by Un-su Kim
“But then one day I took out the pin to wash my face, and the wooden finger wouldn’t come off. I pulled my hardest but it was stuck to my hand like a real finger. I thought it amusing at first. Isn’t it amusing? A wooden finger pretending to be a real finger.”
The man now had three wooden fingers. Of course, those wooden fingers didn’t bend at each joint like real fingers. But as if they were flesh that had grown from his palm, the wooden fingers were perfectly adhered to his hand. Stranger yet, at the point where the wood met the man’s flesh, there was a type of carnification taking place in which it looked like the material was a mix of half-wood half-flesh. Underneath the surface of that wood-flesh mixture, you could even see a few veins. How could flesh fuse with the wood, I wondered.
“This is surprising, indeed. There have been instances of organisms growing on people’s bodies, but this is a first.”
“Things like that happen?” he asked with an intrigued expression on his face.
“People like that are called chimeras. People who have lizards for tongues, tales of gingko trees growing from people’s bodies. But this is the first time I’ve seen a dead piece of wood fuse with human flesh. Can I touch it?”
He stuck out his hand without hesitation. I examined the three fingers for several moments. They were made from the same everyday wood he used for making toothpicks. They didn’t have fingernails and there were tree rings in the place where normal fingers would have fingerprints. The middle finger was bent slightly into a hook shape, perhaps for better dexterity while working. And for some reason, his pinky finger was one segment too short.
“Why is the pinky finger so short? I can’t believe you would have cut it this short by accident,” I asked.
“I accidently snipped a part of it off with the cutting machine. I wasn’t quite used to the finger back them.”
“Thankfully it was your wooden finger this time. That could have really hurt.”
“Oh no, it really hurt for a wooden finger,” he said with a straight face.
“Does it feel uncomfortable or foreign?”
“Of course it does. After all, it wasn’t my finger to begin with. But slowly that foreign-body feeling is going away. Little by little the finger is changing. It’s getting less cumbersome and sometimes bends in the direction I want it to. Of course, sometimes it bends in the direction I don’t want it to. At first when I would look at this wooden finger, it felt like I was a monster. I sold my eye to repay my debt, and now I have a fake one in its place. A wooden finger and a plastic eye. I felt so pathetic. But now it’s not so bad. Just you wait. By the year 2100, all machines will look like humans. And if that’s not the case, all humans will look like machines. It’s got to be one or the other. I know this because I can see that humans and objects are starting to resemble one another.”
“Do you still hate toothpicks?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me at first. Finally, after several moments, he spoke.
“Well, I don’t hate them as much as I used to, but neither do I have a newfound love for them. They’re just ok. Sometimes I wonder if humans aren’t meant to eventually return to the place they once loathed and live there in harmony.”
When he finished talking, the man lit a cigarette between his index finger and his wooden finger. Then after taking a lengthy drag, he blew a long stream of smoke into the air.
The man told me that he was beginning to resemble a toothpick. What he meant by that exactly, I’m not sure. A future society in which humans and objects resemble each other – what does that mean? Does it mean that in the twenty-second century, tables, vases, and wine glasses will love, cry, and feel loneliness like humans? Or does it mean that in the twenty-second century, people will live empty lives like vases and tables, unable to feel love, pain, or loneliness?
One day after coming back from the market, Pinocchio made a worried face and asked Geppetto the woodcarver a question.
“Papa, am I a human or a wooden puppet?”
Geppetto the woodcarver looked at Pinocchio with sadness in his eyes.
“My child, don’t be sad. If you have a kind heart, you can be whatever you desire. You can be a human or something much greater.”
Then Pinocchio shouted with joy.
“Then I want to be the best wooden puppet ever!”
