No One Writes Back

by Jang Eun-jin

  “But on the other hand, there could’ve been someone whose life was spared thanks to the mail you delivered promptly. Everyone makes mistakes. The problem is when they repeat the same mistake over and over again. If the mail was important, she would surely have made an effort to find it. Think only good thoughts. Think about the good things the job has to offer,” the woman says.

  The words bring me some comfort.

  I thought about many things on my way home from the post office that day. The many things I had gone through while delivering letters passed through my mind one by one, like scenery passing the window. I realized then, that just as you don’t drink much liquor when you run a liquor business, and don’t eat much ice cream when you run an ice cream business, I hadn’t written many letters since I began delivering letters. After I decided to go on a journey, I resolved to write, as I traveled, all the letters I had put off writing. I decided that since I had spent seven years going around delivering letters, I should now go around writing some. And that my journey would be a journey of words, and a journey of letters.

  I look up at the bed. The woman has fallen asleep. I look up at the ceiling. I’m blinded by the fluorescent light. I have the odd sensation that the light is interfering with something. Should I try turning it off? I get up quietly, and push the light switch. Sublime darkness falls. I lie down next to Wajo and blink my eyes a few times. A motel room with lights off. This is a first. The darkness is easier to bear than I thought.

  86. The woman suddenly enters the bathroom as I write a sentence on the underside of the Motel Banana sink, my body crammed below. Taken by surprise, I bump my head against the sink. Curious, the woman squats down like me and sticks her head in.

  “‘Wajo and I were here?’” she reads.

  She gets up, turns on the faucet hard, and washes her hands.

  “I was here, too. How come I’m not included?” she asks.

  Instead of wiping her wet hands on a towel, she deliberately shakes them off in my direction. Drops of water splash onto my face. She seems angry.

  “This sentence has never changed in three years,” I say, wiping my face.

  I’m a little annoyed, too, because she won’t be satisfied just sharing a room with me, but tries to take over my sacred ritual as well. She slams the bathroom door shut and leaves the room. She’s really getting upset over nothing. It turns out that she’s quite petty. I thought she was cool, so I’m disappointed.

  “You’re really petty, aren’t you?” I ask, quickly catching up with her.

  “I can put up with a lot, but there’s one thing I can’t tolerate,” she says, stopping in her tracks and turning around to glare at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Being left out. Being excluded when I was there, too. I’ve always been alone, you know, and I like being alone. Sometimes, I get up the courage to join other people, too. But they don’t acknowledge that I’m there. It always happens to me for some reason,” she says.

  I’ve had similar experiences myself. My name would be excluded from the address section in the yearbook, a professor would remember everyone’s face except mine, and so on. And the countless mistakes in recordkeeping that often occurred on paper. Whenever such things happened, I would cry out in my mind: Why me? Why do these things keep happening to me? Why me, of all the people in the world? I get left out. My life gets left out. When you’re left out over and over again, you come to feel that you’re left behind.

  As one who’s had similar experiences, I can understand how she feels being left out. Still, I can’t quite figure out where she’s coming from. I don’t know whether she was being brave by correcting the omission, or arrogant by thinking she could interfere with someone’s lifestyle just because she has shared a room with him. In any case, I’m perplexed, and feel that she has overstepped the boundaries.

  “I understand. But consider the fact that this habit has been with me and these sinks for three years before I met you, 751,” I say.

  The discord arises from the fact that we require different amounts of time to accept each other. I need much more time than she does.

  “I’ve never even been to a motel with a girlfriend,” I say.

  I don’t know why I must divulge something so private to her.

  “Yeah? That makes me feel even worse.”

  “I’m afraid that you’ve got the wrong idea . . .”

  “What do you mean, the wrong idea?”

  “You seem to think that we have some kind of a relationship just because we shared a room.”

  “You’re the one who’s got the wrong idea.”

  “What I’m saying is, I’ve done the best I could, and gone along with you. I mean, it wasn’t because of me that we shared a room, is it?”

  “So you’re saying it was because of me?”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  Now she’s backing out. I think I’ve completely misjudged her. When things go wrong because of something so little, the idea of two is bound to become tiresome and annoying. I can begin to see why her friend pulled out a fistful of her hair while writing a screenplay with her. Absurd things happen at unexpected moments.

  “I can see why your friend pulled your hair out,” I say.

  “What?” she says.

  “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

  “Look who’s talking!”

  “How can you write novels when you have so little empathy?”

  “That’s right, I have no empathy. That’s why my novels are that way. You, 0, must have so much empathy, to wait three years for a letter that doesn’t come!”

  “W-what d-did you say?”

  “You heard me!”

  “How c-can you say such a thing?”

  “You started it!”

  “No, you started it! I’m really beginning to doubt your character.”

  “That’s what I want to say!”

  “You followed me around to save money on rooms, didn’t you?”

  “You finally figured that out?”

  “What? A woman like you should live alone her whole life and die alone too!”

