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The
Utility
of Landscapes
Kim
Ae-ran
Translated
by
Brother Anthony of Taizé
Long
ago, Mother
would often tell me to go stand somewhere. –
Hey, Jeong-woo. –
Hmm. –
Go and stand over there. When
Mother said
that, I would stand quite still and hold my breath. –
Hey, Jeong-woo. –
Hmm? –
Look this way. I
don’t remember
who first told me that I should stay still when my
picture was being taken.
Maybe it was someone very ordinary, someone who knows
that good things are soon
over, that such days do not come often, and if they do
come they easily go away
again. So, whenever you encounter those moments, you
have to recognize them and
pin them down somehow…. I mean someone old enough to
know that. In fact, my
family had several such opportunities. Not so many,
though. At such times, we would
stop what we were doing, exactly like in the song,
“Let’s dance merrily, then
freeze.” Adopting every kind of posture, preparing to
become a scene from the
past, then count silently, and smile, looking at the
camera. In
places where there was not enough sunlight,
occasionally a flash would be used.
The camera would go, Pop! Pop! as it left a chalk mark
on time and clipped out
the present moment. The sound of the flash was like a
parachute opening, giving
us a sense of relief, we were saved! after a moment of
anxiety that we might
die. It gave us a padded shock, like an airbag
engulfing a driver. –
Hey, Jeong-woo. –
Hmm. Whenever
Mother set
off the flash, Pop! the rest of the scenery that had
been excluded went inevitably
flying off, white. I often closed my eyes and
occasionally smiled brightly, regretting
that evaporation. I pulled up the corners of my mouth
as if I was pulling on a
parachute cord. In
old photos I am always standing bolt upright, looking
awkward. I do not know
exactly what color to call it, but I’m carrying a
1970s color, an optimistic
blue, on my back. I am wrapped in Kodak-style
brightness and Fuji-fashion chroma.
Sometimes my expression is so blurred it looks as if
it’s about to disappear
completely. I am directing a low-resolution smile at
someone, at the future
that someone wants. And the ignorance, the eternal
ignorance embedded in the
picture, abruptly touches a spot in my heart, making
me shudder. When we say we
do not know what something is, it usually means that
we do not know what it is
that we are going to lose. One of the things a
photograph always does is to
take back something the very moment it gives it. So,
way back, when my mother
called me with a heavy camera in her hand, the sound
of her voice calling me, the
name “Jeong-woo,” rich in expectation and pride
concerning life, may have been
the sound of the name of that strange shudder or the
loss I would experience
someday being called out in advance, a loss I did not
know how to express at
the time. Concerning
light, there is one more scene that comes to mind.
Father is sitting close to
the TV, basking in the electromagnetic waves as though
he’s warming himself at
a bonfire. When he was a child, he grew up in a remote
mountainside village. He
had to walk a long way to meet any neighbors, and the
village was so dark after
sunset that you could not see a hand in front of your
face. When it snowed, he
used to open his mouth and taste the winter; when it
rained, he would overhear
the humming sound of earth plunged in meditation; or
occasionally, he learned from
adults how to appease ghosts. It was already half a
century ago, but when he recalled
that time, Father said that he felt he had come here
after living in another “world,”
rather than another “age.” It’s something you actually
experienced, but you have
the feeling that your life back in those days was like
a story you’d read or
heard about somewhere. It used to be even more so on
weekday mornings, when
blankly sitting in front of the TV, he would watch ads
for cancer insurance. It
was when an older actor repeated slowly and distinctly
the phone number of the
insurance company he had already given out, as if to
make clear that elderly
people suffer from loss of memory and understanding.
He said that at such
moments, both this world and the world beyond suddenly
felt unfamiliar, so that
he had the impression he had walked into somebody
else’s room by mistake. I sneered
inwardly, “Yes, Father. Talk about cancer makes
everyone feel rotten.” Instead
of saying anything, I simply stared at my father’s
hand that was holding a cup
of coffee. That must have been a few days before I
graduated from college, more
than ten years ago. Father’s
hands as I saw them that day were still big and thick.
Within them lurked humbly
the discipline and rigor of someone who has long been
training his body through
regular exercise. With those hands, Father would live
the rest of his life judging
people’s faults, informing them of the rules, and
imposing penalties. I don’t
know the details, but that’s what I heard from Mother.
It couldn’t have been
easy to give up a stable job at that age and earn a
living as an umpire. Yet
still, it would not have been possible to return to
teaching again, since a
scandal stays alive a lot longer than any germs or
diseases in this world. Father
stared at the lukewarm coffee as if gazing into a
well. He kept holding the cup
in his hands, as if he had nothing else to hold on to.
Those hands were hands that
detected irregularities, upheld rules, signaled
“fault” and “double fault.” At
the same time, they were hands completely at a loss in
the presence of the son he
was meeting for the first time in several years. From
the speaker in one corner
of the café ceiling came a constant stream of dance
songs. It felt as though
someone was pouring noise onto our heads from a
bucket. Besides which, students
at the next table had been furiously badmouthing
somebody for ages, until I was
on the verge of a headache. “Her? With that professor?
