by Jang Eun-jin
“I don’t mean it wouldn’t be necessary, I mean the numbers would be a language in themselves. A universal language.”
“You’ve met only 751 people in three years?”
“What do you mean, only? To me, they’re as many as the stars. I don’t grant a number to just anyone.”
“What kind of a person would you have to be?”
“Someone who tells me their address.”
If I counted all the people I’ve met so far, the number would be well over three or four times 751. Of all those people, there were seven hundred and fifty who told me their address when I asked them in the final moment. When I asked people for their address, the first thing they did was become suspicious. Then gradually, they would become guarded. Even those I thought I’d gotten to know well through conversation turned into completely different people when I asked them for their address. It seemed as if they were afraid that one day, I’d show up at the address and bother them or harm them, or secretly break in and steal something. Even if they did give me their address, I couldn’t assume that they weren’t giving me false information. But for now, I have no choice but to believe that it wasn’t false.
“You mean, you remember all seven hundred and fifty of them by their numbers? That’s incredible,” the woman says.
I feel somewhat pleased, and straighten up my shoulders despite myself. Like the words of an old scholar, who said that giving cultural and historical meaning to a meaningless number creates unexpected drama, the numbers I knew all had a drama of their own. When I say that I remember their drama as well as their number, based on the number alone, the woman’s eyes grow wide.
“That’s amazing. So why did you give me a number without even asking for my address?” she asks.
“I had to call you by something since you kept following me, and I didn’t really want to bother. It doesn’t really mean anything,” I say.
“When are you going to ask me for my address?”
“I’ll see how it goes—I might not even ask at all. 751 is still a temporary number.”
That’s what I say, but actually, I’m curious as to what kind of a drama will unfold through the number.
“Boy, are you fussy. Are you like that with everyone else, too? Maybe that’s why only that many people told you their address,” she says.
“What do you mean, only!” I flare up, though I’m not really sure why.
For some reason, I can’t seem to speak in a nice way to the woman. It’s probably because we didn’t meet in such a nice way.
61. Music continues to flow out from the laptop. It’s amazing how you can wander around like a nomad and still use the Internet. The term “digital nomad” wasn’t coined without reason. Suddenly, the woman begins to tap on the keyboard, mumbling to herself.
“0 believes that numbers don’t betray or lie, so why don’t they write back?” she says.
I look at her. She stops tapping on the keyboard for a moment, looking as though she’s thinking intently on something. Then she begins to mumble again, tilting her head this way and that as though she’s talking to someone.
“There could be a number of reasons. Maybe all the addresses were fake; maybe the numbers just didn’t want to bother writing; maybe they were illiterate, or indifferent; or maybe they died or moved; maybe they thought the letters were from someone they didn’t know, or maybe the letters got lost on their way; maybe they haven’t read the letters yet, or didn’t like what they said; maybe they’re not such great people, or maybe the messenger lied . . .” she goes on.
Listening quietly to her words, I find them all plausible, which suddenly frightens me. I’ve never considered such possibilities. She must have an extraordinary imagination, since she writes novels. But I’m angry in a way because she has dashed my hopes to the ground. She begins to mumble to herself again.
“Why does he write letters? Does he want to receive letters himself? Or does he write because he’s already received them? It’s like the question of the chicken or the egg, isn’t it?” she asks me, after talking to herself the whole time. I don’t answer. Then she begins to talk to herself again.
“I think 0 writes letters because he wants to receive letters. That must be why he says he won’t go back home until he gets a reply, right? A letter not sent or delivered is like a letter not written, isn’t it? So in the same way, a letter without response is like a letter not written, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you think you’re being too cruel, when you should be comforting me?” I protest.
“All I did was put my imagination to use.”
“But you’re saying that all the letters I’ve written up to now have all been in vain.”
“Are you mad?”
“How can I not be mad, when you say stuff like that?”
“Your cold is gone, isn’t it?”
“ . . . ?”
The cold really has left, while I had my mind off it. My body feels as light as cotton. But even if she had really put on the show of wordplay for my sake, my anger doesn’t easily subside. I lie down, wrapping the blanket around myself and thinking, tomorrow, I’m going in the opposite direction from her, no matter what.
62. The moonlight shines in through the little motel window. It’s the kind of a night when the moonlight would seem much more beautiful with the lights out. The woman is about to turn the lights off, but stops when I tell her that I can’t sleep without them. She seems to think that she was doing me a favor by not turning the lights off. But I think since I paid for the room, my habits should be given first priority. I have the bed to myself, and the woman is on the floor with Wajo. She must be having trouble falling asleep because of the light, for she’s tossing and turning. She must sense that I’m having trouble falling asleep too, because she initiates a conversation.
“Are you sleeping?”
“How can I sleep, after hearing something like that? It’s been three whole years.”
“Are you still mad?”
“ . . .”
