Su-ho should have done the same right away, but he’d been delayed when a bank loan fell through. He couldn’t afford the deposit on anything else in the area anymore. He had no collateral, and he no longer qualified for credit. His only resort was one of the smaller banks. He had delayed going to one, as he knew that most of the debtors he chased down for payment had done the same thing, but he couldn’t put it off any longer. In order not to end up like them, Su-ho’s big plan was to pay off the interest without fail and to draw large circles around the dates on the calendar for when he needed to pay down the principal. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew the month would come when he would miss a payment, and then, eventually, he would stop being able to pay off any of the interest at all, let alone the principal.
Back when they first moved to this building, he’d thought that they’d hit rock bottom and had nowhere left to go, and so it surprised him to learn that they had no choice but to go somewhere else now. Life was much deeper than he could ever imagine. It was impossible to tell just how far you could sink.
If only his mother were out of the picture, Su-ho thought. Whenever he felt like he was running out of hope, that thought wormed its way into his head. He’d thought it when he saw their last, remaining neighbors move out, too. Every morning when he left for work, he had paused to peek in at the apartments that had emptied out. The belongings his neighbors had left behind were visible through the front window. He could see an old stroller, a preschooler’s drawing of the ocean, a Hula-Hoop that had once spun wildly around someone’s waist. It looked like people were still living there. Su-ho’s apartment looked the same. Like people were still living there.
The debris netting that divided the sidewalk from the construction site began at the subway station exit. In the beginning, it had divided the area into construction zone and residential zone, but by now all of it had become a construction zone, rendering the netting meaningless. The businesses that had taken a big hit while homes were being wiped out in a single stroke stared silently at the barricade as they waited for construction to end and sales to pick back up. With the drop in customers, shops were closing up earlier and earlier, and the neighborhood had grown darker and more deserted. On snowy days, the sidewalks inside the construction zone routinely turned to sheets of ice.
Su-ho headed into the construction zone. It was just past eight. He had gotten off work much earlier than usual because he had skipped one of his regular stops outside of the office. All because of Ki-in Ku. As frightened as his targets were of Su-ho, he was just as scared of them. He assumed that whoever it was who kept calling his cell and home phone to silently threaten him was one of them.
If he hadn’t been extra tired and in a hurry to get home, he would not have chosen that path. It was dark and narrow and icy, but also walking that way always spoiled his mood. It made him think bad thoughts. Like how his home was about to get torn down. And about the difficulty of finding a place he could afford with the few coins he had to his name.
His cell phone rang. It was his mother. He didn’t answer it. She would be calling to remind him to eat dinner at home or to tell him to come home early. Dinner was probably boiled eel again. He’d warned her that she would have to lay off the eel soup for a while after they moved. The smell inside #101 was terrible. His mother had given up on airing the place out in order to save on their heating bill. Each time she told him she was making another pot, he started to snap, Wouldn’t that money be better spent elsewhere? But he always stopped himself. His mother was the only person in the whole world who worried over how tired he was and wanted to feed him something to make it better.
She liked to say, “People are the best thing in the world.”
“What’s so great about people?” he would ask.
She would look at him in exasperation and say, “What isn’t great about people? Those who say people are the scariest thing in the world only think that way because they themselves do scary things. But people are good. They can talk. And they can listen. They talk to you. They work for you. They bring you your groceries. They’re warm to the touch. And soft and smooth . . .”
Su-ho’s favorite thing was money. For that reason, he often became the scariest thing in the world to other people.
Going around collecting on debts even gave him a special opportunity that didn’t come often to others. The opportunity to understand people’s true natures. The ugly, naked faces that they revealed as they refused to turn over the money. The ease with which they lied.
The bad luck poverty ushered in was close to fate. That is, once you were under its evil spell, everything turned bad. Paying for surgery for a parent on the verge of death. Cosigning for an older brother who was starting a new business. Getting injured on the job when no one else in your family was bringing in any money. No matter how they started, the stories all ended the same way.
