until the flesh was hot and tender. You tried sitting at Jeong-dae’s desk, then lay prone with your face pressed to the chilly floor. You ground your fist into the concavity at the centre of your sternum, which was starting to throb. If Jeong-mi were to come in through the main gate right this second, you would race over and fall to your knees at her feet, beg her to go with you to look for Jeong-dae among the bodies lined up in front of the Provincial Office. Isn’t he your friend? Aren’t you a human being? That’s what Jeong-mi would scream while she thrashed you. And you would beg her forgiveness while she did.
Just like her brother, Jeong-mi is small for her age. On top of that, her short bob means that from the back, she looks like a senior student at middle or even primary school, though she’s actually just turned nineteen. From the front, too, she can easily pass for a high school first-year, especially as she only ever wears light make-up. Despite her feet being swollen from standing up all day, she insists on wearing high-heeled shoes for the walk to and from work. Far from being the type to thrash anyone, her light tread and quiet voice makes it impossible to imagine her ever getting properly angry. And yet, according to Jeong-dae, she had strong opinions on certain matters, and was more than capable of holding her own in a debate. It’s just that people don’t know. She’s actually even more stubborn than my dad.
In the two years she and Jeong-dae have been living in your annex, you’ve never once had a proper conversation with Jeong-mi. She worked at a textile factory, and was frequently on night shifts. Jeong-dae, too, was often home late – because of his paper round, though to his sister he pretended to have been studying at the library – so the coal fire in the annex kept going out that first winter. On evenings when she got home before her brother, you’d hear her soft knock on your door. Face haggard with exhaustion, short hair tucked behind her ears, excuse me, the fire … it seemed an effort for her just to part her lips. Every time that happened you would spring to your feet and hurry over to the fireplace, pick out some hot briquettes with the tongs and hand them to Jeong-mi in a long-handled pan. Thank you, she would say, I didn’t know what to do.
The first time the two of you exchanged more than this handful of words was one early winter’s evening the previous year. Jeong-dae had tossed his book bag into a corner as soon as he got home from school, then headed straight back out for his paper round. He still wasn’t back when you heard what to you was the unmistakable sound of her knock. So tentative, as though she was afraid of harming the wood, as though the tips of her fingers had been swaddled in soft rags. You opened the door straight away, and stepped out into the kitchen.
‘I was just wondering, I don’t suppose you still have any of your first-year textbooks?’
‘First-year?’ you echoed dully, and she explained that she was planning to attend night school starting from December.
‘The world’s changed since they assassinated President Park. The labour movement’s gathering strength, and now our bosses can’t force us to work overtime any more. They’re saying our salaries will go up too. This could be a great opportunity for me, I need to take advantage of it. I want to start studying again. But I’ve been out of school so long, I’m not sure I’d be able to just pick up where I left off; I want to go back over the things we did in the first year before I make a go at anything else … then, by the time Jeong-dae’s on holiday, I should be okay to move on to the second-year stuff.’
You asked her to wait just a moment, then clambered up into the loft. Her eyes widened when you climbed back down, bearing an armload of dusty textbooks and reference books.
‘My goodness … what a steady young man you are, holding on to all this stuff. Our Jeong-dae threw all his out as soon as he was done with them.’ She accepted the books, adding: ‘Please don’t tell Jeong-dae about this. He knows it was because of him that I couldn’t keep on with my studies, and he already feels bad enough as it is. So please don’t let the cat out of the bag until I’ve passed the high school entrance exams.’
You stood there staring at her smiling face, dumbfounded by this unprecedented volubility, and by the blossoming in her bright eyes, pale petals unfurling from tightly closed buds.
‘Perhaps, once Jeong-dae’s gone on to university, I might even be able to follow in his footsteps. University. It’s possible, if I study hard enough. Who knows?’
At the time, you doubted whether she would be able to keep her studies a secret. If Jeong-dae came home to find her with those textbooks spread open, where in their tiny single room could she possibly hide them? Behind her skinny back? And Jeong-dae usually stayed up late to do his homework, so it wasn’t as though she could just wait until he’d fallen asleep.
After only a brief while, these doubts were replaced by more intimate imaginings. The soft fingers that would peel open the pages of your textbook, mere inches from Jeong-dae’s sleeping head. The words those barely moving lips would repeat: My goodness, what a steady young man he is, holding on to all this stuff … those affable eyes. That exhausted smile. That muffled-sounding knock. You felt lacerated by everything you imagined going on in the annex, a bare couple of metres from the room where you spent the nights tossing and turning. In the early hours of the morning, when you heard her stepping out into the courtyard and washing her face at the pump, you would roll up the quilt and crawl over to the door, pressing your ear up against the paper, your eyes, heavy with sleep, still closed.
