The Disaster Tourist

by Yun Ko-Eun

  Only after Yona returned to her bungalow, after he saw the light in her room turn off, could Luck leave. Yona sat in her room in darkness, thinking about how their bodies had connected, the moment her weight had shifted almost entirely on to Luck. Maybe Luck was still sitting quietly nearby. Yona turned the lights on again. She pressed the button on her remote and turned on the eyelid signal light. Luck knocked on the door. That night, crashing waves drowned out all conversations inside this seaside resort. The waves came and went like the rhythm of a lullaby.

  The curtains in Yona’s bungalow remained closed through the morning. They slept deeply, the bungalow’s eyelids closed, like it would be all right if they stayed here forever. Only at lunchtime did Yona feel appropriately hungry.

  ‘Yona, I’m surprised by you,’ the writer said sarcastically when they ran into each other at lunch. ‘That guy’s getting fired,’ he continued.

  Yona was only half listening as she walked out of the lobby.

  ‘Toying with a Korean woman? We can’t just let that go.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ Yona demanded.

  ‘I saw everything. I saw it, I’m telling you. I stumbled across you guys on the beach last night. I was going to intervene, but it seemed like both parties were making a one-time mistake, so I decided to let it go. It needs to stop here.’

  ‘I wasn’t being coerced.’

  ‘Then was money exchanged? Is this the guy’s parttime job?’

  ‘Is it a problem for us to be together as a couple?’

  ‘A couple?’

  ‘A woman from Seoul and a Mui man. There’s no rule limiting our interactions to small talk, is there? Nights in Mui have been pretty boring, but now I’ve found a lover to pass the hours with. Spinning it that way would make our relationship look better in your screenplay, right?’

  The writer made an expression of surprise. He fanned himself with one of his documents.

  ‘I guess the screenplay’s been spilled, then,’ he said seriously. ‘There’s no way to keep things secret on this stupid island with your idiot lover.’

  ‘Junmo, you didn’t have to try and deceive me,’ Yona joked. ‘I didn’t know I would be part of your script.’

  The writer looked wide-eyed at Yona.

  ‘There was no need to specifically tell you,’ he insisted in earnest. ‘I wanted to include a relationship story, but the higher-ups kept sticking their noses in my plans, so now I only have a few remaining characters without determined parts. I had to give this role to you. I wouldn’t have done this if you were going to get hurt, would I? And I noticed that you and Luck were already spending a lot of time together anyway. If this screenplay is made public later, you’ll basically be the protagonist. You’re going to become a heroine.’

  Yona thought about it. She’d just finished putting the Mui programme together, and now she was going to be immortalised as its creator in a screenplay. Looking at it that way, the script didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

  ‘Since everything’s happening according to your script, Junmo, we won’t face any problems, will we?’

  ‘There is one potential issue. Sometimes, when you’re acting, it becomes hard to distinguish between reality and theatre. That’s what’s happened to you—it’s why you fell in love with Luck. I’m still going to include the romance between you two in the screenplay, but I wish you’d chosen someone better. Why him, of all people?’

  The manager called Yona and the writer into his office, interrupting the conversation. He could barely hide his nerves. Last night, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake had occurred nearby. The earthquake’s aftershocks didn’t reach Mui, but considering how the manager was acting, they might as well have. His anxiety had to do with the disaster recovery programme he’d hoped to win for Mui. Now the island nearby which had been badly affected by the earthquake would become a strong candidate for it instead.

  ‘They benefited from another recovery programme only three years ago. If they’re selected again this time, all our work is going to go down the drain.’

  The disaster was arousing a sense of competition in Mui. When the manager heard that damage from the earthquake included more than two hundred casualties, he couldn’t sit still. He unfolded and refolded his map several times, repeatedly asking Yona and the writer if plans were progressing smoothly. Only the plan for the first Sunday of August could save the manager from his anxiety. They began to doublecheck details, but talk of work overlapped with talk of news, and eventually news won out. It was hard to keep talking about their outlandish performance when faced with their neighbours’ actual suffering.

