by Jang Eun-jin
412, however, never came back on the bus. I pled with the driver to wait a little more because there was someone who wasn’t back, but the driver had other passengers to consider. Thanks to the driver, I was able to wait five more minutes, but 412 never came back. In the end, the bus made its departure, and I stood on the entrance steps looking in the direction of the rest stop until the bus entered the highway. 412 was nowhere to be seen. I came back and sat down on my seat. I saw the stuff 412 had asked me to watch. It was a good thing, I thought, that he hadn’t asked me to watch a newborn baby or a puppy. I got off at my original destination with his stuff in hand. The next morning, I sent a letter, along with his stuff, asking why he never came back on the bus.
68. Suddenly I feel anxious that the woman, like 412, may not return. Should I have asked her for a bottle of water or something? I leap to my feet and look out the window, which isn’t like me. Even if she doesn’t come back, I can’t send her stuff in the mail as I did for 412. Should I have asked for her address earlier? I can easily get it by calling her publisher, I think, and flop back down on my seat. It also occurs to me that I’m a little silly for thinking such thoughts. Just yesterday, I was wishing that we could go our separate ways, that she would finish writing her novel soon. Trying to relax, I cross my arms and close my eyes. At that moment, the bus lurches to a start.
My eyes fly open, and I jump from my seat like a spring puppet and shout out to the driver, “There’s someone missing!”
The driver turns his head and looks at me. I make my way toward the entrance and look out the window as I did earlier. A few restless seconds go by. The driver frowns. The bus lurches a little backwards. I grow more restless and take a step onto the entrance steps. A few more seconds pass. The bus is approaching the road. At that moment, I see the woman in the distance, running toward the bus. She’s running as fast as she can, looking ridiculous. So ridiculous that it almost makes me laugh. But I suppress my laughter and turn right around, and sit back down on my seat. The woman, out of breath, keeps bowing to the driver in apology, and sits down on her seat.
“You could’ve missed the bus! Where were you?” I say to her, as though scolding a child.
Still out of breath, she replies, “I, have no sense, of direction, so it took, a little while, to find the bus.”
“I wouldn’t say a little!”
“Were you worried? That I, might have run away, after asking you, to watch my baggage?”
Instead of answering her, I turn my head toward the window like a sulking child. She brings up to Wajo’s nose the fishcakes and dumplings she bought at the rest stop. Wajo sniffs and wolfs them down. She taps me on the arm and offers me some. I take a look, and turn my head back toward the window.
“This baggage is my life. Would I abandon it and run?” she says.
“Some people do.”
“Would you abandon Wajo and run, 0?”
“That’s different.”
“It’s the same to me.”
I look at Wajo, absorbed in eating. Is Wajo my life, or my baggage? In a way, he’s the one who has led me to this point, so he must be my life. If I had considered him baggage, I would’ve come without him in the first place. I turn my head toward the window. The bus is picking up speed on the highway, and the woman resumes writing her novel in a little notebook.
69. As soon as she gets off the bus, the woman stands in the middle of the terminal square and begins selling books as if in a performance. Without my help now, she gives a reading, introduces herself, answers the audience’s questions, signs the books, and takes pictures, standing side by side with the audience and holding up the books she has signed. In this way, the books get sold off one by one. The people show more interest in the woman, who’s selling her own novels, than in her books. She carries out the task, which some writers may consider humiliating, as though it were her calling in life. I sit on the clock tower far away from her and look at her as though she were a stranger. There’s a faint smile hanging at the corner of her lips. The weather is the hottest it’s been this summer.
As the people scatter away one by one, the woman comes over to the clock tower, pulling her cart. I put The Moon and Sixpence, which I’d been holding in my hand, into my backpack. Lately, I’ve been feeling lonelier while reading. I think it’s because I read novels, and novels are about people. If there’s a novel with only one character, it wouldn’t make me feel lonely. When I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel with only one character. A novel like that probably doesn’t even exist.
When I’ve finished speaking, the woman says, “Well, then, don’t read them.”
“I figure I’ll look less lonely with a book in my hand.”
“So you’re the type that cares what other people think.”
“That’s how you end up when you go around alone. People think people who go around alone are weird.”
“I know what you mean. I often care what people think, too. But in the end, everyone is alone in the world.”
“Everyone is alone, but not everyone thinks so.”
“You have Wajo.”
“People don’t consider Wajo a person.”
“If you’re not lonely because you have Wajo, that means you’re not alone. Wajo would be disappointed if he heard what you just said. It’s arrogant to think that only people can heal loneliness.”
“Have you ever read a novel with only one character?”
She furrows her brows, looking intent.
“No,” she answers.
“That’s because there’s no such novel. There’s no such novel, because people can’t do anything alone. Do you think such a novel exists somewhere I don’t know about?”
“Well, if there isn’t, I’ll write one myself.”
“Even if you did, it’d be a very tedious and boring novel.”
“You never know.”
