by Cho Se-hui
The dwarf and his family said not a word. Children continued to cry in the houses. The odd smell was still in the air.
That night Yun-ho didn’t study. Chi-sŏp didn’t read his book. For the first time he talked about life on the moon. The moon was a pure world, he said, and Earth an impure world. And then Yun-ho told Chi-sŏp what he had learned from a book—that even if humans made the moon habitable, those who settled there would find themselves living in a barren wasteland. The surroundings were monotonous, the daily life wearisome. If you didn’t wear a cumbersome spacesuit, you couldn’t go outside the base. The slightest tear in that outfit, and you lost your life. The same if you misread your watch. If the watch was wrong you didn’t realize you were out of oxygen, and you died. And night lasted for three hundred and fifty-four hours, or some fourteen Earth days. “But …” Chi-sŏp had said, shaking his head. At that time, there were so many things Yun-ho didn’t know. And so he concerned himself only with scientific facts. Smiling, Chi-sŏp proceeded to talk about astronomical observations in outer space.
Those who work in the observatory to be established on the moon will be happy, he said. To him the moon was a golden world, a world unto itself. The events that took place on Earth were too horrible, he said. According to his book, time on Earth was utterly wasted, oaths and promises were broken, prayers went unanswered. Tears flowed in vain, the spirit was suppressed, hopes went unrealized. The most terrible thing was the suffering people underwent because of their thoughts. Chi-sŏp wanted to talk more about the dodo, but he fell silent. That night Yun-ho dreamed that an alien came up beneath his window and knocked on the pane. And he dreamed that the dwarf climbed the brick factory smokestack and sent a paper airplane flying. In class the next day nothing registered in his mind.
Yun-ho paused atop the ladder. He hadn’t seen Chi-sŏp leaving. He had seen the chauffeur cleaning the bloodstains from the back seat. He’d seen the housekeeper removing the bloodstains from the tile walkway outside the front door.
“Whore!” he said to himself atop the ladder.
“Good,” his sister had said when she saw the water from the faucet washing the blood down the tile walkway. “Good for you. Father came home and got rid of him.”
“How come?”
“How come?” his sister had said. “Well, he made a mess of your studies.”
“Who did? Where do you get off talking like that?”
“Shut up. You don’t know a thing, but you think you’re so big. You probably don’t even know he was in prison.”
“What does that have to do with my studies?”
“Look at this blood.”
“That’s enough, you whore!”
“Oh!”
“Don’t you talk about him anymore. All you think about is screwing some guy—what do you know, chatterbox?”
That year Yun-ho failed the college entrance exam dismally. The social science departments at A University, which Father had so rigidly insisted on, had been unrealistic from the start. After dismissing Chi-sŏp, Father had invited expert tutors to the house to instruct Yun-ho. Each in turn drove up in his car and put in his time with Yun-ho before driving on to the house of the next student. Father thought if he just paid expert tutors in English, mathematics, and Korean two hundred thousand wŏn every month, or six hundred thousand altogether, Yun-ho’s grades would improve noticeably. This was a departure from the usual thought patterns of the lawyer he was. He kept a pistol hidden in one of his books. His personal secretary had shoved the bleeding Chi-sŏp into the car. No one knew where the driver had let him out. And no one knew what Chi-sŏp was doing at the dwarf’s house before the eviction squad had begun demolishing it, starting with the north wall. He had come back bleeding. Even while Yun-ho was under the guidance of the expert tutors he knew he would fail. He was the one who was studying, after all. His hope was the history department at B University. His father had given him an encouraging slap on the back, saying a man shouldn’t despair. Failure was the fertilizer for future success, he added.
As Yun-ho listened to the steam hissing from the third-floor loft, he looked out at the snow-covered field. The dwarf’s neighborhood had vanished. Yun-ho moved the ladder and began rummaging through the next bookshelf. “Whore!” he said to himself again. He could imagine the mischief his sister was up to just then. The lawyer’s handgun was reluctant to present itself. It occurred to Yun-ho that he was no longer a child. He was living the life of an entrance-exam repeater. His father had placed him in a completely new circle: membership by invitation only. Days the group attended a cram school on Sejong Avenue; nights they took special instruction in a spacious tenth-floor penthouse apartment along the banks of the Han River. There was nothing In-gyu didn’t know. He approached Yun-ho like a little devil.
