by Heekyung Eun
“J is looking for someone to take over the inn.”
“The inn?”
“Don’t you remember? She stopped running the boarding house so that she could open the inn. That’s why we had to move out of our beloved boarding house and go our separate ways.”
The bridge of the man’s nose wrinkled slightly when he said “beloved.”
“After closing the boarding house, the housemother had spent the next few years running an inn down an alley in a college town. J was just about to turn twenty when the two of them relocated to W and took over another inn there. They were doing just enough business to get by. She passed away at the end of last year, though, only two months after getting diagnosed with late-stage throat cancer. The inn had yet to reopen after closing around the time of the funeral. J had no desire to operate an inn and wanted to sell it, but he wouldn’t get a good price on the place if he left it vacant, so he’d been looking for someone to stay there for the time being. Now he was getting worried because the right person hadn’t come along.”
The man slowly removed a notebook and pen from inside his black coat and asked me for my address. The notebook looked brand new, with nothing written on it. The pen looked new as well. His handwriting was childish and crude like the scribbling of an old woman who had only recently emerged from illiteracy. I still didn’t know which one among the six boarders the man had been. He seemed to be amused by my question and smiled knowingly, pulling up the collar of his black coat.
“Who else but ‘the business student who had only one outfit per season’. Wasn’t that what K used to call me?”
Saying his goodbyes, the man stood from his chair and walked swiftly toward the exit, leaving without hesitating. Just like that, his black coattails vanished from sight. I lifted my teacup and slowly brought it to my lips. The cup had completely cooled, with a single drop of tea pooled at the bottom, which trickled down and came to a stop halfway to my lips. After the man had gone, I stayed at the teahouse a while longer. When I finally settled my check and headed outside, my body felt curiously lighter.
1Hwatu: Korean playing cards.
2Minbak: A type of low-cost guesthouse, commonly run by local families.
2
AROUND THE END of March, a motorcycle messenger from a courier service delivered an envelope to my dorm. It contained a map and a bunch of keys on a ring. I peered inside the envelope and shook it out, but nothing else was inside. There wasn’t any handwritten note explaining how J, after remembering how much his mother had trusted me, decided to put me in charge of the inn or how to take care of the bills and taxes. There was no memo assuring me that at least the heat and electricity were on or that I could stay there until the end of spring. I didn’t even have a number to call in case of an emergency. Only my name was written on the outside of the envelope, and I recognized the crude handwriting at once. The address of the inn was written in the same hand at the top of the map.
W was a small city located in the mountainous eastern region of the country. When I was about to slide the map back inside the envelope, I saw that its bottom corner had worn away and was on the verge of tearing. It had probably rubbed against the keys. That reminded me of W: During a trip a while back, I’d stopped at a museum dedicated entirely to old prints. An ancient map displayed on the wall had a small hole around its center. A map is something that you fold up and carry around, the guide had explained. The hole forms there, because the very center of the map gets the most wear and tear. The hole was W. “So does that mean the hole is the center and also the starting point?” I recalled S asking. It was our last trip together before S and I broke up. The term “starting point” got my attention and I gazed at the old map, which I’d had absolutely no interest in at first. The center that had been swallowed by a black hole because it had worn away after being folded up and stowed away for so long—that place was W.
A few days later, I went to a bookstore looking for a map of W. The map I found was of very poor quality.
“Is this all you have?”
“That’s all we’ve got.”
Fortunately, the bookstore clerk knew a place where they sold more detailed maps. It was a small specialty bookstore located on a side street in the center of town. But getting there was not as easy as his hasty directions had made it out to be. Only after walking up and down along the same path a number of times did I discover it across the street near the corner. It was in a quiet neighborhood without much traffic, but I backtracked to find a crosswalk anyway. I remembered something S had said. “You’re so square. Don’t you know the rules of the real world are messed up to begin with? Do you think you can bring order to this world by following all of them to a tee?” Would she be in some church right now, praying she be allowed to keep a closer eye on me even after leaving me?
The owner of the bookstore, a man in reading glasses, greeted me from behind the counter. Blocking my line of sight was a bookshelf made out of a bunch of little rectangular compartments stuffed with countless rolled-up maps of various sizes. When I told him I was looking for a map of W, he asked me whether I preferred English, Chinese characters or Korean.
“Korean, please.”
Before I finished speaking, a map was already on the counter, rolled into a scroll, as though the man had just pressed a button on a vending machine. I unrolled the map slowly, and for whatever reason, the college campus was the first thing I saw. Maybe because it was the satellite campus of my alma mater, or it could be that it was right by a lake. When looking at a map, one is bound to notice the mountains and the bodies of water first.
When I checked the address, J’s inn wasn’t very far from campus. The college was located where the lake ended, and approximately four kilometers beyond the campus was the beginning of a steep mountain pass. From either side of the pass, there were trails going up the mountain. The inn was located at the trailhead—a good spot for hikers who wanted to climb up the mountain the next morning and needed a place to stay for the night. It seemed likely that there would be a restaurant nearby as well.
The owner of the bookstore took my money and spoke as he removed his reading glasses.
