by Claire North
Holding out one hand, summoning me, imperious, to her side. Her carer, a woman with three chins and blonde curling hair sticking out beneath a hand-knitted grey hat, apologised profusely but I said no, it’s fine, I don’t mind, and knelt down in front of my sister’s chair.
She surveyed me, and seeing everything to her satisfaction said, “There was spaghetti for lunch, but I don’t like spaghetti so I had pizza instead.”
“Did you?” I asked.
“Yes. Tomorrow is Friday so there’ll be curry which is all right.”
“That’s… good.”
Again, a mumble from the carer, so sorry, you don’t need to, it’s not at all…
I didn’t listen. Gracie’s hand, shifting an inch, resting in mine. The carer stopped speaking, stared at Gracie, stared at me, her mouth hanging ajar. How often did my sister touch another person? How often was she silent with her hand resting in a stranger’s hand?
I said, “She reminds me of my sister; did you say you were going to the station?”
“Yes.”
“May I come with you?”
The carer looked at Gracie, her bottom lip turning uncomfortably, professional training coming up hard against the truth of this moment. “What do you think, Grace?” she asked, voice too loud, voice for someone stupid, my sister is not stupid. “Do you want this lady to come with us to the station?”
Gracie nodded, an awkward gesture, head heavy as it dropped, fast, and then slow, rolling back round and up into its erect position.
“It’s not a problem,” I said. “I’d like to come.”
We walked to the station.
Gracie chatted briskly, told me that she liked the colour blue, but not the blue on the bedroom door, that was the wrong blue, but she liked the blue of the nurses, that was a good blue, and she wanted more things to be that blue but never purple she hated purple especially cabbage, cabbage made her sick. And she had been learning to sing she liked singing but she liked painting more I should come and see some of the things she painted at school there were beautiful things she always used blue not purple of course but that was what made beauty, everything beautiful, just like me.
And they’d been learning about science. And animals. And she liked animals, and animals liked her, and when she was grown-up, she’d keep two cats and a dog, but not a zebra, because zebras were horrid things even though they were stripy.
And the carer said, Grace was doing very well, very well indeed, and the school were very proud of how well she was doing and she knew that she’d grow up and be just fine, and that she’d been reading better recently, and her favourite books were the ones where good defeated evil, and her favourite film was Star Wars.
Why Star Wars? I asked, my hand still in Gracie’s.
Because in Star Wars, my sister explained, everything works properly. People are good and people are bad and good people do good things and bad people do bad, and there’s a good Force and a bad Force and that’s how it should be.
She thought about it a moment longer, then added, and sometimes the bad become good, and that’s good too, because good is better than bad, obviously.
I found I was crying, just crying, just a girl crying, and the carer asked softly, where’s your sister now?
Not so far away, I replied. Not so far.
Chapter 54
Change of place, change of name, change of appearance. Plane to Incheon; air-conditioned coach to Seoul.
A hairdresser in Euljiro said, as she cut the ropes of my hair down to a fuzz above my skull, “I’ve never cut African hair before. It’s just amazing!” and her apprentices gathered round to stare and fumble with the falling knots.
A department store at Myeongdong. I stole a T-shirt, jogging bottoms, thick padded jumper with a grey hood. I stole a smart white shirt, suit trousers, a pair of trainers, a pair of black leather shoes. On the street outside, I bought a slice of pineapple served on a stick from an icy slab, and green-tea ice cream from the doughnut shop beneath the noodle bar. From a stall pushed through the streets on two tiny, creaking wheels, I bought three mobile phones. From an international bookshop above the subway station, I bought a travel guide and a phrasebook.
My hotel was “traditional”; bed mats in bright neon yellow and green rolled out across the floor, Wi-Fi and seventy channels on the TV. By night, red neon crosses blazed from the Protestant churches that lined the railway tracks out of the city. In Itaewon I found hamburgers and American service personnel. I joined them for a meal of ribs and beer, and there was a private who looked at me with wide, terrified, lustful eyes, and he said he was afraid the continued presence of US troops on Korean soil would never allow for peace between the divided nations of the peninsula, and that socio-economic forces were now a greater source of disunity than history herself, and that was strange, because history was a powerful mother, in his opinion, ma’am.