Oh, how could she?” They
were enjoying themselves, adopting expressions of
amazement, as if it was their
own morality that had been wounded, rather than
someone else’s. It was a
pleasure I knew only too well. My
father was at a loss after he had said everything he
had probably prepared at
home, apart from the actual content. After a brief
silence the cell phone on
the table buzzed, taking him by surprise. He grabbed
it with his big hand as if
touching something hot, shielded his mouth with the
other hand and whispered, “I’ve
met him. Uh, uh, I’ll call you later.” Soon after,
when I told him I had to get
back to the teaching assistants’ room, Father finally
laid something on the
table. It was a luxurious box with a ripple pattern on
the black outer surface.
There was a snowflake fixed to the box that symbolized
perpetual snows. Father expressed
his congratulations in conventional terms. Then he
said he would probably not be
able to attend the graduation ceremony, as if he were
someone who had
punctually attended all my other ceremonies. I
never really met Father after that. I saw him once at
my wedding five years
ago, but it would be more correct to say that I
brushed past him rather than met
him. Father briefly occupied the bridegroom’s father’s
seat. He occupied it in
the way my mother and I had wanted, for as long as we
had hoped. Mother posed
for a picture with Father as if obliged to do so in
order to avoid the in-laws
finding fault with my family. Then, acting like a “pro
parent” in the way we
talk of “pro gamers” and “pro golfers,” she never
stopped smiling until the
ceremony was over. A
few days later, when I visited Mother’s house after
the honeymoon, a parcel had
arrived. It was a wedding present from Father. I
showed no interest in the
parcel while I watched TV, drank tea, and was about to
go out through the front
door, so eventually my wife opened the box. It was
full of a not very reliable
brand of red ginseng extract. “Shall I take it to the
car?” my wife asked, and I
remember shaking my head quietly. That was about the
time there were rumors that
Father had quit being a tennis umpire and was peddling
health supplements. Then
I heard that he was working at a sporting goods store,
and that he was learning
how to hang wallpaper. Over the past twenty years, I
had heard news of him only
occasionally; then recently, a friend from my old
neighborhood said he had seen
Father in the street. It was near the South Guro day
labor market, but he had
changed so much that he nearly didn’t recognize him.
When I did not respond, he
touched his beer glass and said he must have been
mistaken, murmuring, “I
thought it was a bit strange,” and changed the
subject. Even
after he had moved out, one of the things Father kept
doing was to be part of
events in our house. Just as someone blindfolded
relies on his fingertips to
recognize the name of an object, Father employed the
form of “gifts” as he
tried to deal with each important event in my life and
commemorate it. To my knowledge,
he did so even when he was having a really difficult
time. After separating
from Mother, Father regularly sent us maintenance
support every month. In the
first few years, it was one million won, then one day
it went down to eight
hundred thousand won. Later, I know it went down to
five hundred thousand, and
then to three hundred thousand. But he kept sending
that money for a really long
time. The last sum he sent was only a little more than
twenty thousand won. Whenever
the payment was going to be late, Father always warned
Mother in advance. That’s
the kind of person he was. Someone like a futon neatly
folded on the far side
of a room in the middle of winter. Someone upright,
heavy, and rather
inflexible. So, when I heard that Father had quit
teaching because of some
scandal or other and was coaching and umpiring in a
tennis club in Gangnam, I
reckoned the job would suit him very well. After
that, Father sent me an electronic dictionary when I
graduated from high
school, a tie when I entered graduate school, and a
wristwatch when I started
my military service. It was always extremely ordinary
stuff that he had clearly
taken great pains over. Things like a fountain pen
everyone gives, a bouquet everyone
gives, and so on. Among them, the red ginseng extract
was the last gift I
received from Father. So, if one day Father’s
greetings tailed off, it was not
because he had become indifferent, but because his son
had reached an age when
he had completed all the social rituals. It was
because there was nothing left to
cheer and celebrate in his life and mine. So, when
Father recently contacted me
asking to meet for the first time in several years, I
naturally thought it was because
he had heard of my wife’s pregnancy. * In
Korea it was
winter and in Thailand it was summer. Thais say they
have three seasons, each
with distinct characteristics, but for a Korean like
me, this just felt like “normal
summer,” “muggy summer” and “very hot summer” all
together. Seated in a tour bus,
I checked the Korean weather, news, stock prices and
exchange rates on my
smartphone. It’s January. Korea seemed to be as busy
as ever despite the constant
cold waves and heavy snowfall. On the other hand, the
summer beyond the bus
windows seemed quite laidback. It looked green,
fertile and humid. And since I
was in a foreign country looking at information
written in my native language,
I felt as though my hand was holding a snowball, not a
smartphone. Inside the
glass ball, a white blizzard raged, while outside it
was high summer. It was a noisy,
vibrant season. My wife scolded me for surfing the net
after coming all this
way. On her knees lay the skins of some monkey bananas
she had eaten. My wife
treated me as a smartphone addict, just as she did at
home, but I had a reason for
using international phone roaming services in
Thailand, even on a family trip. There
was a call I was expecting. The
previous year, I had been going out to a city in the
suburbs three times each
week. I taught a course each at a junior college and
two private universities there.
