The Hole

by Hye-young Pyun

  Instead of the caregiver, her son burst through the bedroom door. He looked nothing like his mother. He was skinny to the point of looking sickly, but he was more wiry than frail. He looked like his leanness was due to prolonged suffering. Considering his nearly shaved head and darkly tanned face, he might have just finished his army service.

  “Fuck, man, who do you think you are? A drill sergeant? Why do you keep bossing everyone around with that stupid whistle?”

  He kicked Oghi’s bed. Oghi glared at him, so he ripped the covers off and used his foot to poke at Oghi’s numb leg. Oghi’s leg must have shook like a twig. The caregiver stood by and watched. The look on her face said there was nothing she could do. Maybe she was enjoying it. She must have been embarrassed, but she showed no intention of stopping her son.

  “How would you like it if I used it to order you to stand up? Huh? Would you like that?”

  He grabbed the whistle from Oghi and blew on it. At first he blew on it where he stood. But then he held it right up to Oghi’s ear and blew. He kept blowing. If the caregiver had not dragged him out of the room, Oghi might have lost his eardrum as well.

  “Use your words instead, man. Got it?” he yelled as he was dragged through the door. “We’ll be real polite with each other.”

  Oghi had never felt so scared of a kid before. The students he encountered as a professor had all been raised by well-educated parents. They were well-nourished too, so they were in good physical shape. There were times at the end of the semester when they raised their voices at him and demanded a higher grade in his class, but they were fundamentally conformist and conservative, afraid to rock the boat. There’d been no students like the caregiver’s son, so rude and disrespectful, at least not in Oghi’s department.

  It was the first time since coming home that Oghi had waited eagerly for his mother-in-law. He’d never imagined being terrorized in his own home by someone he was paying to be there. It drove home the fact that his mother-in-law was his only family, and it made him nervous to think what would happen if she were to abandon him.

  But though he’d wished for his mother-in-law to intervene, the timing went awry. The person who should have been kicked out was the caregiver’s son, not the caregiver.

  That day, when his mother-in-law stepped into the house, the caregiver’s rush to shut her door seemed to raise her suspicions. She immediately barged into the caregiver’s room, fending off the woman’s attempts to stop her. A loud racket ensued. Oghi heard a sharp, hysterical sound that he couldn’t believe was coming from his mother-in-law, and something else that sounded like the caregiver weeping and wailing.

  The two of them carried their argument out of the cramped spare room and into the living room. Oghi could hear their voices clearly now. His mother-in-law was furious. She called the caregiver a thief. The woman feigned innocence, insisting it was a misunderstanding.

  “I didn’t steal it. The bossman gave it to me. I swear. He told me to keep it.”

  Oghi’s mother-in-law grew even angrier. She demanded to know what on earth she’d done for him that he would have given her this.

  “Do you have any idea how much this is worth? Trash like you doesn’t deserve this.”

  The caregiver’s tone changed.

  “How the hell would I know what it costs?” she snapped. “Let’s go in there and ask the cripple. Find out how much he paid for it.”

  Oghi was shocked. He knew he was a “cripple,” saddled with a disability that was difficult to treat, but it was the first time he’d heard the word actually directed at him. What bothered him even more was what his mother-in-law said next.

  “You’re such trash that you’re only good for wiping the asses of cripples.”

  Oghi closed his eyes. He wished to be no part of any of this. Mud-flinging and hysterics, excuses and lies, stealing—it had nothing to do with him. He didn’t need to experience this. But as hard as he tried to convince himself of that, he could not.

  His mother-in-law threw open his door. She stomped into the room and held a small ring up to his eyes.

  “Look. Look at this.”

  Oghi closed his eyes, so his mother-in-law grabbed his shattered lower jaw. She would make him look. The prosthesis shook and his jaw ached. She did not let go. No matter how angry she was, Oghi felt she was going too far to be so careless with his injuries.

  “Did you give this to that woman? Did you? Tell me.”

  The ring had a blue stone. His jaw hurt. It hurt so bad his eyes were tearing up. She seemed to notice because she let go then. Oghi’s face throbbed.