  The manager turned off the TV and opened a bottle of whisky. Outside, another bout of torrential rain was falling. The elongated chandelier hanging from the ceiling wobbled rhythmically, like a cradle. The yellow light had a blackish tint to it, and its regular motion, along with the alcohol, made everyone feel tipsy. Yona sat underneath the chandelier, and the manager and the writer sat across the table from her. The manager looked apprehensive, and the writer who had been chattering away grew quieter as alcohol coursed through his body. Strangely, Yona felt at ease. The earthquake that had occurred across the ocean seemed like a clear-cut truth. Mui, by contrast, amounted to nothing more than an unintelligible shadow of reality. Within that shadow, Yona found herself saying the following: ‘We shouldn’t let this project get out of control.’

  ‘I think it’s time you stopped drinking,’ the manager said as he cleared away Yona’s glass.

  ‘Think about it, Yona. Some people will die because of the sinkhole, but others will live because of it. And a lot more people will live than die.’

  The sinkholes were like a lifeboat, he said. If you wanted to make things fair in an emergency, no one would be allowed to sit in a lifeboat while others drowned. Didn’t Yona want some people to survive? Like conspirators carrying out a grand plot, they’d decided to sacrifice the minority for the majority. No different from cutting off the sprouts on a potato, or removing a bullet from wounded flesh: they were giving something up for the sake of what would remain. But who would be sacrificed?

  People become brave and upstanding versions of themselves when remembering past disasters. But things are different when the disaster is happening. Witnesses don’t see the disaster for what it is, or even if they do, they look on idly, or sometimes exploit the situation. The sinkholes occurring now weren’t on the other side of the desert. They were somewhere unseeable, somewhere inside Yona.

  In her dreams, Yona replayed the truck accident she’d witnessed. She didn’t want to see the driver or the victim’s faces, but the dream forced her to lift her head until she couldn’t help but look forwards—at the criminal, or maybe the body. The dream always ended right before she caught a glimpse of the face.

  Despite her work’s smooth progress, an ever-present feeling of guilt surrounded Yona. She kept forgetting that the Mui Luck had introduced her to and the Mui she was currently slashing to pieces were the same place. During her time with Luck, Yona had grown cautious about everything on the island. She could free herself from this confusion when she was with him. That afternoon, he was taking Yona to the mangrove forest.

  ‘It’s a healing forest,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t realise it was so big.’

  ‘It just looks narrow at the entrance—inside, it’s a different world.’

  They got on Luck’s boat and floated deep into the woodland. This place was the only part of Mui that Paul’s trucks couldn’t access. Trees crowded the swampy expanse, and the wet forest floor kept cars from driving across. The only thing that could pass through the forest was a single, narrow boat. Beneath the trees, Yona and Luck spent the afternoon in conversation. They embraced carefully, like movement would cause them to be eaten up by time.

  That evening, after Yona returned to the bungalow and showered, someone knocked on her door.

  The woman standing on the step had a hat pulled over her eyes. She seemed to have come in secr
et. Yona didn’t recognise the visitor, but something about her was familiar. Yona let the woman inside her room. She held out a stack of paper: the writer’s screenplay. Did this stranger know something that Yona didn’t? Yona tried to look at her face, but only her lips were visible under the hat. An unusual smell came from her body. Yona had a bad feeling about her. She pushed the stack of paper away.

  ‘I’m sorry, but the screenplay is the writer’s responsibility. It’s not my job.’

  The woman seemed to be scrutinising Yona’s expression. Thankfully, the room was quite dark, and the murky indirect lighting masked Yona’s appearance. Silence filled the room. The woman stared at Yona like she was drilling into her. Her eyes looked uneasy, and desperate.

  ‘If it’s not urgent, can we talk tomorrow?’ Yona asked. ‘I’m tired.’

