by Ha Seong-nan
March 23. Cheiljedang Beat laundry detergent (750 g), Kool cigarettes, Coca-Cola, Nongshim Big Bowl Noodle (shrimp flavor), Mommy’s Helping Hand rubber glove (pink, left hand).
The brand and even the color are the same. When everything fits like this, there’s no question about it. The garbage is from the same house.
She enjoys drinking OB Lager and Coke, smokes Kool cigarettes, and likes to eat shrimp-flavored instant noodles. She is also left-handed and has long hair. But it might not even be a woman after all. It could be a man with long hair. Making inferences is easy. Since things like diapers, chocolate, and candy wrappers haven’t turned up, it’s safe to assume there’s no child in the household.
From last winter to now the man has gone through over a hundred garbage bags. He gradually learned the different tastes and lifestyles of the ninety households in the building, though what he learned doesn’t amount to much. Two kinds of people live in these cramped 525-square-foot suites: young married couples and single people like himself, or elderly couples who have married off their children and sold their big house. It’s always the younger people who get suckered into buying the newest products advertised on TV. They’re more open to trying different things—things in flashy packaging and beverages made with exotic tropical fruits. They also tend to go for items that are pricey, considering their quantity or size. He sometimes compiles statistics from the data he has gathered: The women in this building use a higher grade of dishwashing soap with aloe that is gentle on the hands, and perhaps because many of them work, they use two-in-one shampoo and conditioners. They also tend to use sanitary pads with wings.
The man scoops everything in the tub back into the bag. The volume is considerably smaller, now that the liquid has drained. After he reties the bag, he carries it back down to the ground floor and puts it in the bin. He takes his cigarettes out of his pocket and sticks one in his mouth. If only he could have looked through her garbage, he could have discovered what she was really like. Then, he could have learned of her weakness for the color cobalt and attraction to articulate men who dressed neatly.
She quit her job when she got married. In order to see her one last time, he went to the newlyweds’ housewarming party, though he didn’t feel like it. Sporting an apron and her hair pulled back into a ponytail, she squeezed in beside him as if it were the most natural thing to do.
As drinks started to flow, someone asked her, “Miss Kim, no, I guess we have to call you Mrs. Park now, what made you fall for Mr. Park?”
Giggling, she replied it was because of the cobalt-colored dress shirt he’d been wearing.
Park, two years his junior, had graduated from the same university. Park didn’t change a bit, even after marrying. He still holds the same position in the accounts department. The man, however, moved up fast and now sits right behind Park at a coveted location with a view of the whole office. Every time he looks up and sees Park’s starched shirt and neat, wrinkle-free suit, he remembers her long, white fingers hitting the computer keyboard. He’d hear Park entertain their co-workers with stories by the vending machine.
“Damn it, she’s always buying cobalt-colored shirts. Now I shudder if I even hear the word cobalt.”
He even caught Park coming out of a restaurant with a new female staff member. The woman has no idea what kind of man she has married.
As he is going up to his apartment, he bumps into the paper boy who is rushing down the stairs after having finished the morning deliveries. The boy plugs his nose in disgust, curiously eyeing the man’s gloved hands. The boy is also wearing a red rubber glove on his free hand. A rash can develop on the inside of the wrist from sticking your hand in and out of the narrow metal mail slot. To ward against this, milkmen and newspaper boys have started to wear rubber gloves on one hand. The boy strides down the dim corridor. Even though the man uses bleach to rinse the tub and tiles, his apartment still reeks. The sensor lights the boy had triggered switch off one by one as the timer runs down. It’s already past four in the morning.
When the doorbell rings he’s in the middle of trying to piece together a torn-up bill he had laid out on the floor. He’d found the scraps in the garbage the night before. The bill, now held together by tape, is still missing some pieces. There are times when he finds bills that haven’t been crumpled up. He’s really lucky if they’re dry, but even if they’re covered with food scraps, he doesn’t mind. If he irons it after a quick rinse under the tap, he can make out the print without too much trouble. However, whenever they’re ripped to shreds like this, he has to put everything together like a child’s jigsaw puzzle. The name starts to emerge ever so slowly. Kim _____hoon. The doorbell rings as he’s looking for the missing piece.
