by Anna Premoli
“The boss has been on edge for days,” sighs Seung Hee.
“Yes, I agree…” I reply.
“I don’t think it’s to do with work. I have the impression that the restructuring project you two are working on is proceeding very smoothly. I heard some people congratulating him in the lift about it the other day. Do you know what’s really up with him?” she asks, looking at me like someone who knows more than she’s letting on.
Who? Me? “How would I know what happened to him?” I feign ignorance as best I can.
“I just thought that since you’re neighbours…” she insinuates, without completing her sentence.
“I swear I don’t know anything!” I reply quickly, before she starts getting any strange ideas.
Yoo Chul Ju heard us and seems to feel that it is his duty to join the discussion. For the record, unlike Japanese people, who are actually very discreet, Koreans don’t think twice about questioning you about your personal life. It’s like they almost feel they have to. Korean people are weird: they are very prudish (although repressed might be a better word) about sex, but they absolutely love gossip.
“Maybe he’s nervous about the blind date he has tonight,” he drops into the conversation like a bomb.
Seung Hee immediately gets excited. “Who told you that?” she asks in a whisper. The ogre is barricaded in his office, but he still has a bionic ear.
“I was told by Lee Ma Ri, the beautiful receptionist. She overheard him talking to his mother on the phone to confirm the appointment,” Chul Ju reveals. I’m secretly delighted by this news, it’s really interesting. And it’ll give me an excuse to tease him a little and try to ease the tension between us. Some time ago I asked for a coffee machine to be installed, and now there’s always hot coffee available. I pour some of it into a cup, pluck up my courage as best I can and head off towards his office. I knock and when he answers, or rather grunts, I grab the handle and open the door.
Mark is sitting at his desk, busy talking on the phone in Korean, and I manage to understand only a few words of what he’s saying. Who knows, maybe at the end of this long year of exile I will be able to pronounce a whole sentence. I take advantage of the fact that he’s busy so he can’t tell me off and hand the coffee to him. He pulls a dubious face, but then, not knowing what else to do, he takes the cup. I sit on the chair in front of him and wait patiently for him to end the conversation. We eye each other warily, but neither of us looks the other way. It’s obviously some sort of non-verbal communication which is even more mysterious than Korean, as far as I’m concerned. After a few minutes he puts the phone down and takes a sip of the coffee I’ve brought him. It looks as though he’s trying to play for time.
“To what do I owe this act of kindness?” he asks, leaning his head back against his chair and showing off his neck.
I swallow and try not to notice it. “That’s so you’ll have enough energy to get through your date tonight,” I answer casually, feigning indifference. I repeat to myself that it was only a kiss. A lot of people kiss each other and it doesn’t mean any more than that. Actors, for example – they’re always kissing each other. Sometimes a kiss doesn’t mean anything.
My words make him stop with the cup halfway to his mouth. He was probably about to have another sip, but obviously he won’t be doing that now.
“How do you know about that?” he demands, immediately looking much more morose.
“I only know what everybody else knows…” I answer mysteriously.
He doesn’t speak at all for a minute or two, then says “You’re a real bloodhound, aren’t you?” with a hint of honest humour. It’s not the reaction I was expecting.
“Pardon me?” I ask, surprised.
“You heard me, you’re not deaf,” he replies in a much calmer voice. What was he afraid of? Maybe that I wanted to talk about the night of the party?
“I couldn’t help it, I just had to tease you, the opportunity was just too good… And lately you’ve been quite tense, everybody’s noticed,” I justify myself quickly. This is the first time we have really spoken since the party – or since our ‘after-party’. Part of me is relieved that I’ve managed to move on, but another part of me is almost… disappointed?
Neither of us manages to say anything else, and eventually the silence starts getting annoying. I stand up to leave, but not before teasing him just one more time.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to say good luck for this evening, then.”
I’m about to give him a friendly go-get-‘em-tiger punch on the shoulder, but he catches my hand and holds it tight. The contact is electric and intense, my hand starts sweating from being in contact with his, and my heartbeat accelerates. I really need to stop getting so worked up every time he touches me – I’m not fifteen any more, and haven’t been for quite some time!
“What are the rest of you doing this evening?” he asks curiously, without letting my hand go.
The prolonged contact is making my cheeks go bright red – that’s what you get for having such a deathly pale complexion.
“We’re all going out for dinner,” I barely manage to get out.
“Have fun, then. I’m envious. My evening will be much less pleasant, that’s for sure,” he comments thoughtfully.
How come he’s so pessimistic?
“How do you know, maybe she’ll be the woman of your dreams…” I joke.
He lifts an eyebrow to show that he finds my hypothesis unconvincing. “Allow me to doubt that I’m going to like a girl my mother has set me up with…” he mumbles.
For all I know, his mother might be a dab hand at matching men with their perfect future wives. You should never judge other people’s mothers on the basis of your own.
He finally releases my hand, and I snatch it back very quickly. I would really like to be able to fool myself into thinking that I feel as though I’m free instead of disappointed. I can try, of course.
