by Un-su Kim
‘I never would’ve guessed you had so much flair,’ the Admin Section Chief said.
His work team leader tapped the basket and said, ‘Oh, man, if you’re riding this to work, how’s your mother getting to market?’
One co-worker who’d never once spoken to him suddenly approached him. The man kept starting to say something and then stopping, but finally looked as if he couldn’t control his curiosity any longer.
‘Please don’t take this the wrong way. I just couldn’t help wondering.’ The look on the man’s face was very serious.
‘What is it?’
‘There’s a rumour going around that you’re saving up for a sex change operation. Is it true?’
As the stories spread out of control, even workers at neighbouring factories started to talk, until finally the Admin Section Chief asked him, half-jokingly, ‘Don’t you think it’s time you did something about it?’ Reseng had no choice but to hang a sign on the front of his basket that read, The rumours are not true. I am not getting an operation. And I’m already circumcised. He kept it on there for three days straight.
And yet, thanks to the bicycle, he finally became friends with his co-workers. The work got much easier and he started to enjoy himself. His team leader transferred him to the more sophisticated job of drilling holes in copper plates, which paid two hundred thousand won more per month than chrome-plating, and even used his spare time at work to teach Reseng how to trim metal using a lathe. Each time he scraped grease from his hands after work or brushed metal filings off his apron and hung it on the clothesline or laughed as he watched his co-workers play soccer with a paper cup during their breaks, Reseng felt he had finally become a true member of the factory world. He’d gained a large family overnight.
Now whenever they bumped into each other at the factory, Reseng and the woman shared shy, clandestine smiles. After work they rode home in separate directions so no one would catch on. She took a short cut while Reseng went the long way, but somehow he always arrived first. He would open the door and wait for her. She’d come riding up the hill and he’d take her bike and lock it up for her. Then they would have sex.
Afterwards they ate dinner and watched TV. She liked variety shows. Every time someone on TV made a joke, she rolled on the floor laughing and said, ‘Oh, man, that guy is too funny, that’s hilarious!’
Reseng stared straight-faced at the screen and wondered what on earth was so funny.
‘Why am I not laughing? Am I too stupid to get it?’
‘Yeah, you’re too stupid,’ she said in between laughs.
Reseng thought maybe she was right.
At nine o’clock, she sat at the desk to study.
‘I passed the middle school exam last year. Now I need to prepare for the high school one. How far did you get? I only made it to the first year of middle school. My father wouldn’t let me keep going.’
‘On my resumé I put that I finished high school, but I never even went to elementary school.’
‘Liar,’ she said, looking askance at him.
While she studied, he lay down and read Demons by Dostoyevsky. It was a big book, and a boring one.
‘Is that fun to read?’ she asked.
‘The characters have really long names. For instance, the main character’s mother is Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, and his tutor is Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. Each time a new person appears, it takes well over a line just to say their name. So, no, it’s not that fun. Not with this many names to remember.’
‘Then why read it if it’s not fun? You’re the only person I know who reads such big books.’
‘I don’t read for any particular reason. It’s like you and your TV shows. I just don’t know what else to do with my free time.’
At eleven, she would start to nod off. Her head dipped lower and lower until her forehead knocked against the desk. It was sweet. Reseng tapped her on the shoulder and told her to go to bed. She looked at him, confused, and said she wasn’t sleeping, that was just her trick for memorising the thing she’d just read. She shook her head, saying the test wasn’t far off now, opened her eyes wide and resumed reading. Then about three seconds later, her head started to bob again. When her face was completely buried in the old, government-issued textbook, Reseng put down his book and carried her to the futon. He pushed the small desk to one side, turned off the light, climbed under the blanket and wrapped his arm around her. She wiggled closer and pushed her bum right up against him, took his hand in both of hers and brought it up to her cheek, and then nodded as if all was now as it should be. That was her favourite sleeping position. She told him nothing made her happier than being held by the person she loved with his hand pressed to her cheek.
