The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (48 page)

“Why did you call me here?”

“I have something that needs to be finished.”

“What do you mean?”

This is final. I am no longer nineteen but thirty-two. When I first started writing this book, I hoped that by the time it was done, I’d be able to say that I have told the story of my past, and that I feel better for having done it. But that’s not the case.

. . .

It’s in your hands now.

. . .

Tell me about that morning.

. . .

Why did you ask me to lock your door?

. . .

Why me of all people?

. . .

Even after I left that place, whenever I spotted someone who looked like you, or a room similar to that one, my heart would race, leaving me breathless. I’d go blank or become restless. I would lose focus and wake up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. Sometimes I suddenly lost my judgment, as if I were a child, and get caught up in the urge to lose myself in someone . . . Depression would come over me in the middle of reading a book . . . and when crossing bridges, I would feel the impulse to jump off the guardrail . . . Sometimes it felt as if drapes
or clotheslines were about to attack me. Did you know that? You were my handicap. A handicap in building relationships, making me push him away even when I was happy to be with him . . . You know better than me the fatigue that comes from a state of being overly alert . . . I never went back to that place. Not even within the vicinity. But in my mind, words and names like
factories, workers, train station, Garibong Market, Doksan-dong,
and
Guro-dong
at the entrance of the industrial complex have turned into a flood of images, locked inside a dike . . . It’s in your hands now . . .

Why was it me of all people?

. . .

Why me?

. . .

I was only nineteen.

Sitting in the dark, I lifted my back from the bathtub. That was it. My encounter with death. I walked out of the bathroom and called my publisher. The sentences that had thrust a blade into my heart when I opened the door upon returning to my empty apartment was part of “My Encounter with Death,” a section newly included in my essay collection. I had revised them over and over, but the blade was still there. The blade with its edge pointed toward me.

I got a cab and headed back to the publishing house. They had already finished putting in the page numbers. An awkward silence . . . Between my insistence—I need to erase some lines—and the publisher’s questioning—What is this about? The galleys were handed over to me one more time. I positioned the pen between my fingers.

I moved my fingers and changed “My aunt’s son died” to “an older cousin.” I scrapped “Aunt” and replaced it with “a relative.” My aunt did not read fiction, but this was a book of essays, and how much pain would it bring her, a loss that took place more than ten years ago, if her daughter came across the essay and read it to her? I changed “Aunt’s family” to “her family.” I changed “his
crushed, chopped, blood-covered body . . .” to “his body, no longer recognizable . . .” “In the face of my cousin’s death” to “In the face of death, of a man hit by a train.” This, however, was not the reason this sharp-edged blade had appeared in my heart.

I marked the manuscript to delete an entire section on what had gone on that morning with her. Sentences being erased right before they went to press.

She is standing there inside the erased sentences.

I tell Hui-jae that it seems as if the man cannot speak, asking how come he never says anything. She does not understand what I’m trying to say.

“What do you mean he never says anything? He’s also a good singer, you know.” Hui-jae answers back with a question instead.

“But I’ve never heard him say anything.” Or sing, on top of that! I thought to myself.

“No, he’s good with words. And he’s a good singer, too.”

Perhaps between the two of them, words were none other than Jin-hui Tailor Shop itself. Inside the shop where he cut the patterns according to size, where she sewed the patterns that he has prepared. Perhaps their conversation was flowing between the cut-out patterns and the sewn-up dresses. Between his cigarettes, which she would light for him during break; between his fingers, lifting a strand of loose thread from her hair while she is immersed in her sewing.

Between the two of them, they had words that were nameless and unknown to the world.

Not having had the chance to take a good look at his face, it is difficult for me to speak about him. He remains, for me, that pair of cargo pants, a pair of unfamiliar shoes on Hui-jae’s kitchen
shelf. She defends this man even though he looks the other way when we run into each other, saying it’s because he was not cared for as a child.

“No one looked after him. He said that ever since he was little, he knew that there was no one in this world to care for him. So to build up courage, he went into the mountain with his friends and asked them to tie him up to a tree. Asking them to come back and untie him after three days.”

“Why did he do that?”

“To build up courage, like I said . . .”

“Courage?”

“You got to have courage to not live in fear.”

“So he was really alone in the mountain for three days?”

“That’s what he said.”

“For real?”

“You think he’s lying?”

“No, it’s not . . . it’s just hard to believe . . .”

“Well, he says that after spending three days in the mountain, he became even more scared. Even at the smallest rustling noise, and when dusk falls and night approaches, he got goose bumps on his arms. Still does, even now.”

“Even now?”

“That’s right, that’s why he leaves the light on when he sleeps.” Hui-jae grins as she turns to look at me. “Without my care, my brother will end up with the same expression as him . . . He’ll be okay now. I take care of him.”

Since they began living together, his shoes now take up the spot on the shelf next to Hui-jae’s school shoes, which she used to wear when she was a student like me. I only remember him as a pair of shoes, a pair of cargo pants, and that spot on his face. He would remember me as the girl carrying fish in a plastic bag, or the girl walking up to the roof on Sundays with laundry in a washbasin. Perhaps he thinks he has never heard me speak, just as I believe I’ve never heard him speak. If what he and Hui-jae shared was a nameless language unknown to the world, between him and I flowed a nameless solitude unknown to the world.

