by Heekyung Eun
I found the manuscript at the bottom of the pile of documents after the editor in chief had left. The examination of manuscripts was the jurisdiction of J and the editing committee, so it was rare to find a novel on my desk. In the corner of the cover page, “Needs further review” was written in J’s hand. I casually glanced at the title. The Cosmonauts in 1991. The name of the author was unfamiliar to me. In any case, it was obviously a pen name. Cosmonaut was the word for a Russian astronaut, so it wasn’t hard to guess that the significance of 1991 was the collapse of the Soviet Union.
At around twenty past one, the new employees came in to greet me. I felt the room grow stuffy, the air inside defiled. In addition to the sheer number of people that came in all at once, it was the disorganized energy and ambition emitting from each one’s youthfulness that disturbed the room so much.
I don’t envy young people. They hardly know anything, and they have neither money nor capable friends. They have fresh blood flowing into their brains and muscles, and with their ample supply of passion and time, countless possibilities are open to them. I arrived where I am today by going through that process. I think I’d rather fully enjoy what I have at this point than return to my youth and go through the difficult process of attaining it all again. People who get old with the inability to accept their age are full of self-pity, and cannot escape the gradual descent into loneliness that comes with it. Compared to them, I’m very realistic.
Before I go to work, I sometimes stare at myself in the mirror. The impression of my pillow on my cheek from the previous night’s sleep stays there for hours. My drooping eyelids and the fine wrinkles around my mouth remind me of my father, who in my childhood would sit me down next to him so I could pull out his white hairs. But just as my increasing ability to maintain a certain balance in my bank account is the product of accruing age and time, so too is the loss of elasticity in my face. Since the onset of aging eyes, I’ve given up trying to read the small print on the menu when I go to an expensive restaurant; instead, I’ll call the waiter over to recommend an appropriate meal for me, as if it were the more refined way. Even when I go to my favorite wine bar, I can no longer read the labels on the newly imported wine. Back when when my eyesight was still good, however, I couldn’t even afford to hold a bottle of a high-quality wine, let alone look over its label. Isn’t human life like that, maintaining a regular shape by moving around the irregular parts little by little? Childishness and poverty are the only things I remember from my youth.
After the new employees left, I opened the window and lit a cigarette. The manuscript I’d pushed to the corner of my desk, “The Cosmonauts in 1991,” caught my eye again. I tried the intercom, but the editor in chief was not at her desk. I put out my cigarette, absent-mindedly pulled the manuscript toward me and began to read it, page after page.
I had been reading for about an hour when, at around two thirty, the message, “You’ve got mail,” popped up on my computer screen, accompanied by a short alert sound. I closed the manuscript and opened my email box. The subject line was, “You’ve haven’t forgotten about our appointment, have you?” I recalled once having trouble closing my browser window after I’d opened spam with a similar subject line. The sender’s address was unfamiliar, too, but I clicked on the mail anyway. I’d been contemplating going out to get something to eat, so I was in no mood to linger. The email had only three lines. “We have an appointment today. I will be waiting for you at the River Seine at 8:00. Eun-sook.” I deleted the mail and rose from my chair to see a haze of yellow dust rising outside. It was as if a reddish-gray filter was hanging down over the window. The cityscape looked unreal, like a grainy old documentary program. When I got out of the elevator and stepped outside the building, the wind blew into my face, as if it’d been waiting for me.
I was certain I’d read that manuscript before, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. If it was something I’d read when I was editor in chief, J would know and would have no reason to put a rejected manuscript on my desk. I thought about the time, right after I graduated from college, when I was so promptly rejected at every place I applied for work. I was working parttime as a proofreader at my college senior’s publishing company, and I’d read a lot of the manuscripts circulating around the office in my abundant free time. But surely the contents of manuscripts I read well over ten years ago don’t remain in my memory. Besides, I can hardly remember anything at all from that period of my life, as strange as it may sound. I only remember climbing up the creaking stairs of the wooden building to the sad-looking office, with a coal stove and a small blackboard hanging on the wall behind an iron desk. It was a time when I’d spend my bus fare on a bottle of soju and walk home instead, drinking and shouting into the night, “Nothing is impossible!” Even today, when people I don’t know occasionally approach me as if they know me, I assume they’re people I knew in those days. Needless to say, I’m not very happy to meet people from that most miserable period of my life.