‘What did you do before this?’ she asked, half-asleep.
‘I worked on different construction sites for a few years.’
‘Ha! Liar. You don’t have the hands of a construction worker. You’re such a shady character. Seriously shady.’ She sounded like she was talking in her sleep.
Every now and then he felt a tear slide down her cheek and over the back of his hand. Some nights she cried a lot. He would breathe deeply like he was asleep and watch the moonlight tiptoe across the room. Eventually she would stop crying, and Reseng would fall asleep too.
But the next morning she was always cheerful and full of energy, as if nothing had happened. She hummed as she brushed her teeth and washed her hair and set the breakfast table. After eating, she said, ‘I’ll take the usual route today. Don’t follow me like you did last time,’ and then jumped on her bike and headed to work.
Those were the days. Reseng was getting better and better at his job. His team leader asked what he thought about becoming a certified lathe technician. ‘A man’s got to have a skill. With that you can make a living anywhere. If you pass the written test, I’ll personally train you for the practical test.’
On Friday evenings, the factory workers split into teams to play pool. Their rule was that the losing team had to pay for both the pool hall and the alcohol, and they were very strict about that rule, which meant that pool on Friday nights was a serious and gripping affair. After the pool hall, they grilled pork skin over coal briquettes and drank soju. When the Admin Section Chief was there, they complained about the boss, and when he wasn’t there, they complained about him. He seemed to know that, because he tried his best never to miss either the pool-playing or the drinking.
Meanwhile, the job that Reseng had botched never made the news. The incident seemed to have been smoothed over thanks to some easygoing public officials who didn’t want to make their jobs more complicated than they had to be. He decided that, as long as it never got out and everything slipped silently back to normal, the plotters and their clients wouldn’t be too disappointed. But that was just his own opinion. If the plotter decided that he couldn’t let someone who did such shoddy work live, then Reseng was a dead man. But half a year had gone by without any contact from Old Raccoon.
Finally, around his eighth month of working at the factory, he received word. He came home to find a letter stuck in the door. It wasn’t sent through the mail; someone had delivered it personally. He opened it with trembling hands.
終結 歸家.
It was Old Raccoon’s handwriting. The letter contained only those four words: ‘It’s over, come home.’ Reseng wondered what exactly was over and where he was supposed to come home to. He couldn’t quite imagine having a home somewhere that wasn’t here.
The following afternoon, Reseng called Old Raccoon.
‘I’d like to stay here a little longer.’
After a long silence, Old Raccoon asked, ‘The factory girl, she’s nice?’
Reseng hesitated before saying yes.
‘That’s fine, then. If you’re sure you don’t want to return to this line of work, stay there.’
He didn’t sound critical, cynical or angry. In fact, it was the first time Reseng had ever heard Old Raccoon sound warm. Reseng stood with the
phone to his ear. Stay there. He couldn’t quite figure out what those words really meant. Factory workers were pouring into the street on their way to lunch. Reseng’s woman was with them. She winked at him. One of the guys tapped Reseng on the shoulder as he walked by and asked why he wasn’t joining them. Reseng covered the phone with his hand and said, ‘I’ll catch up.’ She turned to look at him too, and he smiled and waved for her to go ahead. She smiled back and kept walking. Reseng brought the phone up to his ear again.
‘It really is okay if I stay?’ he asked.
‘Your name there is Jang Yimun?’
‘Yes.’
‘Live by that name. I’ll erase the name you had here. That way you won’t have any problems.’
With that he hung up.
Reseng came out of the phone booth and stared at the factory workers in the street. I’ll erase the name you had here. That way you won’t have any problems. What kind of problems was Old Raccoon talking about? It was April. Cherry trees were in bloom all down the street. He hadn’t realised until that moment that they were cherry trees. Not that it mattered. Sakura, the flower that wilts the moment it blooms. For some reason that line of poetry he’d read somewhere was stuck in his head. He looked down at his hands, hardened from eight months of factory work. As he stroked his calluses, he murmured, ‘My name was Jang Yimun,’ his voice sounding like he’d just made a great discovery. He stared at the trees and thought about the name Reseng. It had been his for so long, and now it was about to be erased. He wondered what it meant to erase a name. Sakura, the flower that wilts the moment it blooms.
