by Un-su Kim
THE DOOR TO THE LEFT
He heard laughter.
Laughter like a flower garden in May. Laughter like the wings of tiny birds flying low and fast, like the buzzing of honeybees busily cruising the tops of flowers. Endless chatter followed by firecracker bursts of laughter. What was so funny? The sound made Reseng laugh along in his sleep, although he had no idea what he was laughing at.
Where was he? He heard running water. Was there a stream nearby? Not likely. There were no streams. It was just the sound, ringing in his ears for no reason. Ever since becoming an assassin, he had sometimes heard this sound in his dreams, and each time he thought to himself that this must be death: lying still in a place with the sound of water in the background. A place just like this one. Where he could hear water. Where he could not move any part of his body. Where he lay stretched on a cold gravel bed looking up at the sky for an eternity. It occurred to him suddenly that death must be very close. He fell back to sleep.
Reseng walked slowly into a forest carpeted in fog. His feet sank deep into its plush vapour, his pace as slow and plodding as that of an ox carrying a child on its back. Leaves weighted with ice-cold dew licked his cheeks as he passed. There, under the trees, was the nunnery’s garbage bin where Reseng was born. He looked inside. It was filled with baby’s breath. My cradle wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. He turned his face to the sky and laughed. The leaves of a thousand-year-old gingko tree laughed with him. He threw his head back and looked up at the countless gingko leaves hanging from the heavy canopy. As the wind blew, the leaves all tipped in the same direction and laughed in chorus. What’s so funny? he wondered. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the leaves, ‘Tell me what’s so funny! Let me in on the joke!’ But they just kept laughing and did not answer. Teeheeheehee. Teeheeheehee. The tittering of the gingko leaves sounded like the laughter of factory girls. Laughing girls brightening a laneway at lunchtime. Walking along the beautiful forest path beneath a tunnel of tall trees were four factory girls, giggling as they went. A girl with a cute, round face clutched her belly like she’d been laughing too hard and said, ‘Oh, that’s too funny, that’s hilarious!’ Reseng was delighted to see them.
‘What are you doing here so deep in the forest?’ he asked, blocking their path. ‘Don’t you have to get back to work?’
The factory girls shook their heads. ‘Who are you?’
‘Don’t you know me? I did chrome-plating, on Work Team Three. I rode the bicycle with the pink basket!’
They shook their heads again. They did not know him. They tried to walk past. He blocked the way. They cowered and looked scared. But the round-faced girl was brave.
‘Get out of our way!’ she said.
He grinned and pointed at her.
‘I know you well.’
‘How do you know me?’ Her eyes widened.
‘You have a birthmark on your left bum cheek. In the shape of a rabbit. And two birthmarks next to your right nipple. One big, one little. Like a snowman. Like the sun and the moon. And…uh… you hate men who throw away pairs of underwear after wearing them only once. You say it’s a waste of money. That’s why you wash underwear hundreds of times before throwing them out. You squat on the bathroom floor and hum happy songs while scrubbing pairs of underwear until they eventually fall apart. And…uh…when you get angry, your ears turn red.’
The furious factory girl’s earlobes had indeed turned red.
‘Ha! See! They’re turning red right now,’ he said excitedly.
She slapped him hard across the cheek. His eyes filled with tears as he stared at her. But she was still angry. She raised her hand again. Scared, Reseng turned away.
‘You really don’t know me? You don’t remember?’ he asked between tears.
‘No! I don’t know you!’ A look of irritation crossed her face as she said, ‘What a weirdo, I swear.’
The four girls continued along the beautiful forest path, leaving him behind. He could still hear their chattering voices in the distance. ‘What’s with that guy? Is he crazy?’ ‘I don’t know how you can be so brave. I thought I was going to die of fright.’ ‘Seriously. He didn’t look like a creep, so maybe he’s just stupid.’ Their nonstop chattering could be heard all the way from the end of that long forest path. Then, more bubbles of laughter. Why didn’t she remember me? He stared down the path where the girls had gone.
He heard water again. Ice-cold water running over gravel. ‘Am I dead?’ he asked himself in his dream. The gingko leaves rattled in the wind as they answered him. You’re dead. Long dead. Long, long dead. The ancient trees nodded as if it must be true.
