At Least We Can Apologize

by Lee Ki-ho

  The child threw a sudden gush of water onto the mirror. The child’s face and ours dribbled down.

  14. Father and Son

  The client came back before the sun went down. In one of his hands he had a shopping bag of storybooks and comic books. In the other hand he had a plastic bag of apples and bananas.

  As soon as he saw Si-bong and me he quickly offered us a handshake.

  “Thank you. All of this is thanks to you two experts.”

  The client added that it was thanks to us that the relationship between him and his son had gotten better. His son had gotten to know him better, and he even said that he seemed more cheerful than before. All Si-bong and I did was listen to what the man had to say.

  The client invited us to eat dinner with them. Right away he ordered Chinese food. The client, his son, Si-bong, and I sat in a circle around the table eating black bean noodles and sweet and sour pork. The client kept putting more pork on the child’s plate. Each time he did so the child would bow his head slightly. Watching that scene quietly, Si-bong, too, put more pork on my plate. I just accepted it and ate it.

  Even after the meal was over we remained sitting at the table. The client shot us a few glances from the corner of his eye, and then stood with the child in front of the bathroom, both in their underwear. The client spoke using words a little louder than usual.

  “Ha . . . you know, this is something I’ve really wanted to try for a long time.”

  The client went into the bathroom with the child. After a moment we crouched down next to the bathroom door and put our ears up to it. We could hear the client’s voice coming from inside.

  “Is the water too cold?”

  Then we heard the child’s voice.

  “No, it’s good.”

  “Good. Turn around.”

  We could hear the sound of water pouring. We could also hear the sound of water being sucked into the drain.

  “This scar on your back, when’s it from?”

  “Kindergarten.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know . . . kids like me all have a scar like this.”

  And from then on we didn’t hear any other sounds coming from the bathroom. We sat back down at the table.

  When the client came back out of the bathroom we asked him about returning the child and then committing some other wrong. His face changed immediately.

  “Why, what do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s because this one is a wrong that is a little difficult for us to apologize for. If you could maybe change it . . .”

  The client sent the child into the bedroom. Then he stood in front of us again.

  “If a father wants to live with his son what kind of wrong is that? I have no intention of doing what you’re asking for.”

  “You’re not going to apologize to your wife? That’s actually why we brought your son here.”

  The client turned his head to the left. His eyes went to a picture frame sitting next to the television. In the frame was a picture of a man and a woman with their noses pressed together. The man in the picture was clearly the client, but we didn’t recognize the woman.

  The client spoke.

  “No. I’m only going to apologize to my son. I’ve thought about it, and all of this has been because of him.”

  Si-bong and I nodded our heads without speaking. Then we got up from the table and started to walk toward the bedroom. The man stood in front of us, blocking our path.

  “What are you doing?”

  Si-bong spoke. “Since we brought him here, we’re going to take him back. After that, you can do whatever you want.”

  Si-bong put his hand on the doorknob. The client put his hand on Si-bong’s.

  “Are you really going to do this?”

  “After we take him back to his mother you can just bring him back here, can’t you? This is an apology that’s too much for us.”

  The client took a look toward the bedroom, then spoke to us in a small voice.

  “So what, you get all your money and then you’re gonna act like this?”

  “What money?”

  “I wired the money to the account yesterday! That was all money that I sent for the apology.”

  Si-bong and I looked at each other. We had nothing left to say to the client. We bowed our heads slightly to him and then went home.

  15. Waiting

  We waited for the man with the horn-rimmed glasses. For two straight days he didn’t come home or call. Si-bong and I sat at the table with the umbrella in front of the convenience store waiting for him. Each time we saw someone walking towards us from the neighborhood on the other side of the road, Si-bong and I would get up from our seats and walk toward them. For the most part they were workers who had finished their days and were coming home, or elderly women leaning forward, carrying empty boxes on their backs. Si-bong and I would look at them for a while without saying anything, then return to our chairs and sit down. The summer sky felt wide and open, the hair on the backs of our necks was damp and, as we sat there silently, it seemed as though we were even more queasy than the queasy we’d felt when we first started taking our medicine. The stars seemed close to us, and the moon seemed to slip further and further to one side. Si-bong kept clapping his hands, catching mosquitoes that were flying around us. Warm breezes brushed our faces as they passed.

  We were sitting at the table with the umbrella right up until Si-yeon came home from work. It was after three o’clock in the morning as she came walking up slowly, a hand clasped over her forehead. She saw us, and stopped. As always, there was a smell of alcohol coming from her.

  “What are you guys doing here?” She asked.

  We answered that we were waiting for the man with the horn-rimmed glasses.

  “That jerk . . . he still hasn’t come back yet?”

  She scrunched up the middle of her forehead. She took a cigarette out of her handbag and put it in her mouth.

  “So what, you came all the way out here to wait for that jerk? Just go home.”

  I spoke in a small voice.

  “We were just worried that maybe he’d never come back.”

