At Least We Can Apologize

by Lee Ki-ho

  “What’s this? You’ve got customers coming to the house? And two of them at that!”

  The man shuffled his slippered feet along and came just outside the door. He kept his eyes on us.

  “You want me to get out of your way for a bit? 30,000 won and I’ll be back in two hours. Two hours’ll be enough, right? No? Gimme forty, we’ll be good.”

  Si-yeon answered nothing the man said and, instead, closed her eyes tightly. She bit her lower lip. Then, in a small voice, still loud enough for us all to hear, she said, “This is going to drive me fucking crazy.”

  When the man heard this, he spoke once more. “Then we won’t go by time, we’ll go by head, huh? That’ll be better, right?”

  As soon as he said that, Si-yeon slapped him in the face.

  9. Packaging

  The next morning Si-bong and I took a walk around the apartment complex. It was divided into four sections. In between each section there were courtyards with small play areas, and at the end of the last section the land cut off in a steep stone embankment. On the walkways between each section there was a total of seven benches and of those, four were without backs. There were thirteen streetlamps and in the flower beds three poplars, nine cherry trees, and four persimmon trees. Si-bong and I counted them one by one as we walked. Along the way we met a total of five cats and even saw two dead pigeons that had been ripped apart.

  Just in front of the apartment complex there was a two-story shop building. We could see signs for a market, a butcher, a cleaner’s, a real estate office, a fruit stand, and one more shop the sign of which was missing three letters so we couldn’t tell what it was. All of the signs faced the main street, rather than the apartment complex.

  Si-bong and I sat down at a table with an umbrella in front of the market. The white plastic chairs were covered in dust and were a little wet, but we sat there anyway. This was on account of our still feeling dizzy and nauseated. Si-bong took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat. I followed suit. I felt the dizziness start to go away a bit.

  Soon after, an older woman came out of the market and stood in front of us. She was a thick woman with big lips.

  “Want somethin’ to drink?” She asked us as she wiped down the table with a rag.

  We thanked her and told her politely that at that moment we weren’t thirsty. We added that we weren’t feeling very well. With that, the woman threw the rag down on the table and said curtly, “This deadbeat neighborhood! I gotta close up shop and get outta here, that’s what I gotta do.”

  Even after the woman had gone back into the market, Si-bong and I remained seated at the table with the umbrella. On the sidewalk in front of the building there was a public phone booth and right next to it a sign for the neighborhood bus and a trash can. A small, black plastic bag that had been sitting on top of the trashcan got picked up by the wind and landed at Si-bong’s feet. Si-bong picked it up. He looked at it from various angles, then took the rag that was still on the table, folded it neatly in half twice and tucked it inside the plastic bag. In the same exact manner as we’d folded socks, Si-bong straightened out the top of the plastic bag and set it down on the table. Si-bong looked at it and let out a short chuckle. Following Si-bong, I pulled the folded rag out of the plastic bag and folded it just as we had the socks. We took turns going back and forth, folding and unfolding the rag. Si-bong folded it a little faster than I did. The rag smelled a bit mildewy, but we kept on doing it. Folding it up like that, our dizziness eased a bit more, and we felt less nauseated.

  We sat there folding the rag, placing it in the bag, and unfolding it until the small neighborhood bus had passed by a total of seven times. No one ever got off. When the bus came the seventh time, Si-bong and I got up from the table with the umbrella. We politely gave the black plastic bag to the woman inside the market, holding it out with two hands. The woman looked at us for a moment with a strange expression on her face, then slowly opened it. She closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.

  “This month I’m outta here . . . this month!”

  Again, she smacked the rag down on the counter. Bending at the waist, Si-bong and I signaled our goodbye with another polite bow.

  10. The Man with the Horn-rimmed Glasses

  Si-yeon lived with a man. He was sixteen years older than her, but Si-yeon didn’t speak to him in the formal. She would usually just call to him with a “Hey, you!” or “Hey, son of a bitch!” or “Crazy fuck!” The man usually called her “honey.” He called us both “brother-in-law.” We didn’t really know what to call him, so we didn’t call him anything. But we never really had any problems. That was on account of there not really being any reason for us to call on him first.

  The man was rather short, with a very thin body. His hair was long enough to cover the entire back of his neck, but we never saw him wash it, not even once. In the house he usually wore nothing but a tank top and underwear, and when he did leave, he would just pull on a sweat suit. He always wore rubber slippers out, and never socks.

  The man got up late every day in the afternoon, and the very first thing he would do was put a cigarette in his mouth, then put on his horn-rimmed glasses and read the racing papers. After reading the racing papers, he would read a horse-racing newsletter that looked like a magazine. After reading the newsletter, he would eat while watching the horse races on TV. The races were usually rebroadcasts; still, he would pound his spoon on the small folding table without taking his eyes off the TV. The whole time he would shout at the TV, “Go! Go! Go!” Whenever he did that, Si-bong and I would have to grab the little table with both hands.

  When the table was put away and Si-yeon was getting ready to go to work, that’s when he would start pestering her.

