One Left: A Novel

by Kim Soom

  The girls longed for their family, even in their dreams. At the same time they thought it a bad omen, an indicator of misfortune, illness, or death, if a family member appeared in a dream.

  In tears she sought out Hyangsuk, finding her in her room with a bowl of hair-colorant sitting before her. She guessed Hyangsuk wanted to kill herself.

  “But I just can’t do it. Mom keeps saying no. She used to tell us it was unfilial for a kid to die before her parents. She had nine kids in all, and four of them died—two right after they were born and another one when he was two. And then I had a brother, three years older than me, who was learning judo, and he got typhoid fever and died. He wanted to be a constable, and a constable has to be skilled at judo. He worked with a pull cart during the day and went to judo school at night. He always said Japanese dogs were better off than Koreans. The Japanese feed rice to their dogs and pig swill to Koreans. If he’d been a constable, I wouldn’t have ended up here. He wouldn’t send his sister or daughter to a hell like this, right?”

  It was around Ch’usŏk, the harvest-moon festival. When Ch’usŏk drew near—and the girls felt it instinctively even without a calendar to go by—they were beside themselves with thoughts of home.

  Four days of horrid rain came to an end and a truck from an outpost was sent for the girls. Six girls climbed into the cargo bed— she herself along with Pongae, Sundŏk, Miok ŏnni, Yŏngsun, and Hanok ŏnni. It was the first time for Pongae. Hyangsuk was supposed to go but her broken arm hadn’t mended and she was replaced by Pongae.

  Hyangsuk had been asking about Takashi, who hadn’t visited her for some time, but there was no news of him. He must have been killed in battle, the girls whispered. A drunken Japanese soldier found her sobbing in bed and grew livid—a Chosen ppi who was crying and ignoring the soldiers was bad luck. When Hyangsuk continued to cry he hit her so hard he broke her arm.

  The road was soggy and clumps of mud the size of cattle dung spattered the girls, faces and all.

  After a half day’s travel the truck arrived at a river. A ferry shaped like a clog was waiting. The four days of rain had left the river frightfully swollen. The turbid, muddy water scared her and yet it would be nice to be out of the truck.

  The girls clambered out and hopped onto the ferry, along with the soldiers. As soon as the girls were hunched down at the bottom of the vessel, the Chinese ferryman, whose bald head gave him the appearance of a boiled octopus, set to work with his oars. He had stripped to the waist and his sun-darkened skin was the color of ink.

  The motion of the ferry was uncomfortable, but strangely enough she entered a state of utter peace, as if her life had run its course. If only the ferry could go on and on to a place where she and the other girls would arrive as wrinkled old grannies.

  Pongae pointed and said to the girls with a sigh, “Look, a village . . .” Her pockmarked face was sallow and lumpy like bean-curd dregs.

  Squinting because of the headwind streaming along the river, she looked to where Pongae was pointing. The village looked far off and at the same time within arm’s reach. Everything looked red and had a fuzzy, dreamlike quality.

  “I don’t think anyone lives there . . .”

  “How could that be?”

  “I don’t see a soul.”

  “Maybe they’re all sleeping.”

  “A few days ago I dreamed I was back home. But no one was there—father, mother, my brothers and sisters . . . I was just walking around with a dead baby on my back—”

  And the next moment Pongae rose like a ghost and jumped into the river. She shot out a hand to grab Pongae’s skirt but by then Pongae was gone. A split-second later the girls were calling her name, but it was too late. She screeched until she smelled blood in her throat, but Pongae didn’t surface. The ferryman had stopped rowing and was shaking his head as if to say it was no use.

  The soldiers leveled their rifles at the agitated girls and the ferryman resumed rowing as if nothing had happened.

  Not until their return trip to the comfort station did the girls see Pongae again. They were sprawled awkwardly across the floor of the ferry, their eyes hollow, their privates swollen, and their hips strained from five straight days of taking soldiers at the outpost.

  “Isn’t that Pongae?” Hanok ŏnni blurted.