  “Heh . . . that jerk. I’d be fine if that idiot never came back.”

  “Really? You’d really be fine if he never came back?”

  Si-yeon looked me in the eyes for a moment. Cigarette smoke flowed over my head.

  “Yeah! What? You’re worried I’ll cry my eyes out?”

  Si-yeon started to walk home, the cigarette still in her mouth. Si-bong and I both followed her. As she walked, she pulled out another cigarette and put it in her mouth. Cigarette smoke floated back towards us over and over again. When she’d gone into the apartment building, smoke filled the space she left behind in the entryway.

  The following afternoon Si-bong and I went once more to the front of the kimbab restaurant. But we didn’t go inside. Just as we’d done before, we stood outside the elementary school and watched the woman for a long time. Just as before, the woman had the door open, but was not working. The way she sat next to the door with her back straight upright was the same as before as well. Si-bong and I thought about trying to apologize one more time, even taking a few steps toward the restaurant, but we quickly stopped ourselves. That was on account of knowing that she wasn’t waiting for us. It seemed clear that the only thing we could do was wait for the man with the horn-rimmed glasses.

  By the time the man with the horn-rimmed glasses returned, it was the fourth day since he’d left, in the middle of the night. We met him in front of the main entrance of the apartment building. Even up until then we had still been waiting for him. That was on account of there still being one thing we had to confirm with him.

  16. Helping with the Apology

  As soon as the man with the horn-rimmed glasses saw us he stopped right in his tracks. He spoke to us.

  “Look who it is! If it isn’t our dear brothers-in-law!”

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses looked a
t us and laughed. He smelled strongly of alcohol. He wasn’t able to stand straight, and continuously swayed to the left.

  Si-bong spoke.

  “We’ve been waiting this whole time.”

  “For me? What would you wait for a guy like me for? Should’ve just figured I was off with Arongi, my horse buddy.”

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses took his hand out of his pocket and gave Si-bong a light smack on the shoulder. I asked him.

  “So are you really going to apologize?”

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses looked at me. “Apologize? For what?”

  “Apologize to the woman at the kimbab restaurant.”

  “Why would I apologize to the woman at the kimbab restaurant? That’s your guys’ job. You guys are the experts, right?”

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses gave me a light smack on the shoulder. It didn’t hurt a bit.

  “This one is an apology that we can’t make.”

  “Oh yeah? Can’t do it? Okay, fine, don’t. No problem.”

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses put his face close up to mine as he spoke. His earlobes had turned a bright red. There were shiny spots of oil on his glasses.

  “So are you going to give back the money?”

  “Money? What money?”

  “The money that the client sent you. We already know all about it. If you don’t make the apology then you should give the money back, shouldn’t you?”

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses pushed the hair off of his forehead with his hand. He let out a sigh, and was even breathing heavily. He glared at us for a moment without saying anything. Si-bong and I remained standing there as we had right from the beginning. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses spoke.

  “Look, you guys may not understand this but that was all money we needed. I mean, if you’re going to do business . . .”

  Si-bong asked. “So what, you gave it all to Arongi?”

  Then I asked. “If you can’t give the money back then you have to make the apology instead of us.”

  As soon as we said that, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses said in a loud voice. “Heh, you guys are really something. Well if that’s it then I’ll do it myself!”

  “When will you do it?”

  “The woman’s been waiting.”

  The man with the horn-rimmed glasses gave me a shove on both my shoulders. He spoke. “Well fuck, let’s just get it over with! I’ll do it now, fuckers!”

  Right then and there we set off for the kimbab restaurant with the man with the horn-rimmed glasses.

  It was a dark, moonless night. All of the streetlights were out, and not a single car passed along the street. Although it was a summer night, the air was cold. From somewhere far off we heard the sound of a scooter.

  On the way there, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses stopped once to pee on a telephone pole. Three times he tripped and fell over short posts in the road. Each time that happened, Si-bong and I grabbed him at the waist and helped him back up. The third time he fell, he laid his head on a speed bump and fell asleep. We took turns carrying him on our backs and continued on toward the kimbab restaurant. Si-bong carried him longer than I did. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses snored from behind Si-bong’s back. One of his shoes had fallen off and I carried it in my hand as I followed them. It was a dress shoe with the back heavily wrinkled, as though it had been worn mostly as a slipper.

  When we arrived at the kimbab restaurant we laid the man with the horn-rimmed glasses down next to the large pots. After that, we untied a piece of red line that had been tied around the steel piping of the awning. Si-bong and I tied one end of the rope around the man with the horn-rimmed glasses’ neck. We tied it a few times around and around so that it would stay on well. Still, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses did not wake up. All he did was open and close his lips a few times.