  “I don’t know . . . what I read was pretty convincing!” He said to her from behind as she did her makeup. “They say this Saturday is the birthday of the jockey for horse number three. And they say that when it’s the jockey’s birthday, all the other jockeys just give him the win.”

  “Oh really? How would that work? I would think that the horses wouldn’t really know when their jockeys’ birthdays are . . .”

  Si-yeon wouldn’t give the man money. When that happened, he’d take advantage of the moment she went to the bathroom and look through her entire handbag, or her wallet. If there was no money to be found, he would take something like earrings or a bracelet, stick it in the pocket of his sweats, and leave the house as quickly as he could.

  Sometimes the man would come home drunk. On those days, in his drunken state, he would pull Si-yeon into the bedroom after she’d gotten off work late at night and slap her around for no reason. As he hit her, the man would yell that it was because of her that his life had turned out this way. He would pick things up and throw them, saying that if it weren’t for her, he’d still be a teacher. He’d break things, yelling at the top of his lungs that if he hadn’t gotten sucked into the races, waiting around for her, everything would be different now. We’d each put one ear up to the door, listening to everything. Si-yeon wouldn’t say anything back to him.

  After more than an hour of shouting at her, slapping her, and throwing things, the man would suddenly become quiet. Then, shortly after, we would hear the sounds of his ragged breathing. We also heard the quiet sound of Si-yeon moaning. Si-bong and I strained our ears so as not to lose a single one of those sounds. They were sounds almost exactly the same as the sounds we used to hear coming out of the caretakers’ room. But we never imitated those sounds as we had before. That was on account of it being a wrong we had already committed.

  After a while, after all of the moaning and breathing sounds were gone, we would hear the man’s voice again.

  “Honey . . . I feel sick.” His voice sounded almost as if he were about to cry.

  Then Si-yeon would say curtly back, “Jackass . . . That’s what you get for drinking so much.”

  Although Si-yeon cursed him as she had before, this time it was a little different than usual. It was a voi
ce more calm, soothing. It was a voice that neither of us had ever heard before.

  11. The Job Search

  About a week after we had gotten out of the institution the man with the horn-rimmed glasses called us.

  “So, brothers-in-law, tell you what: We can’t just have you sitting around the house all day, too.”

  He was sitting cross-legged at the small folding table. That day, again, the man hadn’t gotten a single penny from Si-yeon. Instead, all he’d gotten was a “Hit the road and die why don’t you?”

  We sat down at the folding table just as he was sitting. Si-bong asked him. “So . . . should we leave the house for a while and then come back?”

  He sat there with a cigarette between his lips, shaking his head. “No, no . . . What I mean is that it’s about time for you guys to start pulling your weight around here. I mean, we can’t have you just making things harder for your little sister, right? A man’s gotta make his own living, doesn’t he?”

  Sure, we thought. So Si-bong and I both nodded our heads.

  We proceeded to walk out of the apartment complex with the man with the horn-rimmed glasses. He said that he would help us find a job.

  The first place we went to was a convenience store located at an intersection about ten minutes away from the apartment complex. “Part-time Work” was written on the glass door. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses did not go in with us. Instead, he watched us through the glass.

  The owner of the convenience store was a plump man with a receding hairline. He asked us if we had ever worked in a convenience store before. Si-bong and I answered at the same time: “We’ve done a lot of packaging.”

  The owner of the store said that there was hardly any packaging work to be done. He said that most of the work was putting things into bags.

  “Well, that’s more or less packaging, isn’t it?”

  As soon as I said that, the man went silent for a moment, looking back and forth between Si-bong and myself.

  “What on earth did you do before, and where?”

  Responding, I told him that it was at the “institution.” Si-bong smiled and added, “And we were considered pillars there.” We were then chased out of the convenience store.

  The second place we went to was a frozen mackerel factory. There, too, there was a paper posted on the front door that read “Employees Wanted.” This time as well, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses did not go in with us and, instead, stayed at the front door. He asked us not to say anything about the institution. We told him we would be sure not to.

  As soon as we went inside, Si-bong and I were taken by the man at the door to meet someone who he said was the person in charge. As we walked through, we could see older women putting plastic-wrapped mackerel into boxes. Without saying a word to one another, they placed the hard blocks of fish neatly into boxes. It looked very much like the work we had done at the institution. Even more, on the box there was a picture of an older man smiling big, holding up two fish in his outstretched hands. As I walked, I tried holding out both hands far and smiling big. Si-bong was a bit ahead of me, and he, too, was practicing holding out both arms.

  The man in charge was wearing a hat and had a band on his upper arm, and went right into his questions.

  “You guys know how to operate a forklift, anything like that?” We told him we didn’t.

  “What about a Class 1 driver’s license? That neither?”

  “We know how to package things.”

  “Packing? That’s what the women do. Besides, we already have enough people for that.”

  Si-bong and I told him again that we had to package things.

  He asked us a bit louder, “Yeah, but you don’t know how to do anything else? Isn’t there something you know how to do that other people don’t?”

  I tried to think hard, but nothing came to mind. It seemed like Si-bong was having the same problem. He tilted his head to one side, trying hard to come up with whatever he could.