Among them, the “Cultural Theory Seminar” at one
university began at 9 a.m., so
I had to hurry and leave early. It was an hour from
home to the Nambu Bus Terminal,
then an hour and a half from the terminal to the city,
fifteen minutes from the
front gate of the school to the classroom, a round
trip of more than five hours
in all. On rainy days, I had to stand in a long queue
at the school bus stop
with the students, holding an umbrella. Sometimes,
feeling awkward at being in
the same bus with students taking my course, I used to
linger for a while near
the school before taking the bus. Even so, there were
students on the bus who would
greet me. It felt doubly awkward when we had to sit
side by side on a crowded bus.
Even though the road was the same, the journey back up
to Seoul felt longer
than that going down. It was even worse when I came
back after class on Friday
afternoons. When the highway was congested I often
felt an urge to urinate. The
moment I arrived at the Seoul bus terminal, I would
head straight for the
public restroom. Yet still the urge did not go away
easily, and my bladder grew
ever larger while I was on the subway. As soon as I
got home, I quickly shucked
off my shoes and headed for the bathroom. Then,
without even closing the door, not
knowing whether my wife was watching from behind or
not, I would unfailingly pour
out a great stream of urine. First
I became a budding lecturer in my alma mater, then
started to lecture in other places
here and there. Traveling to and fro, I was slightly
disturbed on seeing the landscape
spread out along the highway, even though I had
traveled along it a few times on
holiday trips. When the landscape could no longer
simply be considered as
landscape, when I started to feel that I was part of
that landscape, I began to
feel anxious. As a native of Seoul, I realized how
accustomed I was to the “center”
and how used I was to its benefits. And because of
that, I was able to see clearly
the extent to which I was moving away from the center. When
the sun went down, darkness quickly fell over the
fields. Night seemed to come
more rapidly in small rural towns than in Seoul. Once
I had finished lecturing
and boarded the bus home, my whole body relaxed. In
addition, a strange feeling
of excitement and alertness circulated in me, like the
effect of some medicine.
There were even times when I had the illusion that I
could answer the most
difficult question someone might ask. The darkness
encountered along the road felt
unfamiliar each time. Since it was dark outside, it
was hard to tell where I was
and how much farther I had to go to reach my
destination. At such times, I
would feel I had come somewhere very far away. The bus
traversed a space that
was at the same time “neither a city nor not a city.”
Unsold apartments and
outlets, greenhouses and factories, garden cemeteries
and flower shops, restaurants
offering clay-baked duck or grilled eel, and
Provence-style motels went flying
past. The seams joining the capital city and the
provinces were as rough as those
on pieces of cloth that had been hastily tacked
together. Beyond the darkness, paddies
and fields stretched monotonously. Then, when the bus
reached the Seoul toll
gate, an endless procession of cars suddenly appeared,
extending tail-to-tail,
like a lie. . Amid countless lights glowing red, we
were sucked toward the city. When
I first started teaching eight years ago, I was
excited like a new recruit at a
company. I was released from the stuffy library and
now I was hoping for some kind
of social “activity,” reckoning I could gain some
credit with my mother and my girlfriend.
It was fun to create a fresh curriculum using
contemporary pop songs and
animated materials, and I didn’t mind the attitudes
and intellectual tensions
of the students who cast flattering looks on their
unmarried “young lecturer.” There
was the theatricality of lecturing itself, and it was
a time when I even liked
the excitement and the embarrassment that comes with a
job where I had to talk
in front of a crowd. School was school, and school
being school, the fresh
green colors were pretty in spring, and so were the
orange colors in autumn.
The students were students, they were innocent and
hypersensitive at the same time,
and there were times when they were exasperatingly
arrogant or ignorant. In the
campus floated a rich mixture of sexual eccentricity
and moral superiority. In
addition, a vague sense of defeat and helplessness
hovered like heavy air, but
the schools where students frequently took leave of
absence or transferred to
better schools were the worst. However, even the
students at reputed
universities were not so different either. Those who
had experienced intense lectures
at cramming academies in their teens were not much
impressed by a lecturer’s hard
work, either. They
were apathetic, like spectators who have grown used to
watching great actors. They
were even wearier than high school students, as they
were weighed down with the
heavy burdens of managing their credits, their
part-time jobs, and their preparation
for future employment. Of course, I also gradually
lost much of the motivation
and expectations I had felt as a new teacher. After
class, I less often regretted
mistakes I had made while lecturing, and I rarely woke
my wife by muttering in
my sleep words that I had failed to utter in the
classroom. Yet, after serious
conversations with the students, I still scold myself
that it is good enough if
I am a diligent lecturer, so why did I try to be a real teacher. Nowadays, I pretend not to
be aware of students who
are sleeping or using smartphones, I am not offended
by rude questions, and I
am more concerned about practical matters than
relationships. Maybe I have come
closer to being a “pro lecturer” in the way we talk of
“pro baseball players”
and “pro golfers.” Recently, however, I had a chance
to occupy a position other
than that of pro lecturer. It
was spring a year ago when I first met Professor Kwak.
One day, while I was waiting
for the bus in front of the school, I saw someone who
looked like Professor Kwak
walking up in my direction. He was the head of the
Department of Cultural Contents,
which had recently been established at the university.
I had seen him speaking
as a panelist on several TV shows. But I doubted he
knew who I was. For a
moment I hesitated whether or not to greet him, but he
seemed glad to see me. –
Aren’t
you Lee Jeong-woo? I
bowed awkwardly.
