Your Republic Is Calling You

by Young-Ha Kim

  The phone rings. Song-gon picks up. "It's for you."

  Ki-yong takes the phone.

  "Is this Mr. Kim Ki-yong?"

  "Yes?"

  "I sent you an e-mail but you haven't opened it."

  "Who's this?"

  The man pauses for a moment. "I'm a friend of Ansong Uncle. I started a new loan company. If you ever need quick money for your business please give me a call."

  "I'm sorry? Who?"

  The caller hangs up.

  "Hello? Hello?" Ki-yong returns the receiver to its cradle, his brow furrowed.

  He bites his fingernail, unsettled. He swivels his head, taps his desk lightly with his fist. Hesitating, he places his mouse over the Outlook Express icon. He doesn't know what will leap out of the tiny icon. He pauses once more before double clicking. With a whir of the hard drive, the e-mail program pops up. He selects his inbox and enlarges the window. One e-mail announces the imminent arrival at customs of a print of an Iranian movie he licensed last fall at the Pusan International Film Festival. There are messages about his college class holding a charity event and an agent telling him about a few movies with affordable licensing fees. The rest are spam. But he reads each title carefully and deletes them one by one, rather than selecting and deleting them all at once. His cursor pauses at a subject line that reads: "(Ad) Instant Loan Without Collateral for Office Workers and Civil Servants."

  He glances around him surreptitiously. Song-gon, about to get up from his seat, catches his eye.

  "Oh, do you need something?" Song-gon asks.

  "No, I'm fine."

  "Do you want some coffee?"

  "Do we have any made?"

  "No, but I can make some."

  "Thanks. I'd love a cup."

  As Song-gon makes coffee, humming, Ki-yong clicks on the e-mail. The words in the body of the e-mail disappear in a series of flashy effects. He reads the e-mail carefully. He clicks on the red "here" in "Please click here if you want an estimate of a loan." A new window pops up. When he clicks on another word, another window pops up. He goes through a couple more of these. When he reaches the end of the process, he pauses again and looks around. The coffeemaker is hissing steam. Song-gon brings over the carafe and a mug. Ki-yong quickly changes the open window to Google.

  "Here you go," Song-gon says, pouring the coffee.

  "Thanks. That Iranian movie is going to go through customs soon."

  "Oh, good. I guess we'll get busy again when it gets here."

  "Yeah."

  Ki-yong opens Outlook again only after Song-gon is settled in his seat. He closes all the pop-ups and opens the last window. Finally the last message appears.

  The jars of octopus—

  brief dreams

  under the summer moon

  Ki-yong swallows, his mouth is dry. It feels as though he's swallowing the sentence, syllable by syllable. He gulps down the coffee cooling next to his mouse. If memory serves him right, this haiku signals Order 4. He turns and selects from the bookcase volume 53 of the World Poetry Collection published by Minumsa. That haiku, written by Matsuo Basho, is printed on page 67. Ki-yong feels his hands get clammy. He tries to relax by balling his fists and opening them repeatedly. He subtracts 63, the last two digits of his birth year, from 67. Four. The order he's never received. He can't deny that it has arrived.

  This haiku has a prelude, "One night in Akashi." Akashi is a Japanese town famous for its octopus. The fishermen, taking advantage of the octopus's tendency to hide in small spaces, toss clay jars into the sea at night. In the morning they pull up the jars and capture the octopi. The octopi dream their last dreams in hiding.

  Ki-yong flips through the book. In the 1980s, Lee Sang-hyok of Office No. 35 rediscovered the benefit of transmitting codes through poetry and books. You didn't have to fumble with a table of random numbers or shortwave radios. All you needed were a few books and a good memory. Order 4 could be given through several different poems. Pablo Neruda's sonnets and Khalil Gibran's aphorisms and maxims. The seventeenth-century monk's haiku that has planted itself in Ki-yong's lap is starved of its literary significance, much like a camel that loses weight after passing through a vast desert. Ripe nuances disappear and only one meaning remains: "Liquidate everything and return immediately. This order will not be revoked." Basho's haiku, like the order itself, hints at the end of dreams.

