No One Writes Back

by Jang Eun-jin

  I wonder how much more time must pass before he forgets his nature. Unlike humans, dogs don’t seem to know what it is to forget. If a dog has been trained not to forget, shouldn’t it be trained again to forget what it has learned before, when the knowledge becomes useless? The life of a dog is a life, too, and changes are bound to occur in life, so shouldn’t readjustments be made to fit the changes?

  I put the leash around Wajo’s neck and step out of the motel.

  10. The convenience store sign shines brightly. Sometimes, I think that these signs emit the brightest lights in the city. Whenever I go past the light into a convenience store, I think of 56. 56 is someone I met while eating cup noodles at a convenience store table.

  I was breaking my wooden chopsticks in half when 56 said to me, “When is a convenience store most like a convenience store?”

  Because of his question, the chopsticks didn’t break evenly. I grow a little nervous whenever I break wooden chopsticks, because if they don’t break evenly, I can’t maneuver them evenly.

  Frowning, I said, “I guess when I feel convenienced, since it’s a convenience store.”

  56 sat up straighter, with a look on his face that said he hadn’t expected me to answer his question. But for me, such a reaction was even more unexpected. I was a traveler, and traveling is an action taken to make it easier for strangers to approach you, and it becomes meaningful only when you approach strangers with ease. If you think about it, the purpose of travel isn’t to see the scenery or architecture. The scenery and architecture are important, too, but I always thought that they came after people. 56 began to share with me his ideas on “when a convenience store is most like a convenience store,” saying that I was the only person who had ever answered his question.

  “You’re wrong. It’s when you’re eating cup noodles. Without cup noodles, a convenience store is nothing but a corpse. Isn’t it fantastic? You just pay for the noodles, and they give you hot water for free, and a seat, and even let you throw away the trash after you’ve eaten. I can’t understand people who eat cup noodles at home. That’s something that defies cup noodles’ reason for existence,” he said.

  “So cup noodles are the symbol of convenience stores?” I asked.

  “That’s a great way to put it. Sometimes I wish that they sold only cup noodles at convenience stores.”

  “Do you eat cup noodles often?”

  “Almost every day. Above all, they’re cheap, easy to prepare, and taste good, too.”

  “And there’s a great variety of them.”

  “Right. When they give you options, it means they don’t look down on you.”

  “You’ve never had them at home?”

  56 didn’t answer. We talked about cup noodles until we had emptied our cups. I found out then that there’s a lot to be said about cup noodles alone.

  After polishing off the last drop of the soup, I asked him suddenly, “Can I write you a letter later?”

  “A letter? Sure. That sounds hot somehow, like cup noodles,” he said.

  “What’s your address?”

  “My e-mail address is . . .”

  “No, I mean your home address.”

  56 clammed up again. Finally, I understood. 56 had no address.

  As long as he didn’t have an address, a convenience store would always be most like a convenience store. One of the rules I had set down on this journey was to give a number to only those who gave me their address. Nonetheless, I gave him a number—56. For 56, I just wanted to do it, regardless of the rules. So 56 was the only one who had a number without an address. And the only one who couldn’t receive my letter. Even now, 56 is probably going from one convenience store to another, somewhere in this cold city, eating hot cup noodles.

  I’m about to pick up some samgak gimbap, but change my mind and head toward the cup noodle shelf, thinking I should eat the symbol of convenience stores since I was at one. Just as 56 said, there’s a great variety, and I don’t feel looked down upon. But seeing as how I want to try the shrimp flavor as well as the kimchi flavor, and even the black bean flavor as I walk down the aisle, I wonder if the variety isn’t there just to incite your desire, pretending not to look down on you. After all, even someone without an address needs desire. It seems, however, that humans can’t free themselves of choices and decisions, no matter where they go. Life doesn’t go on if you don’t choose one thing or another.

  After racking my brain, I finally decide on the shrimp flavor, and buy some fishcakes and ham for Wajo, as well. Since I met 56, I never have cup noodles in a room at a motel or an inn. Cup noodles seem to taste best when I eat them at a convenience store. The soup warms my insides. The soup must be too hot. It makes me want to tell someone in a letter that they should try some cup noodles at a convenience store, if they want to feel that a convenience store is indeed most like a convenience store.

  11. After finishing my meal, I come back to the motel with a beer and some nachos. The proprietor at the counter still looks at us with suspicion in her eyes. I take ten points off her character.

  I put the beer and the nachos down on the bed, and go into the bathroom to take a shower. I wash my hair, and then my underwear, and hang it to dry. I threw away a pair of underwear with holes in it, so I have to stay naked until the underwear dries. The greatest burden for a traveler is his clothes. Two pairs of underwear and one outer layer of clothing will suffice. I buy new clothes only when my old ones gets tattered or so torn I can no longer wear them. People who care about appearances can never travel. In some cases, of course, circumstances naturally prevent you from caring about appearances.

  My younger sister is a case in point of someone who can’t travel because of her clothes or appearance. She has never traveled, for she dreads getting ready for a trip. She has tried, of course, several times to go on a trip. The problem was that as she packed this and that, her luggage increased, and in the end, she couldn’t go anywhere because of too much luggage.

