I Hear Your Voice

by Young-Ha Kim

  Mokran asked me, “What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing special, nothing in particular.”

  “That’s a load of shit.”

  She rejected all attempts at serious conversation. She had heard a lot about people who “hunted” for stories from her father. People who dug for every single word of your story, but, after they manipulated it as they pleased and turned it into a movie, they turned their back on you. So how could she know I wasn’t that kind of person? Especially when I didn’t even know myself very well.

  I said, “Donggyu already told me everything there is to know.”

  “So why did you come meet me?”

  “Well, there were some things I didn’t feel comfortable asking him.”

  Only then did she look interested.

  I asked, “Where was Donggyu at the very end?”

  We went to the wide patio on the third floor.

  She said, “You don’t have any cigarettes on you, do you?”

  “No, I quit smoking.”

  “What kind of writer doesn’t smoke?”

  “Should I get you some?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “Marlboro.”

  When I returned with the cigarettes, Mokran had disappeared. I repeatedly tried the phone number for her that Donggyu had given me, but she didn’t pick up. I decided not to bother Mokran anymore. The pack of Marlboros is still on my desk.

  I began writing the first part of my novel based on what Donggyu had told me and had written down himself. Jae’s appearance and Donggyu’s aphonia belonged to another part of the book. Up to that point the writing was easy, but after that I got stuck. I ended up putting it aside and focusing on another book. About a year later, I decided that this novel was also going nowhere so I filed it away in a drawer.

  I started wondering if I should seek out Lieutenant Pak Seungtae. From a bulletin board at Y’s organization, I learned that he would be participating in a symposium about teenage motorcycle gangs, where professors of education and NGO workers, former bikers turned university students, and police would discuss potential countermeasures.

  Lieutenant Pak was a stocky man in his mid-thirties. His face was angular and his leather biking jacket resembled a suit of armor. His official duties concerned foreign affairs, but he often assisted with work related to teen motorcycle gangs because he cared deeply about them. Capable police officers talented in foreign languages are often posted in the Foreign Affairs Division, and people in those positions often glowed with pride. I’d seen on the Internet that the media had often interviewed Lieutenant Pak about motorcycle gangs. So he didn’t seem guarded, though I’d introduced myself as a writer who wanted to interview him.

  He handed me his business card. “Which part are you most interested in?”

  He looked friendly but his eyes were sharp. A byproduct of his job.

  “I’d like to hear about Jae.”

  “Who?” His expression changed into a complex mix of suspicion, alarm, and a little disappointment.

  “You didn’t know anyone named Jae?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know what kind of rumors you’ve heard, but I don’t know a Jae.”

  “Do you mean you didn’t know him personally, or that you don’t know anyone by that name at all?”

  He looked at me for a long time, as if trying to read my mind, then gave a short sigh. “Are you really a fiction writer?”

  “Yes, would you like me to send you a few copies of my books?”

  “Are you thinking of writing a novel about this?”

  “I’ll be fictionalizing it,” I said. “People accept what fiction writers write as fiction.”

  “Well, if you’re interested in the rumors floating around, I have a thing or two I can tell you . . .”

  “I’d also appreciate your help in understanding the teen motorcycle gang culture.”

  When I called him the next day, his attitude had changed. After he had looked me up on the Internet and done a bit of research, he became a little nicer. He had learned that I wasn’t a nonfiction writer planning an exposé. We met at a bar that sold fishcakes and got to talking. When I gave him a few of my novels as gifts, he put them casually into his bag without asking me to sign them, saying, “I’ll read them. Thanks.”

  Our conversation naturally focused on Jae. Pak gave me a detailed summary of what he knew about him.

  “Have you met Donggyu? His father is a cop, part of our family. When I put out a call for information on our intranet server, he responded. When we met he told me that Jae’s family had once rented from them, and that his son and Jae were friends. From there it was easy to pin down Jae’s identity. There’s a rumor that Jae’s not even real, but that’s not true. He definitely existed. Anyway, before Liberation Day we dug around everywhere, trying to arrest him. Of course, we first hauled in Donggyu. He was very cooperative.”

  “Why did he cooperate with the police, when Jae was his friend?”

  “He thought it was the only way to help Jae. He said that Jae was starting to lose his grip on reality. You must’ve heard that he even attacked a police station. He didn’t tolerate upstarts and was merciless with them. Donggyu seemed to believe that Jae was lost in delusions of grandeur, and he had to be put back in his place. In his own way, Donggyu was trying to help him. But this is where it stops.”

  “Where what stops?”

  “I mean everything up to this point is true. The stuff after—from breaching police lines and falling into the Han River and rising up to heaven—that’s all nonsense. You’re not going to put that in the novel, are you? But since it’s a novel, I guess you could. Yes, put it in. It doesn’t matter.”

  I said, “Jae definitely reached Seongsu Bridge, correct? And you’re saying that you don’t believe what happened afterward.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So where has Jae gone, then?”