  He believed the order would never come. No—he believed that all orders, not only this one, were forever on hold. But here it is, resting in his inbox. He can't tell who sent it, or why it was sent now. Drumming his fingers on his desk, he tries to gather his thoughts. Since the purge of Lee Sang-hyok, ten years has passed without a single order. The agents sent south by Lee Sang-hyok were cut off from the north and from one another, and they focused on their own survival, unaware of—no, turning a blind eye to—one another's existence.

  Is this a cruel joke? Or a mistake, delivered to him but meant for someone else? Or maybe it was supposed to be sent later but was accidentally transmitted now. No. The person on the phone definitely said his name. Did Lee Sang-hyok return to Liaison Office 130? Is he restoring the lines of communication he established years ago? Ki-yong sinks into the murky depths of confusion. It's as if he's awoken from a dream only to discover that it has become reality, all the while refusing to admit to himself that he had the dream. He has to go through several more steps in the e-mail to learn the details of where, when, and how to return, but he stands up. On his way out, he trips over a plastic wastepaper basket, toppling it with a crash. It has been rooted to the same spot for several years and he's never bumped into it. Paper cups and Kleenex are strewn all over.

  Song-gon leaps up. "Are you okay, sir?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine." Ki-yong turns the basket upright and starts to gather the trash, but cuts his right thumb on the tab of an orange juice can. Frowning, he bounds to his feet and delivers a vicious kick to the basket. It flies across the room and crashes into Song-gon's desk.

  "Fuck, what the hell is this shit?" Ki-yong mutters.

  Shocked, Song-gon runs toward him. "Did you hurt yourself?"

  Ki-yong, breathing hard, sucks on his cut thumb. "Sorry, Song-gon."

  "Don't worry, I'll take care of it." Song-gon, looking at him warily, retrieves the garbage can and cleans up the mess. Ki-yong stands in place silently, watching Song-gon. His head is pounding. He can't think of what to do. Song-gon returns the wastepaper basket to its place and goes back to his desk. Ki-yong, forgetting that he was on his way out, picks up the phone and dials. He gets an automated message requesting the caller to try again because the phone is turned off. Ki-yong thinks for a moment and heads out of the office. He dials on his cell phone this time.

  "Hello? Is this the teachers' office? Can I speak with Ms. So Ji-hyon, please? Oh, I see, she's in class. When does she get out? Yes, I'm a parent. I wanted to talk to her about my daughter. Okay, please give her the message that Kim Hyon-mi's father called. Yes, yes, please tell her I'll be there at ten. Thank you."

  Ki-yong checks his watch and tugs at his disheveled clothes. He feels dizzy with each step but soon regains his composure. He hears a siren in the distance.

  IN THE BATHROOM, Ma-ri fights the urge to rip off the cast and scratch away at the skin underneath until she draws blood. But that isn't something a reasonable adult would do. She spritzes deodorizer on her clothes. The smell of mint mingles with the ammonia. She opens the window. Ashes are scattered on the windowsill, remnants of the smoking habits of the building's female employees. She knows that three women meet here to smoke. They work for different companies but gather like old friends, smoke together, and gossip.

  She washes her hands and returns to her desk. The manager isn't at his. At this moment, she has no idea how this day is going to turn out. She just hopes to sell a car to the customer who is coming for a test drive. She checks her schedule again, to make sure she isn't forgetting anything. Her calendar reminds her that the anniversary of her father's death is coming u
p in two days. She feels guilty—it has been only two years but she has completely forgotten about it.

  Her father, Jang Ik-dok, was born on November 14, 1925, on the same day as the legendary Korean-Japanese pro wrestler Rikidozan. Lee O-dok, the Korean language activist, was also born on that date, but her father wasn't interested in promoting the Korean language. Rather, he was obsessed with Rikidozan's fate, the fate of a man he had never met. Once, he even went over to Japan and for a hefty sum bought a towel with which Rikidozan supposedly wiped his forehead; some Korean-Japanese businessman sold it to him. On December 15, 1963, two days before General Park Chung Hee, the mastermind of the coup d'état, was sworn in as president of the Third Republic, thirty-nine-year-old liquor wholesaler Ik-dok was drinking with his friends on Kwangju's Chungjangno when he felt a sharp pain in his lower abdomen. When the big man collapsed, cold sweat running down his face, the bar owner and Ik-dok's friends rushed him to the hospital.

