No One Writes Back

by Jang Eun-jin

  139. I’m still lying face down on the tile floor, unable to get up. The cold pieces of tile absorb the other pieces around them before my eyes, expanding their boundaries. The pieces of tile have turned into a gigantic screen which presents itself before my eyes. Images from that day are projected onto the screen, like an incredibly vivid dream. There’s a sound of people talking loudly, and a strange smell, a message is conveyed, I am running somewhere, my heart beats, and then stops . . .

  140. It was almost impossibly bright and sunny that day. People said that my grandfather was a blessed man. That he was blessed to have passed away on such a great day. The day my grandfather was being taken to the burial plot, my family had been in a rush since morning. My family must have had the same thought, for everyone got dressed without looking sad, and even had a good breakfast. I seem to remember that someone laughed, even. I was the one, actually, who was depressed to the point of death on that bright and sunny day.

  An hour before we were to leave for the burial site, a registered letter, seemingly urgent, was delivered to me. I opened it in haste. It was a letter consisting of a very short sentence, and didn’t take even five seconds to read. But in that short sentence that took five seconds to read were all of the 17,520 hours I had spent with my ex-girlfriend. Her letter stunned me. I was stunned that two years could be obliterated by that short sentence alone; that there was a sentence in the world that could more than obliterate two years; and more than anything, that she had created such a great, incredible sentence. It was a bizarre letter that kept you from saying anything at all, or imagining anything at all.

  My family all got in the car to go to the burial site, regardless of my misfortune, even unaware, of what misfortune had befallen me. I crammed the letter into the pocket of my mourning clothes, and got in the car last. The day continued bright and sunny on our way to the burial site. The absurd weather threw me into fits of rage. I took the letter out again and read it. I could not tolerate this way of saying goodbye. I asked my father to stop the car, saying I had to go somewhere. My father asked me why, but I just let the tears fall without a word. My family looked solemn for a moment, probably thinking that I was crying because of my grandfather. My father, recalling that no one had cried that morning when we were about to bury my grandfather in the ground, stopped the car for me.

  As soon as I got out of the car, I hailed a taxi and got in, tightly clutching the letter in my pocket. To me, breaking up with my girlfriend seemed something more awful and incomprehensible than burying my grandfather, who had gone forever to heaven. It wasn’t as if my dead grandfather would come back to life if I arrived early at the burial site. But I could surely make my girlfriend come back to me. If I didn’t do anything now, she would be gone forever, and if I didn’t do anything, I’d have nothing but regret down the road.

  I looked everywhere she was likely to be, beginning with her house. I ran and ran, to the point that I thought my heart would burst. It felt as if I had run halfway around the earth. But she was nowhere to be found. As if she’d never existed on the earth in the first place.

  In the end, I didn’t see her that day, and didn’t see my grandfather take his last step, either.

  141. And I didn’t see my family.

  142. That evening at dusk, I received a strange phone call on my way home.

  It was my grandmother. She told me something strange in a feeble voice, not making much sense. It was so strange that I hung up in haste without even realizing it. Then I called her back in a little while. Again in a feeble voice, she told me the rest of the story. It was a strange story about how, on its way back from the burial site, the car carrying my family had crashed into a car driven by a drunk driver and turned over. I thought my grandmother had gone crazy at last. I thought she had gone crazy from the sorrow of losing her husband.

  I ran to the hospital in a frenzy. My heart pounded as though I had run halfway around the earth. Strangely, I went into the mortuary in my mourning clothes. Strangely, my mother, father, and Jiyun were lying still in their mourning clothes. Strangely, my older brother, who was in his mourning clothes, had survived and was lying in the intensive care unit. Strangely, I did not shed a single tear. Like a tightly closed faucet.

  That night, like a miracle, my brother returned to consciousness for a brief moment. He looked at me, with enough awareness to recognize me. I clutched his hand, as if to say I wouldn’t let go. Then I began to wail as if to beg him. To remain by my side . . . to stay . . . to live. The tears flowed without ceasing. As though from a broken faucet. At that moment, my brother’s lips twitched slightly. I put my face near his lips.

  “Do . . . what . . . you . . . want . . . with . . . your . . . life . . .” he said.

  After he said those words, the strength left his hand. He didn’t reach out for my hand, and he didn’t look at me, either. Then in a moment, he stopped breathing. His last breath could be felt at the tip of my nose. It was a strangely good smell, the kind I hadn’t smelled anywhere before, and probably wouldn’t smell anywhere in the future. Do what you want . . . he had woken up momentarily to say those words to me. I looked at his sleeping face. The look on his face seemed to say that he had grown weary of life. I think he put on that expression on purpose.

  143. After that, I realized that everything in life happens in a day.

  144. Wajo and I are here at the house, where there were sounds of only water dripping and clocks ticking. The sounds have grown richer because of Wajo and me. There’s the sound of Wajo’s shallow breathing, as well as of tossing and turning, and of my seizures. Many sounds accompany my seizures. My seizures have not been healed at all. The human body can make a great many sounds. That’s because the body is an instrument, too. The closer it gets to death, the more dissonance the broken body creates. Still, I feel comforted to think I have Wajo by my side.

