At Dusk

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  Okay, now it’s our turn to have a drink.

  I picked up the kettle and poured her a cup of soju, then poured myself one. We downed it in one gulp and immediately drank several more shots. She opened the backpack that had been found in Minwoo’s car and rummaged through the clothing, mobile phone, and miscellaneous items, and then handed me his suicide note. It was written on a piece of paper ripped out of a notebook. On the front was the letter and on the back were her address and phone number and my mobile number. I took the letter in a daze and stared blankly at it.

  Dear Mum,

  I’m sorry I couldn’t take care of you for the rest of your life. You’ll find my laptop at my place in Seoul. Please make sure you get it. I worked like a dog to be able to buy that.

  It’s not much, but I transferred my savings into your account. Please use that money to go to the doctor for a check-up. Make sure you go! And take Woohee with you. I think she might be really sick. She really needs to move out of that basement room … Please tell her that I’m sorry I couldn’t help her.

  Mum, I love you.

  At last, the tears came. Stupid Minwoo, worrying about everyone else when he was the one dying. It must not have felt real to me yet at the crematory, I’d felt embarrassed at my own lack of tears. But now, here I was, a burst dam. Minwoo’s letter, which he must have scribbled down while sitting in the car, made me remember that slow voice of his, the way he always tried to sound so business-like. I kept drinking.

  His mother asked, Did you love Minwoo?

  I didn’t answer. She looked at me for a moment, then her voice turned melancholy.

  You should have loved him.

  9

  The chairman of Daedong Construction was arrested for embezzlement and malpractice. I’d heard about the arrest a few days earlier from Choi Seungkwon, but I didn’t know the exact charges until I saw it on the news. While selling lots in the Han River Digital Centre and pushing ahead with a new project, he had taken out a substantial loan using a company he’d recently acquired as collateral, which caused heavy damage to Daedong. Then, he invented fake tenants and used corporate funds to purchase apartments and Digital Centre commercial lots in order to make it look like the units were selling better than they were. All that, just to expand the business more aggressively and fundraise for Asia World. I think I know what he was praying to God for at those dawn prayer services. And hadn’t I, too, hoped earnestly for his prayers to come true?

  When I got to the office, Song whispered to me, You have a visitor.

  A visitor? What’s it about …?

  He opened the door to my reception room without a word. Two men, one in a suit and one in a windbreaker, set down their coffee cups and stood up hesitantly.

  We apologise for dropping in on you like this.

  The man in the suit handed me a business card: they were police investigators. I stopped Song as he was turning to leave.

  You better sit down, too, I said.

  The two investigators looked me straight in the eye and asked how I had become involved in the designs for Daedong’s Han River Digital Centre. They asked if the plans for Asia World had been drawn up by us as well. I felt annoyed, but I didn’t let it show.

  All we do is draw pictures at the request of building owners. I assume you’re not here to buy blueprints from us?

  The man in the windbreaker said, According to our investigation, Asia World is a complete scam. It’s just a front for raising capital.

  I decided to ignore that and asked, Is this a formal investigation?

  No, of course not. The man in the suit waved his hands. It’s just that there’s been a lot of talk lately, and we’re looking for some help. If the Asia World plans were drawn up here, then we’ll need to see any and all paperwork.

  I turned to Song and asked, Do we have anything like that?

  The plans and promotional photos should already be online.

  I stood to go into my office, but before closing the door all the way, I said, I’ve got work to do, so I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me.

  Song saw the two men out and came to see me again.

  I gave them a little something for their trouble.

  Song said it like it was nothing. He was an old hand at this. I blushed. I spent the rest of the morning feeling antsy. I kept thinking about how Youngbin had once told me to drop everything. I went to Google Maps and sat there looking at various plots of land, studying the shapes of the mountains and coastlines. It struck me suddenly that maybe I wasn’t looking for the future site of the house where I would spend my waning years, maybe I was looking for my future resting place. The thought calmed me. There was not much time, no new people, and no new work left before me. I did have five new emails, though. I opened the one with ‘Foxtails’ in the subject line. Just as I’d thought, it was from Soona. As with the last email, there was a brief message and an attached file. This time, she addressed me by my first name instead of ‘Mr Park.’ It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

  Dear Minwoo,

  It was spring when I first saw you in the news, but already the lush green leaves are changing colour, and the chilly air at dusk has me buttoning my coat higher. I can’t help but think that if we were to measure our ages in seasons, then this would be us. The days of our youth are probably now nothing but photographs in some treasured album, yellowing and fading like memories over time. And yet, my memories of you are still so clear, and lately they grow more vivid as the days pass.

  Please know that I’m not asking for anything from you. I’m simply relishing old memories as one does at this age. After losing my son, I thought that I was all alone in the world. I felt scared and frightened. But then you appeared. Like I said, please don’t feel pressured by that. These are my thoughts alone. I feel like I’ve seen an older brother who was lost to me when I was young, and nothing more. I am not asking for or expecting anything from you.

