by Mi-ae Seo
If you have to live in Siberia, where the temperature is forty degrees below zero, you just drink vodka and bear the cold. If you have always been beaten till you bled, ever since you were born, and scabs cover your wounds, you go on living that way. On some days nothing happens and you breathe a sigh of relief, and on other days you’re beaten near to death and sleep as if you’ve passed out. If you break a bone, you lie down for a few days, moaning and groaning, and if you’re lucky, you get up and walk again.
It didn’t take a single day to wipe out my six years at the orchard. Had there really been such a time? It seemed like it had all been a dream. Sometimes I think it really was a dream.
My mom? Yeah, she was surprised to see me at first. But then one of her eyebrows rose, and she began to curse at me in an annoying voice. She hadn’t changed at all in those six years. Within an hour of returning home, I once again had to put up with her slapping hands, the stick, and the kicking.
I dreaded to think that the next day, and the day after that, would go on in the same way. I wondered why she went on tormenting me, why she didn’t just kill me. Yes, it was a struggle that wouldn’t end till one of us died. You know how you have those dreams where you keep trying to run, but don’t get any farther away from the thing chasing you? You try desperately to run, but then you just want to drop to the ground and get caught so that it would come to an end, whether the thing killed you or not.
If it hadn’t been for the kitten that came into the house one day, it wouldn’t have happened. No, that’s just an excuse. I might just have been waiting for a chance. I would’ve done the same, using whatever as an excuse.
It was drizzling that day.
I found a cat that was taking shelter from the rain under the eaves. The cat was in heat and had been crying every night, getting on my nerves, and now it was in the yard, so I began to throw whatever I could get my hands on at it. But each time, it quickly dodged away, looking at me as if to mock me, and purred.
I felt angry. I felt as if the cat was looking down at me, so I looked around for something else to throw at it, and found a shovel. Yeah, you’re gonna get it, I thought. I quickly got down to the yard, picked up the shovel, and threw it at the cat. It hit the mark. The cat, hit in the tail, went around the yard shrieking.
It was at that moment that a light flashed in front of my eyes.
My mom was holding a brick in one hand. Stunned, I looked from her face to the brick. Then I felt pain in the back of my head. I ran my fingers through my hair. A lukewarm liquid flowed out and wet my hand. I looked at my hand, covered in blood.
My mom called out to the cat, meowing as it went around the yard, as if she didn’t care about me at all. She had a can of tuna in her hand.
Her voice was tender, a tone I’d never heard her call me with. And she had never looked anxiously for me in order to feed me. I mattered less to her than a stray cat.
I felt disoriented, with my head bleeding. I felt as if someone was leading me along. I didn’t hear the rain. I was half out of it.
Strangely, the song flowed out of my mouth. The shovel I had thrown at the cat a moment before was in my hand before I knew it. My mom was startled when I began humming the song. Then she saw the shovel in my hand.
My mom, who had always been so self-assured, looked tense for the first time, and spoke in a trembling voice.
“Wh-What are you doing? Put that thing down this instant!”
I hadn’t really planned on doing anything, but when I heard her orders it suddenly occurred to me that I was much taller than she was. And now I was stronger, too. And I didn’t want to . . . run anymore. I was tired. I felt as if I was up against a wall in a dead-end alley.
I clutched the handle of the shovel more tightly. I could never forget the look on my mom’s face as she looked from my eyes to the shovel.
“Mom, do you remember this song?”
Bang! Bang! Maxwell’s silver hammer . . .
Yes, I learned the song from you, Mom. It was the song you always sang to me. Remember? You remember, don’t you? This time, I’m singing it to you. You’ve raised me this far, so I should do something for you in return, shouldn’t I? Don’t worry. The song has never left my head these past dozen years or so, so I won’t get it wrong.
I don’t know how long I went on singing the song.
When I came to myself, I was no longer singing.
I stood in the middle of the yard, looking at the rain falling onto her face. The eyes, which had glared so coldly and fiercely at me, wouldn’t close even in the rain. The mouth, which had always hurled abuses at me, was too quiet. I realized at last why I had come back to this house.
Yes, I had been waiting. For the day I would be singing that song. I had really wanted my mom to hear it. Humming the last chorus once more, I thought, this song will never again circle around in my head now, will it?
7.
AFTER SEONKYEONG DROVE PAST THE GATE, PARKED THE car in the parking lot, and entered the public service center, the prison guard who had been waiting greeted and approached her. After a brief process of identification with his guidance, she was handed a pass with the word “visitor” printed in large letters.
Seonkyeong hung the pass around her neck, and followed the guard to the building where the prisoners were held.
Visits with the prisoners in the detention center were usually held in the public service center. The visit with Yi Byeongdo, however, was to be held in a separate place assigned by the detention center.
Past the building with the confinement facility, there was an empty lot. It was a space provided for the prisoners to exercise or take walks in, but their brief hours must have come to an end, for it was empty now. There was an enormous wall across the lot, blocking the view. The place was for locking people up, but curiously, it felt like an impregnable fortress that wouldn’t allow anyone near.