When Reseng came to, the first thing he saw was a skinny, blonde Barbie standing on his chest. Misa was holding the doll and poking its legs into his collarbone. Pooh Bear was sitting alongside Barbie, and a stuffed Dalmatian stared dumbly at him from his solar plexus. Misa picked up the Dalmatian and shook it. ‘Booooring! Oh my god, I’m so bored!’ The dog wagged its tail and scampered across Reseng’s stomach. Misa grabbed the Barbie again.
‘Ooh, he’s so muscular!’ Barbie exclaimed.
‘You have a thing for muscles, don’t you?’ said pants-less Pooh. ‘But this is a hill we’re standing on. Who ever heard of a muscular hill?’
‘Shut up, Potbelly Pooh,’ said Barbie. ‘Go and put on some underwear.’
Misa walked the Barbie doll down Reseng’s chest and onto his stomach. Each time the doll’s legs pressed into him, his knife wounds ached like they were reopening.
‘Misa, that hurts,’ Reseng whispered.
She jumped in surprise, then smiled brightly and called out towards the living room.
‘Mito! Sumin! Reseng is awake!’
Mito and the cross-eyed librarian ran into the room and stared at Reseng. They looked like they were staring down into a well. Mito held one finger up in front of his eyes and moved it slowly from left to right and right to left. He frowned and ignored her finger. Mito’s eyes bored into his for a moment, and she laughed.
‘Hey there, Mr Frankenstein,’ she said.
Reseng looked around. They were in a cabin. Outside the window was a persimmon tree that had shed its leaves, and beyond that was a high mountain.
‘Where are we?’ he asked.
‘The house where Mito was conceived,’ Mito said, referring to herself in the third person as if Reseng were a child. ‘The weekend farm where my father tricked my naïve mother into coming with him to pick tomatoes so he could jump her. Though fortunately that’s how Mito was born.’
‘Sis!’ Misa gave her an angry look.
‘Oh, sorry! Our darling Misa was conceived in love, with consent. But her big sister’s birth wasn’t so nice. Whenever our mother was angry with our father, she told me, “That man jumped me. He grabbed me from behind when I was picking tomatoes. That’s where you came from. And that’s why my life turned out this way.” Each time she told me that, our dad’s face turned bright red and he didn’t know what to do with himself.’ Mito burst into laughter.
Misa and the librarian stared dumbly at her.
‘How long was I out for?’ Reseng asked.
Misa held up five fingers. Reseng’s face fell.
‘Are you hungry?’ Misa asked.
Was he? This was his body, but he couldn’t seem to feel anything.
‘I can’t tell,’ he said.
‘You must be starving. You haven’t eaten for five days, after all.’
‘Why would he be starving? He’s been gulping up all that expensive dextrose solution,’ the librarian said with a pout.
‘You know that’s not the same as food,’ said Misa. ‘I’ll make him some delicious rice porridge.’
She wheeled over to the kitchen. Reseng raised his head to check his body. His arm, shoulder and stomach were bandaged.
‘Did you do this?’ Reseng asked Mito.
‘Yes, at my friend’s animal hospital. You lost a lot of blood. You almost died.’
The cross-ey
ed librarian was looking at him with the same sour face as always. At least, he assumed she was looking at him; he was never quite sure. What he was sure of was that she thought he was pathetic.
‘Next time use a gun,’ she said quietly, so Misa wouldn’t hear. ‘Don’t go rushing into battle if you’re not up for it. You just end up making trouble for everyone else.’
‘The Barber knows who I am now, thanks to you,’ Mito said. ‘Sumin’s been exposed too. All three of us are in danger because of what you did. It’s also thrown a small spanner in the plot I came up with for bringing down Hanja. But that’s okay. It just means I’ll have to put things in motion now rather than later. It’s important that we continue to think positive.’
She glanced over at the librarian, who smiled back at her. Reseng could not figure out what was going through those crazy girls’ heads.
‘You saved me from the Barber. I don’t suppose you managed to grab my knife too?’ Reseng asked somewhat bashfully.
Mito gave him a frosty look. What did he want with Chu’s knife? Reseng was surprised at himself for asking.
