I Hear Your Voice

by Young-Ha Kim

  The coffeehouse girls stopped by the dog-breeding farm, though not as frequently as they did at the mushroom farm. Some days they visited the mushroom farm first, and sometimes the other way around. When the girls went to the dog farm, the kids didn’t follow and peek in. They were terrified of the rumors that if caught, they would be fed to the dogs and disappear without a trace. Only Jae was fearless.

  One day Jae ran into a coffeehouse girl coming down from the mushroom farm. She poured leftover coffee from the thermos and handed it to him.

  She said, “So you’re here again.”

  Jae got ready to flee from her and the red blouse revealing the hollow between her breasts. The young woman must have read his mind because she lightly took his arm. “Do you want a cookie? This isn’t for the customers—it’s mine. Here, have it. It’s delicious.”

  He ate the cookie. In high heels, the woman was much taller than him. This moment, in which he accepted the coffee and then the cookie from her with both hands, would have the significance of a spiritual awakening for him.

  “Do you want to see a movie with me sometime?” she asked.

  Jae only finished swallowing the cookie and fled down the hill.

  10

  Jae drew a map of his world when his entire universe was the small mountain and the orphanage. A tiny village where young children lived sat at the foot of the hill. Above perched a kingdom where an evil monarch ruled over fierce dogs, and at the highest point, nestled in a deep cave, fairies made a mushroom their house. Far from those concentric circles, he drew a castle with blooming flowers—basically, the home he’d left behind—that looked like the utopia the ancients had dreamed of. Ever since he was young, Jae’s view of the world was truly his own. He wasn’t interested in what schools taught. Instead he saw with his own eyes and rarely believed anything that grownups said. For instance, he quickly figured out that the idea of democracy taught at school was a sham. He understood too well the fate of dogs allotted equal amounts of space and fed the same meals but that were still trapped, unable to take a single step out of the pen.

  The fire began some fifty meters up from the dog pen, meaning that it started in the bushy slope leading to the mushroom farm. At first the wind blew from the foot of the mountain so the flames burned the withered bushes and spread uphill. By the time the orphans woke to “Fire!” and stared up at the mountain from the yard, it was still dark and the crimson flames seemed about to swallow up the mushrooms. Suddenly the wind halted and a strange silence fell. But only for a moment, before a violent wind blew downward and changed direction. The dogs, catching the scent of stinging smoke, began whining even more wildly. There was no sign of a fire truck, and the orphanage’s employees and the kids simply watched from afar.

  Jae ran toward the dog farm, leading a few curious kids who waved sticks in the air. Embers danced like fireflies. Jae nearly ran into the farm owner dashing down the mountain as he flailed his arms and ran like a lunatic. One of the kids, overwhelmed with fright, reversed direction and ran down after him. Jae and two remaining kids entered the dog farm, which was in flames, and flung open the dog pen. The dogs, smelling death, forgot their own fierce nature and tore out of the kennel with their tails tucked in. A few lacked the courage to leave the kennel and huddled in the corner, trembling. Embers the size of summer flies had grown into fist-sized balls of flame flaring through the sky.

  “Get out now!” Jae said. “You stupid mutts!”

  The dogs didn’t budge, so he lit an old newspaper and hurled it into the pen. Only then did the dogs cautiously emerge and begin running, their butts smeared with dried shit. Jae ran downhill after them. The dogs climbed onto boulders with good views of the area, gazed back at the farm that the hungry fire had devoured, and whimpered. With large dogs appearing and disappearing on all sides and the blazing flames and stinging smoke, the landscape resembled the pictures of hell that hang in Buddhist temples. Fire trucks, late to the scene, wove up the crooked roads, perilously making their way toward the dog-breeding farm. Jae arrived at the orphanage with his face blackened by smoke, but only after the others had taken shelter farther down the mountain. He waited in the yard for everyone to return.