“There will be a number soon who understands how you feel, 0, because numbers are infinite,” she says.
“ . . .”
I look at the moon. My heart relaxes as the moon shines down on me. As I relax, I feel like asking her questions for no reason.
“Have you ever written a letter?”
“I write e-mails all the time.”
“I mean letters on paper, not business e-mails.”
“No.”
“Never? Have you gotten any, then?”
“No.”
“How can you live like that? Don’t you get letters from your readers?”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Get letters from readers?”
“Not necessarily letters from readers.”
“I do want to get letters, of course.”
“If you did, would you write back?”
“Of course I would.”
“You don’t get any letters because you only think about getting them. If you want to get them, first try sending them. You’ll be sure to hear back.”
“From looking at you, 0, that doesn’t seem to be the case. And who writes letters on paper in this day and age? It’s too much hassle. Just finding a mailbox was hard enough. There’s a good reason why mailboxes have been disappearing. If you send an e-mail, you might get a reply soon. So next time, ask for their e-mail address, not their home address.”
A hassle . . . Still, I don’t think all those people would consider it a hassle to write letters on paper. I want to argue.
“They say that people lie more when they write e-mails than when they write letters on paper. I don’t like digital correspondence. I like analog letters. You can keep it by your side and take it out and read it whenever and wherever you are. It’s inconvenient to have to boot up your computer every time you want to read a letter, and it seems a little cold, and a waste to pay the cost of electricity to read and write a letter. I mean, writing is a basi
c human act, and to think that it requires money seems a little . . . And a person’s character and dignity show through his handwriting, in subtle ways. It can give you vital information about the person. I know that digital methods are great and convenient, but they can’t show their true worth without electricity. They’re unreliable. Especially for a traveler like me, analog methods suit better,” I say.
“But with e-mails, you don’t have to pay for writing paper and envelopes and pens. Plus, they’re fast and you can check to see if they’ve been received, and you can cancel the dispatch if you change your mind. In the end, there’s a price to be paid either way. We live in a digilog era, when neither the digital nor the analog method alone is enough, so you should use both, combined together. Some people may prefer letters on paper, but some are used to e-mails,” she says.
“What matters is the care and thought that can be felt with hands,” I say.
“Those things can be found in e-mails, too,” she says.
“Let’s leave it at that. I don’t think talking all night would bring us to an agreement,” I say, and roll over toward the window.
The moon shines brightly, and I gently close my eyes.
I ask with my eyes closed, “Aren’t you going home? For me the last day of my journey will be the day I get a letter, but when will your journey end, 751?”
I hear her voice come from behind me, saying, “The day I finish my novel.”
I open my eyes again.
“You write novels when you travel?”
“Whenever I publish a novel, I go around selling it, and see the world and think about my next novel in the process. When I come up with an idea, I start writing, and when my writing is finished, my journey comes to an end as well,” she says.
“So you travel more to write new novels than to sell books? And you get ideas for your novels as you travel around?” I ask.
“Right,” she says.
“So in other words, you’re an itinerant novelist?”
“To write, it’s also important to listen to and observe other people.”
“So you followed me because you wanted to observe me?”
“No, because I wanted to hear your story.”
“There’s more you want to hear?”
“If you have more to tell me, 0.”
“How much of your novel have you written?”
“It’s almost finished.”
“So you’ll be going home soon.”
“You wish I’d finish it soon, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
At my cold reply, she shuts her mouth. Have I hurt her feelings?
“Somerset Maugham said that there’s no greater exercise of power than to have someone you don’t know and haven’t met read your works and be moved, and to touch someone’s soul and stir up feelings of compassion or fear,” I say.
“That’s right. Written words are stronger than power. So one day, your letters, 0, will exercise their power and come back to you in the form of a reply,” she says.
“You don’t need to comfort me,” I say.
“I said that because we both write on the road,” she says.
I close my eyes again. My cold must be gone, for my body feels light.
63. The first thing I do when I come out of the motel is look for a phone booth. The woman says I’m welcome to use her cell phone, but I politely decline. Traveling becomes relaxing only when you don’t rely on digital devices. She puts her rejected phone back in her pocket. The coins drop, and my friend picks up the phone. As soon as he picks up, I begin to hurl words at him in an angry voice. He seems a little flustered.
“What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” he says.
“Have you been lying to me all this time?” I ask.
“About what?”
“Have you been saying that I haven’t gotten any letters when I actually have, to screw me over?”
“Would I lie to you when I know what a tough time you’re having out on the street? I should get struck by lightning and killed if I did,” he says.
In my heart, actually, I’d hoped that he’d been lying. I could put up with a little trick like that, I thought. Which meant that I was growing more and more tired of this journey.
“If you really can’t believe me, why don’t you come and see for yourself?” he says.
He must’ve been pretty offended that I doubted him. Today, he’s the one who hangs up first.