“It’s probably still cold up there. The ground is heavy with moisture and the valleys run deep. It’s a terrain surrounded by vile energy.”
“Is there much wind?”
“How could there not be, at the crest of the pass.”
Only after leaving the bookstore did I start wondering how the owner had known that my destination was at the peak of the mountain pass, but I forgot all about it while re-crossing the street. My body somehow seemed to be getting lighter and lighter.
3
THE GAS STATION and the restaurant were in a secluded spot a long way from town. From there began the steep pass, at the crest of which stood J’s forlorn three-story inn. As I’d expected, the paint job on the inn’s sign had all but worn away, the windows all securely shut and the outer walls dirty, giving off a gloomy, almost eerie air. It was late afternoon by the time I parked my clunker of a car in the vacant back lot. The shadows from the forest hung over everything so that it was already getting dark.
I tried a bunch of keys until I found the one for the front door and opened it. As soon as I set foot in the empty building, the distinct odor of mold and disinfectant that all such inns seem to carry invaded my nostrils. The interior looked cleaner and brighter than what I expected, based on the way things had looked on the outside. The first floor held the innkeeper’s living quarters, the kitchen, and other functional facilities like the storage room. The guest rooms were located on the second and third floors. I walked up to the second floor carrying my bags and stood for a while in the middle of the hallway to pick out a room. I went past the first room and entered the second room. It was Room 203. When I opened the window, I could see the bottom of the hill directly below. The serpentine road wound all the way down the steep slope. The lake and the college campus were visible in the distance, framed by the mountains.
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Inside, the room was exactly as I’d imagined. Two pillows were laid out on the bed, and installed on the small table next to it were a tiny water cooler and cups. The room had a mirror, a plain old dresser with a comb, a hair dryer, and bottles of lotion. The linoleum floor had a few cigarette burns, and the wall had nothing but two wire hangers dangling on nails. I took off my jacket and hung it on one of the hangers. I couldn’t think of anything to do, so I flopped down on my back on top of the covers. With my arms crossed under my head, I stared vacantly for a long time at the jacket on the hanger. I thought back to the man in the black coat’s younger self.
Back then the boarders had established a routine of playing round after round of hwatu every night. Except for the handsome engineering student who was never around and the older of the two medical students, the remaining four became regulars: the younger medical student, the whiny law student, the business student with just one outfit per season, and the English student who was good with a guitar. They almost always played in my room. They’d enter my room en masse, while offering up some excuse about my room being the cleanest or that, since I was the housemother’s favorite, it wouldn’t look as bad if they gambled in my room. I’d sit at the desk with my back to the cards, but eventually I’d get sucked in by the rowdiness of the game and end up watching. The law student was always the first to start winning money. But as time passed, the medical student and the English student would expand their powers little by little so that when the clock was about to strike midnight, there wouldn’t be much of a difference in how much any of them had won or lost. Around then, the older medical student would come through the door with his first warning for his brother, telling him to give it a rest. There would be one or two more warnings after that. Every time the medical student heard the wind blowing from the Windy Mountain, he’d think it was his older brother coming up the stairs and scurry under my blanket and pretend to be sleeping. He’d do this over and over again, but he wouldn’t stop playing cards.
The law student’s face would grow anxious and contorted each time he lost a hand, and the moment he got a fresh start by recouping his principal sum, his eyes would get all veiny and red. His impatience caused him to make more than a few mistakes. The help I patiently offered him from the sidelines was of absolutely no use to him. The English student appeared relaxed and free when he played, probably because he had plenty of money. He racked up points little by little so that it was barely noticeable, then when the decisive moment came he would invariably crush the law student. Without a doubt, he enjoyed not only playing the game but manipulating the law student’s mood, too.
By dawn, everyone’s concentration had dipped and nerves were frayed. Words became few and far between, and you could feel the tension—the sound of each card cutting through the silence. It was the business student with the single outfit per season who would play best at this time and suddenly sweep the whole pot. He always played hwatu while wearing his suit jacket. The sight of his profile as he sat upright in his suit jacket until the break of dawn was chilling, like that of the grim reaper. Everyone was eager for the game to end soon, but nobody seemed capable of much else but blinking and mechanically dealing out the cards, each imprisoned in his powerlessness. The business student wore the same jacket spring, fall and summer but in winter he wore a coat—again, his only one—over the jacket. He’d smile knowingly at me when I asked him if he ever thought about buying himself some new clothes with the money he won playing. He’d laugh and tell me that buying more clothes only led to more laundry.
Now that I think about it, I’d heard the man laugh like that once before. The vague image of him wearing his black coat again and leaning against the prow came to me. I’d been sitting beside him while gazing down at the river flowing below. The man turned his head toward me and fixed his eyes on something behind me. Then he made that knowing smile. It was cold so the breath came out in white puffs. I wondered what had been behind me that had made him smile that way.
Realizing that the room had gone completely dark, I got up from the bed.