FRIDAY, CLOSE THE BLINDS
Darkness fell outside the window. I got up from my chair, closed the blinds, and glanced around the office. It was quiet. All the employees with families had gone home early; it was Friday, after all. Of course, all the unmarried employees had gone home, too. They had dates or were hanging out with their friends on Fridays. They had healthy bodies for partying and having fun, and their wallets were fat because they were single. What need would they have for staying late at the office on a Friday night? The only people who would look after the office on a Friday night were people like me: people without a spouse or a significant other, people who lived alone. Besides, even if I did go home, the only thing waiting for me would be a refrigerator filled with cold heaps of rice, a half-eaten can of mackerel, and a flat can of beer. I lived in this cursed city alone, without anyone to love.
Recently I hadn’t been dating. It might sound strange, but for the last seven years I hadn’t met a girl whom I would want to date, nor had I had the desire to meet such a girl. Thanks to that, I’d been less depressed and less lonely. On the weekends though, it got tough. It was impossible to go to restaurants alone to eat and drink on weekends. People gave you looks of pity. Worse yet, sometimes they would tell me they didn’t have any tables when I said I needed a table for one. So I had no choice but to cook on the weekends. I went to a supermarket, bought a ridiculous amount of groceries (because the supermarkets, who didn’t want to sell items individually, were detestable and subtly forced you to buy in bulk, damned if you didn’t want to), checked out, then took my load of groceries home with me. And when I got home, I started cooking. As I did this, I often thought that cooking dinner for oneself was such a imprudent act. Not wasteful, but imprudent. Would prehistoric humans have hunted wild boar just to eat dinner alone? Well, considering the fact they didn’t have butcher shops back then, they might have. But most likely there were no Cro-magnons who lived alone. And that’s because they wouldn’t last two days without their pack.
There was one other person besides myself who hadn’t gone home yet. Son Jeong-eun from General Affairs. She always stayed late at the office. With her chubby body hunched over, she sat in the most isolated corner of the office as she worked on something before going home. But in this office where there was no real work to be done, what was it that she was so busy doing?
The other people at the office all said she was odd. I too thought she was a little odd. Even giving her the benefit of the doubt, it would a stretch to call her normal. First of all, she never talked. Never engaging in small talk with anyone, she only spoke when her job required it of her. Sometimes it was as if she were a mute, or had vowed never to speak with another human. Or perhaps she had just forgotten how to talk. She also had never been to any company gatherings – be it a formal business party, team outing, office track meet, or just a casual drink after work. She always ignored our boss’s intimidations when he said the office parties were mandatory, and simply skipped and went home. Everything she did she did alone – eating, working, and going home. In other words, she never did the most important thing for surviving in this city: being sociable. She was excessively reticent, excessively straight-faced, and excessively shy. She didn’t want anyone coming near her. She didn’t accept anyone. She was like an overgrown porcupine.
Friday night. She and I were the only ones left in the office. I should have been the only busy one at this office, held hostage again by Cabinet 13; so for what reason could she have been working so late?
It might have been because she took her time finishing all her work. As if her world was a slow-motion video, everything she did was excessively slow. Her walking speed, her
movements, even her speech (when she did speak) was slow. Anything that entered her world, be it work or some other project, became slow and lethargic. All the other female employees got annoyed with her sluggish pace and complained about her. “I can’t work with her. We’re just not in sync.” But, in all honesty, there was no work in this office with which to be “in sync.” We all knew it, too, and it was embarrassing to ever imply otherwise. Not only was there nothing with which to be in sync, there was nothing with which to even kill time. All we had to do was finish our measly work alone. The real reason the female employees got annoyed with her was because they didn’t like how quiet she was, how slow she was, and the fact her stoic behavior made her hard to read. That was the real and only reason they disliked her.
Another reason for her staying late at the office was because the tedious work that no one wanted to do was all dumped on her desk. It wasn’t like everyone was conspiring against her (then again, maybe they were), it was just the way things were. If it was anyone’s fault, it was hers because she never protested when someone assigned her any work. And that’s not an exaggeration; she never complained. When something urgent was placed on her desk, she would just quietly sit there and begin working, albeit slowly. In that sense, perhaps it was not unexpected that she worked late. Not only did she get all the tedious work that no one wanted to do, but she also worked excruciatingly slowly.
