Your Republic Is Calling You

by Young-Ha Kim

  In a way, he was like a playwright working in-house at a theater production company. When the roles were cast, his job was to create the character. The agents committed to memory stories of a construction worker from Ulsan, a student from the Philippines, or a retired teacher, and went on to complete their missions. He didn't have to be the director. Directing and acting were the agents' responsibilities. He had to come up with countless new stories. Most agents took the roles he created and assigned them, went out, successfully completed their missions, and returned north, but there were some who didn't make it. He was saddened each time he heard of a failed mission, but it wasn't clear whether his depression was caused by empathy for another human's misfortune or his displeasure with his creations' imperfections.

  "Are you going to show me your manuscript when you're done with it?" Soji asked.

  "Just keep it safe, okay?"

  "Don't worry. Let me know if you start writing again."

  "I was thinking about renting a desk in a study hall somewhere. But I don't know if I'll have time to really write."

  "You have to make time," Soji counseled. "You can't wait for it to come to you."

  Soji remembers their conversation ended around that point. She gets off at her stop and walks up the street toward home. She's renting a single-story house in Ahyon-dong, in a neighborhood slated for redevelopment. The redevelopment plan, which was supposed to be underway already, has been delayed again. This delay has allowed her to continue to pay low rent for the past few years, and she's fortunate to live in a house with a backyard dotted with apple and magnolia trees. Her neighborhood is an old one, one without skyscrapers, one that still retains its winding alleys. Hanging between telephone poles, ragged placards wave forlornly in the wind, printed with the words "Congratulations! Redevelopment Committee Formed." It's the kind of place where neighbors greet one another in the street and the corner store sells items on credit. Of course, you can't even dream of bringing a man home with you, but it's an interesting neighborhood from Soji's perspective as a novelist. If she opens her window, she becomes a live witness to a half-naked man and his wife screaming at each other, and sometimes her eyes meet those of a woman who is stealing some red pepper paste from a neighbor's jar. People call her Teacher So and they refer to her house as Teacher So's house. Some people even think she owns the house.

  She unlocks the gate by swiping her electronic card key along the lock. She enters the house and the door shuts behind her with a digital beep. She takes off her shoes, tosses her purse onto the couch, and goes into her office, which is always dark and damp because it faces north. Venetian blinds block the tiny bit of light that shines through the window, so she can't see anything if she doesn't turn on the lights. She flicks on the light switch and tries to remember where she hid Ki-yong's bag. She has no idea. She must have put it somewhere safe because it was important, but she can't figure out where that might be.

  She opens the wardrobe and rummages between the folded blankets, but it isn't there. She drags over the chair from the vanity and climbs on it to check the top of the wardrobe, but it isn't there either. She discovers only heaps of dust, someone's PhD dissertation, and books she brought back from America. She hops down and searches near the bookcase. Since it's a bag, she wouldn't have put it on the bookcase, nor would she have been able to fit it in a drawer. She peeks under the sink and even digs around in the shoe cabinet. She casts a sweeping look under the couch and ventures out on the balcony. Nothing. She wouldn't have ripped up the floor or the ceiling of the bathroom to bury it, since the bag didn't contain anything illegal, like a gun or drugs. Then again, Soji thinks, maybe the bag did contain something illegal. That bag could contain a part of Ki-yong she is completely unaware of.

  She checks the time. It's almost 5:00 P.M. She starts to get a little anxious, and at the same time, her curiosity as to what is in the bag grows so that she can't stand it. She finally begins to empty out every drawer and rifle through every nook. All she unearths are random odds and ends. Finally, her gaze falls on the large red suitcase standing next to the desk. The suitcase is made of polypropylene, hard and stubborn.