4
THIS NEIGHBORHOOD WAS in the outskirts of town, too desolate to call a university district per se. There were clusters of studio apartment buildings, tiny convenience stores, pool halls and restaurants and not much else. Just a few steps beyond these a dark field, a vacant lot, and farmhouses with some scattered lights appeared. There weren’t many people walking down the street, either. When I caught a glimpse of a bar around the corner, I made up my mind to have a beer instead of dinner and stopped the car. It was an underground bar in a small two-story building that housed a real estate office on the first floor. The sign was lit, but even before I set foot down the darkened stairway, I could feel that the place gave off a chilly, foreboding air. When I made the turn at the landing, I saw someone crouching at the foot of the stairs.
I stopped in my tracks. The person must have heard my footsteps because their head turned in my direction. It was a young woman with long wavy hair.
“It must’ve closed because of exams. Nobody ever comes here except students.”
The woman introduced herself as a student who worked part-time at the bar.
“The owner doesn’t call to let me know he’s not opening. This is the second time already.”
The woman’s demeanor made me somewhat uncomfortable—talking to a complete stranger, and a man at that, without appearing to be guarded or nervous at all. After nodding my head slightly, I started to retreat up the steps. From behind me, her voice sounded friendly.
“Wait. I’ll show you another place where you can get a drink.”
The woman was already getting up as she spoke.
At first, I thought that the woman, in the process of standing up, had decided to sit back down. True, she was several stairs below me, but still she appeared astoundingly short. Showing no interest in my reaction, she went up the stairs past me, treating me genially as though she were some kind of guide. It was then that I realized she was a dwarf, with short arms and legs and a chubby build. Her hair was tied with a ribbon fashioned out of a strip of fabric. She wore a flared dress with a frilled hem and red platform shoes about the length of my hand. I stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. The woman turned around to face me.
“It’s not far. I’ll pay for the drinks if you want.”
I imagined her paying the tab with a gypsy bracelet, or with silver coins she’d take from a bundle belonging to a circus troupe.
There weren’t many customers at the bar as I’d expected. The draft beer wasn’t very good, but it was so cold that it went down easy before I could really taste it.
The woman knew about J’s inn. When I told her that I’d be staying there for the time being, she looked at me intently.
“I can sleep there tonight, right?”
She made very little effort to keep others at a distance, let alone to guard herself against men she didn’t know. While swallowing a mouthful of beer, I tried to formulate an appropriate response.
“The building’s been abandoned for some time, and it’s way out in the middle of nowhere. It’s kind of creepy. You’d be okay with that?”
“I’ve already been there many times before.”
The woman said this as if it were nothing. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to probe for details. Though I wasn’t sure what or why, I had the feeling I might end up hearing something sinister.
“Would you mind if I used a couple different rooms?”
When I asked if she had friends she wanted to bring along, she shook her head.
“Ever since I was little I wanted to live in a house with lots of rooms. I’m talking about one of those houses you see where all the rooms are brightly lit. My house didn’t have very many rooms but still my mother always told me to turn off the lights every time I left the room. When I was little, I thought turning off the lights would frighten the people who were still in the room.”
“Who was still in the room?”
/> “That’s the thing. As a child, I had a pretty wild imagination. Even when I was by myself, I thought there was always someone in the room with me. I probably didn’t like the idea of being by myself in a room. My mother always told me to shut the door behind me, but of course I never listened. I was stubborn and said it would be rude if I shut the door behind me when there were still people on their way out. Don’t other children pretend like this?”
I’d only pictured things exactly as they’d been described in books. Your nose would grow if you told a lie, for instance, or a frog would leap out of your mouth every time you tried to speak if you didn’t give a beggar change.
“I even imagined I could float around in midair. I really believed that if I could just make my body light enough I would be able to float in the air.”
“Really? How do you make yourself so light?”
“I had to split up into many me’s. I thought it would help to have many rooms. When I was a kid I thought I wasn’t getting taller because my height had to be divided up between all the different me’s.”
“Do you still think that?”
“No, I’m not a kid any more. But this one time something quite strange did happen.
“I was working at a ticket booth in an underground parking garage at the center of the city. It was one of those areas with towering buildings back-to-back, eight-lane roads jam-packed with cars honking their horns nonstop and shooting fumes from their mufflers. A part of the city where people bumped shoulders as they ran to the bus station, and the trees lining the streets were dying from those Christmas lights coiled tightly around the length of their trunks. But it was a whole other world when you came down into the garage—a place immersed in dark and dingy silence, where dozens of cars stretched out in rows, lying prostrate without a sound. The sight of the cars crowded together, with each car’s arrogant, mean eyes seeming to keep the next car in check, reminded me of corpses awaiting their turn to be cremated. All around them were dark gray walls and partitions, the ordered numbers painted in black, not to mention the stillness and the cold that somehow sent chills deep into your body, whispering for you to make a run for it. The dank smell of cement particular to basements would mix with the smells of gasoline and automobile fluids, so that your breathing became labored the moment you entered. I was the one sitting there all day in that cramped booth by the entrance, staring vacantly at the gate, waiting for cars to arrive, like some broken doll someone had shoved through the booth’s glass door and forgotten about.