  Wajo stands between us barking wildly, aware that we’re quarreling. I decide that the time has come for us to go our separate ways. After all, until a just a few days ago, I’d been trying to come up with a way to part with her. Yes, this is great. It’s a golden opportunity. I pull Wajo’s leash and turn around in the opposite direction. The woman, too, goes on her way without looking back. I feel free. This is the way we split up. It’s a little absurd.

  I immediately found a mailbox and sent my letter, then called my friend. He got even more upset than I did, demanding why I was taking my anger out on him so early in the morning, and hung up.

  87. No one wrote me.

  88. A reply that doesn’t come. If this, too, could be considered an omission, I was the one who was always left out by people. The pain of being left out, which I knew better than anyone, and felt more keenly than anyone. I come out of the phone booth and look at the asphalt stretching straight out to my right. The woman is nowhere to be seen. So, I fall behind.

  89. The first thing that I notice after falling behind is an underground staircase leading down to the subway station. I’m a little surprised that there’s a subway system in such a small town. Wajo and I walk down the underground staircase, curious as to what the subway in a small town is like. The people aren’t busy, and it’s quiet inside the station. I look at the subway guide map on the wall. There’s only Line 1. Perhaps because there’s only one line, the staff at the ticket gate doesn’t stop Wajo from entering. I was prepared to plead with him to cut us some slack just this once, but it seems unnecessary. We decide to just wait for the subway, without pretending to be either a disabled person or a guide dog. I don’t want to be left out anymore, not today. A disabled person is left out just by being disabled.

  An hour has gone by, but we still haven’t gotten on the subway. How many trains have we sent on their way, like the riv
er? I was keeping count, but a thought interrupted me and I forgot. For some reason, I can’t get on my way today. Is it because there’s only one line? I wonder. Is it because I can’t go far even if I get on, and can’t transfer, either? I sit on the wooden bench staring at people, and get a soda from the vending machine when I get thirsty. While I do this over and over again, several more trains go by, but I don’t remember how many.

  I’m getting on the next train for sure, I decide, and go over to the vending machine with some coins in my hand. As one of the coins goes into the coin slot, the rest slip from my hand and clatter to the ground. I crouch down and pick up the coins one by one. One last coin sits still on a blackened piece of gum. I pick up the coin, and look attentively down at the gum. Thinking of 99, I scrape away slowly at the edge of the gum with the coin. I make an effort to scrape it off whole, stuck to the ground, but it’s not an easy task. The gum cracks and breaks apart. Is it the tool? I move to a different spot and challenge myself to another piece of gum, but this one doesn’t stay intact, either.

  90. 99 was someone who scraped off pieces of gum with a flat tool, crouching down on the ground. Everyone looked at him with indifference as he cleaned the ground. They thought he was a street cleaner employed by the city hall. I did, too, in the beginning, but after watching him for a while, I realized that there was something different, something special about the way he carried out the task. He handled the pieces of gum with great care. The ones that didn’t come off very well, he just put in a plastic bag, and the ones that came off intact, he put in a rectangular box as if they were treasures. He handled each and every one of them with concentration and care. I followed him around, waiting for his work to be done. He finally stood when it was dark, stretching out his stiff back with difficulty.

  As he waited for the bus, looking over the pieces of gum in the box, I slid down next to him and said, “I followed you in secret because I was curious.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You don’t seem to be a street cleaner . . .”

  “You can call me a street cleaner if you want. It does look as though I’m cleaning, and I was actually doing some cleaning.”

  Just as I was about to ask him an important question, the bus arrived and I followed him onto the bus without thinking. On the bus, he looked out the window without saying a word. He didn’t even answer my question, as though he had set a rule that he wouldn’t talk on buses. It didn’t seem, though, that I was bothering him or making him uncomfortable. And somehow, I ended up going over to his house.

  As soon as I entered his house, I could see what it was that he did. It seemed that he hadn’t said anything because he thought it would be better to show me than to explain in words. To put a name to him, he was a gum artist. He was an artist who painted on round, flat, and worthless pieces of gum. Why pieces of gum, though? They had been chewed on and spat out by others, and trampled on and defiled by countless people. How had he come to use them as material for painting?

  Sipping bitter coffee, he explained, “I loved someone once. She told me that I was like gum to her. ‘Let’s stay stuck together like gum. Will you stay by me all my life?’ she said, telling me how she felt. I was like gum to her to the very end. This is what she said later on. ‘You’re really clingy, like gum, aren’t you? I’m sick of you! Will you get off me now?’”

  He emptied his cup of coffee with a bitter look on his face. It was the kind of expression I liked the most. For some reason I felt that someone who drank coffee with a bitter look on his face wouldn’t lie.

  He went on in an unaffected way, saying, “One day as I was walking down the street, I began to notice pieces of gum, thrown away after all the sweetness had been sucked out of them. There were too many of them. I haven’t chewed gum since. Even if I did, I wouldn’t spit it out on the street.”