Seonkyeong had been there several times, and had brought her students there on a field trip a month before, but she had never come this far inside. Looking at the high wall, she turned to the guard.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“It’s for condemned criminals only,” the guard replied.
The building stood in the innermost part of the detention center. Beyond the high wall was a space reserved for condemned criminals. Slowly, Seonkyeong looked around at the wall.
The detention center was built in 1987. It had been more than twenty years since then, so naturally, the building looked worn. But there was a strange feeling to it that couldn’t be explained by the years alone. Seonkyeong felt as if she were looking at a photograph that was neither black and white nor in color, a photograph that had faded through the years.
This world was utterly different from the world beyond the wall, one in which even time and air were locked up.
The barbed-wire fence, easily two meters high, and the watchtowers in between, were rusted by storms or had peeling paint. For a moment, Seonkyeong, overwhelmed by the old and enormous gray wall, couldn’t say anything.
In the high wall that blocked Seonkyeong’s view, there was an iron gate that looked as if two people could barely manage to pass through it. After the guard confirmed her identification, Seonkyeong followed another guard through the gate, and she felt as though she had entered the gate of hell, from which she could never return.
The gate closed behind her with a loud creaking noise.
Her brow automatically furrowed at the sound. It was as irritating as nails scratching a blackboard. She had been feeling increasingly tense, and felt as if the taut nerves in her mind had snapped.
An indescribable feeling overwhelmed and stifled her. It felt as if a heavy rock were pressing down on her chest. She took a deep breath, but the heavy feeling did not leave her.
Suddenly, she wanted to turn around and leave.
Calm down, there’s no need to be nervous, she told herself, but it was no use. She recalled the nickname her students had given her.
; Clarice Starling. A rookie FBI investigator.
Seonkyeong pictured Jodie Foster from the movie The Silence of the Lambs. It occurred to her that right now, she looked like Clarice as she walked step by step toward the dungeon amid strict security, flinching and tensing up at the slightest sound. Seonkyeong wasn’t on her way to see Hannibal, but she realized that she was mentally overpowered by Yi Byeongdo before she even met him.
The case journal, the materials, the investigators’ anecdotes, and three days of cramming seemed to have overloaded her mind. There had been no time to think and prepare calmly. Seonkyeong decided that she should forget everything she had crammed into her head before meeting him.
The Yi Byeongdo in the files or in the stories told by the investigators was merely one piece of the puzzle. Seonkyeong had to find another piece, a different side of him. The thought helped her relax a bit. The vague, childlike fear seemed to ease a little as well. To hide her remaining anxiety, she tightened her stomach. She finally felt calm enough to look around.
Following the guard walking ahead of her, Seonkyeong gazed about her. There was only a crude building with no remarkable features. She stopped for a moment and looked up at the sky.
It was June, but already an intense sun ruled the world. The clouds that had sent down heavy rain in Indeokwon were no longer to be seen. Seonkyeong took another deep breath. She could feel the heat from the ground. Her face was sweating under the blazing sun, but strangely enough, a chill ran down her spine. She turned her head and looked around, but couldn’t see anything.
“Are you coming?” asked the guard.
He had come to a stop in front of the building and was looking at her. Realizing she had made him wait, Seonkyeong hurried on. She wished she could wait until the chill coursing through her body had left, but soon gathered herself. She could feel sweat on her palms.
Solitary confinement was for condemned criminals only, in the innermost part of the detention center. She approached the door of the building, cold even in the middle of summer.
“Creepy, isn’t it?” the guard asked cautiously in an effort to help her relax.
“I didn’t know I’d be coming this far inside.”
“People usually don’t. Interviews or counseling with general criminals is held in the building with the public service center, which you saw earlier.”
His words didn’t really explain anything to her. He must have known why Seonkyeong had been led this far inside, but seemed to have no intention of telling her the reason. The guard opened the entrance with a security card.
He said, “There were more than thirty maximums here just till last year.”
“Maximums” referred to condemned criminals—those sentenced to the maximum penalty that could be handed down by the court.
“There are only about ten now, with the others transferred to prisons in different regions throughout the country.”
She had heard that on the news. A condemned criminal’s sentence was carried out only through execution. Thus, condemned criminals had always been treated as prisoners on trial. Then last year, a change in the law ordered that they be treated as convicted prisoners. In the end, a good number of the condemned criminals here were transferred to prisons out in the provinces, and the building was left with empty rooms where they had stayed.
As they entered the security office adjacent to the building entrance, a monitor on a wall came into view. More than ten screens showed different rooms.
CCTV cameras had been installed so that each condemned prisoner in solitary confinement could be seen at a glance.
Some were asleep on a blanket, and some paced ceaselessly around the room as if suffering from a behavioral disorder. They all seemed aware of the CCTV, for they glanced at the camera now and then, looking disgruntled, or approached the camera and cursed, with a middle finger sticking up.
Seonkyeong’s eyes were automatically searching for Yi Byeongdo.
“After the last incident, all the solitary confinement rooms have been placed under a twenty-four-hour surveillance system.”