  Once the fire was under control, the others came back. The older students told Jae that the dog breeder had been in an accident. He’d been running madly down the hill when a milk delivery truck hit him. Next they said that two bodies untouched by the fire were discovered at the mushroom farm. Someone had stabbed the farmer with a sharp knife and strangled the coffeehouse woman beside him. The police officer who arrived at the orphanage said the two had clearly been attacked in their sleep and the murderer had started a fire to destroy the evidence. But, because of the shifting wind, the cover-up hadn’t gone as planned. That was when the orphanage director informed the police about the long-standing grudge between the dog breeder and the mushroom farmer.

  11

  While the police searched the mushroom farmer’s residence, trucks pulled up into the empty lot across from the orphanage. Men carrying snares emerged from them and climbed up the mountain.

  “They’re here to catch the dogs,” said a guy two years older than Jae, as he spit on the floor, his eyes bright with excitement.

  Once the hunt began, the men snared the calf-size dogs that had simultaneously tasted fear and freedom, and dragged them back to lock them up one at a time in wire cages. The men strained their eyes as they combed the smoky mountain for the sight of one more dog. The dogs were either hiding near the intact mushroom farm or had crossed the mountain toward a village near the cement factory. More trucks were waiting for the dogs there.

  Jae found a sharp nail, approached the trucks where the trapped dogs waited alone, and slashed the tires. They made a woosh woosh sound as the trucks slowly sank. The dogs, remembering Jae’s scent, stopped barking and whimpered instead. Red Eyes was among them. With his limp, he’d be the first one sold for meat. As Jae punctured the tires of a fifth truck, a fist struck his head like lightning from behind and stunned him. The three dog hunters dragged him to the orphanage director’s office, but Jae was too weak to fight. They’d even lassoed him around the neck with a snare.

  The three, officially dog breeders by profession, burst in while the director was watching television. His gaze landed on the snare around Jae’s neck.

  He asked the dog breeders, “What do you have there?”

  “This brat, he’s yours, right?” one of the dog breeders asked, looking a little timid.

  As soon as the director nodded, they explained what had happened. Before they were finished, the director interrupted: “Can’t you remove the damn noose?”

  One of the dog breeders snatched the snare off Jae’s neck. The director continued speaking. “It’s a real pity, what happened, but the orphanage cannot be responsible for a student’s misdeeds, and that’s all I will say. If you’re angry, feel free to bring him to the police and take the matter to court.”

  An elderly dog breeder stepped forward with his arms crossed. “Look here, Mr. Director. Do you think we can buy a single tire with the money from selling even one bitch? But this goddamn fucking son of a bitch here ruined twenty tires, tore them all up so we can’t even patch them. I’m talking about this orphaned piece of shit here.”

  The dog breeder smacked Jae across the head. His small body flew and hit the wall. Jae struggled to stand.

  “You know why I slashed the tires?”

  The one who had smacked him said, “Oh, check out this asshole. Okay, so why’d you rip them up? Why don’t you tell us, so I can rip your trap right off your face?” He rolled up his sleeves.

  “Dogs have souls too. They have souls!” Jae’s voice cracked.

  One dog breeder responded, “They have souls. So what?”

  All of them stepped forward in sync. They looked as if they might, if needed, trample over Jae with their work boots. But he didn’t back down.

  He stared at them and said grimly, “I mean, you can’t tr
eat something with a soul that way.”

  “This runt, this little asshole, keeps talking to us like this, showing us no respect.”

  As they charged toward him, the director slapped the desk. He frowned and tapped cigarette ashes into an ashtray. “Let’s put a stop to this. There’s no point in arguing with the kid. He’s an orphan, a bastard. There’s no one to officially claim responsibility for what he’s done. You see what I’m saying?”

  Dealt a death blow, the men brooded over this reality. Just then an investigator coming from the mushroom farm stopped by the office for a cup of coffee, with a cop accompanying him.

  The dog breeders, guilty of illegally hunting the homeless dogs, tried to sneak quietly out of the director’s office, but the investigator called them back.