Behind him I could see his teaching assistant and
several students from the
department. Their faces were flushed as though they
had been drinking.
Professor Kwak held out his hand, saying, “I’ve heard
a lot about you from Professor
Choi. How is he doing?” Then he glanced at the bus
timetable and asked me, “Where
do you live?” When I said Seoul, he asked me where in
Seoul, and since he lived
in Seocho-dong, he offered me a lift in his car to
Nambu Bus Terminal. I
sat silently in the passenger seat with my knees
together as he started the
engine. –
What’s that by the way? He
looked at the
box of tonic drinks tucked under my legs. –
Did the students give you that? –
Why, yes. As
I fastened the
seat belt, I asked him, “It seems you’ve been
drinking, are you okay?”
Professor Kwak replied, “Just one glass, along with
lunch. Don’t worry. I can
drive home with my eyes closed. In fact, I was
intending to go on to a second round,
but nowadays, students seem to be busier than
professors, so it’s hard to
insist.” I did not show it, but in fact I was very
glad to be sitting there
with him. Actually, I had visited his office earlier
that day but had gone away
again on finding his door locked. –
Still, I think it’s an age to be able to listen to
people properly. –
What do you mean? –
The students. They treat me as a professor. I don’t
know if they’re just pretending
to listen to me. Even if it’s similar, it’s different
from what I do. When
professors chatter away while we’re out drinking, I
only listen vaguely. Hmm, that’s
boring. Hmm, that’s worth
remembering. I listen to the things I choose to
listen to. But the students
are not like that. Even when they keep listening to
the same boring talk, they put
more effort into showing their boredom as well as
resistance. I
did not think
it would be polite to listen in silence, so I
interjected a passive remark. –
That’s right. –
You agree? That’s youth. Being an adult is nothing
extraordinary. It just means
getting on well with people we don’t like. Isn’t that
right, Mr. Lee? What
should I say
in such a situation? If I agreed, I’d look like a
hypocrite, and if I disagreed,
I’d seem to be putting on airs. While I was debating
inwardly, Professor Kwak went
on speaking. –
It’s not a matter of likes and dislikes, it’s a duty.
You just have to think
you’re doing your share, playing your role. Those who
have only one scale for
measuring people are hopeless. They’re really tiring.
I
was unsure of
what the context was but assumed he was pursuing the
previous topic, so I
replied. –
It’s because they’re still so young. –
No, I mean the professors. Professor
Kwak was someone who talked without any sequence of
ideas. Seen positively, he
spoke intuitively, and seen negatively, he seemed
arbitrary. Either he had always
lived in an environment where he lost nothing by
taking no notice of what
others thought, or else he had a personality that
chattered as a way of taking
revenge on what he had lost out on. However, it was
not that he was simply garrulous,
for when he relaxed and threw down a high card, he was
like an expert.
Professor Kwak said that he was friendly with
professors of science and
technology, that people on that side were less likely
to be twisted, which he
liked. They seem to read books as we do, but being
without resentment they are comfortable
to be with, he said. I suspected that it too was some
kind of illusion, but did
not say so. The topic veered naturally to the culture
circles. Professor Kwak repeated
some gossip and impressionistic criticism about
various people, then grew
agitated when the name of a scholar I too knew came
up. “I know what that guy’s
really like,” he began, and explained how base and
power-hungry he was. “So, Mr.
Lee, in the future, please be careful of people who
drool, pretending to shoot
negative glares.” –
They criticize elegantly, as though they’re being
fair, but in fact…. Professor
Kwak muttered
viciously as though talking to himself. –
They’re so envious it makes them sick. Professor
Kwak was a good driver. There was no telling whether
it was because the car was
a good one or because of his inborn driving skills. At
least, he was skilled
enough to get to Seoul with his eyes closed. He asked
me how I usually got to
school. –
I had a car before but when my lectures were cut, I
got rid of it. Professor
Kwak seemed
not unduly surprised as he asked, “Then how did you
survive?” I replied, “I
just did somehow.” And I felt grateful that he was
“not unduly surprised.” Whatever
the topic was, his attitude, that demanded neither
sincerity nor reward, was frank
and masterly. I gazed out at the fields and paddies
spreading beyond the
window. It still being early spring, the mountains and
fields were hardly green.
Not long after we left the university campus we got
stuck in traffic and
Professor Kwak tapped on the steering wheel with his
hand, “I hate wasting
money on the roads.” He looked restless and
ill-humored, then said, “There’s a
way round at times like this,” as he turned the wheel. –
Now I’m enjoying driving.” Professor
Kwak
pressed the accelerator and spoke in a more relaxed
voice. He seemed to be
indicating his satisfaction, having said all that he
wanted to say in the first
part of the journey. For the first time since we set
out, a drowsy silence
settled briefly between Professor Kwak and me.