He went back to the factory. He did not eat lunch. There was a stack of unfinished work at his station, so he turned on the milling machine and continued drilling four holes into the copper plates. After about twenty minutes, he had finished. He blew on the holes, brushed away the metal shavings, held the plates up to the light. Nodded in satisfaction. After restacking the plates to one side, he swept up the bits of copper scattered around his workstation and poured them into the recycling bin.
Reseng washed his hands and packed his belongings. After looking around to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he snuck into the office and removed his résumé from the Admin Section Chief’s filing cabinet. Not that it mattered what happened to it. His name and resident registration number were also in the payroll book and on the time sheets. But he only took the résumé. He crumpled it up, shoved it in his pocket and left. On his way out, he pictured the factory without him in it. What would change if he were not there? Probably nothing. With or without him, the machines would keep on whirring, day in and day out.
Reseng rode home. He opened the door and looked around at the cramped room where he’d lived for the last six months. The time he’d spent there felt like it had happened long, long ago. He started packing the bag he’d brought with him from Seoul, but his belongings had increased since then. There was far too much to fit in the bag. He put everything he’d acquired since moving in with the woman into a garbage bag and threw it away in the next street. Then he put the shirts she’d washed for him, his spare set of work overalls and his underwear into a black shopping bag and stuck it in a used-clothing donation bin. Back at the room, he inspected every nook and cranny. There had to be something else he should get rid of. He looked around anxiously and started wiping down everything he had ever touched. When he was done, he asked himself why he’d had to erase his fingerprints. But none of the countless faces inside Reseng offered an answer.
He left her no note or explanation. He simply packed his things and left. Halfway down the street, he hid and stared for a long time at the tiny studio where he’d spent half a year of his life. The sun began to set, and he saw her peddling hard up the hill, her basket filled with bean sprouts, tofu and green onions. As usual, she parked her bike next to his and went inside. About five minutes later, she came running out. She looked confused. She stood motionless out the front until the sun had set and the streetlights came on. Reseng hid in the dark like a rat and watched as she stood there frozen. When she finally tired and went inside, Reseng dragged his bag the rest of the way down the hill. He returned to Seoul and burned the ID card belonging to Jang Yimun.
X
The rain grew heavier. The sunbeams that had streamed down between the clouds had all disappeared. Reseng finished his beer, crumpled the can and threw it on the floor next to the hundred or so others. He took a moment to admire the varied shapes of the crushed cans before grabbing a fresh can from the fridge. The one sane voice among the many inside Reseng’s head spoke to him: What are you thinking? Death has crept right up on your arse, and all you’re doing is drinking beer? But Reseng popped the tab anyway. The can sighed, exhaling its carbonation. He smirked. Since when does a can of beer sigh with regret? He took a sip and wondered why he’d bothered to come back. If he’d stayed at the factory, he wouldn’t have had to tremble in fear at a stupid bomb in his toilet. He would not have had to live this life of constant, compulsory murder.
The night after his first kill after returning to Seoul, he had asked Old Raccoon, ‘Am I going to end up killing more and more people?’
‘No, you’ll kill fewer and fewer. But you’ll make more and more money.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘The better you get at it, the more valuable the people you kill will be.’
But Old Raccoon had been wrong about that. The price of assassinations had fallen. And as their price fell, the value of beautiful, worthy people also fell. The result of which was that great people were dying in larger numbers and more easily than before. It takes countless legends to produce a hero Achilles, but only one idiot prince Paris to kill him. In that case, how many would it take to kill an idiot prince?
