Human Acts(10)

“The muscle was giving me pain earlier, and I couldn’t get up. Give it a trample down near the base.”

You peeled off your socks and lifted your right foot up onto your father’s lower back, careful not to press down with your full weight.

“Where’ve you been gadding off to? Your mother kept phoning to ask if you’d got back. It’s not even safe to go around the neighborhood, with this demo. Last night there was shooting over by the station, and some people were even killed…it doesn’t bear thinking about. How can anyone go up against a gun with nothing but an empty fist?”

You switched feet with a practiced movement and cautiously pressed down between your father’s spine and sacrum. “Ah, that’s the spot, just there…”

You left the inner room and went into your own, next to the kitchen. You curled up into a fetal position on the papered floor. Sleep sucked you down so suddenly it was like losing consciousness, but not many minutes had passed before you started awake, jolted out of a terrifying dream whose details were already impossible to remember. In any case, the waking hours that stretched out in front of you were far more frightening than any dream. Naturally, there were no sounds of anyone moving around in the room Jeong-dae shared with his sister, a tiny annex off the main gate. Nor would there be when evening came. The light would stay switched off. The key would stay skulking at the bottom of the dark brown glazed jar next to the stone terrace, undisturbed.

Lying in the hush of the room, you see Jeong-dae’s face with your mind’s eye. You see those pale blue tracksuit bottoms thrashing, and your breathing becomes constricted, as though a ball of fire has lodged itself in your solar plexus. Struggling for breath, you try to replace this image with that of Jeong-dae on a perfectly ordinary day, or right now, pushing open the main gate and stepping into the courtyard as though nothing had happened. Jeong-dae, who still hadn’t had the growth spurt that usually comes in middle school. Whose older sister, Jeong-mi, found a way to get milk for him even when times were tight, hoping it would make him grow. Jeong-dae, whose plain features made you marvel that he could be related to Jeong-mi. Who still managed a certain appeal in spite of his flat nose and buttonhole eyes, who could bring about general hilarity just by screwing up his nose and deploying his megawatt grin. Whose disco dancing at the school talent show, his cheeks blown out like a puffer fish, had made even the scary form teacher burst out laughing. Who was more interested in making money than in studying. Whose sister nevertheless gave him no choice but to prepare for the entrance exams for liberal arts college. Whose paper route was carried out behind the back of this same sister, the bitter evening wind whipping his cheeks red as soon as winter set in. Who had an ugly wart on the back of his hand. Who, when you played badminton together in the yard, was incapable of playing any shot other than a smash, seemingly under the illusion that he was representing the South Korean team in some international match.

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 center 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 center 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.