Professor Kwak hummed quietly as
he turned up the volume of his audio player. Swing
jazz of the 1940s flowed out
of the hi-fi speakers. It was music that I too enjoyed
listening to. Professor
Kwak kept time with his head. Through the windshield,
I could see a large crane
looming over unfinished apartment blocks and bleak
plains, like a long-necked fossil
dinosaur. I noticed a greenhouse complex where the red
fruit destined to be
shipped to the city was ripening, as well as a
self-service motel built in the
style of a medieval European castle. As I listened to
jazz amidst the smell of
new leather in a comfortable car, I began to feel that
the boring scenery beyond
the window was a more or less acceptable background to
life. Was it a familiar sense
of life for Professor Kwak? Anyway, I wondered what
this person who liked to
judge people so much might say about me in front of
others. Then Professor Kwak
asked me about the atmosphere in the department and
whether the attitudes and
responses of the students were at all negative. –
But our students are good kids, aren’t they? –
Yes, of course. –
I’m sure they’re good. And so are the teachers. Professor
Kwak
smiled oddly and said, as if giving me an extra point. –
By
the way, I’m glad you don’t say the air here is good. Some
time passed. Suddenly Professor Kwak slammed on the
brakes. My body was thrown
forward and shaken from side to side. Professor Kwak
stayed frozen for a
moment, gripping the wheel. He looked confused and
shocked, as though he
thought he had hit something but did not know what it
was. Pulling himself
together, the first thing he did was take out a throat
pastille from the glove compartment
beside the steering wheel with almost animal stealth.
As soon as I heard the crunching
sound as he chewed up the pastille, the thought struck
me that maybe it had not
been “just one glass, along with lunch.” A
young girl was lying on the road. The child looked
dazed, in a state of shock.
At the same time, she seemed pretty calm, but when he
said, “You should go to
the hospital,” she insisted, “First I want to phone my
mom.” There was a little
blood on one knee under the school uniform, but
fortunately she seemed not to
be seriously injured. Professor Kwak’s face expressed
relief. While the child
was talking to her mother, Professor Kwak called me to
the side of the road. He
was hesitant, saying, “What’s to be done about this,
what should I do?” It was
spring, but the wind struck a chill. Every time a big
lorry passed by, there
was a blast of dusty wind and noise. Some drivers
showed an interest in the
scene beside the road and poked their heads out of
their window to look at us. Seeming
embarrassed by the stares of the onlookers, Professor
Kwak had his back to the
road as he looked at me. Then he started to explain
that this was the first
time such a thing had happened to him, that he was
coming up for promotion
soon, it was a very difficult situation. –
Mr. Lee, this incident…. –
Yes. –
This accident, I mean, this car…. –
…. –
Could you possibly say that you were driving? * “Right,
we’ll soon
reach Coral Island. Now, everybody enjoys the sea,
right?” The
guide holding
the mike spoke cheekily. –
But when you’re traveling, have you noticed how
there’s always one negative
character in every group? At each new destination,
someone pipes up: Ugh, I’ll
just stay put, I’ve always disliked drinking, I never
enjoy eating, I hate
crowds, it’s hot, it’s expensive, I’m not doing it. Quiet
laughter filled
the bus. –
But when will we ever come here again? Once we arrive
at Coral Island, don’t just
do nothing, at least drink some seawater. That’s a
payoff that will remain. –
Mom. –
Huh? –
Stand over there. My
mother stared
at the camera as she turned forty-five degrees. She
showed the awkward rigidity
of a generation that has never had landscapes as a
background. –
Mom. –
Huh? –
Look this way. A
low cloud could
be seen hanging behind her back. Between the gray
clouds hundreds of multicolored
parachutes were floating, beautiful and mysterious.
Perhaps because the day was
cloudy, the parachutes looked like a swarm of
jellyfish sunk in pessimism. Over
there, the mothers in our group were already racing
toward the sea, after
throwing off their tops. In contrast to the brightly
colored bathing suits,
varicose veins under their skin struck the eye. One,
who had square medicated
patches stuck to both knees, was even sporting a
bikini. As they poured water over
each other, Mother cast an envious look at those other
mothers, who had been
planning this trip for a long time while they worked
together at Yeongdeungpo Market.
My quick-witted wife pulled Mother this way and that
on an inflated tube. At
that, she smiled brightly like a child. I stayed in
the shallow part, with only
my feet under water, and diligently photographed the
two of them. All the while,
I kept worrying about the mobile phone I had left in
my bag, in case I got a
call from the university. I turned my gaze toward the
beach, pretending to be checking
the pictures I’d taken. Far away, I could see our
guide in sunglasses lounging under
a parasol, keeping watch over our belongings and
happily downing a fizzy drink. I
had been saving up for an overseas trip, two hundred
thousand won a month for
two years. Mother had turned sixty the previous
October. But since I was busy
with classes, I delayed the trip until January. So,
from Mother’s point of
view, this trip was her sixtieth birthday celebration,
though it was taking
place when she was sixty-one years old. We arrived in
Bangkok after midnight on
the first day after our departure. As we made our way
through the smoke and
humidity surrounding the airport terminal and boarded
our tour bus, we found
other people who had selected the same tour package as
ourselves already in
their places. There were three separate groups apart
from us—the cluster of
mothers working in Yeongdeungpo who had pooled their
savings for this holiday,
a middle-aged couple sporting the same sandals as
their children, and a young
couple who made it clear that they were “about to get
married,” though nobody
asked. From the first day, whenever she had a chance,
Mother boasted that her
son was a professor. No matter how much I shook my
hands in denial, she
persisted, “It’s the same as, anyway.” The
tour package we had chosen was called “Four nights,
five days, with three
nights’ sleep-over.” It was a conventional tour
schedule, eating at pre-selected
restaurants, riding designated rides, buying things we
did not need, getting a
traditional massage just when slight dissatisfaction
and fatigue were setting
in, eating Korean food, kimchi stew or pork belly,
once a day. We encountered a
non-standard reality, which was like a fake crystal
set in our ordinary lives,
and waved to each other as we parted again after
spending all our money. Still,
it was good. The trip was for Mother’s sake, not for
my wife and me.