  As Yona turned away, the woman grabbed her elbow, snatching at her like the roots of the strangler fig tree.

  ‘Have you not read the entire screenplay?’ the woman asked urgently. ‘Here, look at it.’

  Yona stared at the woman, and for a second, she caught a glimpse of her eyes. Eyelids without a fold, brown irises. They filled with tears.

  ‘You can’t tell anyone that I’m here,’ the woman pleaded. ‘But I had to come.’

  ‘What do you want to tell me?’

  ‘If you read this script, you’ll know: these plans aren’t normal. We have to stop them before they happen,’ the woman blurted out. ‘Massacre—isn’t that what you’re doing?’

  ‘Tell this to the manager,’ Yona replied flatly.

  ‘You need to know.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know who you are, so why should I listen to you?’

  ‘It’s a massacre. You’re planning a massacre.’

  In that moment, Yona hurled the first thing she could get her hands on. It was just a bedside cushion, but it felt like a rock. The cushion fell to the floor without hitting the woman. Yona let out a shriek, unable to hold back the anger welling up inside her. She hated this unwelcome guest.

  ‘From what I know, people volunteered,’ Yona said after she calmed down. ‘They’re compensated, the volunteer performers. This is between those volunteers and the people who hired them. There’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me. There’s nothing I can do.’

  Yona looked at the woman, and the woman laughed scornfully.

  ‘If you read the script,’ she said, ‘you’ll understand. There are people who were unwittingly given roles even though they didn’t apply. People who are carrying out this stupid performance that they don’t actually want to be part of. Here: everyone assigned the parts from Crocodile 70 to Crocodile 450 is going to die for nothing. These crocodiles don’t have lines. They’re not even practising; they’re just going to die. Most of the crocodiles, even if they’re alive now, have been given roles where they have to die. Do you really not understand what this means?’

  ‘They’re crocodiles. What kind of lines would a crocodile have?’

  ‘Don’t you know who the crocodiles are? Haven’t you figured it out what that word means?

  Yona turned away. Of course she knew the crocodiles the woman was talking about. The people who lived in the crocodile caution zone by the red sand desert, the people who set Paul on edge. The manager had repeatedly told Yona that the crocodile caution zone needed to be ‘cleaned up’. Every rainy season, he said, the crocodiles came to shore and caused problems, and the baby crocodiles were increasing in number.

  Yona recalled something else that the manager had told her. ‘Mui isn’t big enough to house these crocodiles, you know. They’re dangerous.’

  ‘Why are you saying these things to me?’ she asked.

  ‘You have to know. What the manager’s plan is, how the massacre will occur. We need to stop it.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

  ‘Listen to this line in the script: There were about three hundred of them. People who lived here during the dry season and left during the rainy season. Mui was their home, and what happened is sad—it’s horrible. I’ve seen the encampment from a distance several times. This is all unbelievable. I knew a really lovely boy who lived there.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘That’s one of the lines. Only after the crocodiles die are they treated like people. They’re being sacrificed for this awful tragedy. Do you not recognise this part?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s supposed to be saying that? And why should I trust you?’

  ‘That’s one of my lines. Now do you believe me?’

  The crocodiles didn’t have any lines. That was all Yona knew. She wasn’t sure how they would be massacred. Honestly, she would rather not know.

  ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.’

  When Yona said that, the woman shook her head.

  ‘You can help,’ she said.

  ‘Please, just go.’

  ‘It took bravery for me come here, Yona Ko,’ the woman said from behind Yona’s back. ‘It pains me to think that I participated in the unfolding of this event. Of course, at the beginning I didn’t realise it would be such a big deal. The hole in front of me now is larger than I expected, and it’s growing out of control. I regret what I’ve done. But it’s not too late for you to do something. I don’t want you to regret doing nothing.’

