The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (27 page)

But it turned out my wounds had yet to harden. It seemed I had not been able to overcome anything. It seemed that my desire had triumphed even before the wounds had hardened. My desire to write something about that time before I grew too distant from it, before I had nothing to say about it, had moved on beyond me. If not, how could I be so anxious, so ashamed, so scared that I was surprised at myself? How could I let myself be won over by my wariness of others, focused singularly on self-protection? If the wounds had hardened, if what had happened had been overcome, then why would my eyes keep welling up with tears?

If someone said to me that he had read the first chapter that had been published, I would no longer want to be with that person all of a sudden. I wanted to quickly get away from the person and be alone.

As December came and went and New Year arrived, I became extremely passive. I felt either too upset or too numb. I did not read or listen to music or turn on the television. I would either be standing or sitting or lying down when I would happen to notice something like a strand of hair stuck on my soap and have
a fit. After undergoing an internal uproar, like picking up every single breadcrumb from the floor by stamping each one with spit on my finger, I ended up feeling dazed. I would go to sleep at any time of the day, which meant there was never a time when I could sleep soundly. I had an annoying headache on any given day, and when someone talked to me, I would cling to some small random thing they said and interpret the meaning in the worst way possible.

One early morning, I opened the front door to get the paper, pushed the paper inside, then walked outside. It was the kind of morning where the snow overnight had formed soft, thick heaps on the cars parked in the plaza. Standing between other people’s cars, I looked up at the window of the apartment that I had just left. My window was the only one that was brightly lit; everyone else probably still asleep. I had a strange feeling, gazing at my own window from the outside. I walked past the closed dry cleaners, the art studio, the pork-and-potato stew place, and on and on. I hesitated for a while when the road came to a fork, then headed toward the hills. The hills, both near and far, were covered with snow. I had made it about halfway toward the temple that I had often hiked to before winter came. At a distance four or five hikers were gathered around, looking anxious. In a corner next to where the people were standing lay a man in blue hiking gear, I would say in his mid-forties, his body twisted and foam at his mouth.

“Looks like a seizure.”

The mountain path, covered with snow, was cold and narrow. It seemed no one among the crowd had been hiking with the man.

“He’s going to fall down the valley. What’ll we do?”

Some five minutes passed like this. Then in an instant the man’s body stopped its twisting. His arms and legs went limp, like they were drained of all energy, then the man gently lifted himself up. His eyes were still hollow. The man seemed dazed for a moment, like he did not know why he was lying there, then quickly got to his feet. He brushed the snow off his clothes and wiped the foam
off his mouth with his sleeve, then set out trudging down the hill. The people who had gathered, on their way up, not down, the mountain, headed up again, glancing back at the man. I stood on the spot where the man had lain twisting his arms and legs and gazed at the man’s back as he descended the hill. There were still lumps of snow on his clothes. When he disappeared from my sight, as I put my palms together to warm my cold hands, I was once again surprised at myself. While I was gazing at the man’s back as he walked down the snow-covered path after recovering from his seizure, my nerves had calmed, surprisingly.

Hiking Path Closed
. A wooden sign hammered into the winter mountain path. A forbidden road. As I stood gazing down the road where I was prohibited from, my listlessness lifted and my senses came alive again. I stopped in my path and turned around. I felt a longing. For myself. For the person writing at the desk. This longing swiftly whipped up inside my head. I even missed the sense of distance that I had so feared. I saw in front of my eyes myself, sitting at the desk, just as I would when I was thinking of someone else. I wanted to hurry back home and be captivated by writing once more. I ran. I got into a taxi that was waiting at the start of the hiking path.

My headache finally lifted. No internal turmoil, even with six strands of hair on the floor; when I got to thinking about the uncertainty of my future, I said to myself, Well, there’s nothing I can do about it. While I am writing at least, it seemed that nature, which I lacked, seeped into me. Mountain paths and water routes and plains.

With only a few days to go until summer vacation, Kim Sam-ok, the oldest student in our class, who sits in front of me, comes over to Mi-seo as she’s reading Hegel and tells her that she will not be able to come to school starting the following day.

“How come?”

“There’s going to be an all-night sit-in.”

Kim Sam-ok is in the same grade and same class as we are, but we use honorifics when we talk to her since she’s six years older. Mi-seo closes the Hegel and asks, “They will let you stay in school even when you participated in sit-ins?”

“The company closed down without prior notice.”

We are mute with shock.

“They closed down the dormitory and the cafeteria as well. . . . If we do not come and collect our retirement allowance and severance pay, they’re going to deposit the money with the court.”

“What about school, then?” Mi-seo asks.

“I don’t care about school. I have to work. How can I survive if the company closed down without any plans? I also have to send money back home to the country.”

I gaze blankly at Kim Sam-ok as she talks with Mi-seo. How much money does she make, if she can send some of her earnings back home? Mi-seo must have thought the same thing.

“You’ve been sending money home all this time?”

A meek laugh escapes her lips as Kim Sam-ok spits out her answer. “I made a single tube of toothpaste last three years. Get the picture?”

Summer. An intense heat wave. Third Brother goes back to the country for summer vacation and Cousin’s older brother, who attends college in Jeonju, comes to Seoul. Hui-jae invites me over to sleep in her room, worried that our room might get too hot with four people sleeping in there. I ask Oldest Brother and he flares up.