“Gonna join?” In-gyu asked.
“Join what?”
“A club where we study animal life. We’ve got two hundred color slides.”
“Animal life? I don’t get it.”
“Join the club and you’ll see, okay?”
“I’ll think about it. You ever heard of a dodo bird?”
“Girls’ll be there too.”
“Never heard of a dodo?”
“Oh, come on. There’s no birds where we meet, nothing like that.”
In-gyu was the direct opposite of a person like Chi-sŏp. During the Sunday night meetings of the club, he took every opportunity to show off, blabbering in a loud voice. They had no classes on Sunday. No instructors came. To keep informed of their son’s progress in his classes, In-gyu’s parents flew from Pusan to Seoul twice a month. The housekeeper wasn’t aware of the mischief the kids were up to. The girls drank Coke in the living room. The boys went into the room at the far end of the hall. Yun-ho saw one boy open a small box and stick his nose inside. He sniffed for a time, then sprawled out on his back.
In-gyu set up the slide projector. He turned it on. The boys held their breath. Inside the box was glue. Another boy snatched the container, held it close, and poked his face inside. In-gyu hadn’t lied. They were color slides, all right. Made in Denmark. Shocking slides. But Yun-ho couldn’t watch until the end. He went out to the living room and picked up his bag, and one of the girls got up as well. In the elevator Yun-ho noticed Ŭn-hŭi for the first time. She was the purest and most innocent member of the club.
“I’ve got it,” Yun-ho said.
“Got what?”
“I know why you flunked.”
“Tell me.”
“An alien came. Stole your answer sheet.”
“Oh! Is that so,” Ŭn-hŭi said unsmiling. “But why did it steal my sheet?”
Yun-ho remained silent as the elevator door opened. And then as Ŭn-hŭi walked toward her car he said, “The alien …”
Ŭn-hŭi came to a stop.
“… already knew I’d flunked.”
Ŭn-hŭi thought for a moment and for the first time flashed a smile. She walked toward her car. Yun-ho wished he could talk with Chi-sŏp about Ŭn-hŭi. Ŭn-hŭi was extremely pretty. Yun-ho realized he went to the cram school, and to the tenth-floor apartment, simply to see Ŭn-hŭi. Otherwise he would have stopped going by now. The instructors at the cram school and the experts who came at night made an enormous amount of money. Every Saturday night, college instructors appeared. They examined this select circle of entrance-exam repeaters on their lessons. If any of them were losing ground they pointed this out and steered them in a new direction. They figured out which areas the professors were particularly interested in, the form their questions took, when this or that question had appeared previously on the exam, and which kinds of questions were likely to appear on the following year’s exam. Yun-ho spent a year among them. Chi-sŏp wasn’t there. There was only Ŭn-hŭi.
Yun-ho’s mind was unsettled. And so he came down from the ladder. He went downstairs.
“Auntie,” he called to the housekeeper. “Did Pok-sun go somewhere?”
“Her mother came up from the provinces.
She said she’d be back by ten.”
“Well, you can go too, Auntie. Don’t your children miss you?”
“I’m okay. Maybe next time.”
“Why don’t you go now? Sister said she’d be late. And I’m not sure if Father will come home late or stay at a hotel. Something important’s going on, and he has meetings every day. You saw the news on TV, didn’t you?”
“Will you be all right by yourself?”