‘I’ll take care of the Barber,’ she said firmly. ‘You have a different job to do.’
Mito left the room, followed by the librarian. Reseng could hear the three of them laughing and chatting in the kitchen. Most of it was about how to cook rice porridge. After a moment, Misa appeared with a bowl. Mito and the librarian put on their coats and prepared to leave. While the librarian laced up her shoes at the front door, Mito came over to Reseng and whispered in his ear.
‘Don’t get any stupid ideas in that empty head of yours. You’ll only make things worse. Just eat your porridge and get lots of sleep until I summon you.’ She dragged out the word lots.
She and the librarian left. Misa dipped a spoon into the bowl, blew on it to cool it, then offered the spoon to Reseng. He gazed blankly for a moment at Misa’s face and at the steam rising from the spoon. Misa held it closer. He opened his mouth. Her porridge, the first warm food he’d eaten in five days, was delicious. Reseng ate the whole bowl and fell back to sleep.
Reseng slept, just as Mito had told him to. He fell asleep and dreamed, and when he awoke, he ate more of Misa’s porridge and fell asleep again. No matter how much he slept, an endless drowsiness kept washing over him. He couldn’t help wondering if Misa had added sleeping pills to the porridge. Or maybe there were sleeping pills in his water cup, or in the flowers in the vase, or in the warm sunlight spilling through the window and over his bed. He ate porridge and slept, and even in his dreams he slept.
In the evenings, Mito returned and undid Reseng’s bandages to disinfect the wounds. Then she gave him an injection. On the nights Mito didn’t come, the librarian changed his bandages for him instead.
‘How did you get involved in all this?’ Reseng asked the librarian as she wordlessly wrapped a clean bandage around him.
She didn’t answer.
‘This isn’t a game,’ he said. ‘You could die.’
She pulled hard on the bandage as she tied it off. It was agony: Reseng felt as if the wound was going to burst. He groaned.
‘You’re not the only one with a story,’ she said, gathering up the scissors and the old bandages. ‘So stop acting as if you know everything, as if you’re the only tragic one here.’
She was right. Everyone had a story. Old Raccoon, Chu, Bear, Mito, the Barber, even Hanja. They fed their anger, hated each other and even killed each other because of their particular story. They all believed their injuries justified their actions. But did they? What a load of crap, Reseng thought, then said to himself, And you’re as big a prick as the rest of them.
Now and then Reseng awoke to find Misa playing with her Winnie-the-Pooh on his stomach. It reminded him of how Desk and Lampshade used to fall asleep on his back or with their tails draped across his thigh.
‘Aren’t you a little old to play with soft toys?’ Reseng asked. ‘Why not try something else?’
‘Something else?’ she asked, stroking the loose seams on the toy.
‘Yeah, like, for instance, you could get a cat. Cats make people happy.’
Misa raised an eyebrow, considered the idea. But she shook her head.
‘I don’t want a cat or a dog. It’ll die before I do, and I can’t get close to anything that will die before me. My soft toys will outlive me as long as I mend them.’ She gave the old Winnie-the-Pooh a shake.
‘How come you never ask any questions?’
‘About what?’
‘About anything.’
‘Because even if I knew what was going on, I couldn’t do anything about it. So I pretend not to know anything about the things I can’t control. The more I pretend not to know, the more I actually don’t know.’ She smiled.
Pooh shook his head on Reseng’s stomach.
‘Have you ever read a book called The Doubting Polar Bear, by G.Y. Gumdory?’ he asked.
‘Is that a famous writer?’
‘Not at all. The book is about a polar bear who questions whether he’s really a polar bear.’
‘Why would a polar bear question whether he’s a polar bear?’
‘Well, it’s a funny story about a polar bear who wonders why he’s a polar bear, specifically, and not any other kind of bear. Is it simply because he was born at the North Pole? He hates the fact that where he was born determines what he is, and he hates that he had no choice in the matter. He could’ve been a grizzly bear instead, or a panda bear, for instance. He agonises for a long time over why he had to be born a polar bear.’
‘Sounds more like a stupid bear to me.’