  But even that comfort is not to be mine.

  145. Wajo has died.

  146. He died a day after we came home, as though he had just been waiting to come home. Wajo, who I once thought had killed me, has saved me in the end, and died. I think Wajo had been fighting it. Death, I mean. I think he’d been delaying the hour of his death because he wanted to die at home, where we once lived together, and not on a cold, strange street, or in a motel room where many people come and go.

  My tears flow gently, quietly, and without a word, just like Wajo. Wajo, lying at home, looks as peaceful as can be. Fortunately, his death comes without pain. Even that, I think, was out of his consideration for me. I’m at peace, too, because I’m able to send him off at home, not at a motel. At peace, I realize at last that he’d been at my side for me, not the other way around. I was happy, and never lonely, because of Wajo. For three years, I was always with someone.

  I hold him tightly in my arms and whisper, “Wajo . . . Come to me as my puppy in your next life, too . . .”

  147. I have no strength left in me, so my friend builds a coffin using a saw and a hammer, and digs up the ground on the sunniest spot in the front yard.

  He stops digging for a moment and asks, “Should I dig deep?”

  “No, make it shallow.”

  “I think we should make it deep.”

  “I think I’d feel like he was far away if it’s deep.”

  “All right. Shallow, then . . .”

  I place Wajo in the coffin. I give him another tight hug before I close the lid. My friend, who has been holding the lid, asks if he should close it now. I don’t answer for a long time, and then finally nod my head. The coffin lid is blotting Wajo out little by little. I won’t ever see that face again.

  Wajo’s coffin is lowered into the shallow ground. The weather is as sunny and bright as it was the day my grandfather was buried. Wajo is probably his guide dog again by now.

  Covering the coffin with dirt and smoothing out the ground, my friend asks, “Still get those seizures?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come stay at my place if you’re having a hard tim
e.”

  “Your place is filthy.”

  “That’s because I don’t clean very often. It’s clean when I do.”

  “I’ll still be the same when I come back. I’ll just stay here. Besides, Wajo’s here.”

  “You need to see that girl I told you about. You never know when I’ll get caught.”

  “I will soon.”

  “Cheer up. You look like you’re about to be buried next to Wajo right now.”

  “I’ll get better eventually.”

  “How about renting a small room and moving?”

  “Moving? But I buried Wajo here.”

  “You can leave the house as it is. Then you can come see Wajo once in a while if you want.”

  Perhaps I’ll do that, if my seizures don’t stop.

  “Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” he asks.

  “Thanks,” I accept.

  148. The seizures subsided, thanks to my friend who stayed up talking to me all night. He even had breakfast with me. But he put his spoon down and ran out as soon as he got a phone call from his girlfriend, and the seizures returned. I can’t swallow any more food. I clear the table and do the dishes. In his rush, my friend forgot his phone battery. The doorbell rings just then. He’s so out of it. Without bothering to use the intercom, I push the button with a hand wearing a rubber glove. In the distance, I hear the sound of the gate latch coming undone.

  I pour some detergent into the sink and wash the dishcloth. The friend I’m waiting for doesn’t come; instead, I hear someone calling out to me. With my sudsy hands clasped together, I go to the front door.

  “Young man, young man, are you home?” someone says.

  I open the door. It’s the woman from next door.

  “I guess the supermarket lady was right when she said she saw you. How long has it been? When did you come home?” she asks.

  “Three days ago . . .”

  The woman, who has always been talkative, talks on and on as though to make up for the past three years. She sounds like someone who hasn’t talked to anyone in all that time. All I can do is nod and say yes. The water on my rubber gloves has already dried off.

  “Oh, I forgot. Let me go home for a second,” she says.

  She must have left a pot boiling on the stove or something. She probably wants to come back and talk on and on again. I feel a little tired, thinking I have to listen to her again. The woman, however, doesn’t come back even after ten minutes, as if her house were a thousand miles away.

  I go back into the kitchen and back to washing the dishcloth. The woman still isn’t back. I twist the clean dishcloth tight to squeeze the water out. My mother always said that you had to squeeze out the water completely after washing dishcloths or rags. That if you didn’t, something will happen to make you cry. Since I squeezed the water out completely, I don’t think anything will happen to make me cry in the days ahead.

  149. I’m about to go into my room when I hear the sound of the woman approaching, grunting as she comes. She comes in through the front door and puts down before me a package covered with invoices. It must originally have been a box holding a TV, for there’s a picture of a TV on it.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Open it,” she says.

  I go up to the box and open it. When I see what’s inside, I am stunned. I ask the woman because I can’t seem to grasp what it is even after I take a look.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Can’t you tell? They’re letters.”

  I check the letters one by one. They’re all addressed to me. All the stamps have postmarks on them, and my name and address are clearly written out, indicating the recipient.

  “How did you . . .” I begin.

  “Mail kept coming for your family after you left on your trip. There was so much mail piled up later that some of it fell to the ground and got wet in the rain, so I made a request to the postman in charge. To deliver your family’s mail to my house, because there was no one here,” she explains.

  I plop down on the floor. The woman looks a little surprised.