Fortunately, Mother did not grow weary and always kept
up with the guide’s
pace. Of course, her habitual criticizing and constant
complaining about other
people remained unchanged. Sometimes I was embarrassed
by what I heard. Previously,
Mother had always tried to tell as many people as
possible what a terrible man
her husband was. Once it seemed to me that she was
determined to make everyone
hate Father first so that she alone would love him.
After separating from Father,
she changed the target of her criticism to the people
around her: I don’t know
why that woman does her hair that way, that guy eats
so vulgarly, how can she
dress her children like that? She tried to maintain
her pride by picking on the
minor defects of others. It was only when she emerged
after a complete,
two-hour-long Wat Pho massage with a face bright as
the sky after rain clouds
have cleared and said, “I don’t know how long it’s
been since anyone touched my
body for such a long time,” adding, “The girl touched
me for so long I nearly
fell in love with her,” that I thought for the first
time that we had done well
to come to Thailand. The
schedule was generally satisfactory. Today, after
sightseeing on Coral Island, we
were going to see kickboxing and a snake show at an
open-air bar in the
evening. In the bus returning to the hotel, Mother was
overcome by fatigue after
playing in the water and nodded off. The guide showed
his professionalism by
starting a quiz to relieve the tedium. –
Now, when Thai people go to Korea, there’s something
they make sure they eat. What
is it? I’ll give a present to the first one with the
right answer. I
glanced at my
phone in case the school had called. There were three
missed calls and one text
message. My heart pounded briefly, but on seeing the
sender I felt
disappointed. He had already called I don’t know how
many times. My wife leaned
toward me. –
Who was it? –
Father. –
Bulgogi! –
Again? –
Wrong, sorry. –
You still haven’t made up your mind? –
Hmm. –
Shouldn’t you answer quickly? –
Pork belly! –
Hmm. –
Yes or no. Won’t that do as a reply? –
No, wrong again. –
I have to consider the situation. –
Kimchi stew! –
Nothing from the school yet? –
Ah, that’s a pity. –
Why not look at the school homepage? –
I’ve already looked. I
turned my eyes
back to the phone and reread Father’s messages.
Jeong-woo, call me when you
have time. Jeong-woo, call me when you see this
message. Jeong-woo, are you busy?
Messages that had previously only come very rarely had
recently been arriving more
than once each day. I jumped every time the phone
vibrated because of the other
call I was waiting for. Feeling confused, I looked
through the window. I could
hear someone at the front of the bus shouting, “The
answer’s Samgyetang.” * The
previous
fall, I was given an extra lecture at the university.
But I reckoned that it
had little to do with “that incident.” Professor Kwak
was promoted to full
professor without any problem, and I continued my life
as before. There was no particular
change as a result of the accident. I got a penalty
point on my driver’s
license, but I did not have a car anyway, and the
insurance was covered by
Professor Kwak. I ate a couple of times with Professor
Kwak after my class was
over. As he refilled my glass, Professor Kwak would
say, “I owe you a lot.”
From time to time in bed my wife would ask ominously:
–
Honey, that girl. –
What girl? –
The one that was hit by the car and you said was fine.
–
What about her? –
You said there was really nothing wrong with her,
didn’t you? –
Yes. –
But suppose she has problems later? The consequences
of a traffic accident can
show up years afterward. Then we really…. –
No, it’s not going to happen. When
I was on my way back home from lecturing, I often
looked at my face reflected in
the bus window. At such times, I would think that the
“past” did not go away
and disappear but kept bubbling up and leaking out. I
had a feeling that the people
who had passed by me in my life, the times I had
experienced, and the emotions
I had felt all played a part in the look in my eyes,
were part of my appearance.
Never disappearing, they remained as an expression on
my face, a form of
atmosphere, and came oozing out from deep inside my
guts like air. Especially
after summarizing in an unsatisfying manner the
emotions that cannot be simply cleared
up after some incident. After “that incident,” I
realized that my expression had
subtly changed. At such times, I really thought that I
had “eaten up” my past. Digesting
it, disposing of it was still in progress. Shortly
after the start of the semester, there was a notice of
the upcoming appointment
of a professor at the university’s Department of
Cultural Contents. After
finishing the day’s classes, I headed for Professor
Kwak’s office. Not wanting
to go empty-handed, I bought a box of red ginseng
extract and went and knocked
on his door. –
This is for you. –
Oh, you shouldn’t have bought something like this.