“Humans have to some extent the ability to forget the things they don’t want to remember, and for this reason they are flawed beings, not genuine at all.” I think K was the first to tell me that. Ever serious and pedantic, K even wrote something similar on his suicide note. “Selective memory will allow you to soon forget all about me.” True to his words, I hardly ever think about him. Nor M, who hasn’t been back since he left for Germany fifteen years ago. But without those two, those days would’ve been meaningless and not worth remembering.
I felt like eating something spicy like pan-broiled octopus to bring back my appetite, but I opted for a pasta restaurant where I could sit alone comfortably. As mealtime had already passed, there were some vacant window tables. It wasn’t long ago that I’d avoid tables by the window in brightly-lit restaurants because I felt like I was on display to the outside. But as I ate out alone more and more often, I noticed that it was surprisingly uncommon for passersby to look in on the inside of the restaurant. They were looking at their own reflections in the glass.
As I waited for my scampi in cream sauce, I tried to recall everyone I knew with the name Eun-sook. I lost interest after the sixth one. Thinking only of the business cards I’d received over the last twenty or so years, I realized Eun-sook was a very common name. Off the top of my head, I could even think of two Eun-sooks employed in my own company. The owner of a basement café I frequented until a few years ago was named Eun-sook, as was the realtor who introduced me to my current residence. Staying with my original impression of the email, I concluded that it was some kind of gag. But as I took a sip of the strongly acidic Colombian coffee the server had recommended, a new Eun-sook suddenly occurred to me. She had big eyes, a somewhat pale face, and she showed her pointed canines when she smiled. She was constantly surrounded by a dense, chain smoker’s smoke, and her shoulder bag was always full of photocopies.
“Do you like music?” she asked me one day.
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?” I gave her a bewildered look.
She smiled sweetly, pointing at my T-shirt with her finger. It was a faded mustard yellow T-shirt with musical notes printed randomly over it, something I wore only on days I overslept. In a poor family with lots of brothers, only the most dreadful clothes were left to the one who woke up last. Yes, I attended her wedding, too. How could I have completely forgotten about something like that? Three forty-five. There were only about four hours left until my alleged appointment with the woman. I had no reason to believe that it was that Eun-sook who sent the email. I slowly took another sip of coffee, savoring its aroma.
J might have been able to help if he were still around. I’d get drunk with him, play up my fatigue, show him the weak side of me that I wouldn’t even show my wife. His memory was pretty good, too. I used to say that it was better to ask J about me than it was to ask me. He didn’t have the need I had to forget about, say, something from my miserable years. But he’s in an airplane now, at an altitude of over 10,000 meters.
“Brother.” At the airport, J had called me by the name he used to call me when we were in university all those years ago. “Other things are nothing. This is hard.”
“What are you talking about?” I looked casually at his face.
He was staring into empty space. “It’s not like there wasn’t another way. But I found that it was something I didn’t want to do. I know that there’s someone who can help me if I just open the door, but I don’t feel like getting up. So I just sit there and get beaten.”
“Beaten? By whom?”
J smiled bitterly, perhaps at the severity of my response. “I know why you talked me out of it. Like you said, leaving isn’t going to make much of a difference, and I can’t very well start something new right away. But you know me. I didn’t want to end up just sitting around. Shouldn’t I at least once live my life how I want? There’s still enough time left for that, isn’t there?”