  Si-bong and I went to the front door of the restaurant and grabbed the other end of the line with both hands. There was not a single person who walked by. There were no sounds to be heard from inside the restaurant, either. We looked at each other for a moment and then pulled on the rope as hard as we could. The man’s upper body was pulled up. We could hear a short sound coming from him, but we didn’t let go of the rope. We pulled on the rope a little harder. The man’s two feet lifted into the air. They kicked around frantically. Si-bong and I did not let go of the line. We saw his horn-rimmed glasses fall to the ground. Some coins also fell down noisily. Some papers fell, fluttering to our feet. They were old racetrack tickets cut in half. Then everything grew quiet. The line grew heavier.

  Si-bong and I tied the opposite end of the rope to the door of the kimbab restaurant. We tied it tightly so that it wouldn’t slip off, so that it would be the first thing you saw when you opened the door of the restaurant.

  Si-bong spoke as he wiped off the sweat from his forehead. “Are we all done now?”

  I nodded my head silently.

  Si-bong looked up at the man for a moment. I looked up as well. The man’s hands had gone limp, and he was slowly rotating from left to right. We couldn’t see his face well. And that was on account of his head being turned down all the way.

  Si-bong and I each gave a polite bow of the head.

  We came home right away.

  17. Helping Keep the Apology

  After what happened, for a few days we had to meet with many people. The people we met were mostly police officers. We met them in the interrogation room of the police station. They asked me and Si-bong if we were there when the man with the horn-rimmed glasses died. We answered that we had been.

  “So you must have seen what happened when his neck was tied?”

  We told them that we hadn’t seen it.

  “You didn’t? Well then, why did you go there that night?”

  “He wanted to. He said that he was going to apologize.”

  “Apologize?”

  Si-bong and I told the police officers that the man with the horn-rimmed glasses had died in order to apologize for the client for what he had done wrong.

  “So you’re saying that the man who died, he died for something that someone else did wrong? That’s what you’re saying?”

  We answered the police officer’s question by nodding our heads without speaking.

  The police officer beat his pen on the table as he spoke. “Huh, and here I thought there was only one Jesus.”

  Si-bong and I were also questioned separately at times. I was questioned by a police officer with very short hair, and Si-bong was questioned by a police officer who was very old.

  The short-haired police officer slammed a thick file on the table as he spoke.

  “Just speak to the facts! You guys helped him, didn’t you? Wasn’t it you guys who pulled on the rope?!”

  I answered. “No. We went home right away.”

  “Well then why are your fingerprints all over the door of the kimbab restaurant? Weren’t you guys the ones who tied the rope to the door?”

  “We went to the kimbab restaurant plenty of times before that. That’s why our fingerprints are there.”

  The police officer rifled through the files. He tapped his temples as well. “That doesn’t even make any sense now, does it? Why would any normal person go to someone else’s door to die?”

  “Well, it’s because he’d already accepted the money to make the apology. It was an apology that only death could make.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I wanted to help keep the man with the horn-rimmed glasses’ apology. That’s why I hadn’t said that we’d helped him. It was probably the same for Si-bong. That was on account of the part that we helped with being so small.

  We saw the woman from the kimbab restaurant in the hallway of the police station. Even though she saw us she did not greet us. Without a word, she simply went into the interrogation room with her head hanging low. We saw the client as well. As soon as the client saw us he asked, “What on earth happened?�
�� He looked a bit surprised. All we did was nod to him quietly. The client went into the same interrogation room as the woman from the kimbab restaurant. They didn’t come out of the interrogation room for a long time.

  When we saw Si-yeon in the hallway of the police station it was only a day after all of this happened. As soon as she saw us sitting on the bench, she stopped right where she was. She glared at us for a long time, biting her lower lip. Si-bong waved his hand to her and smiled brightly as he did. I bowed my head to greet her.

  From the interrogation room where Si-yeon was we heard a loud voice shouting from time to time. It was Si-yeon’s voice.

  “It’s that idiot’s fault that this whole thing happened! He always gets into trouble when he drinks!”

  The people who walked by would stop in their tracks and stare at the door of the interrogation room. They looked at us as well. We simply sat there, quietly, our backs against the bench. They would walk away.

  “I don’t know! I told you they’re not the kind of guys to do anything like this! They’re not right! They’re sick!”

  The interrogation room grew silent again.

  Around dinnertime we followed Si-yeon back home. The older police officer said that we might be called in again, and that we shouldn’t go anywhere. We told him that we would do as he said. We also told him that we had nowhere else to go.

  The whole way home Si-yeon didn’t say a word. She walked two or three steps ahead of us and didn’t look back a single time. As soon as we arrived, Si-yeon went into the bedroom and began to wail loudly.

  Si-bong and I went into the bedroom. Si-yeon just lay on the bed face down, crying. She didn’t even look at us. Si-bong patted her on the shoulder.

  Si-yeon looked at us and screamed.

  “Why?! Why the hell did you do that you crazy fucks?!”

  Si-yeon smacked Si-bong with her pillow. As she cried, she struck him on his head and shoulders. Si-bong simply sat there and allowed himself to be hit. I spoke.