Watching her sluggish movements, I often got frustrated with her, too. I couldn’t understand why someone would choose to live in such a way. I got especially furious when Ms Chung, who talked about Jeong-eun behind her back the most, would come to Jeong-eun just before it was time to go home and tentatively hand Jeong-eun a file as she said, “Would you take care of this for me, honey? I’ve got sudden plans.” This was the only time Ms Chung ever gave Jeong-eun a friendly smile. But behind her teeth Ms Chung was mocking Jeong-eun. It’s not like you have friends or a boyfriend anyway. Each time this happened, I was overcome with the urge to slap Ms Chung. But what really got me angry was how Jeongeun quietly took Ms Chung’s file and sat down. Ms Chung said, “Thanks, honey,” and Jeong-eun nodded her head as if to say she understood. It bothered me when she took that file. Why didn’t she scream and say, “No!” Why didn’t she show her temper? Why didn’t she curse at Ms Chung and say, “Piss off, bitch. Do it yourself. Or, better yet, shove it up your loose hole or between the cleavage you like to show off so much!”
What a strange life she had. A life as a punching bag. A life with a note on one’s forehead that said, “Punch me.” A life with no regard for her own body. I had never once known someone like her. Is a life in which one never defends oneself even worth living? I always got angry watching her. It was like I was the one who getting insulted. It felt like I was looking at my own battered face in the mirror. But I wasn’t quite sure why it was I got overcome with that feeling when I looked at her.
I had been watching her for several years now. I watched how she walked; I peeked at her through the blinds as she left work; I even glanced furtively over at her hunched shoulders from time to time. For some reason, my eyes always wandered in her direction. Perhaps you think I empathized with her. Empathized is a funny word. With whom would someone like me empathize? Then, perhaps, I had a crush on her? I’m not saying it wasn’t true, but if I had, it would have been a surprise to everyone. All the female employees would have thought I was joking and laughingly said, “No way.” Section Chief Kim would have shaken his head in disapproval and said, “Kong, you have odd taste in women.” And my boss would have said, “Are you out of your mind! What, did you send your brain on a business trip? Pull yourself together, man.” Honestly, not even I knew what kind of feelings I had for her. Perhaps I just never had the opportunity to confirm what those feelings were. Or perhaps I never had the desire or the courage to. I really can’t say.
I had a friend who was known as the Count of Myeongdong. This friend not only claimed that he had sex with more than five hundred women before graduating college, but he also swore that he loved every last one of them. Once while drinking, he told me that love is like canned food. “Like all canned food, love has an expiration date, a price tag, and a warning label. In order to love, you need to check the price tag to see if you have enough money in your wallet, observe the warnings given in fine print, and finish matters before the expiration date. Only then is it a smooth process for everyone.”
Perhaps he was right, perhaps love in this city really is like canned food. As long as you have the will to check your money, the expiration date, and a can opener, you’ll be able to find love – mediocre, safe, and palatable love.
When the office clock hit 7:15 pm, Jeong-eun got up from her seat. Whenever she got up, her chair would make a high-pitched creaking sound. The office was completely empty as all the other employees had gone home for the week. Even so, she glanced once around the office. Then she picked up her old leather bag, which she’d had since she first started working here. Even back then it hadn’t been new. It was a tattered leather bag, one that she had to carry around on her bosom because the strap had broken. The kind of tattered leather bag that carried some strange secret. I always wondered what was in that bag of hers.