  Yona pushed the woman and they struggled with each other until Yona shoved her outside. Yona felt dizzy. She thought of Nam. And of the hole, bigger than planned and growing, unchecked.

  The next morning, when Yona finally opened her eyes after failing to fall asleep all night, the ceiling fan looked several feet lower than before. She wanted to hurry up and go to breakfast, where all she had to worry about was how her eggs should be cooked. Recently, the writer had hardly been coming to meals. Yona ate alone, crossed the empty garden, and returned to her bungalow. Just as she was beginning to suspect that the woman’s visit last night had been a dream, the script on the table caught her eye. Yona picked it up and threw it in the bin. Yona had never seen the final plans for the sinkhole. She knew about the initial outline, of course, but clearly the plans had extended way beyond that now. As her confusion grew, so did the number of things she didn’t want to think about.

  No one in the writer’s script was being told to stab someone with a knife, or push them into a hole. The people being sacrificed, though, didn’t know they would die. Ultimately, this event would bury hundreds of people in the holes. People who knew were staying silent about the future carnage. The woman was right: a massacre was being planned, but so cleverly that no one was directly responsible for it. Every part of the plans for Mui Sunday had been divided into the smallest possible components, so the workers making the sinkholes happen focused only on the assignments given to them. Yona was no different. She occasionally thought about the overall plot of this event, but those thoughts were always followed by the consolation, or perhaps excuse, that all she could do was plan the travel programme. If someone had ordered her to push people into the sinkholes, Yona would have said no and left instantly. But because her contribution wasn’t direct, Yona stayed silent, and as she got more used to her position, she grew insensitive to the effects of her work.

  But she dreamed often. The dreams brought Yona into a new realm. They were dreams about an almost-complete world, a world that would collapse immediately after construction finished. Where a man with a forty-inch waist and his partner worked together, each painting the places their hands could reach; where an old dog drowsed under a hammock; where a child practised crying for money; where an old motorcycle drove on roads that weren’t really roads: that world.

  The script was still in the bin. Yona wanted it to disappear, but eventually she fished it out. As she flipped through the pages, she came face to face with a story that she couldn’t have imagined. A story whose last scene showed Luck’s dead body in the first sinkhole, after Yona had returned to Korea. A last scen
e where Yona, without her lover, faced the sky and shrieked like she was being torn to pieces.

  ‘All the relationships in my script are approaching their expiration dates. You didn’t anticipate this? Why include a love story if it’s not a tragedy?’

  The writer sounded frustrated. He said that he’d never written a happy ending. No one who hired him expected a satisfying end. Yona grabbed him urgently.

  ‘It’s your screenplay—you can write it how you want. Do you want to kill Luck? No!’

  ‘I couldn’t hurt a fly. Does anyone wish to kill random people? But I’m an employed writer. This is a highly structured process, and my job is the script—nothing else.’

  It was like a food chain: the manager stood behind the writer, and Paul lurked behind the manager.

  ‘Yona,’ the writer added, ‘you’re not free from this system, either. And haven’t I been telling you from the beginning not to get too attached to Luck? You’ve got to stop caring about him now, see?’

  Yona ran to the manager’s office. If the manager was in charge of the writer, she needed to see the manager, and if Paul was in charge of the manager, she needed to see Paul. Then she could save Luck, she thought. If there was someone else behind Paul, who would it be? Who stood behind Paul, driving him? The sun slowly sank towards dusk, and the manager wasn’t in his office.

  In the distance, she saw the woman who’d come to her room last night. Yona couldn’t read her expression, but the woman’s presence felt like an added pressure. Yona returned to her bungalow and pulled the plans for the revised Jungle travel programme out from her drawers.

  Yona had included the mangrove forest in her programme itinerary. The idea was to make the trip seem like an eco-tour as well as a disaster one. Luck knew more about the forest’s ecosystem than anyone, a fact that she now indicated in the schedule by adding him into the itinerary as the mangrove forest tour guide.