  “Aigu! Yes, it’s Pongae!”

  Her body had been snagged by a branch of an uprooted tree that was upside down in the river. Pongae’s face was above water and she seemed to glare at the girls as if she’d been waiting all this time for them to rescue her. Her waterlogged stomach was bulging.

  At the request of the girls the soldiers pulled Pongae onto the ferry. Arriving at the riverside, the girls gathered twigs into a kind of bed and lay her down on it.

  Sundŏk wiped down Pongae’s sodden face, which was chafed and scraped and looked like rats had gnawed on it. But Sundŏk, tearful though she was, didn’t seem the least bit scared or reluctant to do so.

  The soldiers sprinkled gasoline over the twigs and lit a fire and in no time flames were soaring aloft. Leaving the flaming corpse, the girls climbed into the back of the truck. Sparks shot up like a tapestry of fireflies. She reached for the sparks as if they were Pongae’s soul, but in her grasp they were dark and lifeless.

  She blamed herself for Pongae’s death. If only she’d reached out more quickly to grab her skirt . . .

  She always blamed herself when a girl at the comfort station died.

  As always she turns on the television first thing in the morning. No news about the last one. Good—there is still one left.

  Folding her blanket, she spews out a deep breath at the realization that the last one doesn’t have much time left—whether the last one is she herself, the woman she sees on television, or someone elsewhere.

  She sticks a foot beneath the veranda for her shoes and flinches. A magpie. Nabi must have come by, but when? There’s no sign of the cat in the yard.

  She feels that the magpie—like Hunam ŏnni, after otosan took her from her room and dumped her out on the wasteland—still retains a breath of life.

  She slides a pair of fingers beneath one of the wings and feels a touch of warmth that reminds her of living breath. Cupping the bird in her hands, she sets out for the alteration shop. The woman there can tell if the magpie is still alive.

  The woman is having breakfast at the low round table in front of her television. The table contains an array of side dishes. The television is loud enough for passersby to hear. As the woman opens up a grilled croaker fish with her fingers she turns toward her guest.

  “What have you got there?”

  Nervously she holds out the magpie.

  The woman shudders. “Oh my god, that’s a magpie.”

  “Can you tell if it’s still breathing?”

  “Good lord, are you out of your mind? Bringing me a dead magpie first thing in the morning? . . .” The woman keeps shaking her head. The dog, curled up on the cushion beneath the sewing machine, gets up and starts yapping at the visitor.

  Back in the alley she continues to hold the bird, sensing it’s still breathing. She can’t bring herself to dump it.

  Suddenly she stops where the sun is shining down diagonally and lifts her gathered hands toward the sky.

  The feathers glisten in the sunlight, reminding her of sparkles in the ashes of the pea coals in Manchuria.

  The girls’ blood and the pea coals were what glistened in the comfort station.

  For nine days now she’s been leaving right after lunch, anticipating an encounter with the girl as she roams the alleys of 15-bŏnji. But the girl just doesn’t show up. Lately she’s having dreams where she wanders the alleys in search of her. She guesses the girl might have moved but also wonders if something has happened to her.

  She has no clue why she fixates on this nameless girl—after all she’s long since lost all sense of attachment or kinship to anyone. Her affection for her sisters is gone as well. Unable to breathe a word to them about her p
ast made her ill at ease and distant from the nephews she saw a few times a year. She became an outlier and found it difficult even to make a friend.

  She sometimes waits for the girl in the alley where she was gifted with the paper-pulp mask. She tries squatting against the wall where she found the girl squatting that time. She once waited more than two hours but the girl didn’t appear.

  Steeped in disappointment at not seeing the girl, she trudges down an alley and finds a pile of trash. Discards by a family that moved out? There’s broken furniture, an electric rice cooker, a fry pan, dishes, a badminton racket, a stack of children’s books, and more.

  And a baby! She hurries over only to find it’s a rubber doll. The doll’s face is awash with a lovely smile for all the world to see, as if unaware it’s been abandoned. She puts it to her bosom and pets it.

