I Hear Your Voice

by Young-Ha Kim

  I tried to stop Jae. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to cross.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “I can hear it,” Jae said, as if he had spoken to an oracle.

  “What?”

  “What the bridge is thinking. And what the river’s saying to me.”

  “What’s it saying?”

  “They’re calling me,” Jae said. “They’re telling me it’s where I have to go.”

  He suddenly frowned and clutched his chest.

  Mokran asked, “What’s wrong?”

  He took deep breaths and leaned against the handlebars until his forehead nearly rested against the dashboard. The pain seemed to be worsening.

  “Are you hurt?” Mokran asked. She began approaching him, but Jae raised his hand and stopped her. He straightened up.

  “I’m better. It happens now and then.”

  Jae glanced back at the motorcycle rally he was leading. He frowned as if he was still feeling pain, but he grabbed the handlebars, his mind made up. Jae rode up the bridge with the front guard. Mokran followed. The patrol car’s high beams were aimed at Jae and bathed him in light so strong, it was difficult to open your eyes, but Jae didn’t retreat. Police holding megaphones shouted warnings that if he didn’t stop, he would be arrested. The conscripted police came in one line at Jae, their batons raised.

  Nearly halfway across Seongsu Bridge, a spike punctured his motorcycle tire. The bike wobbled and skidded to the road like a rolling coin that had lost momentum, then teetered. Jae’s Honda hit the concrete median strip, flew into the bridge railing, and then his body soared over the water like a balloon a child had let go.

  Jae spun in the air. The mouth of the wide, black river, the brightly lit bridges, the police car lights, and the red brake lights all entered his eyes. His spirit was escaping his body, and it felt different from anything he had ever known. He sensed that he could be gone for a very long time, wandering restlessly without settling, and be transformed into a completely new being.

  He no longer felt the force of gravity. There was no velocity to the fall, no cold water, no fear of suffocation. He was slowly rising. Looking down, he saw the bridge below. The dozens of motorcycles that had followed him charged the police barriers and skidded with flat tires to the ground. Mokran, Gas Tank, and Seesaw Eyes fell too. Mokran’s face was soaked in blood and she writhed in pain on the asphalt. She tried reaching out, but her body wasn’t listening. It was as if her physical self no longer existed. The motorcycle rally, with its advance blocked, turned southward. It resembled a twitching worm covered in salt. Now greedy for victory, the police forced their way across the bridge. When I turned, in the distance I saw the Express Bus Terminal where Jae had been born. The buses ready to leave at daybreak sounded so close by, it was as if their engines were idling next to me. I thought then that maybe Jae’s soul would lie down and finally find peace at the terminal.

  39

  A witness said, “At first I didn’t even know it was Jae. Someone just rose up into the air. I mean it, shit, maybe I’m losing my mind.”

  Hundreds of motorcycle gangs on the Seongsu Bridge overpass that day claimed they saw Jae ascend to the heavens. They said that rays beamed down from the sky and carried him up. Their testimonies lined up. Around three in the morning they saw a vague shape rising in a sudden path of light; they were sure that this was Jae. Some of the drafted police officers also posted online about seeing the same thing, with comments like “He spread his white wings and rose into the sky. It was definitely Jae. He had longish hair, and he was tall and thin.”

  The only pictures were cell-phone shots of a dark, blurry sky. Some photographed an indistinct light in the pictures, but that was all. Many on the Olympic Highway also saw the phenomenon from their cars. Some Catholics asserted that it was the Virgin Mother appearing on August 15, the feast day of the Assumption.

  Seungtae had also been on Seongsu Bridge. He saw Jae’s miserable expression when his long hair had parted, fluttering in the wind. When the boy and his motorcycle had gone over the bridge handrail toward the water, Seungtae closed his eyes.

  “Ascension?” said Seungtae the next day to the chief of security. “Do you believe everything you read on the Internet? I’m telling you, it didn’t happen.”

  He added, “Wasn’t I there? It’s impossible for it to happen right in front of my eyes and for me not to see it.”

  The chief of security picked at his ear. “You think an ascension happens in front of your eyes? It probably happened over your head.”

  A diving team found the submerged motorcycle but never discovered the body. The next day the police briefed the press on the Liberation Day motorcycle rally. One missing, 6 bikers injured, 15 police injured, 127 arrested. The gist was that swift, thorough police action at the rally had subdued a potentially large-scale public disturbance in its early stages. Still, alongside news articles titled THE MADNESS OF MOTORCYCLE RALLIES: HOW LONG WILL THEY TEST US? were critical articles with titles like EXTREME POLICE ACTION LEADS TO HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS CONTROVERSY. Related articles exploded all over the Internet and hundreds of commenters offered their opinions. Hatred ran like a river. But within a few days the articles were crowded out by other news as people lost interest in the motorcycle rally. Summer was coming to an end, and tourists returning from their travels waited for taxis at Incheon International Airport, holding duty-free shopping bags.