  His mother-in-law had straightened up the house before the caregiver moved in. She’d gathered together all of the jewelry and accessories that his wife had carelessly left scattered around the house. She’d showed the box that held all of it to Oghi. She’d even pulled each item out and displayed it on her palm. There was quite a lot. Some had been gifts, while others were items his wife had bought for herself. Some of it Oghi had bought for her. He couldn’t tell what was what. His mother-in-law had said several of the items were very expensive. She’d singled them out and showed them to him, but he did not remember them.

  Oghi blinked at his mother-in-law. He kept on blinking. Even though he could shake his head a little and move his left arm, he lay as still as he had when he first awoke from his coma and only blinked his eyes. All while feeling relieved that no matter how hard his mother-in-law grilled him, he was unable to say a single word.

  “I knew this would happen. Get out!” she yelled.

  Oghi flinched. He thought she was telling him to leave.

  “Who do you think you are, stealing from us, getting drunk in broad daylight.” She shook her finger at the caregiver.

  The caregiver rushed at Oghi. “You crippled son of a bitch, how dare you accuse me of stealing!” She grabbed his numb legs and shook them.

  If he’d had any feeling in his legs, they probably would have hurt in her tight grip. But Oghi felt no pain at all. He didn’t even flinch. He didn’t feel them shake. His body was standing strong against the lies and excuses and misunderstandings. His body held out, but his mood had soured. He’d already been through one terrible accident, and he’d assumed the pain he had to suffer because of it was over by now, but even after all that he’d been through, there was still this endless parade of lies, excuses, misunderstandings. No different than ordinary life. It made no sense.

  The caregiver wasn’t the one who’d gotten drunk. It was her son. He’d started out cautiously in her small room, and then later drank openly in the living room. When he was good and drunk, he sang loudly and ranted at his mother. He called up places and bitched about his senior officers, and ended his drunken bouts with tears and sobbing. And when he was done crying, he came looking for Oghi, reeking of alcohol. He greeted Oghi, his eyes gleaming in his darkly tanned face.

  “I’m sorry, Mister.”

  He bowed politely from the waist.

  “I’m sorry, I drank it all.”

  He bowed again.

  “Goddammit, it was just so good.”

  Now and then, he would dip the corner of a towel in alcohol and hold it to Oghi’s lips. The first time he did this, Ogi had closed his mouth. He didn’t want to participate in the boy’s mockery of him. But the boy didn’t give up. He kept touching the dampened cloth to Oghi’s lips until Oghi could no longer resist the peaty aroma of single malt whiskey. How long had it been since he’d had a taste? He was in heaven. The boy gave him a little more, and Oghi stuck his tongue all the way out to lap it up. Later the boy fed it to him with a spoon and even put a straw in a cup for him. The whiskey the boy fed him was good, but it wasn’t the best. There were many better whiskies, but either the boy didn’t know his whiskies or he’d already drunk them all.

  Oghi’s mother-in-law went back into the caregiver’s room and tossed all of her belongings out into the hallway. The caregiver grabbed whatever she could carry. His mother-in-law threw the front door wide open and
chucked the rest of the woman’s belongings into the garden. Oghi watched from the window as the caregiver hurriedly stuffed her belongings into a large suitcase.

  She was leaving. Now Oghi would have no one to let him smell her skin or to wet his lips with whiskey. A feeling—he didn’t know if it was hurt or sorrow—filled his chest. But instead of feeling sad, Oghi told himself that the whiskies the woman’s son had drunk were all high-quality single malts. Bottles he’d gone to great effort to bring back from academic conferences and seminars, from his travels, from all over the world. He tried hard to think about how wasteful and annoying it was.

  His mother-in-law spent the whole afternoon cleaning out the caregiver’s room. She shoved everything the woman had been unable to pack into the trashcan. Then she made several phone calls and informed the people on the other end that she was looking for a new caregiver. She was told over and over by the employment agencies that, unlike hiring nurses by the hour, finding a live-in caregiver was no easy task.