Whoever rang the bell seems to be leaning against the front door. He tries to push open the door, but the door doesn’t budge; it’s probably a man, judging by the weight. Only after several attempts to shove open the door does the person seem to notice. Still, it takes a while for him to step away. It’s a complete stranger, so drunk he can barely hold himself up. He has a large bouquet of roses is in one hand, and his dress shirt, pulled out of his pants, hangs over his thick legs like a tablecloth.
“Don’t worry.”
The massive body falls on him. He braces himself, struggling against the dead weight, like a monkey caught in the grips of a giant bear. He can tell the fellow easily weighs over a hundred kilograms. The stranger looks down at him and mumbles again.
“Don’t worry.”
His foul breath hits the man in the face. The stranger keeps mumbling unintelligibly, crushing him still. When he plays the words over in his mind, it seems the fellow is saying “I’m sorry.”
The stranger manages to open his eyes, which begin to roll in different directions, making him look cross-eyed. Suddenly they focus, registering that the man is in his undershirt. His eyes flash with rage.
“What? Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?” he shouts, trying to force his way into the apartment.
The man pushes him back. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing? Do you know what time it is? You have the wrong apartment!” But he doesn’t stand a chance against this giant.
“I can find this place with my eyes closed. Where is she? I know you’re in there! Stop hiding and come out!”
The fellow stops shouting and backs up abruptly. He begins to retch uncontrollably. Vomit hits the floor and splatters all over the man’s dress shoes, which are sitting by the front door.
“Isn’t this 507? Samgwang Apartment, Unit 507?”
The fellow becomes more coherent as he sobers up. The light in the stairwell hasn’t been working for a long time. Whoever lived in 507 before must have hit it with his furniture as he was moving out. The doorbells for 507 and 508 are right beside each other. In the dark the fellow had pressed the wrong bell.
“Goddamn, I’m really sorry.”
Looking from the man to the mess he created, the fellow stumbles toward the stairs and flops down on the ground.
While the man cleans up the vomit, the fellow presses the doorbell of 507. The apartment is empty. For the last couple of days, the man hasn’t heard a peep from the unit. If someone was there, it would have been impossible to ignore all the commotion. The fellow continues to push the bell. Electronic cuckoo sounds chirp inside. When the door doesn’t open, he shouts and pounds on the door with his huge fist that’s like a boxing glove.
“I said I was sorry! Please open the door!”
Kim___hoon. Even though he searches every corner of the floor, he can’t find the missing piece. It probably got thrown out in another bag. He found these pieces in the bag with the kidney bean shells. He riffles through the pages of his notepad.
Bean shells, seesaw, monkey bars, boy, puddles.
Inside the garbage bag, there are crinkly plastic candy wrappers and a fistful of chicken bones. He can tell the woman doesn’t mind preparing foods that require a lot of time and effort. He finds an old toothbrush with the bris
tles harshly flattened.
The doorbell rings again. It’s the fellow again. He shoves the bouquet of red roses he’d been holding into the man’s chest.
“Could you give her these? It’s her birthday today.”
He staggers down the stairs, bumping into the wall. The man counts the roses. There are thirty in all.
For a few days now a pair of yellow socks has been hanging on the clothesline on the balcony of 507. The heels and toes have dark smudges the detergent couldn’t remove. Three days have passed, but he still hasn’t run into her. There’s no sign of life next door. On his way home he circles the building on purpose, using the back path, and looks up at 507. The glass balcony door is shattered, all except for a few pieces still dangling in the frame. Only their units, 507 and 508, have the lights off. People at his office have been staying late. Once tax season passes they should be able to get off at the regular time.