  Four years ago, I first heard about the boy named Jae from a girl I’d dated for a year during college. Let’s call her Y. She was a freshman in my school literature club who, in contrast to her quick-witted, energetic appearance, was sensitive and kindhearted. I was more interested in novels, but she liked poetry. We didn’t keep in touch after graduating, then years later, she e-mailed me after reading an article about a novel I’d written.

  When I called the phone number she’d sent me, she was pleased to hear from me and said she hadn’t been sure she’d had the right e-mail address. She had been passionate about politics as a student, and after graduating had worked for an NGO. Then she got a job making Korean-language teaching manuals for an educational publisher. After working there for some time, she left and was now at an organization that helped at-risk youth. She said she had read my novel.

  “So I saw I was in your novel.” She was sure that one of the characters in the book was based on her.

  “I don’t think so,” I disagreed, laughing.

  “I’m sure it’s me.”

  “You keep insisting, though the writer says you’re wrong.”

  “Do writers always know everything about their own books? You might have written about me without knowing it.”

  Okay, let’s leave it at that, I thought, and backed off. And she was right about one thing: a writer doesn’t have complete control over his own novel. I was curious, so I asked, “So which one are you?”

  “I don’t think that’s for me to say.”

  Which character in my book resembled her? She refused to tell me, so I resorted to guessing. I could find her if I looked, but it seemed a waste of energy, considering that sometimes even readers who’ve never met the writer will assert that a character was based on them. Someone once said that a person remembers his life, at most, only a little more vividly than the memory of a novel he has read. I was actually more interested in my fading memories of the year we had dated than the character she resembled.

  I asked, “Are you married?”

  She hesitated, then said that she and her husband had separated. They didn’t have children. It turned out that I knew her husband; we had briefly been members of the same university club. He had seemed rather cynical and cold, and looked like a model student, but lewd rumors about his relationships with women never ceased throughout college. Y didn’t seem to want to talk about him and started talking about her job instead. She said she visited the biker kids that gathered under the Wonhyo Bridge weekly to counsel them. Her organiz
ation had done this work for years, and also ran a shelter where runaway teenagers could stay for a short time.

  “If you’re ever curious about what we do, come on over. Our volunteers are really lovely people.”

  I didn’t know then that this was a half-open door.

  I asked, “Is there anything you need for the shelter?”

  “Well, our fax machine broke a while ago. If you’ve got one idling at home, could you donate it to us? I know no one uses them anymore, but we do.”

  There was an old flea market near my neighborhood, so I bought a used fax machine at a stall between Sindang Market and Seongdong Technical High School, and paid her a visit. The second floor of the Western-style house had been remodeled into a shelter where runaway teenagers could sleep, and the first floor was used as an office for the volunteers.

  The volunteers, all in their early twenties, were openly curious about their boss’s ex-boyfriend dropping by at the office. They seemed to like me even more once I offered up the fax machine and tangerines. We peeled the tangerines and chatted, but the cheerful atmosphere soon turned. Y ’s organization was having financial problems. I could have guessed—they couldn’t even afford a used fax machine. Municipal funding had dwindled, and there were few companies that donated to causes for runaways and abused teenagers since it didn’t help their image.

  I took a look at their newsletter. “I was always interested in this area of work.”

  Y said, “Really?”

  “I once wrote a short story called ‘Emergency Exit.’ Have you read it? A story about teenage burglars.”

  “Oh, that one. It was kind of shocking. What kind of fiction starts like that?”

  She shuddered in mock horror. She was still the Y I remembered, but her appearance had changed. Back then she had been a chubby-faced student in her early twenties. But the Y in front of me was an emaciated middle-aged lady with sunken cheeks. It was strange, unfamiliar. It felt like I was meeting an actress playing the role of Y.

  “Well, you probably see a lot worse here,” I said.

  “Yeah, but reading it in a novel’s more shocking. Literature somehow seems like it should be about something more refined . . . You know what I mean.”

  “I wrote that story then actually shoved it in a drawer for six months,” I said. “I never thought I’d be able to publish it. There were days when I couldn’t write a single sentence. Then, when it looked like I’d miss my deadline altogether, I showed the story to a friend. My friend read it and told me to try to publish it right away, so I drummed up the courage and sent it to the magazine. Back then no one was writing stories about these kinds of kids.”

  “What inspired you to write it?” she asked.

  “You remember the War on Crime, or whatever it was called during Roh Tae-woo’s regime when they suddenly banned alcohol after midnight?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The Prohibition period. Remember how once it hit midnight, the touts owned the world? They lured you in, saying, Older Sister, Older Brother, have another drink. Then they brought you to a secret basement bar three floors down, where you couldn’t leave till four in the morning, and in that smoked-filled space you had to hand over a chunk of money to drink.”

  “There was that famous tout called Green Pillow, a girl who went around with a green pillow tucked under her arm. People were mesmerized by that pillow and followed it everywhere, into beer halls and soju bars, but when you got there, she disappeared to go out and bait other customers. I started writing ‘Emergency Exit’ one night after I saw that green pillow.”

  Y said cautiously, “You’ll probably find good material if you write a book about our kids. Why don’t you try it? We’ll help you.”