  It was acute appendicitis. In the emergency room, he was examined by the on-call doctor. Next to Ik-dok's bed was a family of five who'd tried to kill themselves by eating blowfish soup. One was already dead and the rest were in critical condition. That family was the talk of the emergency room. Ik-dok, suffering merely from appendicitis, was an afterthought. After a long time he was wheeled into the operating room. Cold sweat covered Ik-dok's forehead. The surgeon and nurses were preparing for the surgery. He was feeling light-headed because of the severe pain in his abdomen, but he could still hear the radio. Sitting in the corner of the room, it had stopped broadcasting music to transmit breaking news. The surgeon was coming toward him with a needle. Despite the enormous wave of pain lapping at him, Ik-dok raised his hand to stop him. The surgeon flicked the needle with his thumb and forefinger. Ik-dok paused his moaning and pointed at the radio. The brand-new model transistor radio reported that Rikidozan, who had been stabbed by a Yakuza's knife a week ago, was dead.

  "Rikidozan, the giant of Japanese pro wrestling, died on the fifteenth at 10:00 P.M. while being treated at Sanno Hospital in Tokyo for a wound that developed into peritonitis," Kyodo News reported. "Rikidozan was stabbed in the abdomen in a cabaret fight with a gang member named Murata Katsuji on the eighth and has been in the hospital since then."

  Tears rolled down Ik-dok's face, but a sharp pain attacked his lower abdomen. The sorrow of losing his spiritual brother, Rikidozan, transformed his pain into something else. Later he bragged about the appendicitis, considering it to be a unique pact of solidarity in sickness with the dying Rikidozan. The surgeon, who didn't think highly of pro wrestling, turned off the radio and inserted the needle in Ik-dok's arm. Ik-dok lost consciousness, tears rolling down his face, and the operation began.

  At that moment, Ik-dok claimed, he dreamt that Rikidozan came to him, dressed in a sharp suit. As soon as Ik-dok woke up, he looked at his family clustered around his bed and uttered in Japanese: "You have to live just like you sing a song." He insisted that this sentence was Rikidozan's last words. His family was shocked, and rightly so, since it was the first time he'd spoken Japanese in the eighteen years since liberation from Japanese occupation.

  After that day, Ik-dok repeated that phrase as often as the French say "C'est la vie." So much so that, at his deathbed, the family waited for him to make that pronouncement. Not because they liked it, but because it was a perfect phrase for the moment of his death, like a familiar slogan in an ad campaign.

  But Ik-dok didn't open his mouth. He blinked his sleep-filled eyes like a cow and turned his head with difficulty. They knew the end was near. He called over his second eldest son, In-sok, who was standing by his feet. In-sok shuffled nearer to his father but couldn't advance farther than Ik-dok's waist because his mother was standing by the old man's head. Ik-dok nodded for him to come closer. In-sok was finally able to lean over his father's mouth after pushing past his mother, who reluctantly let him take her spot. Ik-dok left his last words to his son in an inaudible voice, moving his dry mouth slowly. In-sok listened, nodding, with a heavy and dark expression. A short while later, just as in a TV drama, Ik-dok's heart stopped beating. But the family members didn't throw themselves on his body, sobbing, as it was a death they'd been expecting. The new widow asked her son, "What did your father say?"

  In-sok looked uncomfortable and didn't want to say anything.

  "It's okay. He's gone," his mother encouraged.

  "I'll tell you later. It's nothing important."

  The more he declined to tell, the more curious everyone became, including Ma-ri.

  "What did he say?" Ma-ri asked.

  "Well..."

  "Spit it out," their mother urged. Outside, the nurses were getting ready to move the body. Ik-dok's stomach, which had ballooned to a great size because of his illness, started to smell like wet socks.

  Finally, In-sok opened his mouth. "Be wary of taxes." It was In-sok's mouth that was moving, but as if by a feat of ventriloquism, his voice sounded like Ik-dok's.

  "Taxes?"

  "Yes, he said to be mindful of taxes."

  It was a fitting end for a liquor wholesaler. Taxes were his arch nemesis; he had been fighting them his entire life. Even though everyone understood this, each thought wistfully of the legendary pro wrestler.

  PREMATURE NOSTALGIA

  9:00 A.M.

