by Heekyung Eun
That night B’s mother tossed and turned, groaning in pain. From under her blanket, B heard the sound of the cold spring wind ferociously shaking the windows. It appeared that everything was going to be different in this strange city. There was no longer a single person around who’d known the formerly ordinary B. Starting a new grade in a new school, she could become a completely different person. She tried to sleep. Just in case she composed a great poem in her dreams, and became famous overnight as a genius middle-school-student poet when it was published, she kept a pencil and paper at her bedside.
A Visitor
CHILDREN ARE INTERESTED in transfer students. But there wasn’t much about B, who was always alone and lost in thought, to attract their curiosity. After a week or two, she’d become an inconspicuous child, just like she’d been in her hometown. Most of the children who took the bus to school hung around in small groups, but B was still alone.
One Saturday, the girls were especially restless and disorderly during clean-up time. Though Saturday was something they looked forward to anyway, this time they were also going to a movie after school. At the sound of the bell indicating clean-up time, the children hurriedly put aprons over their school uniforms and tied kerchiefs around their heads. They chattered on endlessly like a flock of sparrows sitting on a straw mat eating grain, even while moving around to the areas they were each responsible for. The weekend clean-up invariably included washing the windows. Standing one to a pane, the children looked as if they were busier with their chatting than with their cleaning. At a certain moment, a slight disturbance passed through them, and they all at once looked at the same place as if they were performing a military drill. Outside the walls of the school, it meant nothing, but at a girls’ school during school hours, the appearance of a young man couldn’t help but attract gazing eyes.
The man was slowly passing by the girls with a blank look on his face. He was tall and thin. His smart jacket and the black bag he carried in his hand made him look like an office worker; and with his prominent forehead and cheekbones casting a dark shadow on his face, his expression was not clearly visible. All of the girls at the windows craned their necks, their eyes following him until he disappeared through the staff room doorway.
B was sweeping the floor, indifferent to such disturbances. Not long after the man had passed, one of the students cleaning the staff room ran over to the classroom and called B’s name. The teacher in charge had instructed her to come and get B. B decided to take off her apron and kerchief, not caring that it was still clean-up time. Like most first-years, she looked like a small child in her oversized school uniform. But her hands were trembling slightly as she gave it a sharp tug to straighten it out. As she slowly followed the other student out of the classroom, B was fully aware of the eyes of her classmates focused on her.
The man, standing in the corridor to the staff room, stared intently at B as she approached. There was no feeling at all in his dark, sunken eyes. His manner was businesslike rather than calm. But B was impressed by his exquisite silhouette against the backlight, long and dark like the shadow of the mysterious benefactor in the novel Daddy-Long-Legs. The man took B by the shoulder and led her over to the window as if he had a very secretive matter to discuss. He was a bill collector.
“You have a collection of World’s Classics for Boys and Girls at your house, don’t you?”
The tall man bent slightly toward B as he spoke, blinking his eyes. He lowered his voice to a whisper so as not to be heard by anyone else. A group of curious students walked past the corridor, glancing sideways at the pair. A heavy silence descended upon the man and B as they waited momentarily for the girls to pass. After they’d gone, the man slowly unzipped his black bag and took out an installment card with a number of spaces on it crowded tightly together. As soon as he confirmed that B’s name was written in the contracting party’s space and that not a single one of the spaces for payments made had been filled in, he promptly slipped the card back into his black bag, moving his hands as precisely as a magician. Only then did B realize that the reason her mother had kept those books was because not a single payment had been made on them.
“I don’t want to humiliate you here at school.”
Now extremely nervous, B stared up at the man’s face, awaiting his next words.
“Are there any adults at your home?”
“My house is quite far away.”
B wasn’t unkind to strangers. But by the sound of her wavering voice, one could guess how much she wanted to avoid this situation.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s far away.”
The man’s gaze was as cold as his response was predictable.
B bit her lip. Leading the bill collector to her home would be a betrayal of her family and land them in trouble. Her mother might not be her real mother, but B couldn’t forsake the woman who was raising her. In fact, it was B’s sincerity that kept the unfair treatment she received from her family from being unbearable. Her mother would be at a loss when B and the man walked through the gate, but surely she’d soon afterward give her daughter a sharp, questioning look. Her brother would thoroughly scorn her as thoughtless and disloyal, saying that he’d known all along she’d one day cause this kind of big problem.
“You can go to my house, but my father isn’t there. Neither is my eldest brother.”
B spoke the truth, but the man looked down at her with eyes that knew well enough the guiles of children.
“Is your mother not home either?”
At the man’s incisive question, B’s face reddened as if she’d been caught doing something bad.
