One Hundred Shadows

by Hwang Jungeun

  I washed and stacked the dishes before leaving the house. The cicada, I noticed, was now lying on its back.

  Goodbye, I said, and closed the door behind me.

  —

  We had a visit from Mr. Park, who ran a repair shop in Building A, about the same size as Mr. Yeo’s. Unloading two vacuum tube amplifiers from his cart, he asked for Mr. Yeo’s help, saying he’d been working on them for several days and still hadn’t cracked the problem. While the two men talked, examining the amps together, I offered one of our rather shabby chairs to Mr. Park’s companion. He was an elderly man, neatly turned-out and with an air of respectability. He didn’t turn his nose up at the seat but accepted it graciously, and maintained an excellent posture as he watched the two repairmen. Mr. Yeo set the amps to one side and asked Mr. Park about the intended demolition of Building A, which was apparently becoming more concrete by the day. The latest proposal included an offer to pay all moving expenses, even for those whose businesses were unlicensed, and that any who wished to would be able to re-establish their shop in the temporary market, whose construction was nearing completion, where, moreover, they would only be charged a basic maintenance fee for the first few months. This all seemed reasonable enough at first glance, but Mr. Yeo was skeptical, saying that the other traders had been asking where this so-called temporary market was. Are you planning to move there? asked Mr. Yeo, and Mr. Park said that he was.

  What do they have there?

  Nothing much.

  So why are you going?

  Things will get better.

  The old man who had come with Mr. Park leaned towards me and asked, Have you seen the old woman who was outside?

  Was there an old woman? I wondered, and told him I hadn’t, and Mr. Park turned around and said, Mother’s at home, Father. Mr. Park introduced the old man to the startled Mr. Yeo, explaining that his father had recently had a big chunk of his shadow ripped off, more than half in fact, and had been acting oddly ever since, not constantly but periodically, so Mr Park tried not to leave him at home too often, and hoped that getting him out and about might give him some of his old energy back and make up for his lost shadow. Now that I knew to look, the shadow around the old man’s feet was indeed unusually faint. Mr. Yeo said hello to him and the old man said hello back, smiling in a courteous and entirely normal manner, but a moment later he got up from his seat and wandered out of the shop, casting around for something or other, and Mr. Park had to go and fetch him back, holding him firmly by the hand. Mother’s at home, Father, Mr. Park said, and the old man said, No, it’s not the old woman I’m looking for, it’s my shadow, but he followed Mr. Park back inside without any fuss, sat down in his chair and stayed there, perfectly composed, as if he’d completely forgotten that he’d tried to wander off. Mr. Park and Mr. Yeo returned to discussing the problem of the amps. Now and then I would catch the elder Mr. Park’s eye, and each time that happened he would ask the same question. He talked about other things too, like yesterday’s weather or his favourite model of vintage amp, but then he would ask me where the old woman was, the one he claimed to have spotted just moments ago, and each time Mr. Park turned around and said, she’s at home.

  We saw the old man to the door when Mr. Park left, watching him meekly consent to being led by the hand, and then I asked Mr. Yeo if we, too, would move to the temporary market, when it was Building B’s turn to be knocked down.

  Mr. Yeo shook his head.

  It’s not free, you know.

  Where will we go, then?

  To Building C, Mr. Yeo said.

  Will there be enough space?

  He scratched his head and said there should be plenty, since Building B was already so empty; though that emptiness was itself a problem, he said, he couldn’t just up sticks and abandon three decades’ worth of business connections.

  That day, I ran into Mujae while I was down on the ground floor. I heard someone call my name, turned around and saw him there, standing on the other side of the car park. He looked tired, and the box he was carrying needed both arms to heft it. He crossed the car park, looking both ways, and when he reached me he said, It’s been a while.

  It has.

  Can I call you?

  Please do.

  He asked for my phone number and I was going to write it down for him, but neither of us had a pen. I recited the number twice and asked him if he thought he could remember it.