  THE NOISE WITHIN the classroom subsides when Soji opens the door. She tosses the roll call book onto the lectern. The kids call her Soji, not by her full name, So Ji-hyon. She's used to the nickname. When she was in school, there was a girl named Maeng Ji-son, and their friends referred to her as Maengji, while she was called Soji. She often thinks that Soji is preferable to such a common name like Ji-hyon.

  The kids scurry back to their seats. If it were nice outside, everyone would frown at the thick dust floating around the classroom, but it isn't visible in this weather. Soji glances out the window. It is overcast and possibly drizzling. The class president, Hyon-mi, stands up and leads the class in greeting Soji in a powerful voice, unusual for a girl. Soji looks at Hyon-mi. When their gazes meet, Hyon-mi widens her eyes. She isn't really pretty, but there is something attractive about her. Hyon-mi was in Soji's seventh grade Korean class, and her reading comprehension and language skills were excellent. There are many different kinds of students, as many as there are different types of lovers. Some you want to take out for a nice meal, and others you want to converse with, meandering together through an art museum. Hyon-mi is the kind of kid who would be a perfect partner for playing board games. She smiles a lot and is considerate of others, and even gives you the feeling that you're getting smarter just by sitting across from her. Overcome with emotion all of a sudden, Soji closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She opens her eyes and flips open the roll call book.

  "What day is it today?" she asks.

  "Tuesday," the kids shout in unison, their voices ringing metallically.

  "And what's the date?"

  "March fifteenth."

  She jots down the date in the roll call book. She looks around the class, but it seems like everyone is present. She starts the class. She thumbs through the textbook, questions the kids, wakes up the dozing ones, and assigns homework. Korean is the hardest subject to convince kids to take seriously. They don't understand why they have to learn more Korean when they all speak it fluently.

  When the bell rings Soji leaves the room with the roll call book and textbook tucked under her arm. A few kids greet her as they walk past. She clacks toward the teachers' office and stops short. She stands in place blankly, like an unwound windup toy. A few students pause to say hello but, noticing her blank stare, continue on, looking uncomfortable. A minute passes. Two boys laugh, one saying, "Hey, look who's zonked out again. I bet she won't even notice if we hit her."

  "Do it, I dare you. I'll give you a thousand won if you do."

  "Okay, I'll do it. You better mean it."

  "Fucker, I bet you can't."

  "So it's a bet?"

  "Do it. Chi
cken."

  The boy with spiky hair approaches Soji in large, exaggerated steps. But she comes to her senses right before he is about to take a swipe. She blinks a few times and shakes her head, and starts to walk forward.

  "Hey, the light came on," the boys snicker, and walk off.

  Soji goes into the teachers' office. From far away, she hears "Für Elise," the chime indicating the start of the second period.

  THE SCHOOL IS on top of a steep hill. Ki-yong's car drives over the yellow speed bumps embedded tenaciously on parts of the slope. On the shoulder of the winding two-lane road, dogs with bald patches are lying around, scratching their necks with their hind legs. Stationery stores that were swamped in the morning gear up for afternoon traffic. It's such a typical school scene that it's almost surreal. Two boys too young for school are bent over a small video game machine in front of a stationery store like old men playing chess.

  Ki-yong's car glides through the front gates of the school. The sprinkling of rain that dampened the windshield has stopped. The aging security guard squints and stares at Ki-yong, but soon loses interest and turns back to his sports daily. Ki-yong parks in the empty lot in front of the school building and pockets the car keys. He closes the door and watches girls in gym clothes playing volleyball.

  One girl throws the ball in the air with both hands, and the girl standing in front of the net sets it up for a spike. The girls running up to the net follow rehearsed steps, jump up, their stomachs sticking out like frogs, and try to spike the ball. Most hit it below the net and some miss altogether. The ball lands in various parts of the net. The teacher, sitting in the referee's chair with a whistle in his mouth, looks down at the kids with a world-weary expression. The girls are overweight. They run up to the net uncomfortably and just barely manage to hit the ball. Then they return to the starting line to wait their turn. On their way back to the line or while waiting, the girls surreptitiously pull the edge of their underwear down, which has become wedged between their buttocks. Throw the ball, run up to the net, wait, spike the ball, pull down the underwear. Ki-yong feels like he's watching Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. The kids do what they have to when their turns come, then go back to their places.