Familiar Things

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  ‘Hey,’ Bugeye said, ‘let’s go home. Come on.’

  ‘Where’s it? Gotta huff some more.’

  Bugeye forced Mole to his feet and walked him out of the hideout. They climbed the hill much more slowly than before, stopping to rest partway, then climbing a little more, then stopping to rest again. They crossed the field, fording their way through the tall, dried grass. Bugeye kept his arm around Mole, whose arms and legs kept flailing around like an octopus. They came to a clearing where Hard Hat was having drinks with his work crew.

  ‘Ha! Look at these brats,’ said Hard Hat. ‘Still wet behind the ears, and already they’re out getting drunk and acting crazy.’

  Bugeye was exhausted, so he let go of Mole for a moment to catch his breath.

  ‘His brother lost both his legs,’ he told the men.

  Bugeye said nothing more, but the men understood at once.

  ‘Drinking will only make it worse.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘He lives in the place across from mine,’ said one of the men, who wore a knit cap. ‘His dad sleeps somewhere else.’

  The man in the cap stepped forward and hoisted Mole easily onto his back, then took off down the road to the shantytown. When Bugeye got home, the shack was empty; Baldspot had left again. The alcohol hit him all at once. Bugeye sat with his back against the wall and muttered to himself, Great job, pounding all that goddamn alcohol, gonna rot here, just like the Baron, or Mole’s brother, or Mole. As Bugeye sprawled out on the blanket, a thought occurred to him and he reached into his pocket. The plastic bag crinkled, and he hesitated for only a second before grabbing it with both hands, spreading it open, and placing the bag over his nose and mouth. Whatever, he thought, who gives a shit? He inhaled deeply, the smell of rubber and petrol filling his nose and throat, and then his head was spinning and he couldn’t breathe. He pulled the bag away from his face and then brought it up for another inhale. The inside of his head droned with the sound of cicadas at the height of summer, and everything started to go black. He groped around on the floor for somewhere to rest his head, his arms flailing. His hand fell on something. What was it? He fumbled with the object for a bit before accidentally hitting one of the buttons. The screen lit up.

  Electronic music fills my ears. The screen grows bigger, and bigger, and with a brrr, my body shrinks down. I am dressed in blue overalls and a red cap, and I am walking straight ahead. To each side of me are walls made from fake stone blocks and directly ahead is a door. The moment I walk through the door, a new world appears. The sky is a bright blue, and big round clouds float by. To one side is a jagged forest. If I look hard, off in the distance I can see the flat line where bright blue sky meets dark yellow earth. When I look closer, the blue of the sky is paint, and the clouds are clumps of urethane foam, and the forest is plastic and vinyl, and the earth is latex and rubber pellets pounded flat, and the grass is polypropylene, and the side of the road and the walls and the fake rocks are synthetic plastic. Cement buildings sparkling with metal and glass stand like scattered towers in a vast plain. It looks like a brand-new city that has just recently been built. But there are no other people besides me. Grape vines and apple trees grow along the edge of a flowerbed where the leaves have unfurled and the plastic flowers are in full bloom, and the grapes and apples are smooth, shiny plastic.

  Up ahead, something, some sort of shaggy dog, is coming towards me. Its polyester fur sticks out in all directions, and its eyes are red and it is growling. I keep walking. I figure this creature will move aside for me, but, oh no! The moment I touch it, a jolt of electricity runs through my body and I flash through a screen that reminds me of a window filled with very bright light, and I plummet into darkness. Light breaks again, and I am back on the narrow path between the brick walls, back where I started, and I pass through the door. I walk the same path as before, past the flowerbed, and here comes the dog creature. This time I turn around and go back the way I came, but there is another one. This one looks like a tortoise; it crawls with its belly pressed to the ground. They are on both sides of me and coming closer. I push off with my feet a little and, boom, my body is aloft. I push a little harder and I’m bouncing high into the sky. I bounce and land on the tortoise creature: with a bloop-bloop it pops like a bubble and vanishes. I bounce again and land on the dog creature, and there’s another bloop-bloop. This time, a line of creatures marches towards me. I bounce, bounce, bounce, and pop each one in turn. Floating in the sky are stones, staggered like a staircase. I bounce, bounce again, and at the very top I bump into a small star; I grow in power, and the score I accumulate appears in sparkling gold numbers in the sky. I leap onto an embankment across the way and cross a log bridge. Ahead are the dog creatures; in the sky are bats looking like scraps of tissue. I bounce on the heads of the dog creatures, kick the bat creatures out of the sky, one-two, one-two, bloop-bloop, and cross another bridge.