I’ll accept it anyway, since
you’ve brought it. But actually, my body has a lot of
natural heat so that
ginseng is not good for me. Professor
Kwak offered
me some high-quality Pu-erh tea that he had bought
during a business trip to
China, then waited for my reaction, explaining how
endless the world of tea is,
far more so than the world of audio players and
fountain pens. –
Oh, it’s really good. Wishing
to
appear not overly dramatic, yet at the same time
sincere, I deliberately answered
in a low voice, but he shrugged his shoulders. –
That’s nothing special. Professor
Kwak slowly
raised his cup to his lips. –
Something really good, something truly good. Something
that most people will
never know about. Aren’t you amazed at the thought
that such a thing might exist
somewhere in the world, Mr. Lee? –
Indeed. I
replied,
although I really had no idea what something really
good, something truly good,
might be. I vaguely thought of the music, the movies,
the liquor that I liked and
reckoned I might have experienced something quite
close at least. Professor
Kwak asked how my former teacher, Professor Choi, was
and made similar remarks.
Then, unexpectedly, the appointment came up, but with
an odd expression on his
face, Professor Kwak merely laughed cheerfully and
said, “You seem to be tense,
but just prepare with an easy mind.” Embarrassed, I
wrapped both hands round the
cup for no reason. The warmth of the small tea cup
warmed my hands. As I slowly
drank the tea I looked around the room. Whether
because I liked the way the
books surrounded me like the bricks in the tomb of
King Muryeong, or because
the tea was sweet, strangely enough I felt I did not
want to leave the room. I
had met Father a few days before coming to Thailand.
It was while I was waiting
for the result of the interview after I had submitted
my application for the
position, that I had prepared with the utmost care,
and given a sample lecture.
Father said he wanted to meet me and talk about
something. It was the first
time I would see him since my wedding five years
earlier. I had a slightly
ominous feeling, but I reckoned that surely he could
not be so bad a person. It
was an appointment I was not obliged to keep, but I
was rather hoping that
maybe he might want to apologize to me. By this time
it was too late for
explanations, but I wanted to hear what he had to say.
Maybe just as, a long
time ago, he had given me a fountain pen and sent me a
tie, now he might want
to do something for his as yet unborn grandchild. Father
looked older than before. Perhaps I looked the same in
my father’s eyes. He may
have seen eyes where the brightness had grown dim, a
mouth loaded with subjective
opinions and prejudice, an impression of being trapped
in what I had gone
through while relying on experience. It was to ask for
money that my father wanted
to see me. I had gone out thinking “it couldn’t be
that” but that was the
reason. He wouldn’t say exactly how much he needed.
“Just whatever your
situation allows…” he said vaguely. And he wouldn’t
say exactly what he wanted
the money for. What my situation allows? Does Father
know what a lecturer earns
these days? His impudence was so breathtaking, his
hesitation so stifling that
I spoke first. I wanted to finish talking as soon as
possible and get away. –
Are you sick? Father
slowly
nodded. So that was it. Of course. And he can’t just
ask for a gift, so he asks
for a loan. As if he’ll ever be able to repay it.
Instead of compassion, I felt
irritation rising. So finally, unlike myself, I spat
out words that, as I recall
them now, were very disrespectful and coarse. –
What, have you got cancer or something? Father
nodded
again. Without thinking, I gave a bitter laugh.
“Cancer?” I thought, “You’re indeed
living a typical life, I see...” Then I asked in tones
as businesslike as
possible so that he would not nourish vain
expectations. –
Where? Father
licked
his parched lips before he spoke again. –
No. It’s not me. It’s her. * “Right,
we’re
about to arrive at the latex factory. You don’t have
to buy anything, just look
around at your leisure. Especially when husbands come
to a place like this, they
keep looking up at the sky and asking where the
smoking room is. They keep rushing
me, asking when it’ll be over. Don’t be like them, go
in and lie on a bed once,
hug the pillows. It really feels different.” The
middle-aged
man wearing sandals of the same design as his children
raised a hand and asked.
–
Do they take dollars at the factory? The
guide
responded gaily. –
Yes, of course. They take everything except North
Korean money. Now, in you go,
enjoy it if you can, steal something if you can. We
left the bus and went into a large container building.
There a factory employee
led us into a small room, like a conference room,
instead of taking us straight
to the display space. He then used various visuals to
explain the importance of
sleep, which accounts for a third of our lifetime. He
invited one of us to come
forward, and after asking her to lie down on a
mattress which had a ballpoint
pen lying underneath it, received an assurance that
she could feel no
discomfort. The next step was for everyone to stroll
freely around the display
hall and select objects freely. The Yeongdeungpo
mothers lay down on the
various beds and moaned, “Aigo, so
good,”
“Aigo.”
Mother and my wife each chose
a mattress and lay looking up at the ceiling, laughing
as if they could see the
stars. It seemed that accumulated fatigue made a short
rest yet sweeter. Just
at the right time, factory employees distributed
little paper cups of iced
coffee for free. I asked my wife to excuse me for a
moment and came outside. I
smoked two cigarettes in front of the factory, then
called Professor Kwak. It
was my first call since the interview. I practiced my
prepared speech in my
head and started on a third cigarette. After the
ringing tone had gone on for a
while, there was a message that I would be connected
to the voicemail box. I
felt sorry and relieved at the same time. After
stubbing out the cigarette on
the ground I returned to the factory entrance. At that
moment, I felt the phone
vibrating in my pocket. My heart leaped despite
myself. –
Hello? –
…. –
Ah yes. That’s right. –
…. –
Ah… Just leave it with the security guard. My
wife purchased a latex pillow for our not-yet-born
baby and a mattress for Mother.