Why were life’s tragedies so similar? The tragedies Su-ho had witnessed all came down to money. There was nothing more trite and predictable than having no money and no luck. It wasn’t the individual backstories themselves, but the way the rest unfolded. Because of money, you’d lose your house, your family, and, in the end, everything.
The penniless liked to weep and bewail their difficult circumstances and apologize for trivial errors in order to appeal for aid. Those people never inspired his sympathy or made him want to help or filled him with compassion. It was simply their own bad luck that had got them there. Su-ho often told them that if they didn’t pay off their debts, they would only make things harder for themselves. That they had to pay what they owed in order to live an ordinary life. But it was a lie. They had no shot at improving anything.
Whenever he ruthlessly shook off one of these people clinging to him and begging for help, he felt like he was shoving a drowning person farther underwater. They would die, but Su-ho wasn’t the one who’d pushed them into the water in the first place. Dealing with animals had turned Su-ho feral. But he forgot that it was he who had regarded them as animals in the first place.
His legs felt heavy, and he had to piss. He moved over to relieve himself against the netting. He was about to unzip his fly when he heard someone coming toward him. From the sound of their dragging feet, they had to be drunk or maybe just exhausted from work, and yet they shuffled quickly, with urgency. Su-ho stepped aside in embarrassment and waited for the sound to pass. The footsteps stopped. What was this? He glanced behind him. A feeble hand clutched at his arm. If the hand had had any strength to it, if that strength had given him any clue of what was to come, he would have physically subdued the stranger. But the hand that gripped him only held enough strength to ask for directions, to thank a person for steadying them when they were about to stumble, to say sorry for blocking the way. Su-ho was sure that if he turned to look, the person would apologize and walk on with renewed vigor.
The person clutching his arm tipped forward and pressed their face closer to Su-ho’s. They smelled. Not of alcohol. It was the smell of eating something spicy and then vomiting it all up. Su-ho turned to brush the person off, but the hand tightened. What was going on? Who was this? No sooner did those questions enter his head than he felt a deep agony. His body shook as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over him. He bent forward like a broken stalk. He flexed his legs to try to regain his senses. A burning hot something that he could not identify pressed into his stomach again. Then, for a brief moment, the sensation turned to one of cold, as if he were pressing an ice pack to that spot. Had he been stabbed? Was it a knife? Su-ho slowly looked down at himself. A knife quivered there. This was funny. At home they had a kitchen knife that fit into a wooden sheath. Every time he saw it, he thought it was an unnatural way to store a knife. His stomach, which had finally begun to fill out, however, was the perfect spot to stick a knife.
Before the pain spread, his body swayed. Su-ho grabbed the person who’d stabbed him. They did not try to run. They were shaking worse than Su-ho, as if spent from the exertion. They clung to
the knife in Su-ho’s stomach for support, like it was a kind of pillar. A moment earlier, they’d leaned on Su-ho. Now they leaned on the knife.
It was Ki-in Ku. The spice that Su-ho smelled was the scent of funeral incense. Ki-in was still wearing the black funeral suit that he’d worn when he showed up at Su-ho’s office. The mourning suit that he’d worn as he was dragged down the company’s hallways. He wore nothing else over it, despite the cold, making him look stupid and poor. It didn’t matter how deep your sorrow, how intense your rage. Nothing could stop the cold.
Someone was crying. Su-ho thought at first that it was him, but it turned out to be Ki-in. He sobbed like a little girl. He wept like he’d stabbed himself rather than another human being. Su-ho wanted to tell him to fuck off, but a wave of pain prevented him. Ki-in continued to weep as he reached down to yank the knife out of Su-ho’s stomach.