  As long as I can share these old stories with you over email now and then, I’ll be happy with that. But if you don’t want these emails, then this will be the last I ever send you. I just want to tell you about the things that happened to me after you left, just to get it all off of my chest. I think that might be the only way that I, too, will finally manage to escape Moon Hollow. Actually, I take that back. You were the one who wanted to escape. I … honestly, miss the place.

  I opened the attached file. Soona said she missed Moon Hollow, but it sounded like she was still stuck there. Her story drew me in, like she was leading me by the hand, back to Moon Hollow. When I read the part about my showing up there after a long time away, right around the time Tomak attacked her, I could tell that she resented me for not having been there for her. She said that after that happened, she locked herself in the attic with a stack of books. And, of course, the one who comforted her and helped her was Jaemyung. Whenever there was a good movie in town, he got free tickets for her from the boy who put up the movie posters, and whenever they needed an extra hand in the noodle house, he rolled up his sleeves and dove right in.

  I knew that once Minwoo escaped Moon Hollow he would never come back. And honestly, when I thought about what an awful sight I was, I didn’t want him to ever see me again. I knew that he dropped by sometimes to visit his parents, but I stayed hidden for fear of bumping into him. Luckily, he never looked for me.

  Jaemyung found various excuses to drop by our house during my year or so of hiding. I knew from rumours that he had stepped up and beat the hell out of Tomak, and that Tomak had disappeared from our neighbourhood ever since. My parents treated Jaemyung like a son. How could someone like me ever be good enough for a man like Minwoo? I realised that no one knew me better than or understood me and cared for me as much as Jaemyung did.

  I heard that Minwoo was going into the army. I decided to accept Jaemyung’s love, in order to free myself of my feelings for Minwoo. But as the date approac
hed for our planned visit to Jaemyung’s hometown, where we would visit his father’s grave, I found myself despairing over the fact that I was going to grow old with him there, in Moon Hollow, and I wanted nothing more than to run away. I don’t know what I was thinking when I went to see Minwoo. He sounded more disconcerted than happy on the phone. I was already feeling waves of regret, but I couldn’t turn back. I felt like I just had to see him once, no matter what. I was so flustered when we met. I asked him to buy me alcohol. I should have got up and left then. But I figured I’d already messed things up as badly as I could, so they couldn’t get any worse. I chose to think of it as my personal way of sending him off. The next morning, when we parted ways on the sidewalk, I forgot to get on the bus and ended up walking for several bus stops. Other people kept glancing at me crying as I walked. I muttered out loud to myself, Goodbye, Park Minwoo, you and I are through. That was his send-off.

  After my father died, we closed the noodle factory. Running the machine to knead the dough and extrude the noodles was too much for my mother to handle on her own.

  Jaemyung was pretty much my husband by then, just without the wedding ceremony. With his help, we bought a house across the street, on the corner of the entrance to Moon Hollow, and opened a small store. I quit my job to help my mom out at the store. Jaemyung came by once every few days and spent the night with me. He was the one who told me that Minwoo was leaving to study abroad with his fiancee. Then, a few months or so later, Jaemyung was arrested. Rumours went around that each police station had a quota to fill, and so a lot of people I knew got rounded up. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to see Minwoo again, but I had nowhere else to turn.

  A month later, Jaemyung came home. He was all skin and bones and looked exhausted. It took over a year for him to recover. I moved in with him to help nurse him back to health, and soon after we had a little girl. But he never was able to return to his old cheerful and outgoing self. His stint in the Samcheong Re-education Camp didn’t just ruin his body, it destroyed his spirit. He swore at first that he was going to keep his distance from bars and the like, but once he was on his feet again, he started hanging out away from home and meeting his old crew. I didn’t find out until much later, but he opened a gambling den and even started doing drugs. We used to call these illegal gambling dens ‘houses’. They made money by hiring professional gamblers to fleece big spenders of all their money. Jaemyung bought a used foreign car and showered me with jewelry, and I believed him at first when he said that he’d made the money by selling alcohol wholesale. But after just a couple of years of this, someone was killed in a gang fight, and Jaemyung was rounded up again. He was sentenced to fifteen years for being part of a crime ring.

  Not long after he went to prison, our little girl died of measles. I didn’t tell him, but he must have heard it from someone anyway. I went to visit him one day, and he refused to see me. The guard handed me a note from him that read, ‘Stop visiting. We have no child now, so find your own way to make a living.’ Then he applied to be transferred to another prison. I tried visiting him there, but he always refused to see me.

  I moved back home with my mother. She’d been lonely working in the store by herself. I was there all of three or four months when a man came to our store. He was so awkward and hesitant. He was selling books on monthly installment plans door-to-door. He was shy, nice, and about three years younger than me. He told me that being a book peddler wasn’t exactly a suitable career, but he’d tried all sorts of odd jobs after graduating high school and had barely managed to secure that position. I loved reading, and was drawn to a thirty-volume collection of world literature that he showed me. Given my circumstances, I could never dream of spending that much money all at once, but when he said I could split the payment up over ten months, I didn’t need to hear any more of his awkward sales pitch. He left in a cheerful mood at having sold the books so easily, and started showing up every month after that, supposedly just to collect my next installment. Had he been only a book peddler, I would not have followed him out of Moon Hollow. But he, too, loved reading, and he kept me well-supplied in books. We fell in love with each other while reading the same books and talking and even arguing about them, just as Minwoo and I had once done. But his timid personality made it hard for him to make ends meet as a book peddler. I moved with him to his hometown of Incheon and started a new life with him, selling eggs and fruits and vegetables out of a small truck.