“How can a girl think about spending the night outside of home?”

“But it’s only Hui-jae
eonni
’s room.”

“Enough of this nonsense!”

Oldest Brother buys some
chamoe
melons and puts them in water inside a rubber bucket under the tap in the kitchen. When I get back from work and open the kitchen door, I see the melons floating on the water. When he gets back late from the tutoring center, Oldest Brother exclaims as he slices a melon.

“I can’t believe that a fruit can taste this good!”

One Saturday, Oldest Brother suddenly sits up in the middle of the night. He jerks himself up with such force that I, who was asleep next to him, stir awake as well. I’m soaked in sweat from the heat and my back feels sticky. The summer moonlight pours in through the window and I can see the attic door without turning on the light. Oldest Brother speaks as if he’s shouting.

“Jae-gyu, I want you to leave tomorrow.”

Our male cousin Jae-gyu, who had just come to stay with us for the summer, jumps up from his slumber. Cousin, who was facing the wall, wakes up as well. Jae-gyu is her brother.

“Please leave, will you?”

He does not respond.

Oldest Brother’s voice is firm. At the break of dawn, while Oldest Brother has gone up to the roof, Cousin Jae-gyu gets dressed and leaves the lone room. Cousin sets out after him. Returning from the roof, Oldest Brother asks where everyone has gone. When I tell him that Cousin Jae-gyu left, saying he’s going back to the country, and Cousin went to see him off, Oldest Brother gets mad.

“He left without even staying for breakfast just because of what I said?”

When I, having been on my toes all night, well up with tears, Oldest Brother yells again.

“What are you crying for? Did someone die?”

It’s almost noon but Cousin still isn’t home from seeing her brother off. Scared of Oldest Brother, ranting angrily about how Jae-gyu could just leave like that without even saying good-bye
just because of what he said, and about why Cousin, who had gone to see him off, was so late getting back, I, seventeen years old, sit crouched next to the kitchen cupboard. I’ve served him breakfast but Oldest Brother is too upset to eat. I open the bottom cabinet of the cupboard and see the bottle of
soju
, wrapped inside the yellow paper bag. I take it out and, after filling a rice bowl halfway, drink it in sips.

“Come in here.” Oldest Brother calls a while later. I stay sitting there stubbornly. When I don’t come in, Oldest Brother pushes open the door. He pushes it so hard that it hits the hot water tank installed above the fuel hole and bounces shut, then opens once again.

“Why aren’t you coming in?”

As I lift myself up, I feel my head spin. I walk into the room and sit with my back against the wall. Oldest Brother sits at the desk and speaks with his back to me.

“I wasn’t being angry with you.”

As soon as I hear these words, I break into tears, overcome with anguish. Surprised at my crying, Oldest Brother looks back at me in confusion.

Once I start, I cannot hold back my tears. I even start getting hiccups in between tearful gasps. Oldest Brother gets down to the floor and shakes me.

“What is this smell? Have you been drinking?”

Dumbfounded, Oldest Brother wets a towel, squeezes out water and wipes my face.

“You must be crazy.”

After crying myself to exhaustion, I fall asleep.

“Crazy, that’s what you are.”

I keep waking up and falling asleep again as the hiccups return in between sobs. When Cousin returns at night, Oldest Brother talks to her in the kitchen.

“I didn’t say what I said because I have anything against Jae-gyu.”

She does not answer.

“It was just too hot . . . Would I have acted that way if we had two rooms?”

After this, Oldest Brother says nothing when I sneak away to Hui-jae
eonni
’s room and spend the night there. Cousin, who dislikes Hui-jae, never comes to her room. When I ask why not, Cousin says that Hui-jae has a strange smell.

“Smell? What smell?”

Cousin, unable to find the right words, mumbles, “She’s got this smell, she does . . .”

I remember the room Hui-jae lived in. The kitchen, with barely enough room for two people to stand and turn around. The first thing you see when you open the kitchen is a shelf. A pair of purple high heels sit on the shelf. She would have worn these heels before she started school. Each time I enter her room, I bump my head on the shelf with the pair of purple heels. One would think I’d be more careful after a few times, but I still bump my head every time. The first time I bumped my head on the shelf, Hui-jae said, wearing her faint smile, “You’re tall.” But it has nothing to do with height. Hui-jae, who is a handspan shorter than me also bumped her head on the shelf from time to time. Each time I bump my head, this is what she says.

“You’ll get used to it. I also used to bump my head every single time, but now it happens only once in a while.”

The windowsill is her dressing table. The scenery that the window possesses is one of a red brick wall from the house next door. She never opens the window. After I got to know Hui-jae’s room, I realized that our room was the brightest, at least among the thirty-seven rooms in this building. From our room, we can see the vacant lot outside the window, the last stop for the number 118 bus, the factory chimneys, the subway station, and the sky, but from Hui-jae’s room, the scenery outside the window is the wall. Then one day, I see that her lotion bottle has been taken down from the windowsill to the wooden floor table and the window is
open. I look down from her window. It seems that the rain gutters on both houses spout down this wall and the ground at the foot of the wall is soggy. It looks like a swamp, deep enough to reach one’s shins. The surface is scattered with a dizzy clutter of cigarette butts, empty packs of
ramyeon
, and chewing gum wrappers.