In the morning, my face was on Interpol’s most wanted, and more quietly being circulated through the darknet. From a dealer in Yeoksam, I bought three USB drives the size of a fingernail, copied the base code of Perfection onto them, and sent them to PO boxes around the world.
whatwherewhy: I’m heading south, towards Namwon. Find me there.
Byron14: Regretfully, I will comply.
A train ride from Seoul, heading south, towards the sea.
A child cheered as the screen showing our speed surpassed 300km/h. A woman in a grey uniform got an electric shock off the door as her flat-heeled shoes rubbed static off the carpet. On the cuttings by the railway track were squeezed vegetable gardens and tiny, two-person paddies, plastic bags tangling on the fences; cars went backwards along the motorway.
A man in a sharp blue suit sat down next to me, stared at me for a long while, though I was avoiding his gaze, and at last said, “Jesus rubs you.”
I met his eye, waiting to hear what Jesus might do next. He gave me a leaflet. On the front was a picture of the Saviour in a brown robe and white tunic, holding a startled-looking goose. Behind him two lambs grazed peacefully, and a rabbit nestled against his feet. The title of the piece was “How To Escape Hell And Live Free From Mental Illness”.
“Jesus rubs you,” repeated the man firmly, pushing the paper into my hand. “Jesus rubs everyone.”
So saying, he rose from his seat, and went to spread the word of Jesus’ rubbing in his more fluent native tongue.
Mokpo: an industrial city, an ugly port, wide belching roads heavy with lorries, buildings of grey, roofs of iron, a noticeable decline in the number of women on the streets.
The receptionist stared at me as I signed into the hotel, then blurted, “American?”
“Yes.”
“Come here for husband?”
“No.”
“Come here for lover?”
“No.”
Her face crinkled up in bewilderment. “Why you come here?” she asked at last. “I think here no good for you.”
At night, in a fast-food dim sum bar off a pedestrianised shopping street, I met a passport dealer whose handle was cantopopisdead. The passport she sold me was French, and I’d requested German.
“This good!” she exclaimed, shovelling pork dumplings between her lips, chewing with mouth open, eyes wide, cheeks bulging with meat, like a woman who isn’t sure she will ever eat again. “French good, good work, good passport, you see!”
I considered arguing the point, and decided against it. The passport would be good for one trip and then I’d destroy it, get to the Schengen zone or into the US and pick up something better, from a more reliable source.
Outside a restaurant specialising in fried rooster feet, a waiter struck up a conversation in halting English.
“I don’t get to practise very much,” he explained, one word at a time. “It is so good that you are come here.”
I stayed and talked with him for half an hour, until the mistress of the restaurant came out and shouted at him for neglecting his work, and he ran indoors, no saving face before
this matron’s wrath.
A woman with Perfection, snubbing the food her partner offered her at the café where I ordered breakfast.
A man with Perfection, updating the app on his phone, a sports bag slung over his back, arms bulked up with protein shakes, chest heaving, sweat on the back of his neck.
A teenager with Perfection, looking at the prices for the perfect haircut.
Open your eyes: it is everywhere.
At night, I sat at a laptop in the hotel, while in the background a twenty-four-hour TV channel showed a top-down view of a go board, over which hands sometimes moved, laying a counter, removing a piece, while off-shot voices “Aaahhed” and “Oooohhed” and sometimes were moved to applaud the elegance of the play.
Byron14: I’m in Namwon.
whatwherewhy: I’m in Mokpo.
Byron14: I do not appreciate being led a dance.
whatwherewhy: Come to Mokpo; get a mobile phone.
I lie awake, and do not sleep.
I count down from a thousand.
In my dreams Luca Evard is dead, and I killed him.