  I cannot turn back now. I cannot speed up either, can only march along in step with the solemn music. Oops! I don’t make it across an open manhole, and down I go. I fall through darkness, and enter a cave-like underground world. The scenery is completely changed. A river of sticky paint flows past; fake rocks and an acrylic waterfall tumble down. Everywhere I turn is crawling with rubber balloon creatures shaped like tiny, horned crocodiles. They reek of petrol. I jump on them, too, and pop them. An enormous mountain of trash looms before me. There’s a bog of sticky black grease, a pond that shoots out flames, a tangle of junk—some like cans, some like long bottles, some like crumpled rags, some like twisted balls of wire, some like broken boxes—and a long rope hangs down from the very top. I grab the rope and rise. Up there, an even bigger crocodile spreads its jaws. I bounce and fly through the air, kick him with both feet, and vanquish him.

  I cross the bridge: there stands the king of the underworld in his fluttering cloak. Fire spews from his mouth. If the fire touches me, I’ll have to tumble back down into darkness. I bound up stepping stones floating in thin air and alight at a higher place. Then I soar down and kick the monster in the head, once, twice, three times, kwang-kwang-kwang, and he explodes, and with the last of my strength, I swoop over and claim the golden bead glittering atop a plate. The music swells, fireworks explode, and my score, my winnings, sparkle in the sky. Just above the still-exploding fireworks, an opening gapes. I flap hard to reach it, and at last I emerge from the dark and gloomy cave and into a different landscape. It’s the same open field from before. Here, I can speak to no one, see no one, receive help from no one. The houses, trees, rocks, and rivers are all obstacles, and the monsters intent on sending me back to the beginning are my enemy. I cannot turn back, all I can do is move endlessly forward, and skip and soar and grasp and hang and push, all while raising my score. I barely make it past the first stage, and then I am back, standing before a door that leads into a high castle. The path I have travelled has been pushed off the edge of the screen and there is no way back, no retreat. It is an endlessly repeating parade, and even if I reach the highest stage, I return as always to where I started.

  I stand before the castle door when I hear a raspy voice behind me. Child, do not go. I want to trust the voice, but surely it’s a trap. I turn and look: Grandfather Kim is standing there. What are you doing here? I ask, and he says, Everyone who goes down that road meets their ruin. They think it’s a shortcut, but they pay a terrible price. Do not forget that every living thing and every object in this world is connected to you. Just then, a memory, like a longed-for dream, comes back to me and I call out, I’ve been to your village, is it different from here? Of course it’s different, he says. But our village is always with you. We’re here because you’re here, and when you vanish, we vanish. We live with you and are the same as you, down to every last tree, every blade of grass, every duck, every mountain, every river. Here, everything is an obstacle and you are alone, surrounded by monsters that you must fight and destroy. Can’t yo
u see that this path will keep you running forever, bent only on making it to the next stage? You don’t have to go through that door. You can leave this place.

  Wait, did he just shove me?

  The horrible landscape vanished at once. Just like that, Bugeye was back in a candlelit room, lying on his side with his legs curled to his chest and his arms wrapped around his head. He thought he was still falling and falling.

  ‘Hyung! What’s wrong?’

  Baldspot was standing there with the game in his hand. Bugeye struggled to speak.

  ‘W–water …’

  His tongue was so dry that he could barely get the words out. Baldspot held a bowl of water up to his mouth, and Bugeye look a long drink. The water wet the thick cardboard of his tongue and poured down his feverish throat. A surge of helpless regret washed over him, and with a curse, he closed his eyes.