64. No one wrote me. No doubt, as always.
65. The bus is driving down the highway. As soon as she sits down, the woman turns on her laptop and continues to tap away on the keyboard. She’s working on her novel. She looks different from her usual self. She looks calm somehow, and even sexy. Especially when she tucks falling strands of hair behind her ear, or tilts her head and bites down on her lip. I recall what my ex-girlfriend once said, that people look their sexiest not when they’ve taken off their clothes, but when they’re concentrating on their work. The other passengers, however, glare at her as though they’re annoyed by the sound of her tapping on the keyboard.
She’s the kind of a person who can concentrate on her writing no matter where she is. I know an unhappy person who can’t write anything unless he’s sitting at his desk in his room with his laptop. He wasn’t a novelist, but wanted to be one. He couldn’t write while traveling, and even if he did manage to write a little, he’d repeatedly delete and rewrite because he didn’t like what he’d written. Even so, the end result wouldn’t be to his satisfaction. He said that a piece of writing that wasn’t to your satisfaction was useless. What he didn’t like probably wasn’t what he’d written, but where he was staying. At his request, I read what he wrote. I read things he wrote in his room and things he wrote elsewhere, but I didn’t see any difference between them. Actually, what he wrote elsewhere seemed to flow smoother and freer. His unhappiness lay in his notion that his writing varied depending on the place where he wrote, and he didn’t even make an attempt to correct the notion.
He soon quit traveling around. No matter what spectacular places he visited, he couldn’t enjoy himself because he had only his own room in mind. He was the happiest when he was sitting at his desk in his room, traveling with his laptop. In the end, he became someone who couldn’t come out of his room all his life. He did write, of course, but he couldn’t be a world-renowned novelist. He could write things that were only as big as the room in which he stayed.
66. The battery must have run out, because the woman closes her laptop. Her face is full of regret that she wasn’t able to write more. Frantically, she writes down in a notebook the words she couldn’t write on her laptop, as though the sentences may flee or evaporate. From my quiet observation, it looks as though she has a hard time writing on paper. Her handwriting isn’t neat, the order is confused, and she often crosses out sentences and squeezes in other sentences in between. It looks as though she’s wasting paper.
I look at her and think that most of the people who have gotten my letters may have just as hard a time writing on paper. For a moment, I wonder if I should try writing e-mails. If I sent an e-mail, maybe I’d get a reply, and I’d at least know if the person got my e-mail. Plus I wouldn’t have to call and bother my friend, and I wouldn’t have to doubt him when he’s done so much for me. A reply that arrives as fast as the letter is sent. But the despair, too, would come just as fast. You could click on an e-mail, full of anticipation, only to be deceived by spam. When that occurs to me, I feel that what’s slower could be better. Hope that’s alive and moving can keep a person going until he falls into despair.
Meanwhile, the bus makes its way into a rest stop. The woman asks me if I’m getting off. I shake my head no. Then she asks me if there’s anything I’d like to eat, offering to get it for me. I shake my head again, as if I’m a little annoyed. She puts her belongings down on the seat, asks me to watch them for her, and gets off the bus. Suddenly I have an ominous feeling that she won’t be coming back. Why, I wonder. It’s prob
ably because of 412.
67. 412, whom I met on an express bus, was someone who sat next to me.
He was friendly, so we quickly became friends. Throughout the bus ride, he told me his life story. He seemed to have led an exciting life. His words came pouring out like those of a medicine peddler, and he was optimistic.
Looking at him, I couldn’t help saying, “You’ve got a great personality. You get that a lot, don’t you?”
“Does it seem that way? I wasn’t always like this,” he said.
“What were you like before?”
“I was fatally cynical, pessimistic, and depressed.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You don’t believe me, do you? I never imagined myself that I’d change so much.”
412 said that it was a high school friend who made him so talkative and cheerful. When I thought about it, the friend was always in the story when he was talking excitedly about his life. By then, I was more fascinated by the friend than by 412, and our conversation naturally turned toward the friend. At the end of our conversation, he said that he was on his way to meet his friend. Then the following words popped out of my mouth.
“Could I meet him, too?”
I probably said that because I, too, wanted to be infected by the positive virus from his friend. Immediately, I clapped my hands over my mouth, as though I’d made a big mistake, but he was neither flustered nor surprised. He said that whenever he told people about his friend, they all begged him to let them meet him.
“You’ll probably fall for him as soon as you see him, too,” he said.
What does someone who makes you fall for him as soon as you see him look like? I wondered. 412 looked a little sad, however, after saying those words. Having gotten his consent more easily than I’d expected, I changed my destination on the moving bus. I was very excited at the prospect of meeting his friend, and asked him for his address while I was at it. As I entered the address into my mind, the bus entered the rest stop. 412 told me that he was getting a cup of coffee, asked me to watch his stuff for him, and got off the bus.