In-gyu was there, though. In-gyu was a little devil. There was truly nothing he didn’t know. On Sunday afternoons he went to a dimly lit drinking place. It was a place that played ear-splitting music. Yun-ho was a problem for In-gyu. And so In-gyu tried to win him over. Like the other kids, In-gyu swayed to the music where they sat. Beneath the table he touched the knee of the girl sitting across from him. The boys and girls ardently rubbed knees. Yun-ho couldn’t sit long there. The girl across from Yun-ho offered him some wine. In-gyu drew the girl near and whispered something in her ear. Yun-ho rose. The girl followed him out and linked her arm in his. She snuggled up close to him. Yun-ho slept with her that night. If Chi-sŏp were there, Yun-ho would have talked with him. The dwarf’s daughter had played her guitar with the broken string next to the flowerbed where the pansies were blooming, a flowerbed the size of your outstretched hands. In-gyu was pleased with himself. Yun-ho went down a gloomy, unlit alley to a small hotel. When he slept with other girls he used the same hotel. The hallways and stairs were covered with a frayed red carpet. In-gyu thought he had won Yun-ho over.
“I’m scared the alien’s going to come back.” Ŭn-hŭi was aware of the change in Yun-ho. “Think it’ll steal my answer sheet again?”
“Cut it out,” Yun-ho had said. “You know what I’ve been up to, don’t you?”
“Mmm.”
“You’ll do fine.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Count these fingers—that’s how many girls I’ve slept with.”
“I know.”
“You ever hear of a dodo bird? It didn’t use its wings. So they degenerated. And then it couldn’t fly anymore and now it’s extinct. I’m one of those dodo birds. It’s too bad, but you are too. We live with trash who take what’s important and stab it in the back.”
“Answer my question, will you? Do you think the alien’s going to steal my answer sheet?”
“I said you’ll do fine.”
“And what about you?”
“I’m looking for someone. For my hyŏng Chi-sŏp and his friend the dwarf. You don’t know my wish, do you?”
“That’s right. I don’t. I don’t know anything.”
Yun-ho went back up the ladder and took out books. He was by himself. His mind was settled. He thought about Ŭn-hŭi and he felt heavy inside. When he had told her about what he’d been doing with the girls she’d looked at him with tearful eyes. What he couldn’t stand was that In-gyu thought about Ŭn-hŭi at the same time that he was touching other girls. He probably thought about her even when he was watching those color slides. Still, he couldn’t do anything with Ŭn-hŭi. He took into account the status of Ŭn-hŭi’s father, and the effect on him and his own father if he were to do something stupid with her. If In-gyu hadn’t been so completely calculating, Yun-ho might have forgiven him. Yun-ho’s father knew nothing. From the time he had dismissed Chi-sŏp, Yun-ho had taken the wrong path. With the college prep exam just a few days away Yun-ho had been given one final test by the experts. No one took this preliminary entrance exam lightly. Because this exam, which qualified a person to enter college, had a bearing on which university a student was qualified to attend. In applications to A University, as elsewhere, the preliminary entrance exam counted as much as thirty percent. It all started the day the students made the standard visit to the exam sites. In-gyu and Yun-ho had been scheduled for the same room. The two of them would be sitting diagonally opposite each other.
“Don’t think I’m bad,” said In-gyu. This was the first time Yun-ho had seen him talk with a straight face. “I know you’ve got something going with Ŭn-hŭi.”
“So?”
“And you know I like Ŭn-hŭi, too, don’t you?”
“So?”
“So you haven’t scored yet. And the fact that I like her is no good as far as the two of you are concerned, right?”
“You want an answer to that?”
“I’ll get to the point. I back off from Ŭn-hŭi—make a clean break. In return, you help me.”
“How?”
“You know the layout. Tomorrow you and I sit kitty-corner. The exam questions are all arranged the same way. Don’t cover up your test sheet with your arm. And before you mark your answer sheet, circle the right answer—ka, na, ta, or ra—on the test sheet. Got it? Just make sure you don’t cover up your test sheet with your arm. And that’s all the cooperation I’ll expect.”
Yun-ho had nothing to say. The dwarf’s son was fixing the radio. He’d bought it at the Last Chance Market.
The telephone rang. Yun-ho came down from the ladder. He hesitated, then lifted the receiver. It would probably be his father’s secretary telling him Father was busy and would spend the night at the hotel. His hunch was off the mark. It was Ŭn-hŭi. Something hot rose from his chest up his throat.