  I say from time to time, if you want to know about someone else’s desires, you should have them pack a suitcase. Or take a peek into their suitcase. Someone who packs his bag with all kinds of stuff ends up suffering from just that much fatigue and stress, even while traveling. The weight of the bag alone will guarantee that. The trip, intended as a way to unburden yourself, suddenly becomes a burden in itself. People who care about what other people think of them, like my sister, can never go on a trip.

  Instead, my sister planned other trips—trips to the department store, on which she wore high heels and carried a purse. She insists to whoever’s next to her that shopping is a form of traveling, too. It’s a good thing that at least she doesn’t say she’s back from traveling when she’s back from shopping.

  “All you do is g-go spend money—th-that’s not traveling,” I said.

  “Your feet hurt, and you get something out of it, so it’s the same thing. Do you know what an incredible thing it is to walk around in high heels? It’s a lot more ascetic than the travels you talk about,” she said.

  My sister always sounded nervous, sharp, and edgy, like someone with a mental disorder.

  “W-why would you t-take it upon yourself to do something like that?” I asked.

  “Because at least it’s less painful than when people stare at me like I’m an ugly monkey,” she replied.

  “. . .”

  Whenever my sister came back from her trips to the department store, both her arms would be laden with shopping bags like clusters of apples. She looked even more tired coming back from her trips. She didn’t gain any wisdom, even as she picked and ate the apples that hung from her arms. The apples only enticed—when she bit into them, they didn’t taste like anything at all. Nevertheless, my sister’s journeys for sweet apples that did not exist never came to an end. She spent nearly all her income adorning herself. The only thing that can stop the rule of desire is death. My sister won’t be able to change her habits until the day she dies.

  12. I have a beer
, sitting naked on the bed. Now and then, the sound of a girl’s lilting laughter and moans float over from the room next door. I am startled, having forgotten that some people really do opt for “a rest.” Because of them, motels once again become secretive, very suggestive places. I look down at my naked body. I laugh, thinking that the lovers next door and I probably don’t look all that different. Nude is the most appropriate attire for a motel.

  There’s one question that comes to my mind whenever such sounds of excitement reach my ears. Are they doing it with the lights on, or off? There was a way I could check, by going outside and looking up at the windows, but I can’t go out in this state. If someone asked, I’d say that I would do it with the lights on. When I turn the lights off, I imagine all places to be like my home, and then I can’t do anything. I wouldn’t be able to feel a girl’s breasts, let alone get an erection, and she would turn her cold back on me.

  When I left home, I suffered from a phobia. At first, I thought I’d come down with claustrophobia, like the peculiar Mr. Sommer in Patrick Suskind’s The Story of Mr. Sommer. I found out by chance that it wasn’t claustrophobia, but phobia of a certain place, when I went over to my friend’s house. Surprisingly, there wasn’t the slightest sign of my seizures, which had continued on for some time, even though his house was small, filthy as a dumping ground, and smelly—the kind of a place that would make even normal people go into a seizure. Thinking it odd, I stayed at another friend’s the next day, and at another friend’s after that for a few days. Still, my seizures didn’t return, and I went back home, thinking I was better now. But as soon I stepped in through the door, the awful seizures started again. I had cold sweat running down my back, I felt nervous, I couldn’t digest food, and I couldn’t sleep. I ran away again to my friend’s, feeling as though I would die at any moment. A writer once said that home could heal your sicknesses and bring you happiness, but in my case, the opposite was true.

  That’s how I came to quit my job, and decided to come on this journey. I could sleep comfortably anywhere, as long as the place didn’t look like my house. Luckily, the house wasn’t one of those apartments which were exact replicas of each other. So for me, the place of safety wasn’t my house, measuring 45 pyeong, but the entire earth except for those 45 pyeong. To put it another way, I had lost the desire to possess a place of my own, with decent furniture.

  13. Instead, a desire for words swelled up in me around that time. It was my friend who lived in the filthy, smelly house who first sensed my desire.

  The night I stayed over at his house, he said to me, “You seem smarter in some way.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “That’s it, exactly.”

  “Wh-what do you mean by ‘that?’”

  “That. Before, you would have said, ‘Wh-wh-what do you mean by that?’ but now, you’re saying, ‘Wh-what do you mean by that?”

  Suddenly, it dawned on me that I was beginning to talk again. I told my friend to keep talking to me, and he really kept talking to me all night. Later on, he even asked some weird questions, such as, “Have you slept with Yuseon?” and “How many girls have you slept with so far?” My words sounded smarter, less stunted, even to myself. Now that I sounded smart, I didn’t feel like an idiot when I said I’d slept with only three girls, at my age.

  In the end, I got so ambitious that I came to wish that I could talk without stuttering at all. I wanted to use this chance to fix my problem, once and for all. It seemed, too, that since I would be able to survive only if I talked well and often, I shouldn’t neglect the problem any longer. Words equaled communication, and I, more than anyone else, was someone who could survive only through communication.

