by Suah Bae
The chimney room had a small television, the guest bathroom had a radio, and there was an old record player in the small living room which the couple used to listen to, but Kyung-hee never went into the living room. The chimney room’s small television had a thick Braun tube coming out of the back, and the screen wasn’t much bigger than that of a security camera at a bank or airport. When you pressed the button on the remote control, a thin thread of bluish-gold light extended horizontally across the gleaming black bulge of the screen, and only after several continuous seconds of an odd sound, like something coming from beyond the galaxy, would the screen flash on. It was just the same when you switched it off. There were also occasions when, even without so much as touching the remote, the screen would flicker for a brief instant, the world hemmed in by its borders would be plunged into sudden darkness, and a long, slender horizon of golden pixels was strung out across the screen before it all snapped back to normal, a single galaxy exploding into nothingness. It looked like a star going supernova, seen side-on in the form of a whirling disc. A disc with streaming saw-teeth around its edges, fire’s ragged hem. Kyung-hee stared at the screen for a while, wondering what that desolate explosion might presage, but the appliance now seemed entirely inert. The radio in the bathroom, on the other hand, was shiny and new, so it switched on without a problem even when you hadn’t touched it for a while.
The teacher couple gave Kyung-hee a bunch of keys. As well as the key which opened the building’s ground-floor entrance, there was a small silver key for the outer of their flat’s two entrance doors, and a large, broad brass key; this was for the inner entrance door, which led through from the section containing the chimney room. The couple explained to Kyung-hee that several years ago some gypsy children had robbed them, so it was imperative that the inner entrance door be locked whenever the house was empty, and at night time. But they also said that, as one of them was always up by 8 a.m. at the latest, and would then open the inner door, Kyung-hee would be able to come in and have breakfast in the kitchen. The couple called the hole in the chimney room’s ceiling the ‘skylight hole’, and informed her that when it rained she could use the switch on the wall to plug the hole with a glass stopper; just then the heavens were restless with a shifting filigree of rainclouds. But even when it wasn’t plugged with the stopper, not even a single raindrop ever made its way down through the ceiling onto her bed, which Kyung-hee found strange. Before, the chimney room must have been temporary quarters for domestic servants, or else a room for praying, or for receiving a punishment. The electronic skylight hole would have been installed more recently. The couple referred to switching it on as ‘giving the room a pat on the head.’
When taking the stairs down from the fourth floor you would come face to face with a full-length, life-size photograph of John F. Kennedy, on the landing between the second and third floors. The same, of course, if you’re going up. Kyung-hee had walked up those stairs many times, but it still came as a shock every time, as she momentarily mistook the photograph of the beaming president for the real thing.
That morning, there was a basket of red roses on the table; only then was Kyung-hee informed that today was the female teacher’s eighty-second birthday. Her husband lit two candles, and they divided the bread between three plates. On the windowsill there was an orchid and a pot of peppermint, and the candles in the two brass candlesticks were duck-egg blue, matching the sugar bowl. The husband poured his wife and Kyung-hee a cup of coffee each, and Kyung-hee spread butter and honey on the sliced bread. Just then, they were interrupted by the bell’s noisy chime. They were all surprised; there was no reason for anyone to come calling at such an early hour. Their unexpected guest turned out to be the former Lufthansa stewardess who lived next door, who’d brought a homemade birthday cake. She’d come with her daughter, who looked to be around fifteen years old; the girl announced that her cheeks were swollen because she’d had her wisdom teeth taken out just the day before, and so they all made a fuss over her, peering at her puffy cheeks and murmuring words of concern. Standing in the entrance hall, they let off tiny firecrackers and waved slender, self-igniting Yugoslavian sparklers while they sang “Happy Birthday”. They each tasted a piece of the homemade cake, and the consensus was that it was delicious. Once these standard congratulations were over, the former stewardess and her daughter went back to their flat. Just before, though, the stewardess turned and looked back over her shoulder as though something had suddenly occurred to her, saying “Oh, I’ve only just remembered, once when I flew to Korea, Seoul was completely smothered in a yellow sand cloud, and the plane was on the point of being diverted to Japan. Luckily, we managed to touch down in Seoul after all; I remember our strongest impression of the place, stronger than that thick yellow sand suspended in the sky like a swarm of yellow dragonflies, was of the intense, peculiar scent of spices that pervaded it.” It’s garlic, Kyung-hee said, supplying the word that the former stewardess had forgotten, or else was deliberately leaving unsaid, and then their guests went straight home. The female teacher explained that the former stewardess’ family had been their neighbours for decades, they were really quite close—so much so that, in the past, whenever the couple went on holiday and left the house empty, they would empty their postbox for them.