  “You there, what is it you do for a living?” He spoke strangely, mixing informal and formal terms.

  The director answered for them. “They’re dog breeders.”

  The investigator slurped his coffee. “What brings dog breeders to an orphanage? Planning to adopt people instead of dogs?”

  A dog breeder in a black down jacket said in protest, “That bastard slashed our tires.”

  The investigator turned his attention to Jae. “You, how old are you?”

  “I’m fourteen.”

  “What’s a little bastard like you puncturing people’s car tires for?”

  Jae didn’t respond. The cop said to the dog breeders, “You should really leave. It’s not like he has parents to compensate you.”

  “What about the orphanage or this supervisor—isn’t there any sense of responsibility here?” The man in the black jacket didn’t back off. “I mean, this is an act of terrorism!”

  The cop finally became annoyed. “I tried to explain the situation nicely to you people, but you clearly don’t know your limits. Why don’t we all go and officially file this case and investigate the details? Will the dog-breeder gentlemen here be able to receive compensation for their tires or not? What? Terrorism? If this is terrorism, then shiiiit, report it to the Americans and their FBI.”

  The dog breeders exchanged glances. They didn’t like government institutions or the law since their way of life lay just at its boundaries—and maybe outside it. People often said that they secretly caught dogs that had owners, and—whether they turned them into fighting dogs or used them for meat—all their actions verged on illegal. The dog breeders standing near the door quietly slipped out one at a time.

  The director helped Jae to his feet; he had collapsed again. “Jae, my boy, why did you rip up their tires? Why don’t you tell me?”

  “They have souls.”

  “Dogs don’t have souls. Only people have souls.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The fact that humans are capable of sin is proof in itself that they have souls.” The director sounded like he was justifying as he continued. “Dogs don’t sin. They aren’t able to commit a sin. Sinning, suffering, asking for forgiveness, and receiving salvation—this is what makes us human.”

  Jae responded, “Sin, doing wrong, people, animals. Dividing everything up like this is exactly what makes us human. We think we’re high and mighty. I’m a human being. I’m at the very top. I know sin. Animals don’t. That’s why we can kill animals. That’s your logic?”

  The director straightened. “So you’re saying what you did was right? But didn’t you harm others? That’s the same as stealing. Don’t you agree?”

  “There’s something worse than stealing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s ignoring pain. It’s not doing anything about someone’s cries. The world of sin begins there.”

  “You can’t avoid pain.”

  “You can’t avoid it, but you can try. You shouldn’t inflict unnecessary pain on humans or animals for your own benefit.”

  “It would be great if everything were as simple as you make it.”

  “What’s so complicated about it?”

  “Then who decides whose suffering is more important? You? You think only the dogs trapped in cages suffer? Those dog breeders work hard at making ends meet, and they have families too. Their kids might have to go without food for a day because you slashed their tires.”

  “But if we pick everything apart like that, we won’t ever get anything done.”

  “You need to grow up first, then maybe you’ll understand that the world’s not that simple.”

  “If I can’t make decisions now, it won’t change when I grow up. I acted based on how I saw it. I don’t have any regrets.”

  “You hold a grudge against the world. That’s why you want to judge it with your petty version of justice. That’s dangerous.”

  Jae nodded seriously as if he were a consumer listening to instructions on how to use an electrical appliance. “Yes, it is dangerous,” he said. “I know that too.”

  12

  Jae ended up with a week of solitary confinement. The room chosen to punish the orphans received hardly any light, and instead of a bathroom, there was a bowl. Books weren’t allowed, so all you had was the sound of your own breathing.

  A strong feeling rising up in Jae’s body confused him, and only after two dark days alone did he realize it was rage. One hundred percent pure rage. Its hot toxicity burned through him like sulfuric acid. His stomach acted up so he couldn’t digest anything he swallowed, and he threw up on the plates he was eating from. He began avoiding food. After a day or two the vomit dried and stopped giving off a smell. During the long, lonely nights on an empty stomach, he entered the next stage. This differed from the meditation practice of monks and yogis. It was more like being possessed—his soul entered and occupied other lives, then inhabited them as if they were his own.