  “What can we do?” she lamented to Oghi. “Even if we do find someone, they won’t be any better.”

  That evening, after she left, Oghi was on his own. He was finally alone, just as he had wanted to be when he first returned to this house. It was the first time since waking up from his coma that he was left without a nurse or a caregiver. He thought he would feel free, but he didn’t. He was lonely. And frightened and scared. Oghi blew uselessly on his whistle. No one looked in. There was no one to pick on him or treat him badly. No one to yell or get angry at him.

  The house was dark. His mother-in-law had been negligent. She had left without turning on any lights. It was stingy of her, and cruel to imply that Oghi wasn’t worth the electricity. But then again, it was the first time she’d done this, so maybe it simply hadn’t occurred to her to leave one on for him. There wasn’t a single light on in the garden either. It would’ve been nice if she had at least closed the curtains, but because she hadn’t, Oghi was left to watch as the world outside the window turned dark, as the branches waving in the darkness looked like someone beckoning to him.

  A red light flashed on the nightstand. Someone was calling. If the room hadn’t been so dark, he would’ve missed that faint light coming from the telephone. It did not ring. Come to think of it, the telephone had never once rung the whole time Oghi had been in that room. Perhaps his mother-in-law or the caregiver had turned off the ringer out of consideration for Oghi. Or they might have switched it off since Oghi couldn’t answer the phone anyway.

  When he looked at the telephone, he got an idea. He groped around in the bed with his left hand and found the back scratcher the caregiver had left there. She’d given it to him and told him to use it whenever his legs itched. Oghi had never once bothered. If he needed to scratch, all he had to do was blow his whistle and summon her.

  His idea was to reach over with the back scratcher and use it to pull the phone closer, but it didn’t work very well. His left arm almost immediately cramped up. Soon the light stopped flashing. It did not flash again.

  Oghi didn’t give up. He kept reaching for the telephone. The cord stretched to its limit until he couldn’t pull it any closer. He stretched his arm out as far as he could but he couldn’t reach the receiver.

  After several attempts, he managed to push the speakerphone button with the back of the scratcher. As the dial tone filled the room, his loneliness faded a little. But no sooner did he hear that sound than he hesitated. Even though he could dial, he still couldn’t speak. The best he could do was let out an audible sigh. He decided to try anyway. Given the state he was in, anything was worth trying.

  There was one phone number he knew by heart. Ever since he’d been able to store numbers in his cell phone, there’d been no further need to memorize them, but this number alone he never forgot. He had deleted it several times from his contacts. He’d made an effort. But those efforts never seemed to last long. The number would spring to mind, every digit, and he would give in. After just a moment’s hesitation, he would dial her number, ask her how she was, and listen to her voice. She never called him first. But when he did call, she answered every time.

  He used the back scratcher to slowly press the buttons. It took a while for him to press all ten numbers correctly. Finally he heard it ring. It rang for a while. And then she answered. His heart raced. Unlike his wrecked body, his heart was still intact.

  He heard her say hello and nearly cried at the sound of that simple greeting. It was such a welcome sound. His heart felt simultaneously relieved and shaken, just like the first time he’d heard someone say she loved him. Hello? There was that voice again. Oghi wanted to speak. He wanted to respond. But each time he tried, a mechanical sound came out.

  This time the person on the other end said, Who is this? Pain wracked his chest. He tried again but could only succeed at producing a ragged moan. Oghi was itching to tell her his name. He tried several times. The line was quiet on the other end. He heard the person ask again, suspicion lacing their voice, Who is this? Oghi didn’t answer. He stopped trying. It was too hard, there was no point. But he waited without ending the call, in case he got to hear more of her voice. The person on the other end was silent for a moment and then hung up.

  The dial tone returned. Oghi felt removed from the entire world. He was even lonelier than before he’d heard her voice.

  After a moment, a call came in. This time as well, the phone did not ring. A small light at the bottom flickered. Oghi felt grateful to his mother-in-law. If she hadn’t left without turning on the lights, he wouldn’t have been able to see it.