“Hello,” said Ŭn-hŭi. “Hello.”
Yun-ho replaced the receiver. He slumped down into a chair. More than half of the books remained to be looked through, books his father used to impress people. He’d better find that gun in a hurry, Yun-ho thought. Again the phone rang. Yun-ho ignored it. He shoved the ladder aside. Furiously he took out all the books he could reach. The gun appeared in one of them. That volume had been placed ever so naturally among several other books in the space behind a set of world history books. His father had hollowed out a space with a razor and placed the gun there. It was very small. Yun-ho made sure the chamber was loaded. I’m going to put an end to this right now.
He returned the scattered books to their places and turned out the light. As he left for the living room the doorbell rang. Yun-ho stiffened, listening. The sound knew no end. He had to answer it. Yun-ho wanted to cry. Ŭn-hŭi was so pretty. The previous year too it had snowed the day of the entrance exam. The snow had accumulated on her hair and coat. Yun-ho touched the pistol in his pocket.
“I’m giving you five minutes—sit down—then leave,” said Yun-ho.
“Is this your room?” Ŭn-hŭi asked. So he doesn’t have a mother, she realized with her woman’s intuition. She came up to Yun-ho’s side as he looked out through the windows. “Don’t worry—I’m by myself,” she said.
“Your five minutes are up.”
“How’d you do on the test?”
“Stop it, Ŭn-hŭi. Will you please leave?”
“The others went to In-gyu’s apartment. I knew you wouldn’t. And I’m not leaving until you tell me why you’re avoiding me.”
“Leave.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“Do what you want.”
“It’s no joke,” Yun-ho said, producing the pistol. He leveled it at Ŭn-hŭi’s chest.
“So,” Ŭn-hŭi said, her voice faint.
“You have no idea,” said Yun-ho. “I did what In-gyu wanted.”
“What did In-gyu want?”
“You.”
“Don’t talk about that.”
“He said he’d give you up if I helped him with the answers. So today I did it.”
Ŭn-hŭi could say nothing for a moment. And then: “Put that gun away…. Will you please put that damned gun away?”
Tears gathered in Ŭn-hŭi’s eyes. Yun-ho let his arm drop.
“Five minutes are up. Just leave. And don’t worry about the alien stealing your answer sheet. You’ll do fine. I gave up. In-gyu’s not going to college either. I wrote down his name and his registration number on my answer sheet.”
“You did! What’s going to happen?”
“Why don’t you go to KI
ST and ask the computer?”
“So both of you are going to fail?”
Yun-ho slumped down like an ash heap collapsing. He held out the pistol to Ŭn-hŭi. She took it.
“Shoot me,” said Yun-ho. “If you hadn’t come looking for me, it’d be all over. So now it’s up to you. But don’t worry, I won’t really be dead. I’m going to the moon, and I’ll have a lot to do there. Can’t get anything done here. It’s like Chi-sŏp hyŏng’s book says. Time is utterly wasted, oaths and promises are broken, prayers go unanswered. I have to go there so I can find the things that have disappeared here. All right, I don’t want to wait anymore—shoot.”
Tears streamed from Yun-ho’s eyes. He watched Ŭn-hŭi take aim with the pistol.
“Well, there’s one thing I want you to do for me,” said Ŭn-hŭi. “If you see the alien, tell it not to steal my answer sheet.”
Tears pooled in Ŭn-hŭi’s eyes as well. Yun-ho was completely spent.
“Shoot—now,” he said again.
Holding the pistol, Ŭn-hŭi unbuttoned her jacket. Then unzipped her dress. She placed the pistol on Yun-ho’s desk and dropped her arms, and she was naked. Like a mother she approached Yun-ho and took his teary face in her arms and bosom. Yun-ho didn’t know what Chi-sŏp had done that day he had gone to the dwarf’s house. The dwarf and his family had had dinner on their plank veranda. They had eaten in silence. Yun-ho wondered what he’d been doing wrong the last two years. He couldn’t come up with an answer.