  “He’s probably hidden himself somewhere. He’s perfectly capable of that. You know he’s a wanted man. The way he was born is strange. There’s even something odd about the fire that broke out while he was at the orphanage. Then when he moved up to Seoul he became a loner, roamed around homeless, and later, ate raw rice. He could be disguised as a homeless person right now. And at first glance, he does pass for a grown man.”

  “To what extent did Donggyu cooperate?”

  “Since all the groups got mixed up during the rally, it was important for us to know where Jae’s group was moving. So Donggyu stuck close to Jae and kept us updated with his movements.”

  “So you really didn’t see anything at the bridge? Hundreds of patrol officers said they did, and weren’t you in the very front?”

  Lieutenant Pak snorted. “You have quite an imagination.”

  He downed a shot of soju. “Let me ask you one favor. What you write is up to you, but I’m asking you, please, don’t glorify the biker gangs. They’re really pitiful kids. Don’t you think I know how they feel? There isn’t a soul in the country who understands them the way I do. But it’s dangerous. Kids paralyzed head to toe, you think I haven’t seen it more than a few times? It’s all temporary insanity.”

  We continued meeting up for drinks. Despite his initial prickliness, he had a gentle side to him. On days he had too much, he told me his deepest thoughts, which I hadn’t expected.

  “There’s going to be a character based on you in my novel. Is that okay?” I finally asked.

  “As long as people can’t immediately tell it’s me, I guess it’s fine.”

  Of course, even without his permission, I would have inserted him into the novel in some way. Before we parted, I asked him something I’d been wanting to ask for some time. “Do you feel guilty about what happened to Jae? I mean, there’s a strong chance he’s dead. And that police barricade caused real damage. One kid lost her vision and many others were injured.”

  He stared at me. “First, it wasn’t my decision alone. Our policy is to be firm in the
face of collective action that disturbs the peace or harms the public. The kids knew what to expect. The second they go without a helmet, they’re inviting death. It probably appeals to the cocky young ones, anyway. Do you remember that educational program about trying to get helmets on them? Ridiculous, isn’t it? But there’s one more thing I want to say to you, Mr. Fiction Writer.”

  “What is it?”

  “I—no, the entire police force—was an absolutely essential presence.”

  “For what? Do you mean to keep the public order?”

  “No, not that. I thought you’d know, since you’re a writer. It wasn’t a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but we were where we needed to be at the right time. We were able to carry out our duties . ”

  “So you feel absolutely no guilt?”

  “That’s right.”

  He got up first. We shook hands, then parted. He was walking away with clipped steps when he suddenly turned back.

  “Oh, there’s one more thing I want to say.” He ran his hand across his cropped hair. “I did see it.”

  “What?”

  “Jae rising. To heaven, I mean.” He pointed up at the sky.

  “What do you think that’s about?”

  “It’s always a crowd of people who see UFOs, right? I think it’s something like that.”

  A group of noisy teenagers flooded us like an ocean wave. We shook hands in the middle of the chaos and parted again.

  After that I met several members of motorcycle gangs, but I only managed to collect more vague rumors about Jae. In contrast to the pile of research growing on my desk, my novel was going nowhere. I didn’t know how to continue. The beginning alone I rewrote ten times, then quit. But I continued jotting down notes whenever something came to me. A year passed, but even when I ended up leaving to live abroad for a bit, my story about Jae went nowhere.

  Then one day I received a short e-mail message from Y in Seoul. It said that Donggyu, whose father had persuaded him to return home, had been studying for the civil service exam. He had stayed up late one night on the phone talking to Mokran, then mixed pills into a bottle of soju and killed himself.

  I took my unfinished novel out of its drawer and placed it on the desk. The manuscript sat there like an unwanted guest. It felt wrong to continue after what had happened to Donggyu. I flipped through, intending to reread the novel, but I couldn’t bring myself to read the scenes related to him, so I put it down. I felt ashamed that after all our conversations together, I hadn’t been able to stop his death. Was fiction—and, by extension, the writer—capable of doing anything?

  A few idle months passed. The American sculptor Steven De Staebler once said, “Artists don’t get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.” I opened that drawer again only when I got to the point where I couldn’t bear not writing anymore. I reread the notes I’d taken, and I began writing to a word count every day. I gained momentum. Flowers bloomed in the spring, disappeared, and summer began. When summer began to fade, I took a look at the novel and saw I had nearly enough material for two books. I felt disturbed, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. I just needed to keep writing and fill a set quota of pages per day. I rubbed out the uneasy embers deep inside me and silently wrote toward my quota.

  “Is it going well?” Y asked on our first phone call in ages. After listening quietly to my situation for a bit, she said, “Just listen .”

  “To what?”

  “They’ll talk, won’t they? Your characters, I mean. You need to be quiet and just listen to them.”

  It was as if a heavy weight had been lifted, and outside of the main characters’ story lines, I decided to throw away the rest. It was like starting all over again. I restructured the novel without veering away too much from what Donggyu had written. As soon as I got rid of the narrative strands I’d added to the novel, I was able to breathe again. My manuscript nearly shrank in half. I saw gaps in the story, but I decided to leave it as it was. Making a perfect narrative didn’t seem to suit the story. As soon as I had a draft, I sent it to Y.