The roses that he hung by the window have started to wither, the petals curling and blackening at the edges. A single wall is all that separates 507 from 508. He moves everything to the opposite wall. Half the morning goes by as he takes his wardrobe apart, moves it over to the other side, and then reassembles it. He drags his bed over to where his wardrobe used to be. He lies down on his side facing the wall. He runs his palm over the wall, which is twenty centimeters thick at most. When he puts his ear next to it, his senses sharpen at the smallest sound. If he leaves his room door open, he can hear everything, even footsteps coming up the stairs. But to his disappointment, the steps always stop before continuing up. Just like dandelion spores suddenly blown in by the wind, curiosity had started to sprout within him. He thinks he hears the sound of a key being inserted into a keyhole and the bolt sliding back into the doorframe. That instant, the mail slot cover on his front door snaps open and a red rubber glove shoves in the morning paper.
From the bus stop he takes the long way and uses the back path again. He looks up at the balcony of 507. He sees the bare clothesline minus the yellow socks and realizes with a jolt that the woman is finally back. But when he rushes up, not a single sound comes from her unit. He has temporarily stopped his garbage work. He had always worked with the bathroom door shut, worried about the stench that might escape. But the sealed-up bathroom became an echo chamber, amplifying every drop of water that fell from the tap, so that it was impossible to hear any outside noise.
After an early dinner, he waits for the woman to come home. He stretches out on his side on the bed, facing the wall. He lies close to the wall, his groin pressed against it. Afraid that the woman would slip past him again, he even resists going to the bathroom. However, the pressure in his bladder forces him to get up. When he comes out of the bathroom, he discovers a maggot squirming on the floor. Summer is coming, but it’s still too early for maggots. He had mopped every corner of his apartment with bleach several times. Writhing gently, the maggot moves toward something. He picks it up with a tissue and flushes it down the toilet.
He finds another one in a crack in the bedroom doorway. The man crawls from the room to the kitchen, looking everywhere. He crawls toward the window where he hung the bouquet and discovers a continuous stream of maggots crawling along the edge of the wall. Some drop to the floor, curling up instantly into balls. A horde of maggots is writhing inside the cellophane. He opens the balcony door and hurls the bouquet into the back lot overgrown with weeds.
In the morning while he’s shaving, he senses that someone is outside the front door. He runs into his bedroom, then dashes to the front door, struggling to put on his pants. In his hurry, he ends up taking longer. He has to meet her. He has to tell her about the drunk fellow, about the roses. He thrusts open the front door, but the corridor is already empty. The clicking of heels is fading. Urgently he leans over the railing and looks down the stairwell at the railings that zigzag all the way to the bottom floor. He sees a flash of yellow, like a butterfly that has taken flight. Is it the yellow he glimpsed from the yellow socks that had been hanging on her clothesline? He looks down at his own feet and realizes he forgot to put on his shoes. He’d stayed up waiting until three in the morning. He hadn’t heard any footsteps come up to the fifth floor. When did she come home? Or maybe she’d never left the house in the first place. Maybe she’d been cooped up inside all this time.
Only a trace of her perfume lingers in the empty stairwell. It’s a light, fresh scent, unlike the perfume called Poison once so popular with the female staff at the office. He inhales deeply, making his lungs expand like balloons. What kind of woman is she? He realizes he wants to get to know her.
When he lifts up the mail slot cover, he discovers another flap behind it. He shoves it open as well and sees the inside of 507 through the rectangular opening. His cheek, flattened on the cement floor, turns icy. There is a pair of indoor slippers placed neatly by the door. They are mustard-colored with crudely embroidered flowers on the instep. He slips his hand into the slot and gropes for them, but it’s difficult, because he can’t see what he’s doing. He needs to leave for work in about ten minutes. He wriggles his arm further and further in until he’s in up to his armpit, causing the flap to pinch his skin. It’s a slow process; he has to take his arm out, look inside to estimate the distance, and then put it back in again. After some thought, he fashions a metal clothes hanger into a long hook and slips it into the slot. He hooks the slipper and pulls it toward him. Finally the slipper is in his hand.