I pulled out a fountain pen from my jacket pocket and
wrote out the shipping directions.
Just then, the phone vibrated again. It was a number I
knew. I grabbed the
phone and went outside, while my wife watched me from
afar with eyes full of an
anxiety and expectation she could not hide. –
Ah, yes. Teacher. It
was Professor
Choi, of my alma mater. It was he who had been my
doctoral thesis advisor, and who
had introduced me to the university where I was now
lecturing. He said he was
sorry to be late, he called as soon as he saw he had
missed my call. He seemed
concerned though I had called primarily just to say
hello. But during the
conversation, he kept saying things that seemed
intended to “console” me. Then,
perhaps finding my responses rather strange, he asked,
“Haven’t you heard?” adding,
“There’ll be other chances, don’t be discouraged.” His
voice seemed to indicate
obvious signs of embarrassment. Pulling myself
together, I uttered a few words
of thanks and was about to end the call when he
cautiously asked. –
But did you upset him in some way? –
Upset him? –
Yes, I was wondering if there was some kind of problem
between the two of you. –
No, there’s nothing of that kind. –
Professor Kim from here participated as an external
committee member. It seems
that Professor Kwak opposed hiring you strongly. He
told me to keep it to
myself. * “Mom,
stand over
there... Mom, look this way.” I
took the last
pictures of Mother at the departure lounge in the
airport before we boarded the
plane. The lights along the runway outside the window
were beautiful. Mother looked
at me and smiled. Deep wrinkles in the middle of her
forehead added a parched
element to the formal smile. The square frame on the
screen of the smartphone expanded
and contracted as it focused itself. I composed the
shot so that the airplane
wing would be on Mother’s right side. Then I held my
breath and at the same
time as I pressed the button, I heard a buzzing sound.
It was the sign that a
text message had arrived. At the same moment, a
rectangular window opened at
the top of the display. I said nothing. –
Jeong-woo. –
Hmm? –
What’s the matter? –
Nothing. –
But why are you looking like that? –
It’s nothing. I
looked at my phone
again nonchalantly. I saw both the square frame that
held Mother’s face and a
text message window that had not yet disappeared. It
was a message from Father.
Since the sender was Father, I assumed that the
contents would be predictable
but it was a collective message. It was a bare death
announcement, devoid of
rhetoric, urgency, expression or feeling. The name of
the deceased, the date of
the funeral, and the location of the funeral hall were
simply displayed on my
phone. The
cabin crew handed around customs declaration forms and
immigration cards. I
lowered the folding table in front of me and pulled
out the fountain pen from
my jacket pocket. For a long time I had left it in my
desk but once I became a “pro”
adult, I started writing with it for purely practical
reasons. After I began lecturing,
I had to sign a lot of documents. I remembered that I
had a good writing
instrument, so I opened the drawer and took out the
fountain pen. Then, like
many people with their own writing instruments, I
first wrote my name on a
sheet of paper. Later, each time I had to sign an
important document—when I
opened a new bank account, when I submitted my
marriage registration, when I signed
a lease for an apartment, and so on—I used the
fountain pen. So, when I had to sign
the report at the police station a few days after
experiencing “that incident” with
Professor Kwak, I automatically took out the pen from
my inside pocket. Then,
before signing the deposition, I put the pen back in
my pocket and wrote my
name with the cheap ballpen lying on the desk. On
the day I met Father, the day he came all the way to
my neighborhood to borrow money
from me, he got a phone call from someone. He
stretched out his arm as far as
he could to check the caller’s name. At that I was a
little shocked that Father
was seeing things “that way” because I realized that
the young Father, who had
left us such a long time ago, left because of “another
woman,” had become long-sighted
from age. My father frowned as he struggled to read
the number. He did not
notice that I was staring at the picture on the phone
screen. The two people in
the photo were wearing hiking gear. Father and the
woman were looking at the
camera cheek-to-cheek. Behind them, I could see a
clear sky and multi-layered
mountain peaks bright with autumn leaves in every
direction. “You two seem to
have climbed up to the very top….” I
felt a mixture of envy and mockery, as I reflected,
“Mountain climbing? You’re indeed
living a typical life.” I laughed bitterly. However, I
could not take my eyes
off the faces of the two people in the fall scenery.
Somehow, they seemed like
people who know that good things pass quickly, that
such moments do not come
often, and even if they come they are easily missed. As
I recalled the message on the phone, I thought of
winter inside a glass ball.
Inside the ball, white snow flutters, while outside
it’s high summer, and I
imagined the time difference someone might be
experiencing. Through the window I
could see the lights of the foreign land fading away.
I stared blankly at my
face reflected in the window of the airplane, then put
on the sleep shades and pushed
my seat back. I was determined not to think of
anything for as long as the six
hours’ journey back to Korea lasted. I breathed
slowly, trying to get to sleep,
but something hot was rising up inside of me, which I
couldn’t tell was gas or fluid.
I swallowed dry spit and calmly repressed it. Then, in
my heart, I muttered, “I
have never wanted anything for free.” Over the roar of
the plane’s engines, I
heard a voice shouting “double fault” at me.
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