by Jang Eun-jin
“Are you asleep?” the woman says in a whisper, afraid that someone could hear her next door.
“No,” I reply in a quiet voice as well.
“It’s quieter than I expected.”
“Everyone’s tired.”
“I wonder what they’re all thinking.”
“Tomorrow . . . They’re probably thinking about nothing but tomorrow.”
“It’s a wonderful thing that you have a home to go back to.”
“I know.”
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you go home?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. What about you, 751?”
“I’m going to fix the bathroom faucet. I just took off, even when I saw water leaking drop by drop. It’s probably leaking every five seconds, even now. That worries me once in a while.”
“If it were up to me, I’d just leave it alone.”
“How come?”
“Isn’t it reassuring somehow, knowing there’s something moving in the empty house? Plus, it makes you think of home once in a while.”
“True. If it weren’t for the faucet, I would’ve never thought of home. There have been times when I wanted to go home because of that. What else would there be that moves?”
“Clocks.”
“I took the batteries out of my clock before I left.”
“Don’t do that the next time you leave. Even an empty house needs time. A tiny room, too, of course.”
“Doesn’t it seem like time doesn’t exist here, when it’s not even an empty house?”
“That’s because everyone here is tired.”
“I feel like I should try to look tired, even when I’m not.”
“It may be the opposite, actually.”
“What do you mean, the opposite?”
“It may be a place that makes you laugh.”
The woman feigns a very quiet laugh and asks, “Like this?”
I say, “Yeah, like that.”
And then I ask, “By the way, have you finished your novel?”
“I’m not sure,” she says.
“What kind of an answer is that?” I ask.
“I’ve written and rewritten it again and again, but I still haven’t come up with the final sentence.”
“When you think about it, novelists are sorry people who must write all their lives to come up with just one great sentence,” I reflect.
“Your life would be a success if you had just one sentence to carve on your tombstone. They say that Stendhal spent his lifetime searching for the sentence to carve on his tombstone.”
“What was the sentence?”
“He lived, wrote, loved.”
“Tombstone, huh . . . I wonder what mine will say.”
“Take your time thinking about it. You’ve got many days ahead of you.”
I think about telling her that no one knows for sure, that no one can guarantee it, but roll over without saying anything. I can feel Wajo’s faint heartbeat through the floor that can hardly be called a floor. I close my eyes and try to sleep. I want to take my time thinking about such things.
119. Something soft and wet touches my lips. Is it her? I imagine for a moment, but it’s Wajo, licking my lips frantically with his tongue. He whimpers, too, as though he wants to go relieve himself. A little annoyed, I open my eyes slightly and close them again, covering my face with my arms. Then I curl up so that my nose touches my knees. I’m stiff all over, and I have a slight headache, perhaps in the aftermath of the festival. Heedless of my condition, Wajo forces his head in between my arms, and starts licking my lips again.
I wipe away the sticky saliva with the back of my hand and say as if in my sleep, “If you want to go, go. I won’t scold you.”
Wajo lets out a fierce bark, and takes my arm in his mouth and keeps trying to drag me somewhere. I open my eyes. Wajo drops his tail to the floor and growls sharply. Then he spins round and round in his spot, making me nervous, and scratches the door with his paws. I thought I had sleep in my eyes, but no. There’s a light fog in the room. I jump to my feet. It’s neither sleep, nor fog. It’s smoke. There’s a fire.
120. Shouting, I shake the woman awake. I shake and shake her, but she doesn’t get up. Something’s wrong. I slap her on the cheek. She still won’t get up. I sling her onto my back at the speed of light and slip our backpacks onto one arm. Then I take Wajo’s leash with my other hand. I have no hand left for the woman’s cart, standing next to the door. I decide to go without it. There’s not a second to spare. We need to get out of here if we want to live.
I open the door. When I do, a thicker smoke blasts into the room like the devil’s shadow. Outside, it’s already heavy with smoke. I can’t see anything. Just like Wajo. The building is too quiet, as though no one knows there’s a fire. It’s peaceful and desolate, like a misty mountain. I look around, but there’s nothing that looks like an exit light anywhere. No fire alarm sounds, either. As if to say that there’s no way that there could be such a thing in a place like this. That there isn’t supposed to be such a thing in a place like this.
Since there’s no fire alarm, I shout “Fire!” and run toward the exit. The room of exception in which we were staying was at the end of the first floor corridor, so we’ll come across an exit if we keep walking forward. I grope my way out as I continue to shout fire and knock on the other doors with the hand holding Wajo’s leash. The smoke and coughing ruthlessly block out the shouting. The more I shout, the more I choke and no sound comes out. My lungs must be full of smoke, for I suddenly have a hard time breathing. I think I’ll die without lasting thirty seconds in this condition.
The moment I feel that I’m at the edge of death, I feel a wet glass door right in front of me, like salvation. I open the door and come outside. I feel dizzy and collapse to the ground as soon as I do. The sky is dark and there’s no one to ask for help. But the thought flashes through my mind that I can’t just stay lying on the ground. There’s no time. I get up and check on the woman. She still hasn’t regained consciousness. The fire broke out on the fourth floor. I can see the flames swaying through a little window. I tie Wajo’s leash to the woman’s wrist and start going through her stuff. I feel the cell phone in her back pocket. I take out the phone and push 119.