She headed toward the door. As if she were walking on snow, the flat soles of her shoes made a crunching sound. As she turned the doorknob to leave, something came over me and I called out to her in a loud voice, “Ms Son, are you heading home?” Startled by my voice, her shoulders flinched. She then slowly turned around to face my direction. But instead of answering, she just bowed by dropping her head toward my desk (yes, I’m positive that it was not me but my desk to whom she was bowing). Her eyes were slightly crossed as if she was trying not to make eye contact by looking down the bridge of her nose. I often wanted to ask her why she never looked people in the eye. But I couldn’t bring myself to. It would be as silly as asking why her shoes made a squishing sound when she walked. It might even be as rude as asking about her weight. I returned her bow by nodding my head slightly. It almost felt as if I was giving her permission to leave the office, which I wasn’t. I’m sure she also knew that’s not what I meant. As she began to turn around to leave, I called out to her again.
“Ms Son. Cheer up. Don’t pay attention to what the others say.”
This sudden outburst didn’t match the situation. It was so random, it even surprised me. I guess subconsciously I did empathize with her and wanted to give her some encouragement. But it probably would have been more courageous if I had said, “Jeong-eun, you need to be careful. The boss is just waiting for you to give him an excuse to fire you. Everyone wants you out of this office. You should grab coffee with people sometimes, engage in chitchat, come to office parties. You know, come to karaoke to sing and clap and play the tambourine. You’re not the only one who hates it, you know.”
As if she also thought my sudden outburst was bizarre, Jeong-eun cocked her head to the side slightly. And when she realized I was still looking at her, she started searching for a response. Scrunching her eyebrows together, she made an expression as if she were trying to give an evaluation of herself and the office. Her eyebrows, which were furiously twitching, were asking, “Am I OK? Is it OK that the people in this office treat another human being like this? Perhaps I am having a hard time…”
“Office life… is… fun,” she said finally, with a quivering voice. It had been a long time since I heard her speak. Her small weak voice was child-like. She bowed her head once again toward my desk then slowly walked out of the office. I could hear the sound of her flat, rubber soles as she walked down the hallway. I had once wished that her shoes would tip-tap like the other female employees’ heels. But she wasn’t the kind of girl who would wear stilettoes. Perhaps she could at least find shoes that didn’t make the sound of crunching snow. I clicked my pen several times as my eyes followed the sound of her footsteps as she reached the end of the hallway and began walking down the stairs. Office life is fun? What’s so fun about lif
e in this shithole office?
I sat at my desk and stuck a cigarette in my mouth. On the office wall were the words NO SMOKING written in red letters. Now that she was gone, there was no one in the office but me. But even so, that didn’t mean I could smoke. No smoking meant no smoking, even if you were alone. I lit the cigarette in my mouth as I muttered to myself, “You really shouldn’t be smoking in the office.” I raised the blinds and opened the window slightly. A creaking sound came from the rusty blinds. How tedious. These wretched blinds. By the time I finished half the cigarette, she was exiting the front door of the office. Her body was even more hunched over than usual. She was probably holding on tightly to that old leather bag. What was in that bag she held so closely to her chest?
BECOMING A CAT
Have you ever imagined what it would be like to transform into a cat?
Cats are optimistic, curious, cute creatures that sleep on average sixteen hours a day. Look at their agile movements as they launch themselves up onto high ledges; the effortlessly elegant way they jump from rooftop to rooftop; their amazing balance which allows them to fall from a tree and plant a soft landing by making split-second adjustments in their center of mass. Just look at those bottomless eyes of infinite mystery.
Cats are truly marvelous creatures. While their friends the jaguar and cheetah are struggling to survive in the slowly dwindling savanna and tropical forests, domestic cats have adapted to the city in impressive ways. They understand the streetlight system and even know to avoid dangerous hightension wires and electric fences. Cats know what day the compost is taken out in the city, and they know the color of compost bins. And because cats have such an eclectic palette, they can eat almost anything, from scraps of ham and canned mackerel to moldy bread and over-boiled anchovies. This junk food, so to speak, doesn’t really suit the preferences of elegant and noble cats, but they can’t be picky or complain. They silently accept the terms this world has given them.