  One time, he located Red Eyes, whom he had freed. The dog had eluded the hunters and was still roaming across the hills. Jae entered Red Eyes’ soul, saw the world through his eyes, felt the hunger signals sent by the dog’s stomach, and detected the atmosphere of fear that the dog’s sensitive ears picked up. Red Eyes repeatedly dreamed about escaping the depths of an abandoned mine, then going through the stinging smoke. He dreamed of dogfights in which he tore at another dog’s ear. But outside of those nightmarish moments, Red Eyes’ soul was surprisingly peaceful. He could endure an eternity of time just resting his head on his front paws.

  Then, as if someone had pulled a plug, Jae felt his soul sucked out of the Tosa Inu. He thought he might be losing his mind. But without any contact with other souls, he couldn’t endure the sharp teeth of the eternal darkness, and like a hacker who finds a lapse in security and infiltrates a system, whenever Jae caught a soul off guard he quickly entered it.

  The coffeehouse girl’s abandoned scooter was blackened by flames and coated with mold-like fire-extinguishing foam. Even after the fire trucks left, the scooter kept releasing black smoke from its burning tires. Jae stayed inside the scooter for a while. He heard innumerable voices murmuring there, as if it were a haunted house in an amusement park. The inner world of the Tosa Inu was peaceful, but the scooter kept up a racket like an out-of-control manic patient. He wasn’t sure whether the voice belonged to the scooter, the woman who had ridden it, or even another soul who had entered it and was bemoaning his fate, but for some reason, Jae was fond of the scooter. He sensed its dynamic, self-assured spirit indifferent to its environment.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s like to ride a scooter and race.” The voice was playful. “It’s like a yo-yo. The road enters the scooter’s soul, then reemerges. We don’t actually race ‘over’ the road; you could say we reel it in, then let it go. The road isn’t outside us—it’s running through us.”

  In the middle of the endless babbling, Jae sensed a chilly soul silently enter and leave. He thought that it might be the scooter’s last owner, the strangled girl. A girl with tattooed eyebrows and full lips. He recalled the taste of the cookie she’d given him. Though this had already happened, it felt like it was coming from the futu
re. The concept of time didn’t have much meaning for Jae, who was bound to a machine. The difference between the definite past and the unknown future blurred, and future events felt like past experiences, and memories of the past like ominous prophecies.

  Suddenly a sharp noise and a burning light flooded the room, but Jae’s eyes wouldn’t open. Someone told him that his confinement was over. Like a drunk waking up in a strange location, Jae tried to regain his sense of reality. The chaos of time fell back into the right order with some difficulty, and his soul finally returned to his neglected body. He left solitary confinement, dragging his numb leg behind him. Just above his head two magpies squawked, then headed south.

  13

  Jae took an express bus to Seoul. When it glided into the terminal, he felt a deep sense of peace, as if he had returned to a place where he was meant to be. Hundreds of buses releasing exhaust, the noise of diesel engines echoing off the ceilings, passengers crowding in from all directions, the touts, fanatics, and peddlers—all of it comforted Jae’s soul. He stood alert in the center of the terminal’s waiting room and closed his eyes. Noises sprang at him and smells grew stronger. He tried to picture a teenage girl only two years older than him, walking into the terminal to give birth.

  It wasn’t easy. Instead of an image, he recalled a phrase: “What’s bound to happen will happen.” As he was mulling it over, his nerves heightened as if he were sharpening a knife. The bus terminal began to resemble the uterus of an enormous monster. He wanted to penetrate the consciousness of the strange building that had birthed him, but he couldn’t find an entry point or any clues. His consciousness drifted into the dusty atmosphere of the terminal; he couldn’t go any deeper.

  It might not be the right time, he thought.