The man kept watch on the entrance while B went back to the classroom to pack her schoolbag. He quickly recognized her coming out of the classroom in a gap among the other children, approaching him slowly, as if the air was pressing down on her. Holding his black bag at his side, he started to follow behind B as closely as her shadow. B’s body stiffened as a chill ran down her back. It felt like several needles were poking into the back of her head, and she didn’t seem to be able to breathe as deeply as she wanted. How many times in her life had she imagined that someone was following her? But even then, the person following her was always a dignified servant in search of his master’s heir, or a genius film director, able to recognize her allure at first sight. Nowhere in B’s broad and colorful imagination did the possibility exist that she’d one day suddenly become a criminal under strict observation, driven to a place she had no desire at all to go. To make matters worse, the moment B really wanted to avoid, that moment at the end of the laborious journey when they finally managed to reach her home, was waiting for her.
Around this time last year, B’s mother decided to buy the complete collection of World’s Classics for Boys and Girls. At first, she hadn’t intended to buy any more storybook collections. The salesperson had recommended instead a complete collection of literature for young adults. However, it comprised thirty volumes, whereas the collection of World’s Classics for Boys and Girls, with no less than fifty volumes, was the same price. Above all, it could be purchased under a special installment plan, where no payments had to be made for the first six months. Her mother especially liked those conditions. She’d found it strange, of course, that the bill collector never came, but she wasn’t the kind of person to take the initiative to contact him first. Nevertheless, thought B, if he’d only come on the date when the payment was due, this kind of thing wouldn’t have happened.
However B thought about it, she’d done nothing wrong. Above all, that she could be considered a bad person through no fault of her own made B feel mistreated and embarrassed. What’s more, there didn’t appear to be any hope that her innocence would be brought to light. The man didn’t care if she was innocent or not, and being right or wrong in achieving his purpose didn’t seem to be important to him, either. Without this kind of detachment, people carrying out orders could make up their minds to do whatever they wanted. B became worried. In this world, be
ing right or wrong might have been unimportant right from the beginning.
Bus Stop; Traveling Together
THE BUS STOP was noisy with the clamor of students going to the movie theater. Every time a bus stopped, a portion of the children would crowd on all at once, their calves and book bags bumping into each other. The other passengers felt an assault on their hearing as if, instead of a group of schoolgirls, dozens of loudspeakers malfunctioning in high pitches had been suddenly loaded on. Each bus departed uneasily, as if about to burst, owing more to the boisterous sound of the schoolgirls, it seemed, than the fact that it was filled to capacity. B watched the girls with envious eyes.
Not that long ago, B too had planned to be part of the crowd getting on the crammed buses to go see the movie. She was supposed to have eaten instant noodles or ddeokbokki at the snack shop in front of the movie theater and then leaned back in one of the seats in the dark theater, looking up at the screen. But her present predicament was far removed from such everyday pleasures. B felt a burning sensation on the ridge of her nose. Her only desire was to go back to a time before the man had appeared. If her request could be granted, like in the story The Three Wishes, she wanted things the way they used to be. Also, B thought, time might be passing toward me from two different directions. It’s moving in the present direction because I crossed one of the invisible boundary lines. Of all the lines on earth, I wonder how I happened to cross this line, the one that led this man, this bearer of bad news, to me.
“How did you find me?” asked B.
“They tell you who’s assigned to which school at the education office.”
Contrary to B’s notion that her existence was completely hidden, it was apparently short and easy work to find a transfer student. The man informed her of one more fact.
“There are many ways to find out where someone has moved. But a reliable way of collecting debts is to go to the school first and let the children lead you to their homes.”
The fact that the bill collector went to schools meant that he could find children and demand payment whenever he wanted. The parents had no choice but to pay. B didn’t even want to think about the possibility of the man coming back to her school. She had no choice but to lead him to her home now. The Little Mermaid had only one way to return to the sea: to stab her beloved prince with a knife. It was the same for B. All she had to do to free herself from the man’s watchful eye was lead him promptly to her mother. The Little Mermaid threw away the knife and became sea foam of her own free will, but for B there was no other option.
“Don’t you take the bus?” asked the man when B walked past the bus stop.
“The bus doesn’t go to our house.” The words she’d prepared just a moment earlier sprung from her mouth awkwardly but quickly.
It was the first time she’d walked home from school, but if she kept following the string of bus stops, she had no fear of getting lost. Even though it was a few hours walk to her home, she wanted to make it more difficult for him. Against the man’s authority as an adult and his absolute authority as a righteous executor, the only power B held over an older person like him was to bring him discomfort. As an extraordinary being, B couldn’t behave obediently like a normal child.
Unskilled in the act of deceiving adults, B was surprised when she realized that she’d unknowingly quickened her pace and had to suddenly slow down. She looked back out of the corner of her eye and saw the man following quietly. Even so, her insistent heartbeat sounded urgent, as if it was about to jump out through the jacket of her school uniform. Acting as though nothing was wrong, she had to calm herself by secretly placing her hand over her heart. She let out a long sigh. She realized that if she was to be viewed as a bad person, she’d have to start doing bad things.