  *

  That day, the sky was very overcast, and the wind blew hard. The banner in front of the management office declaring spring as the season of safety awareness was tattered and torn, and all but flying away on the wind. The evening’s line of garbage trucks had started crowding in around five, and the final shift was in full swing. The days were now longer than in winter, and a red glow still lingered in the western sky, while all around, the air was growing dusky. Bugeye’s mother began collecting items from her unit. Bugeye and Baldspot worked together to separate the items in the baskets that the workers ferried over to them, stuff them into large sacks, and gather them all in one place. Someone on her unit began to complain.

  ‘The Environmental Co-operative is going too far! They’ve left us barely enough room for our trucks to turn around.’

  ‘The unit leaders for Central Recycling spoke to them yesterday,’ Bugeye’s mother said. ‘The Co-op said they would fix it.’

  Another worker dumped their load and said, ‘Fix it? Shit … Look over there. They dumped those oil drums yesterday, but the drums are still sticking out. The backhoes only went over one area, and everything else they dumped today is just sitting there.’

  ‘The stuff we’re getting is useless—there aren’t enough items worth collecting. This area is meant for household waste only. They should be disposing of those oil drums somewhere else … The Co-op must have taken a bribe.’

  ‘I get your point. If they don’t take care of it by tomorrow, I’ll talk it over with the other unit leaders and go to the Co-op again.’

  Bugeye’s mother tried to console her team before heading over to their work site. As the trash built up, the space they had to work in had narrowed, but it was still big enough for the trucks to squeeze through. Even so, her unit members’ complaints weren’t unfounded. Out of all of the available space, the Environmental Co-operative had picked a spot right in the middle of the entrance to dig a deep pit, and had been burying useless materials in it over the past few days. They said it was because the heavy-equipment operators would demand more money if they were asked to cover a wider area.

  Nevertheless, the day had passed without any particular trouble until just past six o’clock, when a loud blast was heard coming from the district sector over to the east, and flames were seen shooting up. As the layers of trash buried underground rotted, the air pockets had filled with gas; with the warming weather, the ice was melting as well, and the gas was finding its way out. The wind fanned the flames, and the fire began to sputter and spread in all directions. Luckily, the district workers had finished their shift and were just that moment making their way down from the dumpsite, so no one was burned or injured, but they could not leave it be either. A call was made from the management office, and one fire truck from town and two from the city came running. It took half an hour to extinguish the flames. But that was only the beginning.

  Bugeye and Baldspot arrived home first. Their mother didn’t return until around 8.00 p.m., as she’d been busy finishing up for the day and holding a meeting with her work unit. Just like every other night, the three of them were eating dinner at the table together when there was a whooshing sound, followed by another loud blast. Their plastic door lit up. Bugeye and Baldspot went outside to discover flames rising up from the middle of the shantytown. Fireballs launched from the exploding gas in the landfill were raining down on roofs like cannon shells. The shantytown began to burn.

  ‘Mum! Fire!’

  Bugeye’s mother glanced outside and hurriedly grabbed three blankets, shoving one each into Bugeye and Baldspot’s hands, and took off towards the shop. The sky around the landfill was as bright as day: the whole area had turned into a sea of fire, and clouds of white gas billowed up. Everyone quickly regretted leaving their shacks without their cloth masks and gas masks and other equipment. The sound of explosions was constant, and sparks flew through the air before pouring down like hail. Bugeye’s mother took the lead, her blanket covering her head as she ran bent forward at the waist, looking only straight ahead. Bugeye covered his head as well, and held his breath as he ran with his eyes fixed on the ground. The air around them smelled foul, and the sky was covered in a thick cloud of fumes. Baldspot had been following them, but he stopped in his tracks and looked back. He covered his head with his blanket and took off running in the opposite direction of Bugeye and his mother. He had to get back home and save that game. As the flames rose on all sides, Baldspot vanished into the dense smoke.