  She tugs it toward her and lays it on its side. It falls to the floor with a bang, but she can't wrench it open because of the number lock. She tries 783, which are the first three digits of her phone number; 417 doesn't work either. It isn't 531, her birthday, or 000, which she tries as a random guess. She wrestles with the code in the middle of the messy room, which by now looks like someone broke in. Sweat dots her forehead and her mussed bangs stick to her skin. She wanted to fix her hair and freshen up her makeup before she goes to meet Ki-yong, but now she won't have time. Her underarms are getting sweaty, so she peels off her blouse and attacks the suitcase in her bra. It isn't working. She's going to have to start guessing the code systematically, from 000, then 001, 002, 003. She starts twirling the numbers, but it isn't easy to rotate each key separately; sometimes two numbers move at the same time, so after 010 she gets to 021, and when she tries to correct it, it becomes not 011 but 010. She looks at the clock again. It's already twenty past five. She's only at 183. The more time passes, the more she becomes convinced that Ki-yong's bag is inside the suitcase. She gets up, goes to the foyer, and takes out her tool kit from the shoe cabinet. A wrench falls out, hits her on the head, and tumbles to the ground, narrowly missing her foot. The kit must have been unzipped. She grabs a hammer, takes a deep breath, and approaches the damn suitcase. She rights it, spitting out, "Get up, you bitch."

  Those words remind her of a guy she dated in the States, who would grab her by the hair and drag her around the house. She would be lurched out of bed, half asleep, unable to wrap her mind or body around what was happening, and be thrown around the room, reduced to tears, forced to stare at the floor. He immigrated to America with his family when he was ten, earned his MBA at NYU, and worked at a Japanese investment bank in the World Trade Center. His parents divorced shortly after immigrating, and he grew up with his father, a radiologist who settled in quickly but was an alcoholic. As a student, she needed a man with a house, a job, and medical insurance. New York was an expensive town and she didn't want to have to depend on the dirty money her father sent her.

  On September 11, 2001, she was back in Korea, lying around this very house, watching an old Ingrid Bergman movie on cable. Suddenly, a caption popped up at the bottom of the screen: "Private Airplane Crashes Into New York World Trade Center." She didn't pay much attention to it. But when the caption changed from "private airplane" to "commercial aircraft," she switched to CNN. People were falling off the tall buildings like flower petals drifting away in the wind. Soon, the south tower fell. The screen, focused on the fleeing crowd, was shaking; the cameraman was running too. She heard screams in English, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and countless other languages. She wondered, Was he dead? He would have gone to work early, as always, wearing a crisp shirt, a silk tie, and a well-tailored gray suit. He would have smiled at the fat woman at reception. Even though her ex-boyfriend worked in an office on the ninety-second floor of the south tower, the one United 175 crashed into, Soji didn't think he would have been killed. Even though the plane slammed into the building near the eightieth floor, and more people on the higher floors perished than survived.

  The next day, her former New York roommate called her. Her roommate had quit school and was working at a beauty parlor in Brooklyn. She told Soji that her ex survived, miraculously. She repeated the word "miracle" several times, but Soji didn't think it was a miracle. He was too selfish to die like that. It turned out that he left his office as soon as he found out about the American Airlines plane crashing into the adjacent tower, without waiting for any announcement or assistance, and took the elevator all the way down to the ground floor. Many Americans waited in their offices for the firefighters to arrive, as they had been taught from childhood to await further instructions, but he wasn't the sort to rely on the generosity of that system. The security guard on
the ground floor advised him to go back and wait, that there was no need to evacuate, but he ignored him, in fact pushed him away, and darted down the stairs toward the underground concourse. As soon as he set foot in the concourse, he heard a powerful blast. A second plane had smashed into his building. He was safe by the time the burning remnants of the collision hurtled to the ground like hail: chunks of aluminum alloy from the tail of the plane, concrete blocks, the toner of a Xerox machine, an Hermès bag, paper clips, a Benetton suitcase, shards of reinforced glass, an audio system, a small safe, bent steel, a piece of a banister. Soon he was standing just north of the site, on West Street, looking at the two buildings billowing fire. By the time Soji heard that he was safe, she no longer had any feelings for him. It was astonishing to her that this man cared only about survival and control. He didn't have any inner depth, he didn't have an interest in God or another supernatural existence, he didn't believe in the next life.