Chapter 55
The ferry port at Mokpo. Grim, single-storey buildings surrounded by empty car parks. Distant yellow cranes loading and unloading the freight ships. Tourists heavy with bags going to Dadohaehaesang national park, to its mountains and its beaches, its spa resorts bathed in the light of the setting sun.
I call the number that Byron14 has given me and tell her to come to the ferry port.
Her voice, when she answers, is refined, English, soft, and reminds me of Gauguin. I am brisk – too brisk – and something northern comes out in my voice. I sound frightened, didn’t realise that was what I am.
Byron14 is easy to spot, as she waits in the terminal. She and I both stand out, but I wait on the other side of the car park with a pair of binoculars, watch the windows, call her mobile phone and say, “Now let’s have the real Byron14, please.”
The woman who answers is tall, blonde, her hair wrapped up high in a bun, smart suit, two-inch heels. She explains, “I am Byron.”
“No you’re not,” I reply. “Byron was always going to send someone in her place, it was inevitable. I’d like to speak to the real Byron, please.”
“I am Byron…” the woman tries again, then stops, listening to a sound I cannot hear, then smiles at nothing much, shakes her head, hangs up, walks away.
A moment later, my phone rings, and a different voice, inflected with a hint of something older, warmer, real, says, “Would you be the young lady watching the ferry port from the car park?”
I lower the binoculars, nod at nothing much, looking around but not seeing her. “Would you be Byron14?”
“That I would.”
“I’m boarding the 14.03; would you care to join me?”
“I don’t care much for these antics, whatwherewhy. We had an understanding, and this sniffs of abuse.”
“The 14.03,” I repeat. “I’ll text it to you, just in case you forget.”
I hang up. Rudeness doesn’t bother me.
The boat is a catamaran. The skies are grey, the seas are rough enough that sometimes a wave breaks against the bottom of the hull, knocking us up. Every time it happens, the women scream and the men, perhaps in an effort to appear unrattled, convert their screams to great “whaaay” noises, and laugh nervously at each other as the ship settles again. The youngest women make a show of dabbing ineffectually at their sweaty brows. Femininity is fashionable; femininity is frail and prone to giggles. I watch it all, and conclude that femininity can jump into the ocean and drown.
A man approaches me three times – having forgotten that he has approached me before – and asks me my name, where I’m from, where I’m going. The first time I tell him I’m French, I’m a marine biologist, come to study the fauna in Dadohaehaesang, and he says, “Ah” and “Ooh,” and sits down next to me and is very boring. I go to the back of the boat, let him forget that I existed, and return to my seat when he is gone. The second time he approaches I tell him I’m meeting my husband on the island, but that doesn’t seem to deter him, so on his third pass, I speak French, and inform him I don’t understand a word he’s saying and finally he leaves me alone, and the journey isn’t long enough for him to make a fourth pass.
Byron sits at the very back, spine pressed into her seat, a good place to be, observing all, unobserved. She stands out as much as me, but she is old, and my skin is dark, and she has mastered the art of being worthy of little attention.
I stare at her unashamedly as I walk again to the back of the ferry, and she meets my eye, and recognises me for what I am, but before the moment can linger, I walk on, and she forgets, and I repeat this pattern five or six times, and each time she looks at me for the very first time, and each time I stare rudely, and walk away, until I am confident that her face is embedded in my mind.
She is old; far older than I expected, but strength rolls from her. Her face is all small, straight lines. Little ears flat back against a square skull; a little chin that barely disrupts the box of her jaw. Thin grey lips, pressed to a straight line. Little blue eyes beneath flat, grey brows. Straight silver hair cut to a pudding-bowl across her forehead. Little straight nose to the curve of her top lip. Philtrum, the indent between lips and the base of the nose – in Jewish mythology the angel of conception, Lailah, touched her finger to that curve, and at her touch, the infant forgets all it knows. The curve of the lips, cupid’s bow, vermillion border, labium superius oris, labium inferior oris, does Byron14 smile?