She starts taking pictures with great enthusiasm, as though clicking the camera shutter is the same thing as writing a novel. When she points the camera at me, I let out a yelp and cover my face with my arms. I hate pictures more than anything in the world. Pictures are tragic things that turn into pain, sorrow, and anguish in the end. I don’t know why people are so desperate to capture tragedy, why they struggle to get at least one picture. People mistake the flash that explodes every time a picture is taken for a blessing. The light is not a blessing, but a splendid method of disguise to cover up the tragedy called a picture. Darkness begins where light ends.
“Why do you take pictures, when you can just remember?” I ask.
“Someone with a good memory like you, 0, may not need them, but someone with a bad memory like me does.”
“Why?”
“Because novels consist of descriptions and reenactments.”
“So you take pictures for your novels?”
“If I could reduce things to numbers, too, I wouldn’t need something as cumbersome as this.”
Am I blessed, indeed? Free of encumbrance? How simple and easy, then. And how liberated I am. Because I can live without the blessing of light, my memory becomes more rich and fertile, and other people’s lives won’t become tragic because of me. Real tragedy is not my own, experienced by me, but other people’s tragedy experienced because of me.
The woman no longer points the camera at me.
70. News flows out from an electronics dealership, saying that the temperature has hit a record high. The woman seems exhausted, and Wajo flops down on the ground as though in protest, his tongue hanging out. I pull his leash, but he doesn’t budge. I find a bit of shadow and duck into it, but the shadow, too, has long been encroached upon by the sultry weather. It seems that we’ll all collapse from sunstroke. The woman, pleading dizziness, suggests that we go in somewhere. We make our way toward the nearest motel from where we’re standing.
Motels are secretive, and almost always suggestive.
No matter how much I insist that I’m just there for a “rest,” no one would beli
eve me now. The woman and I are a couple in anyone’s eyes, and a couple who goes in and out of motel rooms in the middle of the day, at that. The receptionist asks without reserve, “Here for a rest, right?” in a conclusive way, as though there are only so many things that a couple, who crawls into a motel room in the middle of the day, can do there. The look on his face seems to say, what good will it do to roll around on such a stifling day? The place is called Motel Banana, to boot. I tell the receptionist who’s handing me the room key that we’re staying the night, and he looks at me as if in awe. But I put up with him because he generously lets Wajo in.
The woman suggests that since we’re sharing a room, we should use the money saved to get some food that will help regain strength. I say yes without a thought because it’s so hot. It doesn’t feel at all awkward as we enter the motel room side by side, probably because it’s not the first time we’re sharing a room. Exhausted from the heat, we collapse and fall asleep as soon as we enter the room. I don’t know where the time flies.
71. I open my eyes. The room is dark. The woman and Wajo are taking turns snoring rhythmically. It’s dark out the window, too. An unbearably sour stench rises up from every part of my body. The room, too, is reeking of sweat. I get up from my bed and go into the bathroom to take a shower. I can’t help feeling uncomfortable with the woman in the room. I’m in the habit of going around naked in motel rooms, but I can’t do that now. I must put on the underwear I just washed, and I can’t even wash my clothes, which are drenched in sweat. I wash my hair and put the clothes back on. When I do, the sweaty odor seems to seep back into my body. I can’t keep them on, I’m so uncomfortable. They render the shower meaningless, and dispel the refreshing memory. I take the clothes back off, put them in the sink, and rub them clean. A luxury motel would be equipped with robes, but there’s none here. I come out only in my underwear and wrap myself in a blanket.
72. The woman and Wajo wake up at simultaneously an hour later. She just washes her hair without taking a shower. It seems that she just carelessly wiped her body using a wet towel before changing into new clothes and coming out of the bathroom. At first I think it’s because she’s embarrassed to have me hear her taking a shower, but that’s not it.
“I’m going to sweat a bucket again tomorrow anyway, so why should I take a shower?” she says.
“It wouldn’t matter if you were by yourself, but you should give the person next to you some thought.”
She sniffs herself and says, “So what if I smell a little? It’s not like we’re clinging to each other.”
She doesn’t wash very often, and is kind of dirty. She doesn’t care what people think, either. In any case, she’s very odd. People who write must generally be that way. The unfortunate man who couldn’t write unless he was in his own room disliked washing as much as the woman. He wouldn’t take a shower until he finished writing, and wouldn’t wash his hair or cut his fingernails, either. I could guess how far his work had progressed by the length of his fingernails. He later formed the habit of collecting his fingernails. When he showed me a glass jar full of fingernails in the shape of crescent moons, collected over a period of ten years, the first thought that came to my mind was that it was a good thing that they were fingernails, since fingernails are small and white, at least. It would’ve been too awful if they had been hair, bulky and black.
The woman takes poor, innocent Wajo into the bathroom. She lathers up soap and washes every part of him as if she can’t forgive his smell, even though she gives no heed to her own body odor. Wajo must feel refreshed, for he falls back into sleep after his bath. The warmest, most restful sleep in the world washes over you after a shower.