*
The second truckload of coffins pulls to a stop in front of the gym. Squinting even more than usual because of the sun’s flat glare, you manage to pick out the figure of Jin-su, climbing down from the front passenger seat. His brisk steps carry him in your direction.
‘We’re closing the doors here at six. Make sure you’ve gone home by then.’
‘Who will look after the – the people inside?’ you stammer.
‘The soldiers are re-entering
the city tonight. Even the bereaved will be sent home. There mustn’t be anyone still here after six.’
‘But why would the soldiers bother coming here? What harm could the dead possibly do them?’
‘According to them, even the wounded lying in hospital beds are a “mob” that need finishing off. Does it really seem likely that they’ll just turn a blind eye to all these corpses, to the families watching over them?’
Jin-su bites down on whatever else he was going to say, and marches past you into the gymnasium. You presume that he’s about to say the very same thing to the bereaved. Clutching the ledger to your chest as you would a treasured possession, you stare after his retreating figure, at the sense of responsibility stiffening his shoulders. You squint to make out Jin-su’s wet hair, wet shirt, wet jeans, the profiles of the bereaved as they either shake or nod their heads. A woman’s quavering voice becomes increasingly shrill.
‘I’m not going to budge an inch. I’ll die here, at my baby’s side.’
You turn your gaze to the people lying furthest inside the hall, with cloths pulled right up over their heads; those who still haven’t had anyone come and identify them. You force yourself to focus on the person in the corner. The moment you first set eyes on them, in the corridor of the Provincial Office, you thought: Jeong-mi. Though the face hadn’t yet begun to putrefy, the deep knife wounds that marked it made the features difficult to discern. But it seemed similar, somehow. And that pleated skirt. Yes, it was definitely similar.
But that kind of skirt’s quite common, isn’t it? Are you really sure you saw her go out in a skirt like that on Sunday? Was her hair really as short as that? That bob looks like it belongs to a proper middle-schooler, doesn’t it? And why would Jeong-mi, constantly having to scrimp and save to make ends meet, have been so extravagant as to get a pedicure when it wasn’t even summer? But you never did get a good look at her bare feet. Only Jeong-dae would know if Jeong-mi had that dark-blue splotch on her knee, barely the size of a red bean. You need Jeong-dae to be able to know, categorically, that the woman lying there is not his sister.
On the other hand, though, you need Jeong-mi to help you find her brother. If she was here in your place, she would have gone round every hospital in the city, until she came across her brother in one of the recovery rooms, just that minute coming to his senses. Like when he’d rushed out of the house last February, insisting to Jeong-mi that he’d die before he went to liberal arts school, that as soon as he got to the middle of third year he was going to start taking the vocational classes that would be offered then, to prepare you for the world of business. He’d looked as pale as a ghost when she’d tracked him down in some comics store that very same day and dragged him out by the ear. Your mother and middle brother had found the sight of Jeong-dae being hauled around by such a petite, unassuming young woman utterly hilarious. Even your father, a dour and taciturn man, found it difficult to keep from laughing, and had to clear his throat loudly several times. The two siblings retreated to their annex, and their muffled exchange could be heard going on until after midnight. When one low, murmuring voice was heard to rise and take on an affectionate tone, that person was seeking to mollify the other, and when the other voice rose in turn that meant the tables had turned, and this time it was the former who was being talked down, and in the meantime, up until the point when you slid into sleep as though falling into a sudden abyss, you lay in your room becoming less and less able to distinguish between the sounds of an argument and the sounds of making up, of low laughter and shared sighs.
Now you’re sitting at the table by the door to the gymnasium.
Your ledger is lying open on the left-hand side of the table, and your eyes are scanning the column of names, numbers, phone numbers and addresses, checking you have the correct details before writing them in big letters on A4 paper. Jin-su said you have to make sure that you’re able to contact the bereaved, even if every last one of the civilian militia were to die this very night. There’s no one to help you write them up and fix them to coffins; you’ll have to hurry if you’re going to get them all done by six o’clock.
You hear someone calling your name.
You look up to see your mother emerge from between two trucks. As she approaches, you see that your middle brother isn’t with her this time. Her grey blouse and baggy black trousers are the ones she wears whenever she goes to work in the shop, almost a kind of uniform. She looks as she always does, except for the fact that her hair, usually neatly combed, has suffered from the rain shower earlier.