121. There’s no one else who’s come out of the building. We can’t just wait like this for an ambulance to come. Then suddenly, I remember the letter I left in the room. The letter for Jiyun, which I placed at my bedside before going to sleep. I hesitate. Should I go back for it, or not? Should I give it up, since I can write another letter anytime? No. Even if I do write another letter, I can’t write it with the same feelings I had yesterday. The letter is unique, pertaining to yesterday. Thinking that, I feel as if I left Jiyun in the flames.
I take out a water bottle from my backpack and throw water on my sleeves. Then I cover my nose and mouth with the wet sleeves, and run frantically into the building. The smoke is thicker than before, and darker as well. I can feel the heat on my skin, too. I go back in the way I came out, feeling along the wall with my hands. I beat on all the doors, shouting fire. And then I hit my forehead against the wall at the end of the corridor. The pain tells me that I’m still here.
I go into the room on the right, and crawl on the floor fumbling for the letter. I feel a pain in my chest. I’m having trouble finding the letter. My eyes sting. I come across nothing but hard furniture. Tears begin to flow. Did I put the letter somewhere else? I start coughing. The sentences I wrote in the letter come to my mind one by one. The tiny room, which could easily be seen at one glance, now seems as vast as a desert. I try to remember everything I did after I wrote the letter last night. The memory, too, is unclear, full of haze. I move my hands with more deliberation. At that moment, the smoke that had been veiling my memory begins to clear, and I remember where the letter is. My memory tells me that it’s at the edge of the bed. I can’t die here. I feel along the edge and come upon something. I can’t die
here. Half the letter has slipped under the bed. I need to get out of here fast. Quickly, I pull out the letter with the tips of my nails. I can’t die. I put the letter in my pocket and turn around.
Having barely managed to come out of the room, I open the door to the room next door and go inside. I can’t see anything, but I’m sure there’s someone inside. I grope along the bed, just as I did as I looked for the letter. I come upon a small foot. I go outside, carrying the stranger on my back. At last, people are starting to come out of their rooms one by one, shouting fire.
122. The day is dawning. The fire truck shoots up streams of water in all directions, but the fire doesn’t die easily. The building probably wasn’t constructed using costly materials, since the place is mostly occupied by those who are impoverished. So the flames won’t be extinguished easily, and will die only when they’ve consumed everything and can’t spread out any further.
People, covered in soot, come out with the help of the firemen. Some are carried out on a stretcher, covered in a white blanket. I don’t know how many people are enveloped in those flames. I don’t know how many people have made their way safely out, either. Who would know them, when they don’t even know who lives next door? Those with unconfirmed identities can’t have their identities confirmed even after death.
It occurs to me that all of this may have happened because of the festival. A young man got depressed, not having been invited to the city’s festival. He must have felt even lonelier that usual, without friends, without a girlfriend, without a job, and without a home. To him, the night must have seemed colder and longer than ever. Sitting crouched in his little room with the lights out, he must have tried at first to endure through the long, long night with countless flights of delusion and fancy. The loneliness, however, must have continued to harass him, lying on one side of his little room, not leaving until the end, like an unwelcome guest. The more flights of delusion and fancy he had, the more miserable he must have felt. Unable to bear it any longer, he must have used a lighter to set fire to the clothes he had hung, like his soul, on the wall. There must have been no hesitation. Or trembling. Or fear. He must have wanted to throw his own festival, even if it meant setting himself on fire. Then he must have vanished, like smoke.
123. “Are you all right?” I ask.
“I just have a little headache. Thank you, for saving my life,” the woman says.
“It was Wajo who saved us.”
“He’s better than two blind fools.”
“I couldn’t get the cart out.”
“Who cares about the cart . . .”
She strokes Wajo’s neck, and bursts out crying.
“I wonder how many people died.”
“They found about seven bodies.”
“I could’ve died.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Seven people have died.”
I look up at the building where the flames have now been quenched. It’s an awful sight.
“They were so miserable, and now they’re even more miserable,” she says.
“The world . . . doesn’t . . . cut you any slack because you’re miserable. I’d say it treats you even more cruelly, if anything,” I say.
We have a hard time leaving the spot, feeling sad for those who died, and guilty that we survived. Pain has come to an end for those who died, and has begun anew for those who remain alive. I don’t know which is worse.
124. I see a mailbox in the distance. I finally remember the letter in my pocket. The mailbox stands firm and tall, like a mother welcoming back her son. It couldn’t look any sturdier. I’m happier than ever to see it, and even feel a desire to go up to it and hug the bulky body tightly in my arms and kiss it. Instead of hugging the mailbox, though, I take the soiled, crumpled letter out of my pocket and smoothen it out. Would Jiyun know? That a fire broke out and a lot of people died at the place where I wrote this letter? That I jumped back into the smoke to salvage it? That I was able to save a life because of this letter? No, that she, Jiyun, saved a life? The envelope smells like smoke, as if to say that it knows, even if Jiyun doesn’t. I’m glad that I retrieved the letter. I put it in the mailbox, which is like a mother’s bosom. I think it’s safe there.