  A moment passed and even as the man in charge looked as though he was about to walk off, I still couldn’t think of anything. Si-bong, however, did. He raised his hand quickly and yelled out: “Whistle blowing! We’re good at that, too!”

  After that we had to follow the doorman back out again. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses had gone off somewhere, and we couldn’t see him.

  12. The Search for Medicine

  Si-bong and I took the train again and headed back to the institution. That was on account of our still feeling unwell and queasy. We thought that it was because we weren’t taking our medicine. We thought that if we could just take our medicine again we’d become healthy like we were before. Since we no longer had the superintendent or the caretakers, there was no other way than to go and get the medicine ourselves.

  After getting off the train we walked for nearly two hours down the four-lane highway and then the unpaved road until we reached the main gate of the institution, which was locked tight with a thick chain. There was a giant lock hanging down from the chain, and right below that a sign that said “No Entry.” Spiderwebs had collected on both the chain and the sign. We could see the institution through the gap in the gate. It was surrounded by fir trees, watching over it just as they had before.

  “Looks like no one’s there, right?” Si-bong stood on his tiptoes and looked in. I stood there without saying anything, only nodding.

  We pulled out the signpost from the ground, leaned it against the wall, and used it to gain our footing to go over. Si-bong went over first and I followed. I also gave his large backside a boost from behind.

  First we went to the main building. There was a chain on the main entrance there, too. All of the windows were locked up. Si-bong and I used a broken tree limb to break the window of the first-floor office. The sound of the glass breaking rang out far and wide, out past the fir trees. But there was no one to hear the sound and come after us. Si-bong and I stood frozen in place until the sound of the glass breaking disappeared. This time I went in first through the broken glass. Si-bong followed, and on his way in I gave him a hand.

  The office was a mess. All of the cabinets were open and there were papers scattered all over the floor. All of the desk drawers were on the floor, and the receiver of the phone that the director general always had in hand was nowhere to be seen. We looked carefully underneath the desk and the cabinets. There wasn’t a pill in sight.

  We even went up to the second floor to the room we used to live in. All six beds were in their places, just as they had been. Si-bong and I each tried out our beds. A thick layer of dust had collected on top of the plastic covers. Still, we stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything, just lying there. It seemed as though we would fall asleep at any moment.

  We even tried going into the superintendent’s residence. Since the superintendent had always first given the medicine to the caretakers, and the caretakers then passed it out to us, maybe it would be hidden there somewhere.

  Of course, there, too, the front door was locked, so we had no other way but to break the living room window to get in. We first went into the bedroom. Back when we lived in the institution, there were a few times when we had gone into the superintendent’s bedroom. That was usually when the superintendent drank. Sometimes he would suggest that we put on a play. He said that it would help our treatment. We were always the mother, and the superintendent was always the child being spanked. The dialogue was always the same: We would strike the superintendent on the behind with a pointer while shouting, “That’s it?! Is that the best you can do?!” Then the superintendent would yell out loudly, “Mother! Mother, please, more! Hit me more!” With his behind facing us, raised high into the air, sometimes he would even start to bawl. Then, when the play was over, he would give us chocolate milk or a yogurt drink.

  Si-bong and I searched carefully underneath the superintendent’s desk and bed. Underneath the bed there were stacks of bound notebooks. They were the diaries that the superintendent had been keepin
g over the years. In the diaries he had recorded everything that happened in the institution day-to-day, down to the time, and Si-bong’s and my name came up many times. We put the notebooks in the plastic bag we’d brought along with us. We were thinking we could give them back to the superintendent one day.

  After Si-bong and I had searched through the smaller room and even the closet, we went to the storehouse behind the superintendent’s living quarters. As soon as we opened the door we could see a figure move quickly to hide itself in the corner to the left. It was dark and difficult to see, but it was clear that it was a person. We stood at the door for a moment, and then slowly tried to take a step in that direction. As soon as we did so, there was a shout from the corner.

  “Don’t come any closer! Don’t come any closer, you rotten bastards!”

  All we could do was stop where we were.

  13. The Old Woman’s Wrongs

  Once our eyes got used to the darkness, we were able to see what the things inside the storehouse were. There were newspapers and books stacked nearly all the way to the ceiling, an old boiler and two large oil drums, a fluffy, stuffed bear, and a cabinet, one door of which had fallen off. We craned our necks around to look carefully at each item. Then, as she sat crouched behind the cabinet, glaring at us, our eyes met those of the plump, older woman. Si-bong and I both tried once more to take a step closer.

  “I said not to move, you bastards! Lift one foot and I’ll kill myself, I swear I will!”

  We stopped where we were, and realized we already knew who she was. It was the older woman who lived two rooms over, the woman who’d been afraid to wash herself. She said that if even a drop of water touched her, she couldn’t breathe. If she were to draw water in the sink to wash her face or shampoo her hair, she said she’d surely drop dead right there on the spot, trembling at the thought. She was even afraid to put water in a cup to drink. So the woman was always dirty and smelled.