Su-ho’s body flared with heat. The pain was overwhelming. His body was a piece of wood that had caught fire. He burst into flame. The heat started in his skin but soon spread to his blood vessels, the blood itself, and each of his organs in turn, or possibly with no sense of order at all. It grew so intense that he lost all track of where the fire had started. Su-ho grabbed onto Ki-in. The other man’s body was the only thing he could lean on. But when he felt how hard Ki-in was shaking, he released his grip. Ki-in staggered backward.
Su-ho fell to the ground. A ball of fire was blazing away in his stomach. If he hadn’t collapsed, he would have lain down on the cold ground anyway to try to smother the flames. He spat out the saliva that had pooled in his mouth. It dripped down his chin. Slowly, he writhed against the cold ground. The fire did not go out. His stomach still burned. But it was not fire. It was hotter than fire. And yet, strangely enough, his body was growing cold. If he continued to lie there on the bare ground he might end up wetting himself. If you piss yourself, you’re done. He could hear the team leader’s warning. He tightened his groin but couldn’t hold it for long. A hot stream of urine spilled down his thigh.
After starting his job, all Su-ho could think about was money. He even dreamed about it. But they were never dreams of finding money in the street or of someone else playing his regular lottery numbers and hitting the jackpot. A person whose face he could not remember shook a stack of cash in his face. Sometimes Su-ho snatched the money. Sometimes the moment he reached for it, it vanished like smoke. Either way, he never felt all that disappointed. Even in his dreams, Su-ho knew the money wasn’t his.
Who was the person who shook a stack of cash at him in his dreams? It seemed like the work of the same person who’d wrapped him in flames and made him piss himself. He would just as soon not remember, and yet countless faces flashed through his mind. Any one of them would have loved to stab Su-ho in the gut. If not Ki-in Ku today, then someone else tomorrow.
The pain made him curl his body up like a larva. His teeth chattered, and his limbs were going numb. All because of money. His mother had been wrong. People were the best thing in the world? If she knew what was happening to him, she would take back those words. If the pain would just let up for a moment, if he could only manage it, he would call and tell her. He would say that people do nothing but lie and make excuses and laugh at you and whine and threaten to kill you and, given the chance, actually kill you.
He didn’t know that he was crawling on the ground and crying until he realized he couldn’t get up. Blood flowed from his stomach and he’d wet his pants, but that wasn’t why. It wasn’t because he was afraid of dying. It was because of his great and powerless rage.
30
As the door swung open, a cold darkness rushed out. The apartment looked withered somehow, like a plant long dead and dried up. The only thing still alive in there was the smell.
Se-oh set down the empty cardboard boxes she’d brought with her. The glow of the television illuminated the packed boxes sitting here and there.
“Cold in here, isn’t it?”
The old lady had been friendlier to Se-oh lately, perhaps because she’d realized she wasn’t going to see her anymore. She had stopped giving Se-oh a hard time whenever Se-oh delivered groceries and had started wrapping up dishes of homemade food for her to take home. No doubt hungry for company after being alone all day, she acted excited to see Se-oh and would find any excuse to make her stay a little longer.
“Did you pack all that by yourself?” Se-oh asked.
“My son did. He must have been so tired after work yesterday, but he did it anyway.”
“Have you eaten dinner?”
“I’ll eat with my son when he gets home. I’ve been boiling soup all day for him.”
Se-oh boxed up the odds and ends that the old lady handed to her, while the old lady plied her with questions. It was as if they were meeting for the first time. Where did Se-oh live. How old was she. Se-oh answered only as much as she needed to but otherwise did not speak. The old lady didn’t chide her for it.
Se-oh sealed the box shut with yellow shipping tape and set it to one side, then picked up an empty box and a pair of scissors and went into the kitchen. The darkness made the gas line look black and hard. Se-oh squeezed it to try to work up her courage. Just the feel of it in her hand made her heart pound. She was certain the old lady would come racing in to scream at her. As if she were capable of racing. Alarmed at the thought just the same, Se-oh stole a peek into the living room. The old lady was sitting on her cushion and watching TV.