“I’m sure you’ll have an instructive night – enjoy it,” I say, dashing nimbly from his office.
Well that was a bizarre little meeting – it certainly wasn’t meant to go that way. I should have come across as much more distant and colder. I should have left his office feeling reassured about the reality of my lack of interest in him.
What the hell was I thinking?
*
The rest of the team and I are sitting in a Chinese restaurant, exchanging food and tasting each other’s dishes. I ordered Cantonese rice, sweet and sour chicken and steamed dumpling. I know I’ve only ordered run-of-the-mill stuff, but I’m still European at heart. The weird thing is that my Korean colleagues think my tastes are quite exotic. Moreover, in London we usually have dinner sitting around a table, while here we’re basically lying on the floor. Just for a change.
When you ask for a fork in England, nobody thinks twice about it, but here it’s best not to ask at all. I courageously pierce a large dumpling with my chopsticks, while all the others laugh at my refined British technique. To be honest, most European nowadays can use chopsticks pretty well – I just happen to be one of the few living exceptions. Or, better, I’m resigned to being one, if I’m going to be honest.
“I don’t know how we managed without you, Maddison. Dinners were never so much fun before you arrived here. And I have never before seen anyone attacking a dumpling the way you are,” Chul Ju compliments me, while eating soy noodles and pork.
It’s good that my limitations come in handy for entertaining my colleagues. I’m always happy to be of help!
Seung Hee agrees with him. “Oh, yes, Maddison, before your arrival some things were not allowed at all!” she exclaims.
“You mean that Mark didn’t allow them?” I ask, curiously.
“That too. He was a lot more uptight before you arrived,” Dong Woo answers. He doesn’t usually talk much, and he’s a quite discreet type, so I am really surprised by his observation. Partly because I was really pretty sure he sort of venerated Mark.
“Oh, w
ell, he doesn’t seem to be that easy going even now!” I point out as I attempt to lift up some chicken with my chopsticks. For an instant, I think I’ve managed it, but the distance between the bowl and my mouth is too big, and the piece of sweet and sour chicken lands on the table cloth, splashing sauce that misses me by pure chance. Today must be my lucky day, because stains usually never miss me. We’re very close, stains and I.
“That’s because you didn’t know him before…” Seung Hee insists, barely holding back a laugh. She might be right about it.
Since I’ve been here, the three members of my team have grown much closer to one another – they joke amongst themselves and treat Seung Hee as an equal. She told me herself that before my arrival that didn’t happen often, but having a woman as team leader must have opened their minds a little.
We’re talking about our plans for the Christmas holidays when we are interrupted by the persistent ringing of my mobile phone. It’s the company phone. Who might be calling me at this time on a Friday evening?
I hunt randomly through my bag and after no small effort – because I’m such a tidy girl – I manage to find my Korean phone. The screen says that Mark is calling me.
I freeze for a moment, not knowing whether I should answer or not, but in the end I’m too curious to ignore him.
“Hello?” I answer, trying to appear calm.
“Thank God you heard the phone ringing!” he says unexpectedly. His voice sounds agitated.
“What’s the matter?” I ask abruptly. I mean, I’m sure something really big must have happened if he’s decided to call me instead of one of the many other people he knows.
“I’m in hell – you have to help me,” is all that he says.
Of course, as usual Mark doesn’t ask, that’s not his style – he demands. I’m about to object when, as if he had read my mind, he says the magic words.
“I beg you,” he adds in a low voice. So low that I’m not even sure I heard correctly. Did I dream it, perhaps?
“Where are you?” I ask him. I give up easily, I know, but the sound of him begging was convincing enough.
“At that hotel in town that has a fountain – the one where the M&A conference was last month,” he explains.
“Do I at least have time to finish my steamed dumplings?” I ask. They are not bad at all, and lately it’s an event worth celebrating when I manage to get hold of any food I’m offered.
I hear him laugh. “Sure, I think I can hold off. I would never ask you to skip your dinner,” he jokes.
I’m about to say goodbye to him when I remember to ask for one fundamental detail.
“By the way, just so that we’re clear, what role am I supposed to be playing?”
“You must look surprised to see me and accuse me of cheating on you. That will make me look a lot less attractive to her. Or at least, that’s what I hope… Do you feel up to the job?”
“Do I feel like impersonating an insanely jealous woman? I absolutely do! See you later,” I say, hanging up. The other three, who are real masters of intuition when they want to be, chat and laugh away with one another.
Seung Hee, in particular, is rather amused. “Going to save the boss?” she asks.
“So it would seem…” I admit, lowering my shoulders in resignation. I’m not exactly relishing the thought of getting him out of trouble, but he did beg.
“Please, try to be convincing,” says Chul Ju, who must have taken Mark’s fate to heart.
“I promise. I will be very good,” I say solemnly. And so saying, I bite into the last steamed dumpling on my plate, grab my bag and walk off towards the entrance. “Behave yourselves,” I say to them as they shout fighting at me in unison. Sooner or later someone will have to inform them of the correct pronunciation of the word. Or maybe they already know it, but are still intent on pronouncing it the Korean way, emphasising the ‘t’. In any case, in Korea the word ‘fighting’ is everywhere: they all use it, in every possible situation, as a way of trying to motivate people.