  “What’s wrong? Have I done something wrong?” she asks.

  “No, I’m just feeling a little dizzy . . .” I say.

  “Why do you get so many letters, anyway? I was quite surprised. At least two or three of them came for you every day—are they fan letters, or something?” she asks.

  “No, they’re just letters. Letters,” I say.

  Then I add, “Thank you . . .”

  150. After the woman leaves, I take out the letters filling up the box one by one. They’re all from numbers I know, addresses I know. No one gave me a false address. All the letters I sent arrived safely; it wasn’t that the numbers didn’t want to bother writing; it wasn’t that they were illiterate; it wasn’t that my letters got lost, or went unread; and it wasn’t that the numbers died, or just disliked my letters. Everyone I wrote stayed alive and wrote me back. It wasn’t true that no one had written me. I was never alone, not before my journey, not during my journey, and not after my journey.

  In the end, my tears come spilling out. Even though I squeezed the water out completely from the dishcloth.

  151. I read the letters all night, sitting on the sofa, without even eating. There are so many letters that I don’t think I’ll be able to read them all even when the night is over, or when the month is over. Still, I read each and every word. The letters make me laugh, make me cry, and make me sad, too. Some of the numbers even wrote me a second time because they didn’t hear back from me. One of them told me that she and her boyfriend went to a motel I stayed at, and sent me a picture she took of the sentence I wrote on the sink there. There was also one who said he got into the habit of checking the sink when he went to a motel, and one who boasted, as though she had won the lottery, that she knew two motels that had sinks with sentences I’d written on them. One of the numbers complimented me on my neat handwriting, and the gum artist enclosed in his letter two tickets to his exhibition. Sadly, though, the date on the invitation had expired. 249, the high school girl, says that she was rewarded with a double eyelid surgery free of charge, a very successful one, too, for not squealing on her mother’s extramarital affair, by the doctor her mother was having an affair with. She also said that after the surgery, she bought a book of poetry with her own money for the first time since she was born, and was now attending an acting school while preparing for the second time for college entrance, and asked me to cheer her on so that she’d be able to get into the drama and theater department. 109, the train vendor, tells me about the “little misunderstanding” that had taken control of his life. It was a little misunderstanding indeed. Now he’s making good use of his major, with a fashion-related job. 367, who said that gosiwons were great buildings, is still living in the same building. He says he wants to move to one that’s better equipped, but is hesitant because he hasn’t heard back from me. He says he’ll move when he gets a letter from me, and then tell me his new address. 412, who asked me to watch his stuff for him and went for a cup of coffee, explains why he never returned to the bus. While drinking his coffee, he got a phone call informing him of his friend’s death and lost it in front of the vending machine. He, in fact, had been on his way that day to visit the friend he was supposed to introduce me to, because the friend was ill. The man who said he couldn’t write unless he was in his room says that he has taken up writing novels again, and asks me if I could take a look at the novel he has finished writing recently. There’s also a letter from 32, who traded shoelaces with me. He says that he recently bought a new pair of sneakers when he started a new business, but still wears my shoelaces with them. And finally, all the letters I wrote my family have arrived safely as well.

  They’re all in these letters. All the people I know are in these letters. I feel like I can live out the rest of my life just writing replies to these letters. What mystifies me is that my seizures have vanished completely after reading the letters. I don’t think I’ll ever
have seizures again, as long as I keep receiving letters. Life is bearable when you have someone to write, and someone who writes you back. Even if it’s just one person.

  152. On my way to take out the trash, I notice two pieces of mail sticking out from the mailbox. It occurs to me in that moment that a mailbox is most like a mailbox when there’s mail in it. I take out the mail. They’re the first letters I take out from the mailbox. Now the mail is delivered properly to my house instead of the house next door.

  I walk across the yard, looking at the letters. One is the letter I wrote to Number 1 at the last motel I stayed at. The letter I wrote to 1, the fellow traveler I met on the first day of my journey. The letter I wrote to Wajo, who had no language. It’s arrived a bit late, so it must have gotten mixed up in the mail delivered next door. The woman from next door placed it in my mailbox on the sly.

  I sit beside Wajo’s grave and read the letter out loud for Wajo, who can’t read. The letter is one of gratitude and apology. I think he understood me.

  The second letter is from 751. I was going to write her first, but she beat me to it. How did she send the letter when I never told her my address? I open the blue envelope which looks as though she picked it out with care at a stationery shop. The first line holds the answer to my question. She begins the letter by saying that she took a peek at my address when she was mailing my letter for me. Her handwriting is so bad that it’s nearly illegible. She has enclosed a picture. It’s a picture of me pretending to be blind, wearing sunglasses, and of Wajo sitting faithfully next to me at the subway station. It’s the first picture I took on my journey, and the first and last I took with Wajo. It has become a very valuable picture for me. Now I can see Wajo anytime.

  At the close of her letter, she says that this letter she’s sending me is the first one she’s written on paper. She grumbles that she has wasted a lot of paper because she’s used to writing on the computer. She says that she might have to reconsider if things go on the way they are, and goes off about how great e-mail is as she did once before. Reading that part, I felt my ears tingle as if she were chatting right next to me.