  I’ll remember it. I’ll call you, Mujae said as he left, and I stood there looking after him for a while.

  When several days had passed with no phone call, I fell into a sulk. Fine, I thought, if that’s how it is.

  —

  I was washing up a mug when the lights snapped off.

  The fridge motor whirred to a stop. The street lights looked to be out as well. It was quiet. I wanted to have my hands free, so I put the mug down on a surface I guessed was the shelf. But my guess must have been wrong, as the mug fell to the floor with a deafening crash. I stood there in daze. I knew the shards were scattered over the floor, but I could barely see and didn’t know how to move without cutting myself. It occurred to me to turn on the gas range, but the light of its blue flame wasn’t enough to see the floor by. I wondered if there were any candles somewhere, but I had no memory of ever buying such things. Feeling utterly useless, I turned off the gas. My groping fingers managed to seize on a dish rag, which I used to sweep the spot in front of my feet as I gingerly inched my way forward. My calves throbbed, but I kept on shuffling until I reached the door to my bedroom. I crumpled to my knees and lay face down, with my head on the raised sill. I no longer wanted to move. The heel of my right foot stung, probably impaled with a shard of glass, and I seemed to have injured my right leg too. I touched my hand to my calf and felt something slippery, though I couldn’t tell if it was blood or sweat. I pressed down on it where it throbbed. I couldn’t lift my head, because I felt a chill along my spine as if my shadow were about to rise, taking advantage of my vulnerability as I lay wounded in the darkness. When I thought that the shadow might have already risen and merged with that larger darkness, seeping into a corner somewhere, the darkness seemed to grow even darker, and I felt afraid. This fear was followed by a surge of anger, anger at myself for not stocking a single candle, and when that subsided I began to cry because I had an itch but couldn’t find the spot to scratch it, which was annoying, and then I stopped crying, and then I became even more depressed.

  With my nose kissing the sill, I stared at a slightly darker spot which I assumed was a knot in the wood, and breathed in the smell of it, which seemed both wet and dry. I might as well be dark, I thought. If I were dark myself then I wouldn’t be hemmed in by the darkness around me, or fear that darkness, would I? What if I became dark and indifferent? If that happened, what would I be? What name could I give it? Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, I should just become dark so I don’t have to think about it, and while I was thinking this I opened my eyes, and then the phone rang. I moved towards the sound and groped around on the low shelf until my hand closed around the receiver. I tugged it down, knocking a shower of small objects to the floor, and sank back onto the door sill, my left cheekbone pressed against its wood. I put the receiver to my right ear and found that it was Mujae calling. Eungyo, he said, his voice slightly cracked, and he coughed. Is your power out, too?

  Yeah.

  It’s dark here, too, he said, then was silent for a while. Why are you crying? Mujae asked.

  I’m not crying.

  You are.

  Leave me alone.

  Are you scared?

  Yeah.

  You’re an idiot.

  I’m not an idiot.

  Yes you are, Mujae said, and sighed.

  Mujae, I said.

  Yeah, he said.

  Don’t hang up.

  I’m not going to.

  You can cal
l me an idiot, but don’t hang up, I said, and listened to the sound that came from his end.

  —

  How about we sing, Eungyo?

  You sing to me.

  Which song?

  Footprints.

  Remind me how that one goes?

  Footprints in the white snow. Footprints, side by side with paw prints. Who, who left at the break of day?

  I can’t sing that song.

  How come?

  I’m choking up.

  This one makes you choke up, too?

  It says that someone left at the break of day, with only a dog as a companion, and nothing but footprints remain.

  You don’t have to sing it, then.

  I don’t, right?

  Although you kind of did already.

  I’ll sing something else.

  Tell me a story instead.

  What kind of a story?

  A story about the boy Mujae.

  How far did we get?

  The boy’s father died. What happened after that?

  The boy went on living.

  Okay.