The teacher couple had an invitation to dinner, and were sorting through their formal clothes, trying to decide what to wear. It was an autumn dance party, hosted by a newspaper company. It was always held on the last weekend of October, they told Kyung-hee, and it had been an annual fixture for them for over thirty years, an occasion for dancing the night away before catching the last train home. The female teacher had chosen to wear a very deep red woollen scarf over a white silk blouse. Despite the ground being muddy with rain, she’d also picked out a pair of high-heeled shoes, as these matched the rest of her outfit. Her husband was wearing a thick, soft-looking grey sweater and a grey fedora. My wife will probably be dancing on the table tonight, he told Kyung-hee. The couple begged Kyung-hee to go with them, but she had to explain that, unfortunately, she already had plans. I suppose there’s nothing to be done then, the wife said. Next time, next time you’ll have to come with us. She didn’t have false teeth or dye her hair, her back was still straight, she had good posture and a steady stride. Aside from a little rouge on her lips, she wasn’t wearing any makeup. As she was healthy and very active, only a few years ago she’d been entrusted with directing the children’s theatre production of Queen Gisella at City Hall. Queen Gisella was a fairy tale. Kyung-hee knew it too. Next time, then, next time I’ll have to go with you, she said. Next time, if the opportunity arises, I’ll go with you to the newspaper company’s ball. The couple were bent over the subway timetable, checking the times of the last trains, their heads practically touching. Last train on line 1 departs 11:45, on line 2 departs 00:05, 10:57 on line 4 but you can only take it as far as City Hall, the tram in the town centre runs until 1:20 a.m.… Why can’t you just take a taxi?, Kyung-hee asked cautiously. That way it wouldn’t matter about the time, you could just stay and enjoy the party for as long as you like, and it’s not that far away, so the taxi fare wouldn’t be too high. As Kyung-hee was aware, the couple were both very wealthy. They might well have been the wealthiest people she knew. Well, you see, the thing is that we’re both awfully tight-fisted, the teacher replied. Kyung-hee couldn’t decide whether she was being sarcastic or candid.
Kyung-hee came home late that night. She opened the front door with the silver key, groped about in the dark entrance hall for the light switch, flicked it on, then, after putting the bundle of keys on the table beneath the coat hooks, went into the chimney room and stood there quiet for while, her skin grazed by its chilly air. A tall elm in the back yard towered up past all four floors and above the chimney room’s window, submerged in the sky’s black water; only a few last leaves, already sere, still clung to its branches. As soon as Kyung-hee opened the window, a mass of cold air rushed its moist body into the room. T
hat evening, just before she left the house, Kyung-hee had spied the soft, dark grey body of a nuthatch, sitting on a big branch near the top of the elm. As the nuthatch, its streamlined body small enough to be held in one hand, had taken up a position so close to the chimney room’s window, Kyung-hee could even make out the orange and gold mix of its round belly, and the long, straight black markings that crossed over its eyes. The wind was scattering the raindrops here and there, as though they were dancing. Even when the surrounding branches shuddered violently in the wind, the nuthatch didn’t move an inch, so Kyung-hee carefully reached out to check whether it was merely a beautifully-made stuffed decoration; of course, there was no way that she could reach all the way to where the nuthatch was sitting.