  People often say that a single novel can’t do justice to one’s own life story, but writers are more interested in a life they feel able to write about than in representing the sheer variety of lives. But I enthusiastically agreed, if only to be polite. “Really? If there’s an interesting kid, why don’t you put us in touch?”

  The volunteers around us spoke up at the same time: “You should meet Donggyu.”

  “Is he also a biker kid?”

  Y said, “He was . . . He doesn’t ride anymore.”

  I knew that traitors and defectors often had interesting stories, so I was suddenly intrigued, and asked them to pick a date for us to meet.

  Donggyu worked part-time at a gas station, and gave me the impression of being dark and unsociable. He seemed like a kid who lived with his heart locked up. If Y hadn’t accompanied us the first time, it’s likely that Donggyu would have refused to meet me. As soon as Y saw Donggyu she gave him a hug. He wasn’t startled and instead threw open his arms and hugged her back. It reminded me of a long-ago memory of Y and myself. We used to call the hill near our university’s east gate Turgenev Hill. Word was that the poet Yun Dong-ju used to like that hill, but that’s never been confirmed. From the hill sparsely dotted with pine trees you saw cars passing on the road in front of the women’s university, and in spring, azaleas would bloom, then lilacs. We would climb the rarely visited hill, holding each other and sometimes kissing.

  She had no idea what I was thinking as she introduced me to Donggyu. He merely nodded casually at me. Y left quickly as she had things to take care of, and Donggyu and I went to get pizza. At first it was awkward, but I waited. I’ve learned that introverts speak in more depth and more frankly once they get going.

  He asked me, “What would you like to talk about?”

  “Well . . . anything you want, really.”

  He looked suspiciously my way, but the look quickly faded. We chatted, though our conversation didn’t progress very far. Still, I left sensing that he had something to say, and that he was determined to keep our dialogue going. When I suggested meeting again, Donggyu agreed. A week later, I returned to the gas station and we continued our interview at the pizza parlor. I asked him about his childhood, and listened to him talk about his aphonia, his mother’s infidelity, his father’s second marriage, and the conflicts that had continued to follow him. But gradually he began talking less about himself and kept returning to his friend Jae’s story.

  “Why do you keep talking about Jae?” I asked. “I want to hear your story . . .”

  “Jae is me,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain, but I need to talk about Jae.”

  Donggyu kept a diary, which is rare for a teenage boy. And it wasn’t just the diary—he had a habit of keeping a record of everything, so he was able to faithfully recount his childhood as if he were reciting from a book. Sometimes he riffled through his notebook when he wasn’t sure of a year or day, but otherwise he never corrected himself. Basically, he had a trustworthy memory.

  I met him two more times after that. The last time we met, I checked in with him again. “So everything I’ve heard so far, I can use in a novel?”

  “Yes, someone has to write Jae’s story.”

  “Why?”

  “Jae once said that someone would write his story someday.”

  “Don’t you think that person was supposed to be you?”

  “Maybe. But Jae being who he was, he wouldn’t have wanted it to be someone like me just jotting his life into a diary. Jae really believed he was doing great things. He believed he was painting on a canvas of the universe with thousands of motorcycles. He thought it was a real art form. I mean, even the solar eclipse is a kind of art. Even though the moon only blocks the sun for a little while, people come from all over the world to see it.”

  “A form of performance art or environmental art,” I said. “I think that’s what you’re talking about. Do you really think Jae knew about these kinds of things?”

  “He read a lot of books. You know how people throw away all kinds of books these days. He probably knew about performance art—he was really sharp. And he wasn’t a con man.”

  Donggyu gasped like a kid with a heart problem, but struggled
to keep speaking. “I . . . I never talk about this since people will think I’m crazy.”

  “What is it?”

  “I keep hearing Jae’s voice.”

  “What does he say?”

  “Nothing new. I hear him saying things he used to say, like a tape recorder.”

  “I sometimes hear characters from my novels talking. I’ll sit and be staring at nothing when I think I hear someone talking to me. I’ll turn around, but no one’ll be there. Now that I think about it, I wrote this very dialogue down a few days ago.”

  Donggyu looked upset and hurt because he hadn’t been understood.

  “His voice is vivid to me, vivid enough to wake me up when I’m sleeping. Sometimes I’ll walk down the street and hear him.”

  “What do you hear most often?”

  “I hear, ‘What has to happen will happen.’”

  “Jae once said that, didn’t he? What do you think it means?”

  “I’m not sure. But each time I hear him say that, for some reason I feel as if he’s forgiving me.”

  I met Mokran next, at a hospital. She had been with Jae up to his last moment, until her optic nerve was pierced by the sharp steel barricade. It had left her blind in her right eye. The doctor had told her it was a miracle that her left eye was still intact. She was visiting the hospital regularly for checkups and rehab. After producing repeated box-office flops, her father had stopped making movies and was now in the middle of suing the government and the police department for use of excessive force. I wanted to meet him but he never responded to me.

  Mokran wasn’t too different from the way that Donggyu had described her. It was hard to see her as a perfect beauty, but she had a unique, asymmetrical look about her that got your attention. She was somehow different from other girls, who were all starting to look alike.