  The boy’s name was Mujae, said Mujae, and he was quiet for a while, and then he said, How about we leave it there?

  Why?

  A story like that is too bizarre for a night like this.

  What’s so bizarre about it?

  The boy’s father dies, leaving his debts behind, and the boy grows up, struggling to pay off those debts.

  Is that what happens?

  The boy goes into debt to pay that debt, and gets into other debts to pay the interest on the debt, and everything he earns gets sucked up by the debt, so he has to go into more and more debt just to pay for rent and food.

  …

  You tell me a story, Eungyo. One that isn’t too bizarre.

  A story about Omusa, then.

  Omusa?

  Don’t you know Omusa, Mujae?

  No, I don’t.

  Omusa is a shop where an old man sells light bulbs. Not the ordinary light bulbs people use in their homes, but the tiny bulbs used in things like torches and microwaves, the kind that cost ten, fifty, a hundred won a piece. When you buy a pack of bulbs at Omusa you always come away with one extra. When you buy a pack of twenty, you get it home and find that it contains twenty-one, when you buy forty, you find forty-one, when you buy fifty, you find fifty-one, when you buy a hundred, you find a hundred and one.

  Could it be that the owner makes a mistake when he counts them?

  That’s what I thought, but when I kept finding that extra bulb, no matter what size of pack I’d bought, and always just one, I thought that it couldn’t be a coincidence. I asked the old man about it the next time I went to Omusa, and he looked up from the bulbs he was counting but didn’t say anything. I was nervous, thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it, but when I looked more closely I saw that his lips were twitching, as though he was working himself up to speak. After a while, he said that he always packs an extra bulb in case one breaks in transit, or one is defective, since he doesn’t want his customers to have to come all the way back to his shop. When I heard that I felt, I don’t know, touched, because, well, you know ‘buy one get one free’? Do you ever get those offers, Mujae, at the big discount stores?

  Sometimes.

  When you buy one thing and they give you another of the same, you feel like you’ve gained something, but somehow, you don’t feel that they did it out of any genuine consideration for you.

  That’s true, now I think about it.

  But with Omusa I liked how it felt that I was being given a precious gift, even though it’s such a small, cheap thing.

  I see.

  Mujae.

  Yeah?

  Now go on with the story.

  I’d rather sing.

  Sing me a song, then.

  Footprints on the white snow …

  Even though he’d said it made him choke up, he sang the song to the end, finishing with, Footprints on a lonely mountain path.

  One more time, I said, and he didn’t protest, just sang to me calmly down the phone, Footprints on the white snow.

  Omusa

  I once got lost while running an errand at the market.

  Without realising it, I’d passed from Building B into Building A. I’d worked in the market for years but had somehow strayed from my usual route, finding myself utterly lost within a structure that looked familiar but was subtly different. I went up to the thirteenth floor to get my bearings. Looking down from the rooftop with the wind in my face, I could see the five buildings, from A to E, lined up in the heart of the city like a marker pointing towards the river. They looked like five enormous buses that had had their wheels removed, their bellies now dragging on the ground. They were each eight storeys high, except for Building A, which was taller. I’d never gone further than Building C, and even that had only been a one-time errand. Clinging to the barbed-wire fence, I looked down at the rooftop of Building B. There was a man there smoking, looking down over the edge just like I was, studying the city streets.

  I came down once I’d figured out generally where I was, but by then I had no chance of finding the place whose location Mr. Yeo had only told me in words. All I could do was return to Building B and get a map from Mr. Yeo. He said I ought to go straight down to the ground floor without crossing over into Building A, although he didn’t know where and how I’d got lost. Finally, after following the map Mr. Yeo had sketched out for me, a vague set of lines and curves on the back of a crumpled receipt, I managed to find the place I’d been sent to.

  That place was Omusa.

  —

  Omusa was a shop that sold light bulbs.

  It wasn’t the kind of place you’d notice as a casual passer-by, but one you could only find if you were looking for it.