73. Three bowls of samgyetang ordered with the money saved on the room, are delivered to the room. Wajo, who’s been sleeping, gets to his feet and follows the smell to the bowls. The woman and I bone some chicken for Wajo, and take a drumstick each and begin to scarf it down like savages. It was a good idea to save on the room. Samgyetang is the best way to boost your health in the middle of the summer.
I’m digging into the tough breast meat when I hear a loud noise from outside. We look at each other with greasy faces and strain our ears. Someone out there is kicking a door. This happens sometimes when you’re staying at a motel. You can get a general idea of what’s going on even without looking. The couple staying in the room is probably having an affair, and the person outside kicking the door is probably married to one of them. The person outside has grasped the outrageous fact that his or her spouse is having an affair, and has come to raid the scene of the crime. I hear the voice of the person in question. “Open the door! I know everything!” It’s a deep male voice. The situation becomes more clear and complex. The man has come to catch his wife in the act. When I say that, the woman devours a chicken wing in a single bite, sucks noisily on the bone, and shakes her head no.
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“You never know until you see it with your own eyes.”
“Want to make a bet?”
“What kind of a bet?”
“If I’m wrong, you can have the bed tonight.”
“All right.”
Finally, we hear the door opening from the inside. We go right up to our door, and put our ears against it. We hear the sound of people hitting each other, and the sound of someone screaming. Soon the man will be walking out of the motel, dragging his half-naked wife by the wrist. We open the door quietly and peek outside. It’s the room at the end of the corridor.
At last, the people in question are about to reveal themselves. Just as I predicted, a man is pulling someone out by a thin wrist. The person inside seems to be struggling not to go outside. But to no avail. The person comes flying out of the room by the man’s force. Then the other person comes out, clutching a gray suit. Wrapped in a blanket, I stare through the crack in the door at the people walking through the corridor. My mouth hangs open. All three are men, solidly built.
I close the door, turn around, and ask the woman, “How did you know?”
“Just by the tremor in their voices,” she says.
“What’s the difference?” I ask, mystified.
“I can’t really explain; it’s just a feeling I get,” she says nonchalantly.
She finishes off the chicken soup and lies down on the bed. Suddenly, I’m afraid that she might have caught on. That by the tremor in my voice, she might have become aware of how I feel. That more and more, I’m enjoying being with her. That more and more, I’m growing comfortable with, and used to, being with another person.
74. From the adjacent room comes the sound of a woman moaning. An awkward feeling hovers between the woman and me. At times like this, I wonder why the act of love was created to be accompanied by noise. Couldn’t the human body have been made more pliable, so that the intimate act could be undertaken in silence? I feel as if the creaking noise is causing cracks between us. I wish I could go next door and oil up the couple’s bodies. I’m well aware, of course, that there’s no pleasure without pain. Perhaps it’s noise that allows pain to turn into pleasure, and pleasure into pain.
The moaning next door does not cease even after twenty minutes. The woman, probably embarrassed, strikes up a conversation. Hoping that our voices will muffle the noise from beyond the wall.
“What did you pack in your backpack when you left home?” she asks.
The question seems to have been improvised so that we may escape the awkward moment.
“Why do you care what other people carry in their backpacks?” I ask in return.
“Because they must have packed what they need the most, which must be their most necessary desire.”
“An MP3 player and a novel.”
“Those things are poles apart.”
“What about you, 751?”
“A harmonica and a laptop.”
“Music and words. We’re not all that different.”
The woman next door must have reached orgasm, because the moaning su
ddenly escalates. It’s so loud that this time, I improvise a question, hoping it’ll lead our excited nerves elsewhere.
“Why a harmonica?”
“Because it’s small and cheap, and can express the notes clearly.”
The question fades away, and silence falls. Again, we’re embarrassed. The woman, unable to endure the silence, starts to rattle on as though in a soliloquy.
“I had a little sister. She loved music and was a talented composer. Unfortunately, she got into a car accident when she was in elementary school and had to have her left arm amputated. Almost all the refined instruments in the world require ten fingers. The piano, the flute, the guitar, the violin, and even the recorder. There are, of course, countless things in the world you can do with only one arm. You can write, you can drive, you can shake hands. You can have sex, too, of course. But my sister thought that she couldn’t perform music. The harmonica was the instrument I recommended to my sister, who was in despair. Because the harmonica is an instrument you play with your mouth, not your hands. You can play it with only one arm, or with no arm at all, even. My sister thought it would be meaningless if she couldn’t play firsthand the songs she had written. So she played the harmonica fervently. She probably couldn’t help it. When she picked up the harmonica, I played along with her. What’s really sad is that she could never give up the piano, with its refined sound. Later, she asked me to learn how to play the piano for her. And to play the songs she wrote. I told her no. She couldn’t understand me, who played only the harmonica when I had two arms. She probably hated me.”
“Why didn’t you just learn how to play? It’s not that difficult.”
“I wanted to show her that there were people who could play only the harmonica even when they had two arms. If I played the piano with my two healthy arms, she would’ve fallen into even deeper despair.”