  He wasn’t able to answer on the first try. He moved too slowly and couldn’t get his arm to obey his will. Someone had sent him an SOS and he’d missed it. The phone rang again. Oghi hoped the person on the other end had a lot of patience. He narrowly managed to press the button for the speakerphone.

  The person on the other end didn’t say anything. Oghi spoke as loudly as he could. It sounded like metal scraping over earth. He was out of breath. He thought about how his doctor had told him it would get a little better after his next surgery. His doctor had said that Oghi’s voice would be raspy and inarticulate at first, but that he would soon recover normal speech. Oghi was eager to get more treatment and was prepared to endure any suffering if it meant recovery.

  “Oghi?”

  Oghi heard the sound of his own name.

  Yes, it’s me.

  He tried his hardest to answer. It sounded like he’d said yes. He hoped the other person thought so too.

  “Oghi?”

  She might not have heard him properly, but it seemed that she knew it was him. He could hear her quiet breaths through the speaker. It sounded like she was crying. His throat closed up. There was still someone out there who cried over him. Oghi wanted to hear that crying sound better. He reached out with the back scratcher and pulled the phone a little closer. It didn’t work. He tried again and knocked the phone to the floor.

  Oghi couldn’t see the phone from where he lay, but it didn’t seem to be broken. He could still hear her saying hello through the receiver. Since Oghi couldn’t respond, the person soon hung up. The dial tone droned on for a bit, and then even that stopped. All that was left in the room was the dark, which had grown darker still, and the silence.

  9

  HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW RETURNED AROUND NOON the next day, accompanied by the black-garbed church people. When she opened the door, her eyes went to the floor first. She gave Oghi a quizzical look and placed the telephone back on the nightstand.

  Oghi’s catheter bottle was filled to the brim, so before letting the church people into the room, she emptied and washed it. The church people praised her. Not everyone could handle this sort of work, they said, it takes tremendous love. One of them added, Only someone like Jesus himself could do this work.

  The pastor held Oghi’s hand and prayed, then his followers held one another’s hands and sang all four verses of a hymn. This was followed by a sermon, t
he words of which were slightly different than last time but still no less clichéd. The pastor comforted Oghi and spoke of the miraculous works of Jesus, who cured lepers and made cripples walk. When the praying ended, his mother-in-law handed the pastor another thick white envelope. This time Oghi hoped the pastor would stick around longer, but it didn’t happen. As soon as their work was done, they hurried out of the house to go deliver their next prayer session.

  After seeing them out and returning to the room, his mother-in-law picked up the receiver. Oghi could hear the dial tone. The phone hadn’t been damaged in the fall. As she stood there with the phone in her hand, his mother-in-law fixed Oghi with a suspicious look, then pressed a single button.

  Oghi wondered why someone would press only one button on a phone. Of course. The redial button. His mother-in-law shot him another look and wrapped her hand around the mouthpiece. She must have answered. She was probably saying Oghi’s name or breathing loudly or crying, as she had last night. Maybe she thought it was Oghi calling and was telling him something right now. His mother-in-law listened silently to the person on the other end.

  After a moment, she quietly put the phone back in its cradle and stared at Oghi. He pretended to be sleepy and closed his eyes. He heard her unplug the phone and take it out of his room.

  That day, his mother-in-law did not come back to Oghi’s room. The catheter bottle filled to the top, and his urine spilled out onto the floor. But he couldn’t stop himself from urinating. After the accident, he’d lost the ability to control it. The doctor had explained that the damage to his motor nerves meant he no longer had power over his urethra, and his bladder had shrunk, causing him to urinate more frequently whenever the pressure built up in his abdomen. The tube inserted into his penis dripped continuously like an IV. Maybe it was the medication he was on, but his urine was a darker yellow and smelled worse than usual.

  His mother-in-law didn’t show up until the next day. This time she arrived carrying a large suitcase. She told Oghi that she would be looking after him for the time being and that she would stay in the room his wife had used as a study.