You stand up and run forward, so glad to see her that you don’t realise what you’re doing until you’re halfway down the steps. You stop short, confused, and your mother scurries up to grab your hand before you have time to retreat back to the safety of the gym.
‘Let’s go home.’ You give your wrist a violent wrench, trying to shake free of her grip. The insistent, desperate strength in that grip is frightening, somehow, making you think of someone drowning. You have to use your other hand to prise her fingers away, one by one. ‘The army is coming. Let’s go home, now.’
Eventually you manage to shake her off, and lose no time in slipping back inside the building. Your mother tries to follow you in, but gets brought up short by the snaking queue of the bereaved, who are waiting to carry their coffins home with them.
You turn round and call back to her: ‘We’re going to close up here at six, Mum.’
Agitated, she moves from one foot to the other, trying to catch your eye from the other side of the line. You can only see her forehead, its furrows reminding you of a crying baby.
You call again, louder this time: ‘Once we’ve closed up, I’ll come home. I promise.’
Only then do those furrows smooth out.
‘Make sure you do,’ she says. ‘Be back before the sun sets. We’ll all have dinner together.’
It’s not been an hour since your mother left when you spot an old man heading slowly in your direction. You stand up. Even from this distance, his old-fashioned brown jacket has clearly seen better days. Dazzlingly white hair protrudes from beneath an ink-black peaked cap, and he leans heavily on a wooden walking stick as he totters forward. After weighting the scraps of paper down with the ledger and pen to stop them from being scattered by the wind, you walk down the steps.
‘Who have you come to look for, sir?’
‘My son and granddaughter,’ he says. He seems to be missing several teeth, which doesn’t exactly help you puzzle out his thick accent.
‘I got a lift on a cultivator over from Hwasun. They stopped us in the suburbs, said we couldn’t come into the city, so I found a path over the mountains that the soldiers weren’t guarding. I only just made it.’
He takes a deep breath. The drops of saliva clinging to the sparse white hairs around his mouth are the colour of ash. You can’t understand how this elderly man, who finds even flat ground a challenge, managed to get here through the mountains.
‘Our youngest boy, he’s a mute … he had a fever when he was little, you see. Never spoke after that. A few days ago, someone who’d fled the city told me the soldiers had clubbed a mute to death, a while ago already now.’
You take the old man by the arm and help him up the steps.
‘Our eldest lad’s daughter is renting a room near Jeonnam University while she’s studying, so I went there yesterday evening and it was “whereabouts unknown” … the landlord hasn’t seen her for a good few days now, and the neighbours said the same.’
You step into the gym hall and put on your mask. The women wearing mourning clothes are wrapping up the drinks bottles, newspapers, ice bags and portrait photos in carrying cloths. There are also families arguing back and forth over whether to transfer their coffin to a safe home or just leave it where it is.
Now the old man extricates his arm from yours, declining your offer of assistance. He walks in front, holding a crumpled cloth to his nose. The faces that are exposed he examines one by one. He shakes his
head. The rubber-covered gym floor turns the regular clack of his cane into a dull thump.
‘What about those over there? Why’re their faces hidden?’ he asks, pointing towards the ones with cloths drawn up over their heads.
You hesitate, lips twitching at the deep sense of dread this question never fails to thud into you. You’re waiting for those cotton shrouds, their white fibres stained with blood and watery discharge, to be peeled back; waiting to see again those faces torn lengthwise, shoulders gashed open, breasts decomposing inside blouses. At night, snatching a couple of hours’ sleep hunched up on a chair in the basement cafeteria, your eyes start open at the vivid horror of those images. Your body twists and jerks as you feel a phantom bayonet stabbing into your face, your chest.
You lead the way over to the corner, battling against the resistance embedded deep in your muscles, that feeling of being tugged backwards by some kind of huge magnet. You have to lean forward as you walk if you’re to master it. Bending down to remove the cloth, your gaze is arrested by the sight of the translucent candle wax creeping down below the bluish flame.
How long do souls linger by the side of their bodies?
Do they really flutter away like some kind of bird? Is that what trembles the edges of the candle flame?
If only your eyesight was worse, so anything close up would be nothing more than a vague, forgiving blur. But there is nothing vague about what you have to face now. You don’t permit yourself the relief of closing your eyes as you peel back the cloth, or even afterwards, when you draw it back up again. You press your lips together so hard the blood shows through, clench your teeth and think, I would have run away. Had it been this woman and not Jeong-dae who toppled over in front of you, still you would have run away. Even if it had been one of your brothers, your father, your mother, still you would have run away.