Human Acts(35)

As we each inquired how the other had been, something like transparent feelers reached tentatively out from our eyes, confirming the shadows held by the other’s face, the track marks of suffering that no amount of forced jollity could paper over. Neither of us had managed to go back to university, and we were both still living at home, a burden to our families. Jin-su worked at his brother-in-law’s electric goods shop; I’d held down a position at my relative’s restaurant for a short while, but had quit some time ago. I told him I was thinking of waiting until New Year and then joining a taxi company, maybe even saving up to get my own taxi at some point. He made no response.

“My brother-in-law advised me to do something similar,” he said flatly. “He said I ought to study for an HGV license. After all, it’s not like an office job is an option. But how am I going to get a driving license? These days even simple sums are enough to make my head hurt. Some days it’s a struggle just to tally up the payments in the shop. The most basic addition. The headaches are so bad, it’s impossible for me to memorize anything for an exam.”

I told him that I frequently suffered from a toothache that didn’t seem to have any physical cause, that there weren’t many days when I didn’t have to take painkillers.

“Can you sleep?” he asked listlessly. “I can’t. That’s why I’m here chasing my hangover. I had two bottles of soju before this. My sister doesn’t like me to drink at home, you see. I mean, not that she gets angry or anything. She just cries. But then that only makes me want another drink.” He looked up from his soup. “How about a glass now? Just the one?”

We stayed there drinking until the streets began to fill again, with men and women hastening to work, the collars of their woolen coats turned up against the cold. We poured glass after glass of strong, clear alcohol in the vain hope that this would help us forget. My memory of that night is a series of jump cuts, which later collapsed completely. I can’t remember when we parted or how I managed to make it home. The only shards that have lodged themselves in my brain are the sensation of cold liquid dripping onto my corduroy trousers when Jin-su knocked over the bottle; the sight of him clumsily trying to blot the spillage with the sleeve of his sweater; the moment when he could no longer hold his neck up, and had to rest his forehead on the table.

—

Afterward, we continued to meet up now and then and drink through the night. Seven years dragged by in this way, with each of us seeing in the other a crooked mirror image of our own pathetic lives: failing to gain any qualifications; being involved in a car accident; getting into debt; suffering injury or illness; meeting kind-hearted women who made us dare to believe that our suffering was finally over, only to see it all turn to shit through no one’s fault but our own, and eventually end up alone again. Burdened by nightmares and insomnia, numbed by painkillers and sleeping pills, we were no longer young. There was no longer anyone who would worry over us or shed tears over our pitiful lot. We even despised ourselves. The interrogation room of that summer was knitted into our muscle memory, lodged inside our bodies. With that black Monami Biro. That pale gleam of exposed bone. That familiar, broken cadence of whimpered, desperate pleas.

At some point during those seven years, Jin-su said to me, “There used to be people I was determined to kill.” His deep black eyes, not yet entirely clouded by intoxication, watched me intently. “I thought that, whenever my time came to die, I would take those people with me.” Wordlessly, I filled his glass. “But I don’t have those thoughts anymore. I’m worn out.” Hyeong, he called me. Brother. But instead of raising his eyes to meet mine, he kept his head bowed over the glass of clear alcohol, as though any words I might speak would be found there. “We carried guns, didn’t we?” This didn’t seem to merit a response. “We thought they would defend us, didn’t we?” Jin-su smiled faintly down at his glass, as though used to answering his own questions. “But we couldn’t even fire them.”

—

Last September, I bumped into him late at night when I was heading home after my taxi shift. One of those drizzling autumn days. I’d just turned a corner and there, from beneath the rim of my umbrella, I saw Kim Jin-su waiting for me. He had the hood of his black waterproof jacket up over his head. Perhaps because I was so startled, I remember being gripped by an odd rage, wanting to punch that ghost-pale face. Or no, not punch it, just rub my hands over its contours and erase the expression I saw there.

Not that his expression was hostile, you understand.

He looked exhausted, of course, but that was hardly anything out of the ordinary. I’d barely ever seen him looking otherwise that past decade. But there was something else in the planes and shadows of his face that night, something different. Some inexplicable emotion that was not quite resignation, not quite sadness or even malice, was visible beneath those long lashes. Part submerged, like ice in water.

I ushered him through the darkened streets to my house. He never said a word the whole way.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him once we were home and I could change out of my wet clothes. He pulled his raincoat off over his head, folded it, and put it on the floor by the mattress. Then he sat down next to it, ramrod straight in a thin cotton T-shirt. His posture made me recall the barracks, and that unaccountable anger welled back up in me. Ever so slightly hunched, the sight was identical to the one I’d seen every single day that summer nine years before. The stink of his sweat was rank in my nostrils. As he sat there looking up at me, his dark face seemed a nauseating mixture of submission, resignation, and blankness.