The nuthatch’s belly was the colour of evening sunlight as autumn ripens to its zenith, but now the little bird was nowhere to be seen. A thick layer of leaf mulch carpets the streets, so the flat, worn-smooth soles of Kyung-hee’s shoes were constantly slipping on the pavements’ kerb stones, and everywhere was thick with the smell of rain, of the nearby river, of cobwebs festooned with moisture, of mist rising up from the leaves. Drops of rain gleaming the colour of iron tumbled soundlessly down over the bridge’s metal railings. Her shoes were light summer ones, so Kyung-hee’s feet were still wet. She spent a long time gazing out of the window, down into the inchoate darkness, Kyung-hee said, until eventually it seemed as though flesh, hair, and even breathing itself had all become a wriggling dream of dark green moss, a component of the night. “A spore sets down roots in an empty lung, blossoms into a pretty clump of pale yellow mould and, growing into the spokes of a wheel, bores into me, bores through my skull and flesh, stretching up towards a certain specific point in the sky, looking down on me and the world, that kind of feeling…”
The inner front door was closed like it always was at night, and on seeing the coats and shoes in the hall she guessed that the couple had returned home but were already asleep. Through the skylight hole high up in the chimney room’s ceiling, a small square swatch of sky glinted black. Kyung-hee sat down on the bed, then stretched out on her side, her legs dangling to the floor. “I’m beneath the ceiling of a tent supported by pillars. The tent’s walls are all flapping. Walls of fluidly shifting leather, moistened with the shaman’s spit. Fire lives beneath the central pillar. They swing their bodies up on a trapeze suspended from the air, red tongues ceaselessly stretching to the sky. Actually, they know how to fall away from themselves. Restlessly scintillating their transparent flesh, they exist simultaneously at all places on the ground and in the air. In their mouths, new tongues of silence are constantly sprouting up…” As if these words, whispered while that dark grey nuthatch was perched at the top of the tree of life, had reached Kyung-hee’s ears only after passing over strange mountains, after the briefest lag. “All human abodes are open to the world’s core…”1
The next day dawned to a clear sky, and the wind couldn’t stop the sun from coming into view between thick clouds, so they decided on the spur of the moment to make a trip to the lakeside. This was possible as the female teacher was still able to drive at the time, and also because a male guest, an old friend of the couple who had at one time been Kyung-hee’s German teacher, was supposed to be paying a call on them. In the morning they made cheese and tomato sandwiches and filled a big thermos with hot coffee. There was still plenty of time left before the man who’d been Kyung-hee’s German teacher was due to arrive when the buzzer for the ground-floor entrance went off. The intercom exchange clarified that the person who’d pressed the buzzer for the couple’s flat was the niece of the Polish maid whom the couple used to employ. Their faces both clouded with perplexity at the same time. “Darling, you’ll have to go down and make her understand, and send her away,” the teacher said. “Though I made myself perfectly clear the last time…I can’t understand it.”
After the husband had gone down, Kyung-hee asked what was going on. The teacher dithered, saying that she hoped Kyung-hee would understand that it wasn’t as though they were turning some (foreign) stranger away without a reason. In the past, they’d employed a Polish maid, a skilled, diligent woman with whom they’d had a highly satisfactory relationship, but who, unfortunately for them, had ended up returning to Poland. Before she did, though, she introduced her niece to the couple as a potential successor. The couple had the maid’s niece clean their house once as a trial, but her method of cleaning had left a lot to be desired. So the couple had decided to look for a different maid. And after they’d explained this several times to the maid’s niece, who could speak the language of this place only clumsily, in simple words so that she could understand, they’d sent her away; this had happened last week, but now the young Polish girl had come back again this week, on the same day of the week, as though she had absolutely nothing else with which to occupy her time, and pressed their buzzer.