  “Can you read through it once for me? If you tell me not to send it in, I won’t. You can be more objective than me. If it’s going to be a problem for the kids, I’ll give up on it for good.”

  A few days later Y responded. She said she had read the manuscript and didn’t think it would cause them problems. The interesting thing was her postscript: “By the way, one of our volunteers knows that you’re writing a novel about Jae’s life. She asked for your e-mail address, so I passed it on. Is that okay? You’ll probably receive an e-mail soon.”

  A few days later a woman who called herself Jean contacted me. She said that she wanted to tell me a story about Jae; I opened the file she had attached to the e-mail and read to the end. Jae was vivid in a way that I hadn’t seen in any other interviews or documents about him. At first I thought I would insert it into the novel somewhere, but it was hard to find a natural place for it, and I didn’t think it was necessary to the novel’s arc, so I am adding it here:

  In April, on a day that felt more like winter, a woman went to throw out the trash and discovered a young man crouched by the wall surrounding her house. She thought he might have frozen to death so she stood at his feet for some time, when his shoes began to wiggle. The boy sensed her there, but barely managed to open his eyes. He looked up with the gaze of a stray cat hoping for something to eat. The exact angle of his gaze was a coincidence; the teenage boy and the woman met just after her cat had died of an inflamed intestine.

  The woman said, “Let’s go in. After you warm up, we’ll get you some food.”

  She led him indoors and gave him a meal with some soup. He ate a total of five eggs that she fried up for him. After he thawed out, he took a shower and then fell asleep on the sofa. He spent several days at her house until he recovered his energy. A glow returned to his cheeks and he steadily gained weight. Then one night, he stole her wallet and valuables, and fled. She called to cancel her credit card, but in that short time he had already used it to purchase some clothes in the Myeongdong shopping district.

  “Where did you lose your card?” the operator asked the woman.

  She lied and said she had lost her wallet while out. She was baffled by how the teenager, whom she had treated kindly, had suddenly reverted to burglary. She disliked easy answers such as “Human beings are fundamentally dishonest.” But in avoiding the obvious conclusions, other perplexing questions weighed down on her like heavy moving boxes. She was frustrated and felt wronged but she suppressed her feelings. She didn’t want to be like her mother, who always blamed others. There were solutions available for an educated girl. No matter how difficult, she couldn’t give up. If she gave up, she would become the kind of woman her mother was, so she went to the hospital instead. The psychiatrist prescribed antidepressants to the woman, who had developed insomnia. She decided to trust the medication approved by the American FDA.

  A year passed and then it was spring again. She was returning home after an evening appointment when she stopped in front of her house. A teenager was crouched asleep against her brick wall. What was this? Was life mocking her? At first she thought the young thief from the year before had returned. The way this boy slept, with his face buried in his knees, and his posture and his shoulders, reminded her of him. She stared at the boy, then rushed into the house. He didn’t wake up; he could even be dead. She glanced out occasionally while working but from where she was, she couldn’t see over the wall. The temperature difference was extreme during the changing seasons, and as it got dark, the temperature dropped.

  Near midnight she called her mother. “Mom, it’s me.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Were you asleep?”

  Her mother said, “I was just lying down after doing some grading.”

  “How are the students this year?”

  “At this time of night? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing.”
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  Her mother said, “Some experiences are better left alone.”

  “Why’re you saying that all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t know what the problem is, but it’s best not to do anything you’re unsure about.”

  “You’re worrying over nothing. Please don’t act like you’ve got some sixth sense. Mom, you just don’t.”

  “But I do have it.”

  “I just called because I suddenly thought of you. That’s all, so go to sleep.”

  “Forgive your husband. That’s the humane thing to do.”

  The woman hurled her cell phone at the sofa and screamed and screamed.

  She switched off the TV and lay down. Her heart was drumming so fast, she was unable to sleep. She popped a tranquilizer and returned to bed, but instead of calming down she just became dizzier. The sound of wind rattling the windowpanes grew louder. She thought about the kid huddled up against the wall, and wondered if she should just call the cops.

  To someone racked with insomnia, morning seems an eternity away. It feels as if you’re a defendant summoned to court every day. On good days a trial doesn’t take place, but you still have to appear in court. The prosecutor of this lawyer-free cross-examination is the self. And the relentless interrogation that always seems at the cusp of ending doesn’t actually end until dawn. The process repeats itself night after night. No matter how often you experience insomnia, you never get used to it. Each time the woman lay sleepless, she wondered if she was actually living in what Christians called purgatory.

  She sprang up and went outside. The boy hadn’t budged and was still huddled against the wall. She poked his shoulder with her finger.

  “Hey, kid!” she said.

  He shuddered and looked up.

  She saw that the face lit up by the street lamp wasn’t the same kid. Instead of relief, she felt vaguely disappointed.