  Let’s pay a visit to Omusa.

  When you alight in front of the cinema, having travelled there by subway or bus, your hundred-metre walk to the electronics market takes you past stalls displaying dried up lizards, alarm clocks, synthetic leather belts, batteries, shoes, and hats, before bringing to you to the northern corner of Building A. When you turn right at the lighting shop that has a mirror fixed to a pillar outside, you enter the ground floor of the market, which functions as a car park, and there you encounter the old woman with bobbed grey hair who has constructed a lean-to for herself by stringing flattened cardboard boxes between the staircase and the ground, like a folding screen; you’ll invariably find her sitting on the ground a couple of metres from her makeshift home, watching the road as if waiting for someone. I once saw a passer-by offer her a custard bun; she regarded the pastry with an expression of faint puzzlement, reached out and took it as if it were some bizarre, potentially dangerous creature, tucked it between her knees and chest and turned her gaze firmly back to the road. You’ll walk past her, keeping the car park on your left and the shops selling lighting or tools on your right, turn into the first alley on the right and come across a blank-faced, middle-aged woman who has been doling out blood sausage in the same spot for twenty years, her ‘stall’ no more than a single oil drum. Further down the alley there’ll be glass cases containing pocket watches, copper alarm clocks, and tarnished silver spoons, with elderly men parked in front of them, dozing off in front of their wares. There’ll be a handful of tiny shops as well, one selling cigarettes, drinks, and boiled eggs, one selling spare parts, and one where you can get old radios repaired, each one so cramped that there is only room for a standing counter. You’ll turn down a still narrower alley, or more precisely, a dark passage you’ll initially mistake for a gap between two buildings, you’ll see a shack which dishes up rice and kimchi as a meagre takeaway lunch – across from it is Omusa. It’s a dingy old place that looks straight out of the nineteen-seventies. Its walls are lined with bundles of l
ittle yellow and blue bulbs, yet there is no bulb to light up the shop itself.

  Jam-packed.

  If the word was included in a picture dictionary, the entry would probably be illustrated by a scene like that of Omusa’s interior.

  It’s jam-packed, I thought, and could think of no other word to describe it, so jam-packed was this shop I was seeing for the first time.

  The old man who works there is in his seventies, with a full head of hair though it has long since turned grey. He has a wooden chair and a wooden desk, where he sits with his back to a shelf crammed full of corrugated cardboard boxes. He sits there lost in thought, gazing absent-mindedly at something or other, until a customer comes in and asks for a certain type of bulb. Then, without hurrying, but without dithering either, he slowly pushes his chair back and gets to his feet, gropes along the shelf until he gets to the right section, slides one of the boxes out as though removing a brick from a wall, sets it down on the desk and flips back the worn-out lid, then shuffles over to a different shelf to fetch a small plastic pouch which he opens with care, taking his time, then slips his right hand into the cardboard box and grabs a handful of fingernail-sized bulbs which he drops one by one into the plastic pouch, its round opening ready to receive, like putting rice puffs into the mouths of an eager baby sparrow, as I happened to hear another customer remark one time when I was waiting my turn.

  Even if you rushed over to Omusa on urgent business and hurriedly told the old man what you needed, time flowed at his pace only, so customers would end up having to kill time by ogling Omusa’s jam-packed interior or snacking on some boiled eggs from the shop next door. The old man, though slow, moved with great concentration, and this measured economy of his kept the customers from trying to rush him. Those who were particularly impatient might grumble a little, but they never asked him to hurry up, and they never took their business elsewhere. The boxes at Omusa had been there for so long, they contained bulbs that could no longer be found anywhere else. If you looked closely enough you could see that some of the boxes had little pen marks on them, but the majority were unmarked, yet somehow the old man at Omusa was never thrown; no matter what kind of bulb you asked for, his slow steps would take him in a direct line to the correct section of shelf.