In the meantime the husband had come back up, and in answer to his wife’s question of how it had gone, said that the young woman had acted as though she couldn’t understand even a single word he said, and had tried to push past him up the stairs, her body language stubbornly insisting that she’d come to clean their flat. Kyung-hee kept her mouth closed for a while. Indeed, they all kept their mouths closed for a while, keeping their own counsel. Kyung-hee felt as if she had tactlessly thrust her way into the world of the couple’s ethical beliefs, a world which was perfectly fair, yet private all the same. The couple’s tacit determination, in spite of their perplexity, not to make any further mention of the foreign maid’s niece—Kyung-hee suspected that her own presence might have something to do with this.
The male guest who’d arranged to come that day also pushed the buzzer for the couple’s flat from the ground-floor entrance, just like the maid. This time the teacher called over the intercom in a cheerful voice, We’ll be right down. Her husband was carrying a food hamper, the teacher had the coats, and Kyung-hee had two blankets to spread over the grass. They went down to the main entrance, each in turn encountering on the stairs the handsome young President Kennedy, his mouth open wide in laughter. The male guest presented the teacher with a bouquet of purple flowers, which he’d been awkwardly trying to conceal behind his back, and wished her a happy birthday. The teacher’s hair was completely white, but groomed into an attractively rounded shape. Her husband was wearing the fedora he always put on whenever he went out; this was because his doctor had recommended that, where possible, he should not let his bald head get too much sun. His physique was robust, and the smart, achromatic clothes he always favoured, a palette of blacks and greys, suited him. After an hour of the teacher’s slow driving, the four of them arrived at the lake, which was out in the suburbs. “My friend’s father turned ninety this year; he never has any problem driving,” the male guest said to the teacher while they were in the car. “But of course, he only drives from his house to the supermarket or the church and back, and that’s all in the same area.”
The sand by the lake was deep-coloured and unusually grainy, and the dirt was made up of a mix of thick gravel with conspicuous particles, pointed stone fragments, and deep black quartz. There were several ducks by the water’s edge, rummaging around among their feathers with their beaks. Two golden retrievers, accompanying some picnickers who’d arrived at almost the same time as Kyung-hee’s party, bounded out of their car and down to the lake, so the ducks, their afternoon nap disturbed, yet with no indication of haste, formed a line and wandered off to another spot. Having seen the water, the dogs kept bounding about in excitement, their tongues lolling out. Kyung-hee’s party found a bit of flat ground, arranged the blankets and sat down. The lake wasn’t particularly big, and neither was the scenery all that impressive, but it was clean and quiet; since it was possible to park right in the vicinity, the couple explained, people liked to come here with no particular plan other than to swim or enjoy nature for a few uninterrupted hours. They ate their sandwiches, and shared a bottle of apple juice. Accompanying the dog
s was a small group of teenagers, who chose a spot on the sandy earth near Kyung-hee’s party and got McDonald’s hamburgers and fried snacks out of their backpacks to eat. The smell of grease oscillated through the air and the paper bags rustled noisily. The sunlight, granular as the sand, streamed down onto their cheeks and foreheads, and a cold breeze sticky with sap blew over from a nearby group of Japanese cedars. Kyung-hee rubbed her face and jaw with the back of her hand. One of the golden retrievers came up to her, then, after giving her hair a good sniff, padded off again.
After finishing the last of the coffee, the teacher suggested they go for a swim. “It’ll probably be the last swim of the year.” The moment she finished speaking, she and her husband took off their hats and shawls at the same time and with almost the same gesture, so much so that they looked like a pair of mimes. After that, they unbuttoned their coats, and started to remove their sweaters and trousers, and the woman her blouse. Then Kyung-hee could see the swimsuits that they’d been wearing under their clothes. Lastly, they took off their shoes and socks. They tucked the socks neatly inside their shoes. They blew their noses on their handkerchiefs, each rubbing their chest and shoulders as if trying to smooth the gooseflesh down. A distinct latticework of bluish veins tracked across their bodies. For a moment, they looked not at each other’s faces but at the passage of those conspicuous veins under each other’s skin, their gaze intimate yet distant. As though this, too, were something they’d managed to arrange without words, they held hands and walked slowly down to the lake.