  “Poor baby, where’s your mommy and daddy?”

  No answer.

  “How would you like to live with me?” she whispers.

  And then she looks up to see the girl standing in front of her. The girl is in her small yellow dress, and she’s gazing not at her but at the doll. Now that she’s finally encountered the girl, she feels pressured to escape from her.

  “Are you on your way home from school?”

  The girl doesn’t respond.

  She wants to lavish the girl with an amiable smile, but her hardened facial muscles can’t rise to the task.

  “Where do you live?”

  No response.

  “How old are you?”

  “I’m 12.”

  And soon to be 13. This makes her uneasy.

  “Halmoni, how old are you?”

  “Me?”

  The girl nods.

  “13,” she murmurs without realizing what she’s saying.

  “What? 13?” The girl’s cheeks puff up and release a burst of laughter.

  Setting the doll down, she hurries off in a fluster.

  Feeling guilty about abandoning the doll, she returns to the alley but finds neither doll nor girl.

  13

  SHE’S LYING ALL alone on the floor.

  She’s been lying there so long she can’t tell how long.

  The girl with the short, dark bobbed hair has transported her back to the Manchurian comfort station, to the room that’s more like a tent, the very place she’s wanted so desperately to escape the last seventy years or more.

  The soldiers were making a racket out in the hallway. Whenever the soldiers got too loud Pokcha ŏnni would pipe up. And now she was saying, “They must be from Osaka. Osaka guys sound just like Kyŏngsang guys, it’s so fucking annoying!”

  The door rattled open and a slight, youthful soldier was shoved in. He looked embarrassed and scared. He pulled his pants down to the ankles, then back up to his knees. He searched her face as he rolled on a sakku and then he grabbed her by the hair and penetrated her as if he was hammering a post and thrust violently, once, twice, three times. He clutched her hair more tightly and thrust a fourth time and then a fifth and his face turned scarlet like the tip of a match just ignited.

  As soon as he was gone, another soldier came in. He reeked of gao-liang, and she imagined a liquor bottle with legs. Cackling, he pulled down his pants. “You have to use a sakku !” she quickly reminded him. He brought his face close and cursed her in Japanese. “I have a disease, so you need to use a sakku.” She wanted to cry. He was too drunk to stand up straight, and to keep his balance he sank his glistening metal teeth into her shoulder.

  The third soldier stank not of gaoliang but of body odor. And a foul smell issued from between his teeth. When she turned her head aside, he forced it back toward him and glued his frenzied eyes to hers. At the height of his ecstasy he finally closed his eyes, erasing her.

  The door rattled, wobbling like a tooth decayed to the root.

  The fourth soldier had a mustache. “You smell like a frog,” he muttered as he entered her. To her he smelled like a cat. The cat climbed onto the frog.

  The fifth soldier called out a series of names, all of them female— Toyoko, Eiko, Miyako, Hanako. . . . His sisters, she assumed.

  “Chieko!” he cried out.

  “Who’s she?” she asked, her voice trembling with fright.

  “My girlfriend when I was 20.”

  The sixth soldier flipped her on her back as if she was a dead frog. Burying his face in hers, he thrashed about as if he was swimming for his life. As he was leaving he kicked her in the side with his boot.

  Soldier number seven shot as soon as he was inside her. He pulled up his pants reluctantly and with an indignant expression, as if he’d been short-changed, then stopped and had at her again. The door was flung open and slammed shut, as if it was about to be yanked from its hinges.

  “Hey, hurry up, hurry! Sassato, sassato!”

  “Why are you crying?” said the eighth soldier.

  But the one in tears was not her but him.

  “I hate it when girls cry. My mother did that every goddamn morning!”

  The ninth soldier scratched his head and offered a polite greeting before entering her.

  As the tenth soldier was about to penetrate her, he flinched as if from a branding iron. She couldn’t tell if her body was hot to the touch or cold.