When I turn around, the woman hands me her cell phone as though she’s been waiting. I take it without a word. I’m too drained to go looking for a phone booth.
The phone call with my friend lasts for quite some time. I tell him about the fire more vividly than a journalist, and he tells that me he just read some related news on the Internet and asks me repeatedly if I really had been at the scene. He says there’s never been anyone close to him who had been at the scene of such an unfortunate accident, and asks in a slightly trembling voice if I’m hurt in any way. He says he’s scared, probably feeling that the news isn’t just someone else’s business, though normally, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought. He wants to treat me like a hero, as people do with those who had a narrow escape from the scene of a fatal accident. He seems to feel the gravity of the situation more profoundly when he hears me cough as I talk. Until the moment we get off the phone, he says repeatedly in a genuinely concerned voice that I was lucky that things hadn’t gotten any worse.
125. No one wrote me. My friend sounds more apologetic than usual as he tells me the news.
126. As I hand the woman her cell phone, I notice that she looks grave. I ask her if she’s not feeling well. She shakes her head, and looks at Wajo.
“I think there’s something wrong with him,” she says.
Wajo is lying on the ground. I run over and get him on his feet, but his legs must be weak, for he drops right back to the ground. I take out a handful of dog food and put it to his nose. He turns his head away indifferently as though he doesn’t even want to smell it. He closes his eyes gently, probably just wanting to get some sleep. Wajo is not the kind of a dog that goes to sleep sprawled out on the street. He never relaxes on the street because he still has a sense of mission as a guide dog.
“I think we should take him to a vet,” the woman says.
I think the fire must have had some kind of a negative impact on Wajo. He seems a little short of breath, too. The woman hails a taxi. When the taxi comes to a stop, we get Wajo in it. The woman asks the driver to take us to the biggest animal clinic. Even in the taxi, Wajo keeps his eyes closed.
127. The vet asks me questions about Wajo and writes down the answers on a chart before he begins the examination. His age, the size of his meals, the kind of food he likes, the condition of his feces, his usual habits . . . I stutter a little in a trembling voice, and the woman steps forward. She tells the vet everything she knows about Wajo in a calm voice. She tells him that Wajo used to be a guide dog for the blind, that he hurt his leg in a traffic accident, and that he has lost his sight as a result of the accident. She doesn’t leave out that he’s been traveling for three years, and that he was at the scene of a fire. The vet nods thoughtfully at her words. The thought crosses my mind that she knows quite a lot about Wajo.
Various tests are conducted. Blood tests, x-rays, ultrasounds . . .
The vet doesn’t look too happy as he comes out with the x-ray films and a stack of paper stating the results. My heart is pounding already, as if it’s aware what kind of words will come out of his mouth. The vet places the x-ray films on the reader and calmly explains Wajo’s condition. I can vaguely see Wajo’s white bones and various organs on the white reader. The x-rays look neat and clean, like there’s no problem at all, but the vet keeps saying it isn’t so.
He says that Wajo, being an old dog, is quite worn out from the journey. His heart is weak, his liver is swollen, and his kidneys and prostate are somewhat problematic. The leg he hurt in the accident is arthritic, and the fire has put a bit of a strain on his lungs and bronchus. The functions of all the organs have dropped a little below the normal range.
“It would be best to let him rest for now. Let’s inject him with some insulin solution and nutrition
al supplements for about half a day,” the vet says.
He begins the treatment. A sharp needle is injected into Wajo’s body, and all kinds of tubes that look like wires go up from his legs to the IV bag hanging in the air. The fluid drips down the tubes, like drops of water falling from a broken faucet. Wajo closes his eyes gently and falls into deep sleep as soon as he’s injected with the fluid. His breathing grows more quiet and peaceful.
The doctor asks if I hadn’t noticed anything different about Wajo, saying that he must’ve been having quite a difficult time, that in such a state, he must have shown at least one or two signs indicating something unusual, in his countenance or behavior. I just shake my head quietly. I did think that he’d grown weak, but he’d seemed pretty healthy in my eyes. He hadn’t been healthy, though; he’d been trying to endure. If, as the vet said, Wajo had been telling me how he felt through his eyes and expression, and I’d been dragging him along everywhere without taking notice, thinking only of myself, how will I be able to convey my remorse?
“The journey must’ve been good exercise for him, since he can’t see, but it must’ve become stressful with time, because of his old age,” the vet says.
Wajo had endured for my sake even when he was exhausted, without letting on. Just to be at my side. He had thought only of me, not at all of himself. Perhaps Wajo still thought of himself as a guide dog. Or perhaps he had a sense of duty, feeling that he must be at my side protecting me until his life expired. Perhaps he thought it was because of him. As I did at first.