She had better get started. The stacks of boxes would keep the old lady from noticing. What Se-oh had spent so long imagining would finally be made real. She pulled on the gas line. Nothing happened. She pulled harder. It showed no sign of budging. At this rate, the scissors would be faster. She knew how easy it was for something you’d wished for to suddenly go sideways. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest.
She gave it another yank. In the dark, it looked like a protruding vein. It was not going to come loose. It may have been old, but it was sturdy. It must have been stuck to that same spot on the wall since the apartment was first built; it was standing its ground as firmly as a support beam. That didn’t stop Se-oh, though. She felt a strong sense of duty toward this task. It was time for her to make a decision. Whether to stall while trying to yank out the hose or to cut it with the scissors and leave evidence. Both choices meant risking her life.
She picked up the scissors and stole another glance at the old lady. The woman was leaning to one side, asleep. She looked suddenly ancient. As if every last trace of her youth had expired right along with the deteriorating home that she’d lived in for so long. The television cast its shifting colors over the old woman’s hunched shoulders.
Se-oh pictured herself severing the line and opening the valve. A blue spark ignited. A person’s living body bled, and everyday objects melted like tears in the flames. The ceiling collapsed, and the furniture burned. A deep hush descended like fog before fear had a chance to set in.
The apartment looked like it had all happened already. It was bleak and gloomy, as if no one lived there. It looked like #157. The same #157 where old timbers had gone up in flames. Where daylight had brought long beams of sunlight muddied with dust and ash. Where the memory of disaster lingered and darkness had crept into every crevice.
Nothing was left of #157 now. With the house auctioned and the new owner chosen, it had become a vacant lot, empty and deserted. Spring would come, but there would be no leaves to stir in the breeze. The trees in the yard had been yanked out by their roots. There were no more red bricks or blue roof tiles, no long-used furniture or broken objects. The earth had been tamped down, hard and serene. Dark shadows did not appear in the sunlight, and black dust did not carry on the wind like the sound of someone’s weeping.
“What’re you doing in there?”
The old lady still sounded sleepy. Se-oh heard her move toward the kitchen. She set down the scissors and went to join her. The old lady had the phone to her ear and was calling someone. The light from the televisi
on mixed with the neon glow of the telephone buttons. “He’s not picking up,” the old lady muttered. She hung up the phone and turned her eyes back to the TV.
Se-oh sat next to the woman and looked at the veranda window. Dew had collected inside the thick plastic wrap that had been taped over the glass to keep out the cold; the condensation made the outside look murky and gray, like a heavy fog had settled. The longer she stared at the haze, the more she felt like she’d lived this night before. A night spent watching the fog slowly roll in as a smell rose to fill her sinuses. There had never been such a night. And yet she felt sure that she’d been here once before, long ago. She’d waited so long for this moment that it felt like it had already happened.
She committed to memory the dark night, the fog trapped between the inside and outside air, the blurred sounds coming from afar, the bright glow of the television in the darkened house, the foul fishy stench. If she had to choose one single point in her life, it would be this place and this time. No matter how far she went or how much time passed, this was the night to which she would always return. To this fog, this smell, this dark anxiety. To the cold, hard scissors or to the hammer.
The old lady’s head nodded as she began to doze off again. She breathed quietly in her sleep. Se-oh covered her shoulders with a blanket lying nearby. Surprised at the kindness of her own gesture, she stared down at her hands. Hands that had taken their time to try to pull out the old gas hose. Hands that had squeezed the valve. Hands that had reached for the scissors. Hands that had packed the old lady and Su-ho’s belongings into a cardboard box. Hands that had placed a blanket over the old lady.
What time was it? All she knew was that there wasn’t much time left. Now it was time for the darkness to give itself a good shake and increase the concentration of night. Se-oh put on the coat that she’d stashed to one side of the living room and quietly left.
The Law of Lines Page 19