Thinking back now, we might have lived close at each other’s side but we didn’t like the same food, nor did we spend much time together. I have no memory of us arguing. We had nothing to fight about. She had no desire inside her heart. Except for matters regarding her brother and the man whom she had to take care of, I don’t remember her ever mentioning anything that she planned to achieve or anything she hoped to become . . . or anything that she liked. My cousin always said, I’m going to become a photographer. Just as I always said that I was going to become a writer. Cousin’s vivacity or my melancholy had perhaps sprung from the constant recognition that we were different from the people in that place despite the fact that we also lived there.

Cousin and I had no intention to remain there for long. Cousin had now already left and I would soon as well. Cousin and I knew we had to leave, which was why we had things we wanted to do, were sure about what we wanted to become, wanted to see many things, even if we could not own them. This was why Cousin and I had so much to argue about. This was not the case with Hui-jae. She was the alley itself. She was the power pole, the vomit, the inn. She was the factory chimney, the dark marketplace, the sewing machine. The thirty-seven lone rooms were her, the venues of her life.

The two of them seemed to love each other dearly. I never heard them say the word “love” so I can only write, “they seemed to.”

I could not find the right word to address him so one day I referred to him as “Uncle.” Hui-Jae is washing plums in her kitchen and bursts into a laugh.

“Uncle? He’ll think that’s hilarious!” Getting a basket to drain the plums, still glossy with water, she breaks into a broad grin as she playfully splatters water toward me with her wet
hand. I am sprinkled with that water, fragrant with the scent of plums.

“Well, ‘Fist’ is what he calls me.”

I am the one who laughs this time. “But you have such tiny hands!”

Her hands are much too tiny for her to be called Fist. Tiny hands. Hands that constantly push the marked fabric under the needle of the sewing machine. Such delicate hands, covered with scars from the needle.

“He says that my hands are in tight fists when I sleep, like someone marching to battle.”

Such lonely hands.

Singing. There was a night when we sat singing, on the roof of the buildings that housed our lone rooms. Hui-jae, me, and the man I called Uncle. Cold rain falling in the woods erasing the footsteps of love. Like Hui-jae said, Uncle is a good singer. It is as if he has always sung instead of speaking. It is your round face I see as a gentle wind blows in the morning. His singing is smooth, even on the difficult high notes. There is no hesitation, as if the song is flowing out of the red spot on his face. Burning like a camellia on a dark cliff, enduring cold dew, a flower, is that what I shall become. When he is done with one song, his voice finds another. He has been singing for over an hour, yet he still keeps finding more songs. If I become a flower will mountain birds fly to me, will the soul of my beloved become a flower as well . . .

From a distant darkness, Oldest Brother calls to me. The singing stops and an awkward silence circles us. A silence heavier than the factory building.

“What’re you doing over there?”

“Get going.” Hui-jae pushes me along. Back in our room, Oldest Brother turns his back to me, stiff and stubborn.

“Didn’t you hear what I said . . . I told you to stay away from her.” Oldest Brother’s voice is thunderous. I wish he’d speak more quietly . . . if Hui-jae heard his cold voice, she would cry.

It was around six o’clock. I
must have dozed off while reading. Younger Brother, attending university in Incheon, was on the phone, rousing me from my sleep. He blurted out, “You’re okay,” when I picked up. I asked what he was talking about, and he said he’s in a restaurant near school and the TV reported that a department store had collapsed so he thought he’d call. Just in case.

“A department store? For real?” I turned on the TV, one hand still on the receiver. The screen only shows the building before the collapse. The newscaster was reporting the disaster in a flustered tone, but it did not feel real since the scene of the incident was not shown. It was Sampoong Department Store in Seocho-dong in the Gangnam part of Seoul, south of the Han River. As the names of the dead and the injured began to appear on the screen, I got anxious and hung up to call Oldest Brother, who lived in Gangnam. Just in case, I also thought. Live scenes came on air and I went blank. How could this be? It was like a battlefield. I thought a collapse meant a corner of the building had crumbled, but no, the five-story building, with three underground levels, had collapsed completely, as if it had been a carefully planned demolition. It seemed like the building had never existed on this site. The streets were heaped with debris from the collapse and people were being carried out, covered in blood. Sounds of screams. Complete mayhem. My mind went blank. Witnesses who made it out of the building reported that they heard an explosion before the collapse. Explosion? Terrorist attack? Because it was a department store always crowded with people, a luxury store located amidst luxury apartment and office buildings in Gangnam, it never occurred to me that poor construction or safety issues could be the cause. The scene turned even grislier as time passed. People were buried under the debris of a five-story building. Five stories above ground and three stories below. Smoke from toxic gas was soaring up. The news reported that while survivors were
trapped inside, there existed the dangers of a toxic gas explosion or the collapse of what remained of the building, which kept even the news cameras at bay.