Reseng looked at the bomb sitting on the desk. The guy at the hardware shop had warned him, ‘If this was planted by government spooks, you’re better off putting it back in your toilet and dying. They don’t mess around.’ He’d said it as a joke, but it wasn’t. Once one of them made the list, everyone else hoped for them to die quietly. Fighting only made things worse for everyone. Detectives would notice something fishy and start sniffing around, which made plotters antsy. If Reseng was on a government hit list, no one would help him. How would you prefer to die? Reseng asked himself. One of the voices inside him murmured mockingly, At least you know Bear does a good job. Reseng drained his beer, crushed the can nervously and tossed it aside.
Don’t worry, he thought. No one dies that easily. Some people have lived thirty years with a bullet lodged in their brain. Men have been rescued from desert islands after surviving for a week with a harpoon through their bellies. People have drunk stagnant water from rotten tree trunks, chewed on cactus stalks, drunk their own urine and eaten the contents of the stomachs of dead animals while crossing deserts. A shipwrecked woman was once rescued after drifting for a month and surviving on her boyfriend’s heart, kidneys, liver and large intestine. There was even a case where a doctor had issued a death certificate, the undertaker had cleaned and shrouded the body, and the coffin lid was being nailed shut, when the person inside suddenly awoke and started pounding like crazy on the coffin lid. Life can be a surprising and cruel and disgusting thing.
Reseng opened the fridge and pulled out the last can of beer. He cracked it open and guzzled it down in one gulp, then crumpled the can and tossed it on the floor. Now he could leave. Beer Week was over.
The next morning, when Reseng stepped into The Doghouse, the cross-eyed librarian was gone. On her desk was a little sign that read: ‘On Holidays.’ He assumed it was true because her soft toys and office supplies were still there. But did The Doghouse give librarians holiday leave? Maybe the others had simply been fired before they’d had a chance to use it. Reseng went to the study.
Old Raccoon was at his desk, reading out loud as always. Reseng set the bomb casing in front of him.
‘This was in my toilet. It’s handmade, and the parts are Belgian.’ Old Raccoon p
eered at the bomb casing through his reading glasses.
‘Who do you think put it there?’ Old Racoon asked.
‘I don’t have the slightest idea. Do you?’
‘I have too many. Considering how you’ve lived, it’d be strange if someone didn’t want you dead.’
Old Raccoon sounded like he was talking about somebody else. Reseng hated the way he pretended to be so indifferent. It wasn’t like Reseng was arguing that he didn’t deserve to die, nor was he pleading to be saved and claiming how unfair it was. All he’d asked was who might have done this to him.
‘Do you know any plotters who use this type of bomb?’ he asked, indignant.
For the briefest second, Old Raccoon’s expression changed. The look that flashed over his face said that he definitely knew something, and that he was very amused.
‘None of the plotters I know plant bombs in toilets. And they’re not the type to play practical jokes.’
‘So it’s just a warning?’
He glared. ‘Why would they waste a warning on the likes of you?’
Reseng didn’t know what to say to that. Old Raccoon lit a cigarette and exhaled a long cloud of smoke. Then, to Reseng’s consternation, he turned back to his encyclopedia and resumed reading out loud. Reseng stared at him, half-stunned.
What was this pointless form of reading anyway? Reseng had been wondering that for the last twenty-eight years. Old Raccoon had no interest in anything. Not in politics or power or money or women or marriage or kids. Those held his attention even less than the tiny blossoms of mould that bloomed between the covers of books. To Old Raccoon, the real world was fiction. The only things that truly engrossed him were the problems raised by books—that is, by the insides and outsides of books. While the character inside the book trudged across the frozen Siberian wilderness, outside the book, the monsoon rains of early summer and the damp, humid winds ate away at the glue binding the book’s pages together. Those worries must have consumed Old Raccoon. So why had he been the leader of a hit squad for the last forty years? It made no sense when you thought about it. He should have owned a second-hand bookshop instead.