Human Acts(42)

You believe in a divine being, and in this thing we call humanity.

You never did manage to win me over.

I could never believe in the existence of a being who watches over us with consummate love.

I couldn’t even make it through the Lord’s Prayer without the words drying up in my throat.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I forgive no one, and no one forgives me.





Now


The sign for the bus stop sheds its dim light down on you.

In your backpack is a notebook, pen and pencil, toiletries, a 250-ml bottle of water, the Dictaphone, and tapes.

The stop is a little out of the way, but all Line 3 buses come here. A succession of these buses have pulled up and whisked away their new passengers, and now you are alone. You stare silently at the paving slabs that lie beyond the reach of the lamp’s light.

You turn and walk away from the sign. The straps of your backpack are cutting into your shoulders, so you slide your hands beneath them. The summer night is sultry, its hot fug of air dragging on your limbs. You pace a few yards one way, then turn and double back. Up to the edge of the road, then back.

—

When Park got his things together to leave the office, you shouldered your backpack and accompanied him out. The two of you walked to the bus stop together, your conversation meandering aimlessly and then trailing off when Park’s bus arrived. He got on, found a seat, and nodded awkwardly in your direction in lieu of a formal good-bye. You nodded back.

What might you have been able to bring yourself to do if he hadn’t shown up and interrupted you?

You wonder.

Would you have been able to summon the courage to press the “record” button?

Would you have been able to string together a continuous thread of words, silences, coughs, and hesitations, its warp and weft somehow containing all that you wanted to say?

You’d allowed yourself to believe that yes, you could have done all this; that was why you’d come into the office today, the public holiday for National Liberation Day. You’d even decided to stay up all night if that was what it took, hence the toiletries.

But would you really have gone through with it, even if you hadn’t been interrupted?

If you go back now to your cramped, stifling room, will you be able to place the Dictaphone on the table in front of you and start again, from the beginning?

—

Last Monday, as soon as you heard the news about Seong-hee, you called her. You waited an hour before calling again, and on the fourth try the call finally went through. The first conversation you’d had in ten years was brief and matter-of-fact. You held your breath and strained to listen to the voice made hoarse from radiation therapy.

“It’s been a long time,” she rasped.

“I was wondering how you’ve been getting on.”

You didn’t offer to come and visit her in the hospital, so there was no need for her to protest about that. It was pure coincidence that the parcel from Yoon arrived at your office the very next day, yet now these two events seem inextricably entangled, taut as a barbed wire knot. The two of them together are almost more than you can bear.

Making the recording, and seeing Seong-hee.

The recording you need to make before seeing Seong-hee.



Enduring things is what you do best. Gritting your teeth and bearing them.

You still had a year of middle school left when you dropped out to get a job. Aside from the two years you spent in prison, you’ve never been out of work. You have been unfailingly diligent and unfailingly taciturn. Work is a guarantee of solitude. Living a solitary life; you are able to let the regular rhythm of long hours of work followed by brief rest carry you through the days, with no time to fear the outer dark beyond the circle of light.





You Remember


The work you did as a teenager, though, was different.

Those were fifteen-hour days with only two days off per month. “Weekends” were nonexistent. The wages were half of what the men got paid for the same work, and there was no overtime pay. You took pills to keep you awake, but exhaustion still battered you like a wave. The swelling of your calves and feet as morning wore into afternoon. The guards who insisted on body-searching the female workers every night before they went home. Those hands, which used to linger when they touched your bra. The shame. Hacking coughs. Nosebleeds. Headaches. Clumps of what looked like black threads in the phlegm you hacked up.

We are noble.

That was one of Seong-hee’s favorite sayings. Every Sunday off work she spent attending lectures on labor law at the offices of the Cheonggye Clothing Labor Union, and everything she heard there went into the notes she then used for your meetings. You had no particular apprehensions when you started attending those meetings, given that all Seong-hee said about them was that they were for studying hanja. And technically this was true; you and the other women really did study hanja each time you met. We have to know 1,800 characters if we want to read a newspaper properly. The first task of the evening involved you each writing thirty characters into your notebooks, memorizing them as you did so. Then Seong-hee would begin her labor lecture. And that means…we are noble. Seong-hee wasn’t a natural orator, and whenever she lost her train of thought or couldn’t quite recall the word she’d wanted she would use that phrase as a kind of stopgap. According to the constitution, we are noble. As noble as anyone else. And just like anyone else, we have rights. According to labor law. Her gentle, resonant voice almost put you in mind of a primary school teacher. Jeon Tae-il died for the sake of this law.