‘No, for a bear to be asking that sort of question, it means he’s a very philosophical bear. Anyway, the doubting bear decides that he has to leave the North Pole in order to find out what kind of bear he really is. He opens up a map to look for a place that’s completely different from the North Pole and chooses California.’
‘A bear does that?’
‘Yes, a bear does that.’
She shook her head in disbelief.
‘Wouldn’t he need a boat or something to get all the way to California from there?’
‘Sure. But sadly for him, the polar bear doesn’t have a boat. So he saws off a piece of iceberg. He climbs onto it and sets sail for California. The wind blows hard, and the tides push him further and further away into the huge ocean. But the further he gets from the pole, the faster his iceberg melts. His raft is disappearing beneath him with no new land in sight, let alone California. When the enormous iceberg he started with is barely an ice cube, the doubting polar bear finally figures it out. ‘Aha!’ he says. ‘This is why I’m a polar bear. Because I can never leave the North Pole.’ Then the last of the ice melts and dumps him in the water, and the doubting polar bear has to swim all the way back home. The end.’
‘Does the polar bear drown?’
‘I don’t know. The story ends with him still swimming.’
‘I hope that bear was a good swimmer,’ Misa said worriedly.
‘Don’t you think we’re the same?’
‘Same as what? That stupid polar bear?’
‘We were all born in the North Pole and we hate it in the North Pole, but no matter how hard we try, we can’t leave.’
Misa stared at him.
‘I don’t mind the North Pole,’ she said, smiling brightly. ‘California’s too hot. And besides, who ever heard of a “Californian bear”? That just sounds weird. If I’m born at the North Pole, then I’ll stick with being a polar bear.’
With December, the frost arrived in the forest. By morning, the grass and leaves were pale, frozen and covered with icy powder. The birdsong died, as if all the birds had left for warmer places. On the second day of December, Sumin the librarian chopped down a pine tree; that evening, the three women trimmed it with tiny lights, colourful balls and ornaments shaped like presents, stars, bells, Santa Claus and Rudolph, magic wands and sweets. Misa turned bits of cotton into snowflakes and stuck them on
the branches. Their laughter never stopped. They seemed intent on laughing until Christmas Day. But there was something anxious about their merriment. Their laughter had a nervous edge; it sounded at times like dogs howling at the dark. Their movements were exaggerated, their joy bordering on desperate, as if they were bracing for a coming sadness.
Reseng’s wounds healed. He was able to walk around more easily, although he still had trouble standing up straight. Misa seemed entertained by the way he shuffled around with his bottom sticking out. She laughed her head off each time he went for a walk.
Mito checked his scars and reminded him, ‘You need to move around as much as possible.’
So Reseng went for walks in the forest around the cabin. The garden was wreathed with peach, pine, apricot and chestnut trees. If no one had died and no one had been hurt, Reseng thought, weekends at the cabin would have been peaceful and beautiful. As long as no one died or got hurt.
The cabin had been built on a mountain slope. A single paved road led to the front, and out the back was a steep, narrow path inaccessible to cars. Reseng examined the path. It was unpaved, with tree roots jutting out here and there. It didn’t look as if a wheelchair could negotiate it. If assassins found them, the three women would never make it out alive. Already rumours would have spread about Reseng fighting the Barber, about a woman disappearing with Reseng. The rumours might have even reached Hanja’s ears. Trackers could already be on the move. How long did they have?
Mito and the librarian were coming and going constantly. Each night, after Misa went to bed, the two of them sat in the attic and had long, heated discussions. Some of the discussions dragged on so long that Reseng could still hear their murmuring voices when the sun came up. But neither Mito nor the librarian told him anything. They didn’t tell him how they planned to fight Hanja or Old Raccoon, or how the whole foolhardy lot of them intended to make a living later.
Reseng passed the time reading books and sleeping and gazing out the window at the wintry mountainscape. Sometimes he stared up at the roof beams and pictured the way the Barber had moved. There one second, gone the next. Light, easy, fluid and lightning-fast. ‘If I fight him again, can I win?’ he wondered. No sooner did he ask himself that than an icy terror gripped him; he felt like he was standing on the tip of a knife. It would be too difficult. If he went up against the Barber again, he really would be a dead man.