The one-size-fits-all slipper is worn out. She has small feet, judging by the flattened faux-fur insole where her heel has rubbed. The vinyl on the instep is peeling and its color has faded. Although it looks mustard yellow, it probably was a bright yellow once. He hides the slipper in the back of his closet.
“Shit, late again.”
He purses his lips and then heaves a sigh. To his surprise, he finds himself whistling. He bounds down the stairs and all the way to the bus stop.
Half a month passes. Now that the woman has returned, he has resumed his garbage work once again. The garbage truck empties the bin every other day, so if he skips even one day, he may never find her garbage. On the fifteenth day the other indoor slipper turns up. The nearly empty bag is tied loosely so the knot comes easily undone. For half a month she probably turned her home upside down, trying to find its pair, until she finally gave up and threw out the lone slipper. There are purple fruit stains on the embroidery. He retrieves the other slipper from his closet and places them side by side. The difference in their color is noticeable, and bits of cotton and foam stick out through the worn soles. He pulls out the rest of the contents from the garbage bag. Used tea bags, thick orange peels, Diet Coke cans—all diet foods. Next, he lifts up a plastic package, tightly rolled up. It’s an empty pouch of fabric softener, mimosa scent, the same floral perfume from the corridor. It smells fragrant in the midst of the rotten stink, despite the slippery grains of spoiled rice stuck to the packaging. At the very bottom of the garbage bag is a three-tiered, fresh cream cake, untouched and gone bad. A fluffy layer of mold is already blooming on the top. Grape stains cover the patches where the milky cream has rubbed off, and a red outline marks where a cherry had been. It looks like she picked out only the fruit from the cake. He unfolds every little piece of paper, even an aspirin wrapper. One train ticket to Gurye. In his mind he sees her climb Mount Jiri. Her yellow socks become streaked with dirt. A seven-digit number scrawled on a slip of paper—maybe a phone number? He also finds a past due notice for a pager. Once he has wiped off the cream, her name and pager number materialize. Choi Jiae. 012-343-7890.
He stands in the middle of a large grocery store, holding a yellow shopping basket. In it he has placed mimosa-scented fabric softener and a jumbo container of bleach. Products rarely purchased are covered with dust. In front of the cosmetics counter is an employee, heavily made up like a mannequin. She latches onto passing customers and hands them questionnaires, repeating the same words over and over again.
“We’re promoting our new pro
duct. You’ll receive a free gift just by filling out this short survey.”
Every year, companies launch dozens of new products. Even at his company, those in product development are anxious to come up with a hit product like Nongshim’s Shrimp Crackers. In order to develop products that guarantee consumer satisfaction, thousands of surveys are distributed throughout the entire nation. He has a thorough knowledge of his neighbors’ different tastes and patterns of consumption. Once he read about a sociological discipline called “garbology,” which examines the waste of residents in a certain area to learn about their behavior. Looking through a garbage dump is a far more reliable way of getting answers than collecting information through a vague survey. Garbage never lies. You want to know the real answer to a riddle? Garbage. This is what he thinks as he wanders down the supermarket aisles.
The drunk fellow is sitting on the top step of the fifth floor. He looks up with bloodshot eyes and recognizes the man at once. The man has to wait on the landing until the fellow moves aside, since his huge body is blocking the way. He extends his chunky, bearlike paw and clasps the man’s hand. A large cake box sits on the step.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t give her the flowers. I didn’t even see her.”
“Yeah, she went on a trip.”
“Then I guess you saw her?”
Grimacing, the fellow scrubs his face with his hand. “No, I heard through a friend. Oh, this here …” he says, catching the man glancing at the cake box. He hands it to him. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but you mind giving this to her? She just got back, so she won’t be going anywhere for a while.”
The man has no choice but to take the box with just one hand, since he’s carrying his groceries in the other. When the box slips a little, the fellow’s bloodshot eyes widen.
“Hey, be careful! You might squish the cake.”
At the words squish the cake, the fellow’s broad face squishes up, too.
“Is it a fresh cream cake? With fruit, like cherries or pineapple on top?”