I look at her, and think that sometimes she does, and when she does it must be a beautiful thing to behold. Then I picture her frowning, and that too is easy, and the image is terrifying. Walls fall beneath her glower, minds turn to mush at her gaze; in modern re-imaginings of ancient myths, were there not shinobi who could kill men with their famously un-lyrical piercing-eye technique? Did I read that somewhere, or was it on the TV?
She looks, sees me, recognises me, forgets; even Byron14, even she.
Islands passing by. Hongdo, Heuksando, Baekdo. The fourth island the catamaran stopped at was named for the volcanic mountain at its heart, black rock blurred by the weight of birds nestling in its crags, and was called Yan-ri. Here, at auspicious times, young couples came to be married, the mountain above and the sea below, flowers in bridal hair, proud fathers posing next to silk-clad sons, champagne glasses and ceremonial drums. This time was not auspicious; only four of us got off the ferry, and Byron, seeing me and starting with surprise – surprise to see me, surprise that she had not seen me before – was one. Of the other two, one was a waitress, who rushed away immediately towards a timber and steel hotel upon the hill, her night-bag over her back. The other was a fisherman, his wife waiting to meet him at the end of the slippery, green-washed pier, her arms folded and a woollen hat pulled down across her ears, who exclaimed as he arrived that he wouldn’t believe what had happened, and then lost interest in her words as she held him tight.
There were three cars on the island, a man chewing gum informed me in hesitant English. He knew this, for he was the owner of one of them, and the only taxi on the island to boot, and he knew all the places that people could go, and some of the places that people didn’t, and he knew both hotels and which was the nicer, and the way to the restaurant by the shore.
I thanked him for his kindness but declined the lift, and looking back, saw Byron, waxy green coat, thick brown trousers, slip her arm into the strap of a grey, stained rucksack and meet my gaze. I nodded back at her, and started the twisting climb up the hill.
Byron followed.
Two hotels: one was little more than a room behind a woman’s kitchen, a bedspread rolled across the floor, no curtains but a promise of soup in the morning. I was tempted, but the presence of Byron would have made such accommodation complicated.
Higher up the hill. Cloud on the top of the mountain, hugging the spines of the evergreens. A predatory bird circling overhead, eyeing up smaller birds ne
stling in the slate roofs below. The rumble of an engine, a great ship out to sea, sound carried on the wind. A woman in a bright skirt that hugged her knees almost too tight to let her walk nodded at me as I walked by. An old man in a grey waterproof jacket, seeing Byron, exclaimed in a mixture of Korean and Japanese that it was outrageous, shocking, marvellous, incredible that a woman of her age should be travelling alone, and called down to me to help this revered older lady, but Byron shook her head and replied – in gently accented Japanese – that she was well, thank you, and would continue climbing.
I saw no shops as I climbed, no sign of industry, apart from a blue tarpaulin on which fish had been laid out to dry.
The hotel at the top of the hill was mostly dark, save for a few lamps burning on the porch. A wooden balcony to one side was built out over a steep drop to afford the best views of the sea. A sign in five languages informed the visitor that the hotel accepted credit cards, but not cheques. Wi-Fi was available for an extra charge in the lobby. The front door was locked, but I rang the bell and a woman with a pinched face, eyes wide, lids rolled too far back to reveal the whites of her eyes, pinching at forehead and cheeks, answered within a minute.
Byron stood behind me, silent, waiting, and I wondered if she felt the same tug of sympathy I did for the woman who opened the gate. Plastic surgery gone wrong, features twisted into something strange, a smile on lips that perhaps hurt to smile. Number of cosmetic surgery procedures performed in South Korea in 2009: 365,000. Number of procedures performed in Brazil 2013: 2,141,257. In the USA: 3,996,631. Most common surgical procedures globally: breast augmentation and liposuction. Most common surgical procedure in Korea: double eyelid surgery. An operation to make eyelids look less “Asian”.