  Soji aims the hammer at the dial. Hesitating, she lays it down and tries 184, 185, 186. None of them work. She picks up the hammer again and strikes down at the lock. The strong urethane of the suitcase forces the hammer to rebound violently, causing her to nearly hit herself in the head. She hammers again, once, twice, three times. Eventually, she succeeds in smashing the lock, which is now so wrecked that it's impossible to read the numbers. But the suitcase still refuses to open. If she had a saw, she would use it to hack at the suitcase. She finds a kitchen knife and slides the blade in the gap of the closure. She tries twisting it. She can hear the sharp steel and the knife grating against each other. The noise is unbearable, but she doesn't stop. She decides to try cutting the lock. All she does is create a loud screech. Feeling impatient, she wishes again that she had a saw. She goes to the kitchen, takes the wooden doorstop that is propping open the kitchen door, and sticks it into the crack. She starts banging on the doorstop with the hammer. The crack gets wider and wider, and finally the fortress-like lock falls off. The suitcase opens up powerlessly, its jaws agape. But nothing is inside. She lies on the floor, her arms spread open in defeat. Then, she sees a clay jar she hasn't used in a while, with a film of dust on it. Her mother gave it to her so she could keep rice in it, telling her that it would keep the rice fresh, but she's never put rice in it. She raises her body and crawls over to the jar. When she touches the lid, it slides off, as if it were just waiting to fall off. Clay shards fly all around her. Blood drips from her hand.

  WOLF HUNT

  5:00 P.M.

  CHOL-SU STOPS the car and rolls down his window. The wind, heavy with moisture, chills him slightly. He can see the Volkswagen showroom across the road. Since it is dusk, the inside of the showroom is brighter than the outside, making it look like a space station in a sci-fi flick. He sees a woman, whom he assumes to be Ma-ri, working at her desk. She gets up a couple of times to talk to the man sitting behind her.

  He tries to imagine what Ki-yong would do. Now that it's clear he's being pursued, would he come to see his wife? He gives Supervisor Jong a call to see what he thinks. Jong sounds like he's eating something. "Hey Chol-su, you think people weigh their options before they act? No, no, we live by instinct. Do you know how the Yankees used to hunt wolves? They'd tie a dog in heat on a pole. Then a wolf smells her and comes by. The thing about these members of the dog family is that, once the male gets going, the head of its penis swells up and it's hard to pull it out. You know what I mean? You know the anchors you use when you're hammering stuff in walls? It's kind of like that. So anyway, when they're stuck together like that, they'd creep up—bam, and they'd beat him over the head with a bat."

  "What about the bitch?"

  "The bitch? Oh, the dog in heat? All you need to do is pet it and praise it, and it's happy. Then it sits there, still in heat, waiting for the next wolf." Jong starts chewing again, making a lot of noise. "Just you wait. You'll see. He'll come to her. Males are hardwired to go to their bitches."

  Jong tells Chol-su that the wiretapping team was deployed, so if Ki-yong calls his wife, they can hone in on the signal of his phone. They hang up. Chol-su leans back in his seat, more relaxed. He's dead tired. Perhaps the humiliation he suffered in the hands of the detectives at the Coex mall sapped whatever energy he had. He's never been arrested before. For the first time in his life, he considers the feelings of criminals who are caught, the defeated state they must be in, dealing with people who toy with their fate. He closes his eyes and recalls Jong's words. He pictures a nineteenth-century forest, dark even at midday, the wolf's howl ripping through the frigid air, the bitch tied to a pole, whining, ruddy Anglo-Saxon hunters armed with sticks and guns, waiting for the wolf, and the wolf itself, circling in the vicinity, torn between lust and fear. That wolf had to be low in the hierarchy of the pack, or maybe he was a wanderer that was kicked out of the pack. Otherwise why would he risk his life on this adventure? Chol-su imagines the wolf approaching the bitch, faltering, placing his front legs on the bitch's back, and pushing into her swollen genitals—but then he dozes off.