  Bugeye and his mother ran towards the office, trying to get as fast and as far away as they could from the dumpsite. Countless people were pouring out of the shantytown; most were barefoot and empty-handed. The fire was spreading. Already all of the shacks had gone up in flames. The instant a single lick of flame touched them, those jerry-built structures made from vinyl and canvas and Styrofoam and cardboard and wooden boards caught fire like dry kindling; the walls bulged with heat, and collapsed in on themselves. The methane gas escaping the trash and the layers of flammable materials kept setting each other off, burning everything through and through, and as the heated air pockets exploded, more clouds of gas billowed out, until the flames reached the Co-op’s carelessly discarded drums. There was an enormous explosion, and the drums became airborne. Some were later found floating in the middle of the river; others, crushed and dented on the edges of Flower Island. Sparks rained, gas billowed, and people collapsed in abandonment, unsure of which way to run, while others headed straight for the management office and church for the safety of their intact tin roofs. Two thousand shacks burned at once, and though the fire waned before long, the heat and the gas were worse than what was happening in the landfill. An employee of the management office shouted through a megaphone at the people crowding in.

  ‘Please make your way across the river! You cannot stay here. It is too dangerous. You must evacuate!’

  Bugeye and his mother lost each other in the smoke, and stumbled around searching and calling out for each other. Nearly everyone crowded around the management office was in the same state of panic, which made it even harder to find anyone. They floundered about, coughing, tears streaming.

  ‘Jeong-ho! Yeong-gil!’

  Bugeye heard his mother’s voice, and spotted a familiar-looking blanket. Mother and son embraced as if meeting on a battleground.

  ‘Where’s your little brother?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Bugeye searched around. ‘Maybe he went to Scrawny’s house?’

  Bugeye pushed his mother ahead of him, past the shop, out towards the open field. They headed for Scrawny’s house on the western end of the island. The fire had spread from the landfill and the shantytown, and was burning the field that Bugeye and Baldspot usually crossed to get to their hideout. The flames were being swept along by the wind. They hurried along the smoky path towards Scrawny’s house. They could hear the dogs barking excitedly in the distance.

  ‘Where are we?’ his mother asked nervously.

  ‘This is where Peddler Grandpa lives.’

  ‘I heard he
lived nearby. So strange. It’s like a different world out here.’

  Peddler Grandpa must have already been pacing around outside, because he met them along the path.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called out.

  Bugeye and his mother greeted him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘We’ve had fires before, but never like this.’

  ‘Is Scrawny’s mama feeling better?’ Bugeye asked.

  Peddler Grandpa dropped his voice to a whisper.

  ‘She’s sleeping like the dead right now. I’m worried she’ll run off again if she finds out the island is on fire.’

  He looked around.

  ‘Where’s your little brother?’

  ‘We left the house together, but we lost him. I thought he’d be here …’

  ‘Let’s wait and see. He’ll come here when he can’t find you.’

  They sat in front of the house and watched the fire grow. Flames were licking the sides of the hill and torching the silver grass along the river’s edge.

  ‘Let’s go inside, ma’am,’ Peddler Grandpa said to Bugeye’s mother.

  ‘I don’t want to impose.’

  ‘We have an extra room. The three of you can sleep there.’

  They tried to sneak in quietly, but there was no stopping the dogs from barking and whimpering. Bugeye picked up Scrawny, and the rest of the dogs quieted down. When they sat down, they heard Scrawny’s mama’s sleepy-sounding voice.

  ‘Dad, is someone here?’

  ‘No, go back to bed.’

  They heard sirens off in the distance. The fire trucks had arrived too late. The trucks that had been dispatched earlier in the evening must have returned, along with reinforcements from the city. Bugeye’s mother looked up from her seat in the corner and said to Bugeye, ‘Go out and find your little brother.’

  He’d been planning to look for him anyway. He headed towards the management office, the stream to his left, and the hill, field, and river to his right. The dry grass and trees in the field and on the hill were smouldering, and clouds of smoke billowed in the hazy sky above the burned-out shantytown, while flames were still climbing the landfill. Police cars were parked close together in front of the management office with its cloudbank of toxic smoke, and fire trucks were parked close to the trash. The crew leaders from the district and the unit leaders from the private sectors clustered together, armed with masks and gloves and work equipment. As Bugeye squeezed past them, one of them called out, ‘Hey! Why haven’t you evacuated yet?’