When I came back to my office, the clock showed five after four. I sat down and opened my browser. I typed “River Seine” into the search engine, but none of the results were what I wanted. I typed “Café River Seine.” Five results came up, but they had nothing to do with the place I was looking for. “River City” was a café on a boat, and there was information about various kinds of banquets and water sports. “River Thames” was there, but London, like Paris, was too far away. When I entered “Seine Café,” there was one result, but it was for a place in Kangwon Province. Four hours was enough time to get there, but to go all that way was possible only if I knew for certain that it was the right place, and if I left right away. It also occurred to me that the Seine Café might not be an actual café, but an internet café.
K, M, and I had all gone to Eun-sook’s wedding together. M’s girlfriend, who stuck close to him day and night, had been there, too. When the ceremony was finished, we went to a movie. Then I seem to recall going to a bar when it got dark, as we normally did. We probably drank our fill of cheap alcohol without any food to go along with it and staggered back to our respective homes as usual. That day, as friends of the bride, we should’ve received envelopes filled with cash to have a small party at a café. The name of that café might have been River Seine. Surely Eunsook must’ve been to the place before if she knew about it. Did she and I ever meet at a café, just the two of us? I don’t recall any such place. But we’d agreed to meet there today, according to the email. Still, even if that much is true, I can’t think of any reason at all why we’d need to see each other.
The editor in chief showed up thirty minutes later. She looked much neater with her suit jacket off, possibly because her blouse had short sleeves. Her skirt seemed shorter, too. She was holding a flower pot of royal azaleas that an employee of a client had brought. The vivid pink flowers, sticking their heads through the light green leaves, were splendid.
“What do you think? Don’t they bring your office to life?” When she’d set the flower pot down, she rested one hand on the corner of my desk and leaned there with her entire body slanting. “Have you been looking for me?” When I put her in charge of my entire afternoon schedule, she raised her eyebrows. “About this contribution. Do you have the writer’s contact information?”
“No.”
“The director left without saying anything?” She saw the memo on my desk. “River Seine?”
“Do you by any chance know the place?”
She tilted her head as if in thought and then replied, “I think I’ve seen it somewhere – isn’t it the name of a motel?” I felt she might have been right.
“So you really aren’t going to the meetings with the administration department and the planning committee?” she continued.
“No.”
“You seem unmotivated these days, sir.”
“What, do you want to take over my position?”
“That’s it exactly. You’ve been neglecting your duties, so please submit a written explanation. Either that, or take one week’s vacation.”
“It sounds like I’m becoming less and less needed at this company.”
“Don’t say that. Please just give that depression clinic I told you about a try. Shall I give you an initial diagnosis? You’re always tired, and your body feels like it’s dragging, right?”
“Yes.”
“Your power of concentration is slipping, as is your memory?”
“It seems so.”
“And you find it difficult to make decisions?”
“No, I don’t, actually.”
“Do you consider yourself a pessimist?”
“Very recently, I suppose.”
“Then how about this. You’ve lost interest in things you used to enjoy, haven’t you?”
“Well, like what, for example?”
Without giving a reply, the editor in chief smiled and left the room, her shoes click-clacking against the floor. “River Seine, I’ll let you know if I remember where it is.” Only then did I understand the significance of her last question.
I was about to light a cigarette with the disposable lighter J had left behind when a thought occurred to me. During a period when J came regularly to the morning meetings reeking of alcohol, he’d fish around in his pocket and pull out lighters, one after another, that he’d gotten from places he couldn’t remember. The lighter in my hand, however, didn’t say “River Seine,” but “Friend Karaoke.”
The Soviet Union vanished from the earth on December 24th, 1991. And 1992 was the year I started working in the news company’s publishing department, the first job I had that could be called a regular job. Just out of college, J started working there at the same time. Our first day of work, to which we both wore suits, was in late spring. The first green flower buds were ready to burst, the sky was clear and free of yellow dust, and the city center was burgeoning with the activity of a new workday. The company was on the eighth floor of a marble building with an elevator. There was a computer on my desk, and through the large windows, Namsan Tower could be seen rising majestically.