  By the time Chol-su jolts awake, the world hasn't changed much. How long was he asleep, as far away from consciousness as death? Reality dawns on him, rising slowly into his consciousness like water filling a tub. He looks over at the showroom, which is even brighter than before; it has gotten darker. Thankfully, Ma-ri hasn't left yet. She's tidying up around her workstation, readying to leave. He checks his watch. It's just past 5:50.

  KI-YONG AVOIDS SAMSUNG station, the subway stop nearest to the Coex Center, and goes on to the next station, Sollung, to catch Line 2. He gets off at Seoul National University of Education to transfer onto Line 3. He walks through the underground tunnels briskly, remaining alert to the people behind him. What is he running away from? Does he have to evade the tail so desperately, going to such extremes?

  The subway car is fairly empty. He takes a seat. His thoughts are in a jumble. A lot of people get on when the train stops at the express bus terminal, one of those hubs always crowded with throngs of people. He studies the men closely but doesn't detect anything out of the ordinary. He closes his eyes. He's tired, but his mind is alert. The woman sitting next to him is gabbing on her cell. "I know, I know. Look, I know exactly what you mean."

  What is it that she knows? Ki-yong wonders.

  "I mean, yeah, I mean ... yeah, yeah."

  Every time the person on the other end says something, she repeats, "I mean..."

  "I know. Yeah, that's what I mean ... She's always like that. She's so annoying ... That's exactly what I mean..." Her call is suddenly dropped, but, undeterred, she calls out "Hello? Hello?" into the phone. She finally dials her friend back. During the brief minute she stops talking to redial, the car regains silence.

  While she's trying to get through to her friend, the man across from Ki-yong receives a call. "Oh, me?" he says into his phone. He swivels around. "Oh, I'm just passing Yaksu station. I'm almost there."

  A blatant lie. They are only passing Sinsa station, and Yaksu is five stops away. As he hangs up, looking a bit embarrassed, the woman's conversation starts again.

  "Why'd you hang up on me? You didn't? Oh, okay. I thought you did. Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean ... I know, I mean..." She gets off at Apgujong station, her phone glued to her ear.

  Ki-yong smiles to himself, realizing that he won't be subjected to other people's private conversations if he goes back to Pyongyang. The subway leaves Apgujong and moves on to Tongho Bridge. Clanking, they cross the Han River. The setting sun, opening its red mouth wide, is swallowing the river from far away.

  A-YONG IS WAITING for Hyon-mi in front of a game console at the stationery store.

  "Were you waiting for a long time?" Hyon-mi asks apologetically.

  "What took you so long?" grumbles A-yong.

  Hyon-mi doesn't answer, so A-yong starts guessing. "Were they a pain? Did something happen?"

  "No, not really. We were just talking about ideas and what to do, and it took longer th
an I thought."

  "Oh, okay then."

  They head home, both sensing a little awkwardness.

  "Are you going to Jin-guk's?" A-yong asks.

  Hyon-mi changes the subject, a little coldly. "You really don't have to go to cram school?"

  A-yong stops in her tracks. Hyon-mi keeps going, but when A-yong doesn't come after her, she whips around and snaps, "What, are you in love with Jin-guk or something?"

  "What?" A-yong says loudly in disbelief.

  "Why else would you keep bugging me about it? I told you I'm not going."

  "When'd you say that?"

  "Earlier!" Hyon-mi shoots back.

  "You're acting really weird," A-yong comments, glaring at her.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Never mind," A-yong says, tearing up.

  Hyon-mi gets even angrier. "Now what are you crying for?"

  "Who's crying?" A-yong retorts, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She stalks away.

  "Where're you going?"

  "I hope you're happy!" A-yong tosses back.

  Hyon-mi calls out to her friend, but A-yong refuses to look back and breaks into a run. Hyon-mi doesn't chase after her, but she does call her name a few more times. She gives up when A-yong is too far away to hear her. Loneliness washes over her. She takes out her cell but puts it away. She feels even more alone. She kicks at a rock as hard as she can, causing it to roll into the sewer. What do you think you're doing, Hyon-mi? she chastises herself. A-yong thought you were her friend and trusted you. You betrayed her and made her cry. She's vulnerable and you know she needs your help.