  And then she had a son. She wrote that she lived more or less happily for the next ten years without wanting for more. Her husband made up for his lack of sociability by being a hard worker, and he got them a small room with a jeonse lease, after which he started saving money bit by bit. The year their son turned ten, her husband was badly injured in a traffic accident and received no compensation. As he lay bedridden, their debt mounted; by the time he died, she was back to square one. She took whatever work she could find, cleaning houses, helping out in restaurants, doing janitorial work. But the money she made was barely enough to cover the interest on their debt. She had no choice but to leave her young son at home alone while she worked. Fortunately, her son took after his father and grew up to be a polite boy who stayed out of trouble. He’d only graduated from a junior college since he didn’t have the grades for university, and he was relegated to a temporary contract job, but at least it was at a major firm. Up until he was fired, he worked as an assistant on a demolition site; Soona described in detail how earnest and hard-working he was. I paused at the part where she said he worked on the wrecking crew of an area being redeveloped. The image was all too familiar, as if it were being reenacted right in front of me. My breath grew short, and I felt a strange tug, like there was some delicate, invisible string that connected us all to each other. She wrote that after her son was fired, he went from one part-time job to another before finally taking his own life last winter. When I looked up from her letter, barely an hour had gone by. All those decades of her tumultuous life had slipped into the past along with my hour of reading.

  She said that she had spotted my name on a banner outside of City Hall while riding by on the bus one day. I turned back to the letter.

  My heart raced when I saw your aged face in the photo. After my son died, I went back to Moon Hollow for the first time in a very long time. There was no trace left of our lives there. Your parents’ fishcake shop, our noodle shop, the public tap, Jaemyung’s shoeshine stand, the movie theatre, the overpass. It was all gone. Everything was so changed that I found myself wondering if that place had ever really existed. How could forty years fly by so quickly? So many waves of people coming and going in those streets, people who grew up there with us, people born after we left …

  Ah, I almost forgot. I named my son Minwoo. Even though his childhood was as poor and difficult as ours, I wanted more than anything for him to be happy. Where did I go wrong? Why did my son’s life have to end that way?

  Her story ended there. For some reason I felt like she was scolding me. For a life story, it was quite short. Parts of my life story had been included, too. Each time I read one of her paragraphs, faces and images that had been frozen in time came back to me. I got up, feeling a mix of emotions, paced back and forth, and then stood in the window for a long time. I felt like my body was slowly disappearing. First my arms and legs blurred at the edges and vanished, leaving only my trunk, then that, too, started to disappear from the bottom up. I stared at the reflection of my upper half floating in the window, transposed over the city lights, like a photo taken from overlapping negatives. Who are you? asked the man in the glass.

  Aren’t you going to answer your phone?

  My secretary was poking her head around the door. Just then I realised that my cell phone had been ringing away on my desk. As I reached for it, I asked the secretary,

  Do we have any cigarettes?

  She came back with a pack and some matches. I lit one and took a deep drag. I hadn’t had a ci
garette in so long that my head felt like it was spinning. I sat down hard in my chair. The person who’d called was Youngbin. I immediately asked where he was and what he was doing. He told me his second oldest was getting married and said he would send me an invitation. I suggested meeting for a drink. He sounded surprised and asked if something had happened. Today had been a mess, and tomorrow was still a question, so I said never mind, told him I’d call him up next time, and hung up. I smoked the cigarette slowly, the whole thing, until the filter started to burn. I gave in to the dizzy, sluggish feeling and sat there blankly for a long time.

  I gazed at the computer screen for a moment, and then typed ‘urban redevelopment’ into a search engine. An endless list of links popped up; I scrolled through page after page of photos and text. By the time I’d returned to Korea with my wife and daughter after studying in the US, ten years had passed, and I was nearing forty. I’d acquired practical experience while working on several international projects in the US. That was when I joined Hyeonsan as a department head, right when business really took off for both the company and for me. I came across a photo of a residential redevelopment project that my old childhood friend Yoon Byeonggu and I had handled in the mid-1990s. Of course, that was around the same time that the Sampoong Department Store had collapsed. Nearly ninety per cent of the structures that had been built during modernisation failed to pass safety inspections, and even those that did pass were in need of repairs or renovation. But this did nothing to fix the irregularities and corruption that plagued construction at every stage, from planning to commencement to completion. Instead, it expanded the new market. That was when I started my own company, and Byeonggu went into politics. The photos online held the past and present of the urban redevelopment project that I’d participated in just ten years earlier.