  An officer in spectacles, his mustache looking like a tattoo, entered her and exclaimed, “You feel like a dead body! Shinda onna mitaine!”

  When she moaned he growled, “Don’t bother! Doryokuwa suruna!”

  He put his hands around her neck and tightened his hold on her. “I always wanted to do it with a dead girl! Shinda onnato shite mitakkata!”

  The tighter the officer’s hands gripped her neck, the more purple the dead girl’s face. He left after emptying his load of semen into the dead girl as if scattering old seed onto a cement-coated wasteland.

  The officer was gone. The dead girl’s belly swelled up and the dead girl dreamed about an animal, the way her mother used to when she got pregnant. The dead girl’s mother said that when she was pregnant with her she had dreamed of a bunny white as snow hopping down the hill and jumping into her bosom.

  “It was a bunny,” the dead girl mumbled. But wasn’t the tail too long for it to be a bunny?

  “It was a cat.” But weren’t the hind legs too long for it to be a cat?

  “It was a deer.” But deer don’t have three legs.

  In an alley where no one lives anymore she sees a woman crying. She’s never seen the woman before. The woman is holding a black plastic bag. She wonders what’s inside. The woman looks about fifty. The ankles revealed beneath the woman’s ivory-colored pants are knotted and swollen. Each strand of the woman’s permed hair vibrates like a filament emitting thermal energy, and she feels charged by that energy.

  Why would she be crying?

  She feels she is inside the woman, crying herself as she lies inside the crying woman. Power lines stretch out above the woman’s head; not one bird has come to rest on those lines. Whenever she sees a woman crying she feels she has known the woman from long before.

  She waits until the woman leaves, then goes to stand where the woman was crying.

  14

  IT’S AROUND DINNERTIME when she nears the mini-mart and sees a crowd gathered outside. Police cruisers have pulled up in front. A lanky policeman and a man in a pullover are chatting. She can see only their backs. A policeman with a stocky build is talking on his cell phone. The man who runs the store sits in one of the chairs outside the entrance. Women huddle nearby, their expressions grave. Their clothing is casual, probably what they wear at home. The alteration shop woman is among them. Another woman points toward the back of the store, perhaps to one of the houses lined up like a deck of flower cards. A break-in? What could it be? She decides to hang back behind a utility pole and watch. Suddenly the man in the pullover turns and stares at her. She tries to conceal herself behind the pole. Just as she feared, it’s the man from the precinct office. Her heart jumps and her legs feel weak.


  Not until the police have left do the women scatter. And not until the man from the precinct office finishes his soft drink and swaggers down the alley does she emerge from behind the utility pole and approach the store.

  “Did something happen?” she gingerly asks the mini-mart man, who is back to work, sweeping outside the store entrance.

  “Did something happen?” The man parrots the question.

  “Weren’t those police cars? . . .”

  “Oh yeah, the police. They discovered a bunch of Chinese illegals living in P’yŏnghwa Villa.”

  “Women?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been wondering about them—women I’ve never seen before coming around late at night and buying ramyŏn. You should have seen the roundup . . . what a spectacle! You must have been sound asleep. The neighbors had themselves quite a show . . .”

  “You said women were living there?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s odd . . . I’ve never seen any signs of life there . . .”

  She remembers strolling past P’yŏnghwa Villa a few days ago. It looked like nobody lived there.

  “Did you need something?”

  Unable to remember what she came for, she blurts, “Tofu . . . just one block.”

  “Again?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what you bought yesterday. You need some meat, instead of tofu every day, that way you’ll have more energy,” he says as he hands her a black plastic bag with the tofu.

  “How many women were there?”

  “About twenty, I think they said. They strung ’em together like dried fish and hauled ’em off.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “They’ll probably get sent back to where they came from.”

  “How were they discovered anyway?”

  “You know, a guy from the city’s been poking through all the houses doing a survey and trying to figure out who actually lives here, that’s how.”

  The man goes inside to the room at the back of the store. She watches momentarily as he helps his wife up, then leaves.