  His works didn’t look like pieces of gum at all. Each of them looked like a beautiful stamp. If they were actually cut out in the size of a stamp, with the perforated edges and all, there wouldn’t be a problem sending letters with them. That’s how incredible was the transformation of the black, filthy pieces of gum, which naturally led me to think that they were beautiful: 99, and the works created by 99. He promised me that he would send an invitation if he had an exhibition.

  91. As I left 99’s house at nearly ten in the evening, a question suddenly rose in my mind. What was true beauty? Was it beauty if you found it in something ugly and insignificant? If it were Jiyun, she would have answered in this way: What’s really beautiful is a full bosom, an eighteen-inch waist, a high nose, large eyes that take up half the face, and a chin as sharp as an ice pick.

  Jiyun was born with a great many talents. She got good grades, was very athletic, and was good at drawing and singing, too. She was truly well rounded. If my mother and brother were rational people, and my father and I romantic, Jiyun was a Renaissance woman. But she never did come into full blossom, or rise, or receive great attention or love from people as did the Renaissance. Jiyun concluded that the reason lay in her appearance.

  To Jiyun, beauty was another kind of talent. She believed that as a woman, if you didn’t have beauty, you didn’t have anything at all. Jiyun had often said that she wanted to be a woman who was envied and resented by people. But no matter how good her grades were or how good she was at drawing, the other kids didn’t regard her with envy. She had to be good at such things for her not to be so pathetic and for her life to have meaning, they said, because she didn’t have good looks, and she would have been the most obnoxious and hateful person in the world if she had been pretty on top of being smart.

  What threw Jiyun into shock at once was an incident that occurred on White Day. The girl who always got the worst grade in class received candy, and the boy who gave her the candy was someone that Jiyun had a crush on. Jiyun realized at a tender young age: no matter how smart and talented you were, only a beautiful girl had the right to fall in love. After realizing that truth, Jiyun gritted her teeth to get into a good college. Once she was in college, she began to work as a private tutor and save money like a fiend.

  One day, I asked Jiyun, who was lying on her bed after a nose job, “A-are you h-happy now?”

  “I need thirty million won to be like Kim Taehee. I’ve spent only five million won. I want people to pounce on me, trying to destroy me. I read in a book that people try to destroy other people’s looks, talents, or abilities because they’re not things that can be taken away. But people aren’t the least bit interested in my talents or abilities. Do you know why? Because I’m ugly. My talents get buried because I’m ugly,” she said.

  “Y-you’ll e-end up d-destroying yourself th-that way.”

  “I don’t regret it. Even if I end up dying.”

  It seemed that there was no one in the world who could change her twisted way of thinking. Jiyun became more and more beautiful, but more and more, she turned into someone I didn’t know.

  92. 99, who created original art using pieces of gum, and Jiyun, who loathed herself saying that she had breasts like pieces of gum stuck on the asphalt. On the street are two people I know, and their numbers are too many, and they are everywhere you go.

  93. I hear the sound of a train approaching. This time, I must get on. I get up from my seat and walk up to the safety line. I turn my head toward the passageway from which the train is approaching. The wind blows, scattering my hair. At that moment, I see someone who looks familiar. Over in the distance, by the safety line, stands the woman. The woman is looking at me, too. She seems a little surprised. As am I. Our eyes meet for a moment. The train slowly comes to a stop, giving rise to a cool breeze. Will I get on, or won’t I? The doors open. Will she get on, or won’t she? I get on. The doors close. She got on as well.

  94. The woman is in the first compartment, and I’m in the last. Because it’s a small town, there aren’t that many compartments to the train, and the aisle is so narrow that if you stretch out your legs, your feet will touch those of the
person sitting across from you. I stand up and sit back down repeatedly. I make my way toward the first compartment. Just then, I see the woman walking toward me from the other side. I come to a stop. She comes to a stop as well. We’re standing face to face in the central compartment of the train. She bursts out laughing first. I laugh with her. Thus we meet at the center of the train, both of us at the same time. It feels a little absurd.

  “Why are you taking the subway?” she asks a little gruffly.

  “Because it’s the subway. Why are you taking it, 751?”

  “Because I have to sell my books.”

  I recall how it was on the subway that I first met her.

  I stare at the cart carrying her books, and say, “Can I try?”

  “If it’s because you feel bad, don’t bother.”

  “Not at all.”

  I’ve seen people from speech schools, working hard to discipline themselves. They came out to the street in an effort to reform their personalities and treat their stutter. I usually came across them on the bus or the subway. But I never looked straight at them. I couldn’t bring myself to raise my head because I felt embarrassed, as though I were seeing myself in the mirror. I would sit with my head bent low, glancing hesitantly at them once in a while, listening to what they were saying. A kid in middle school, much younger than myself, bravely talked about himself with clarity, and a balding man in his fifties took a peek at what he’d written down on a piece of paper and on the palm of his hand whenever he got stuck. He looked very strained and nervous, but he didn’t give up until the end, and got off the bus after he’d finished speaking. To me, they were all great. They were putting into action what I was hesitant to do.