In Front of the Theater; Tears
B AND THE man walked down a road built along the embankment of a small stream. In the afternoon, the sunlight of the approaching spring was languid and warm. The light made gentle patterns in the water as it hit the shallow stream, and amid the verdant grass sprouting from the hills, there was an abundance of mugwort with its white inner leaves sticking out on display. On the branches of the cherry trees planted along the stream, the swollen flower buds seemed ready to burst any moment, the pink hue inside their light green coverings suffering from fatigue. The willow trees, like the rest, were busy absorbing the moisture under the hard soil through their wriggling roots, diligently pushing the fresh water up to their branches. It was a scene that B couldn’t appreciate when she took the bus. A gentle breeze caressed her neck, which was exposed below her short bobbed hair.
Spring was everywhere. When they entered the street behind the theater, the abundance of lovers there, normal for a Saturday afternoon, caught their eyes. Some of them, lost in their own happiness, even smiled at the man and B as they approached, walking closely together. The students from B’s school were nowhere to be seen. Those who’d taken the bus had arrived some time ago, and the movie they came to see had already started. None of B’s classmates watching the movie would notice her absence. The small amount of attention that she’d received because of the special visitor would also have been forgotten.
A single teardrop sudden ran down B’s face and dangled from the tip of her chin. Another tear fell from her face and made a spot on the toe of her running shoe. At first, she was at a loss. She’d wanted to maintain a dignified appearance right until the end of her encounter with the man, but she suddenly changed her mind. For fear that she should stop crying, she desperately started to think about sad stories: Nobody’s Boy, about a boy who had to wander about all alone with a monkey as his friend; 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, in which a boy had to roam far and wide to find his mom, obviously; A Little Princess, about a girl who’s treated cruelly, like a servant, by the arrogant and ugly Lavinia; The Wild Swans, the sad tale of a princess who, not allowed to speak under any circumstances, gets mistaken for a witch and is dragged off to be executed. Finally, B covered her face with both of her hands. Her book bag slipped from her grip and struck the sidewalk, her pencil case and books spilling out in a heap on the ground.
With her hands still on her face, she leaned against a telephone pole and sobbed. While one part of her was trying to think sad thoughts, her imagination was running wild. Passersby would approach B and ask her why she was crying, putting the man in an awkward situation. He couldn’t tell them that he was leading her home in order to collect money. With any luck, a large gentleman would pass by and drive the man away, asking him why he was harassing a young girl. If it were her eldest brother, who never lost a fight, he’d definitely do that for her. B suddenly missed him, but he’d apparently crossed a boundary line to another dimension and gotten sucked into a black hole. Her father likewise wasn’t a heartless brute who would simply pass by a crying child. Once he’d gotten off of his bicycle, he would, with his uniquely resolute expression, demand that the man explain himself. B moved her shoulders up and down with more and more intensity. Since the man may not have been aware of the anguish he’d inflicted upon a young child, it was necessary at that precise moment to make him ever more conscious of his wrongdoing. B was even prepared to faint, if necessary, as she had during her outdoor lesson at school.
But as B presently held her face in her hands, leaning against the telephone pole, there was no one around her. All the people were either going their own way or lingering in front of the theater. Those who couldn’t get tickets because of the throng of students were busy talking among themselves about their plans for the day. No one was concerned about B. With his own black bag under his arm, and holding B’s school bag in one hand and a cigarette in the other, the man simply waited with a blank expression on his face. He stuck out his lower lip and blew the cigarette smoke upward. He didn’t even have the tolerance to wait for the persistent child to calm down. When he viewed a crying person, he looked as if he’d never experienced basic human sympathy. The man extended the school bag toward B, who, in order to p
ut an end to her intense sobbing in the most natural way, sniffled intermittently while gradually slowing the movement of her shoulders.
“Isn’t there a snack shop or something around here?”
He spoke calmly, as if he hadn’t even seen B crying. Occupied as he’d been with riding the suburban bus since morning, he hadn’t managed to eat a proper meal. B, having walked for so long that her legs hurt, and even having resorted to tears, was hungry, too.
Snack Restaurant; Delicious Ddeokbokki
THE MAN HAD asked for a plate of dumplings for himself and ddeokbokki for B. When B’s stomach was full, her mind was much more at ease. The predicament of Jean Valjean, the poor, emaciated soul who stole a loaf of bread after going without food for three days, occurred to her. Seeing the man closely across the narrow snack shop table, he didn’t really look that calm after all. When a dumpling slipped from his chopsticks and fell into the saucer of soy sauce, he reminded B of her impatient second-eldest brother as he clucked his tongue in frustration.