Only a week earlier, I’d been hunched over an iron desk in a dimly-lit office in a two-story building buried deep down some side street, proofreading material with a red pen in hand. In those days, I’d always walk around with a black vinyl bag at my side, and if I went to a place where I had to remove my shoes, I kept my toes curled up and stole glances at my heels to make sure there weren’t any holes in my socks. At drinking places, there was no such rule for shoe removal. Once, at a cheap naengmyeon restaurant bustling with a lunchtime crowd, someone actually took my old shoes and left a pair of new ones. A few days later, I went back to the restaurant in a joyful mood, actually knowing the comfort of wearing watertight shoes for the first time in years. The owner recognized me, and when he brought out my old shoes with obvious displeasure, I realized I’d done something wrong. I would’ve come to blows with him, who nearly took the shoes from my feet by force, if K hadn’t put a stop to it. I’d wander aimlessly in those days, checking out used bookstores, and then, toward dawn, wake up in some strange place. Eun-sook’s wedding day would have been one of those days.
Packed in among the throng of well-wishers, we jabbered incessantly while we ate galbitang. There were five of us, I believe, for there was an extra chair pulled up to a table seating four. K was there, as were M and his girlfriend. I can’t remember who the fifth person was. K and M were both wearing limp, awkward-looking suits, and I’d been unable to change clothes and was wearing the same blue jacket with the hole in the pocket that I’d worn the previous day. Although the galbitang was getting cold, the air inside the reception restaurant was very hot. I couldn’t take off my jacket because the red pen inside the chest pocket of the shirt with the musical notes on it had leaked ink into a large stain, so I was sweating like a pig. We carried on at the top of our voices, as if not doing so was not an option.
Our conversation was momentarily interrupted when the bride and groom entered the restaurant to greet their guests.
“Thank you for coming.” Eun-sook ex
tended a formal greeting to us in a flashy pink dress. Her large eyes were focused somewhere else.
“Where are you going on your honeymoon?” one of us asked, and the groom said something in reply, but I couldn’t hear what he said from where I was sitting. I had a clear view of Eun-sook’s profile, which kept disappearing and reappearing because the person sitting next to me in the extra chair we’d pulled up was turning his head from the bride to the groom. She was staring unwaveringly at some other place, not looking any one of us in the eyes.
“Don’t forget to invite us to your housewarming,” M said cheerfully.
“Eun-sook, you look very pretty. I wonder when I’ll get to wear a dress like that.” M’s girlfriend seemed truly envious.
K offered some similar words of encouragement. “Unlike the rest of us, you’ll be happy even in April, the cruelest of months.”
The person sitting next to me and I were the only ones who didn’t say anything. As soon as the bride and groom moved on to another table, I got the chatter going again.
Just then, someone interrupted me. “Are you sad that Eunsook got married?”
With that one remark, they all started in on me.
“You secretly liked her, didn’t you?”
“No, I think you’re under the illusion that she liked you.”
“So now you feel like you’ve been betrayed, is that it?”
“I can’t even imagine you with Eun-sook.”
“Do you need to see her again?” K and M started to giggle, and M’s girlfriend glared at M to stop.
“Let’s go have drinks,” I said. The person sitting next to me then politely suggested that we first go to the movie theater and stay until the sun sets because drinking in the daytime, especially in spring, was dangerous. I picked up my black vinyl bag from the restaurant floor and held it at my side. I think it was K who always told me to be careful not to lose my bag. I somehow ending up leading the way, and as I opened the door, with the sun shining down on my face, dazzling my eyes, I turned and glanced back at my friends. I clearly remember feeling somewhat sad as I took a step out into the bright street. It’s strange. As a forgotten day from my youth came vividly back to life, everything in the present began to feel unreal.