*
The underground, which I’m getting to know quite well, takes me swiftly to the hotel. The black marble entrance is immense and clearly designed to take your breath away. I head directly to the bar, keeping my eyes open for Mark.
It doesn’t take me long to find him. The girl sitting in front of him is quite petite, even though she doesn’t look particularly thin. So there actually are plump Korean girls? I had almost begun to suspect that they were all locked up at home. In this country, the body is an obsession and you’re never quite thin enough. Not only that, about half of the European population, which we consider absolutely normal, would end up being categorized as fat over here.
Even from ten metres away you immediately notice that the girl is hanging on Mark’s every word. Literally. She’s looking at him like a dish which she is hoping to sample as soon as possible. Poor old Mark – how does his mother manage to find him such women? He must have a lot of respect for his parents if he puts up with such intrusion: I would never stand for anything like that.
Taking a deep breath and summoning up my courage, I head for their table. Mark, who from the corner of his eye must have seen me, feigns surprise.
I go in for the attack and throw myself on them like a wildcat. I grab a glass of white wine from the middle of the table and throw it in Mark’s face. Bullseye! And the fake philanderer made a good job of acting absolutely shocked. I mean, if he has to pretend, he might as well make a good job of it, right?
“You bastard!” I shout at him.
The girl winces and puts her hands to her mouth, mumbling something in Korean. I take it she understood my meaning, even if I did say it in English.
I continue. “How could you do this to me, Mark!?” I exclaim.
He looks quite lost – I don’t think he was actually expecting to be sluiced down with wine.
“Maddison, I can explain…” he starts, trying to calm me down. Then he says something in Korean to the distraught girl.
I take hold of his hand and drag him away. He tries to apologize to the girl, bowing over and over again, but then he follows me out of the hotel lobby.
As soon as we get outside, we run for a few hundred metres and then burst out laughing.
“How the hell did you manage to let yourself get wangled into that by your mother?” I ask him, trying to catch my breath.
“I don’t know. But it’s the last time, I swear,” he promises. He seems much more relieved now that he has freed himself from the grips of the man-eater in the restaurant.
“And why did you decide to call me?” I ask him, becoming serious once again.
“Nobody else would have been capable of staging such a thing. You English are so…” But he doesn’t finish the sentence, merely smiling at me as if it should be entirely obvious to me.
“Your mother will find out about it – you realize that, of course? What are you going to say to her?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” he says calmly, as if it were the only possible solution. Either he is good at pretending or he has a long history of run-ins with his mother. Not that that’s something I have any trouble understanding…
I stare at him, curiously. “If it were my mother, I can assure you that you would not get off lightly. She would wear you down until she managed to get some answers out of you. Anyway, what was so wrong with that girl?”
Mark leans against a lamp post and turns up the lapel of his grey coat. Very attractive. And he knows it.
“She is the daughter of some consultant or something similar, which is why my mother has ignored everything else about her. Too bad she’s totally raving mad. After less than five – and I mean literally five – minutes of conversation she was already convinced that we were soul mates. She even insisted on fixing the wedding date! According to her we should have at least three children,” he tells me, shuddering at the thought. It seems that being an attractive and successful man does not stop you from having embarrassing encounters, then.
Or better still, even if you do manage to avoid them, your family will lovingly devise some method or other to arrange them for you. This human side to him makes him seem almost pleasant.
I burst out laughing. “Why the hell don’t you find a good Korean girl to marry for yourself? Somebody normal, who appeals to you and not to your mother, so that you can father some kids with those beautiful eyes of yours?” I suggest.
“And why don’t you have beautiful children with golden hair and green eyes, then?” He retorts. We seem to have gone all the way back to that conversation on the plane.
“Because they wouldn’t be blonde, actually,” I admit. I walk over and whisper in his ear: “I have my hair dyed – my natural colour is chestnut brown.”
If he were a woman he would understand how much it costs me to make this confession. I know women who have burned pictures from when they were little girls to eliminate any inconvenient evidence about the natural colour of their hair.
He looks at me in mock surprise. Apparently he seems to have worked that out for himself. Remarkable, I have to admit. The male species is certainly not known for its brilliant observational skills, especially when it comes down to make-up and hair.
“And now we have escaped from the clutches of your lady friend, where are we going?” I ask. It’s just gone half past nine and I’m not ready to go home. In theory I could always go back to the three musketeers, but for some strange reason I don’t feel like leaving Mark. I completely ignore the alarm bells going off in my head.
“Wherever you want, my saviour,” he says, bowing. I don’t know if it’s the narrow escape that has put him in a good mood, but I’m certainly not going to let the opportunity pass. These days, having a cheerful Mark is becoming almost as rare as snow in July.
“Hmm, I’d like an ice cream!” I exclaim, after careful thought.