Seonkyeong turned around at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, and saw a heavily built man in his mid-forties standing there. He introduced himself as the security manager at the Seoul Detention Center. Seonkyeong understood right away what he meant by the “last incident.” He was referring to the suicide of Seong Kicheol, a condemned criminal.
Seonkyeong, who had written an article for a police journal on the mental state of prisoners, was relatively well-informed about the incident.
“There’s going to be a lot of backlash,” she said to the head, looking at the prisoners on the monitor.
People are bound to get edgy when they’re under surveillance for twenty-four hours a day. Although it was an effort to prevent another suicide, it didn’t seem to be a good solution. There was the possibility of human rights violations, and the condemned criminals, who were psychologically unstable, not knowing when their sentence would be carried out, would be adversely affected.
The security manager looked at the monitor with indifference, as if to say that he already knew all about her concerns.
“If they know that they’re being watched around the clock, at least they won’t make an attempt,” he said.
Seonkyeong was about to say something, but then stopped herself. It wasn’t something she should interfere with. Besides, she wasn’t here to deal with that. The important thing was to see Yi Byeongdo.
“They made all that fuss because it was Seong Kicheol who died—the papers wouldn’t have made such a big deal if it had been some other guy,” the manager said, shaking his head. He must have been quite harassed by the media.
“Would anyone even care what happened within these walls if something like that hadn’t happened?”
Seong Kicheol committed suicide using one of the trash bags distributed throughout the prison.
Those who make up their minds to kill themselves manage to find a way somehow, no matter how strict the surveillance. They tear up what they’re wearing to make a cord, or manage to find and bring back inside a jagged rock during a thirty-minute exercise break.
With the current manpower at the detention center, it wasn’t an easy task to keep watch on the prisoners around the clock. If nothing happened, the prison system would have no problems, but if anything did happen, every detail of its operations would be subject to scrutiny.
It seemed that the security manager, probably having suffered a great deal of harassment because of the incident, decided that he would deal with disputes regarding violations of human rights rather than be reprimanded for negligence in managing the prisoners.
As the security manager talked, his attention focused on one of the screens. Seonkyeong followed his gaze, and saw Yi Byeongdo leaning against a wall. Upon closer look, she saw that his head was shaking lightly.
“Are you really going to go see him?” asked the security manager.
“Huh?” Seonkyeong replied blankly.
The security manager took his eyes off the monitor and looked at Seonkyeong with a serious expression on his face.
“To be honest, I wish you wouldn’t go through with the interview,” he said.
“If it’s a matter of security . . .”
“It’s not that. Whatever happens in here is thoroughly under our control.”
“Then what’s . . .”
“Something doesn’t feel right. I thought it was strange how he singled you out, so I asked him how he knew you.”
“What did he say?”
Seonkyeong had been wondering about that herself.
“He didn’t say anything, just looked at me and smiled. It gave me goose bumps. He’s got some kind of a hidden motive,” said the manager, no longer indifferent and looking serious.
“Can’t you just cancel this appointment? If you refuse to see him, there’s nothing he can do about it,” he added.
He seemed genuinely concerned about Seonkyeong’s well-being. She looked at his
eyes, tense with concern, then smiled gently.
“I’ll be fine as long as you keep watch over me, won’t I?” she asked.
The manager’s eyebrows rose for a moment at Seonkyeong’s roundabout rejection. He then nodded to the prison guard with a resigned look on his face, no longer trying to dissuade her.
The guard opened a door to one side of the office and led her out.
Leaving the office, Seonkyeong sensed the security manager shaking his head.
She knew what his concerns were. Things were already in an uproar regarding security issues, and if problems arose again, he would be in a most difficult position. It would be better to rid oneself of such possibilities in the first place than to go through the drudgery again. The manager wasn’t interested in what kind of person Yi Byeongdo was, or what story he had to tell. He just wanted everything that happened in the detention center to stay under control.
Seonkyeong felt rather relieved that the security manager was sensitive to the task at hand. His fussiness insured that the external security would be thoroughly under his control. As long as the matter was in his hands, the possibility of unfortunate incidents occurring would be prevented.
Feeling more relieved, Seonkyeong became anxious to see Yi Byeongdo’s face. She quickened her pace as she followed the prison guard.
It seemed that the room where she would be meeting Yi Byeongdo was a makeshift visiting area provided by the detention center. She couldn’t tell what the original purpose of the room had been, but it seemed that a table and chairs had been placed in a space that had been empty. The rectangular table and the chairs were new, and looked completely off in the room. The traces of rain on the cement walls, whose paint was peeling, as well as the black mold here and there, told her that no one had been in the room for quite some time. The humidity and mustiness stung her nose. The chill of the walls could be felt even without touching them.
“Please wait a moment,” the guard said.
Seonkyeong nodded and took a look around.
There wasn’t a window in the room. A pane of glass the size of a human face, which was on the single door, was the only channel through which to peek outside. Seonkyeong looked up at the ceiling and saw a long tube of fluorescent light.