  I never used to initiate conversations, and I couldn’t even answer questions very well, but the next night, I kept talking to my friend.

  “Have you ever slept with S-Sugyeong?” I asked, and went on to ask, “How m-many times have you s-slept with girls?”

  He said he’d slept with Sugyeong the night they started going out, and said he’d slept about a hundred times with girls, adding that only an idiot would keep count of each and every time he slept with a girl. Because his words were smart, he sounded manly, and seemed like an incredible person. He even looked decent and honorable. I wanted to go on talking because I wanted to look as cool as he did, and I felt confident that I could; I even felt that I could make the arduous effort required to change “Wh-what do you mean?” to “What do you mean?”

  Exhausted from keeping the conversation going with my friend, I fell into deep thought that night before sleep. What if I went from place to place, talking to people, since I couldn’t go home anyway because of my seizures? My journey, thus begun, has continued for nearly three years. And I no longer stutter. Not only that, I’ve learned how to approach strangers and initiate conversations. For instance, I’d say, “Excuse me, Miss, you have a run in your stocking.” The problem is that occasionally, I can’t tell between the things I should and shouldn’t say.

  14. So this journey is a means by which I can survive without dying, a measure by which I can grow stronger through words, and an experiment through which I can confront the world. If no one listened to and understood my words and thoughts, they would be meaningless. That’s why I had to meet someone, anyone, and talk to them. To do that, I had to walk; I had to go somewhere, anywhere. If I got tired of the street, my obsession might get tired of me and leave me too, I thought.

  I think I’ve grown somewhat, for sure, during the three years I’ve traveled. That’s what it means to be alone, to look after yourself. My growth, which had come to a stop three years ago, seems to have come to a completion now, at last. I no longer seek change by running after it. That doesn’t mean, however, that I want to walk ahead of, or next to, change. If I can detect change, that’s quite enough.

  15. After finishing the beer, I close my eyes, leaving the lights on. I can hear the sound of Wajo snoring now and then, and the sound of the lovers next door opening the door and leaving. I feel like listening to the Beatles. I take out my MP3 player with its 2,300 songs from my backpack, and put on the earphones.

  16. The underwear is completely dry. The good thing about summer is that laundry dries fast. Even if it’s not dry, you can put it on and it doesn’t matter, in summer. Winter isn’t an appropriate season for drying jeans or traveling. Before I leave the room, I squeeze myself in under the bathroom sink, and write a short sentence with a marker on the underside of the sink: August 3, 2009. Wajo and I were here.

  The reason why I leave a mark on the underside of the sink, of all places, is because out of all the things comprising a motel, that’s the spot that’s the hardest to see. The harder it is to see, the lower the likelihood of it being discovered and removed. Because of the low likelihood of it being discovered, the person who discovers it becomes seized with a sense of wonder. And above all, there’s something secretive about words that can be found only when you cram your head in with difficulty.

  I take the room key to the counter. The feeling of emptiness that comes over me every time I leave a room returns as usual, never to be gotten rid of, like a tattoo. It’s because I sense that I’ll never be able to return to this place. It would be nice if the person I wrote to in this room happened to stay here, some distant day in the future. When she does, the sentence on the sink will be a secret between 239 and me, as furtive as a motel. I think at least one secret should be shared between those who write each other letters. If a journal entry is a one-man crime, a letter is a joint principal offender, or an abettor.

  Taking the key from me, the proprietor looks at Wajo and says he’s handsome, and asks how old he is. Like everyone who has a dog, I like it very much when people show interest in Wajo. I feel offended for no reason when they don’t. Since she did show interest, her character, which had lost some points, gains some back. Wajo is thirteen years old. He’s an old man in human years.

  “He’s the same kind of dog that’s in the mov
ie, Maeumi, right?” she asks.

  “Yeah, a Labrador retriever.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Wajo.”

  “That dog was a good actor, too.”

  What does she mean by “too?” Has she figured it out already?

  As though in acknowledging a fact, I say, “He’s a pretty good actor himself.”

  She gives Wajo a piece of leftover bread.

  Wajo lifts one leg upon leaving Motel Iris, peeing on the door. It’s his private ritual. Like the sentence I left on the sink.

  17. After leaving the motel, I look for the nearest mailbox. It’s quite difficult to find a mailbox these days. After walking two hundred meters, I finally see a clumsy looking mailbox standing blankly next to the police station.

  I stand before the mailbox, fidgeting with the letter for a long time. It’s not that I want to open it. I never open an envelope I’ve sealed. Reading over a letter you wrote the night before is an act of denying yourself. When you read it over, you’re bound to find at least one or two sentences you want to erase, like a mistake you made in the past. I don’t think you need to be ashamed of them, since they’re symptoms that occurred because you were too true to your feelings, or because you were full of courage. If we don’t allow ourselves to have courage at night, at least, we’ll have to live as cowards all our lives. I push the letter into the slot. The letter drops, with a light thud, to the bottom of the empty mailbox. I’ve grown accustomed to the sound.