by Lee Ki-ho
We continued to visit the kimbab restaurant. The fourth day we visited the restaurant was the first time we were able to hear the client’s wife speak.
“Would you mind taking a seat?”
When she said that, as before, we had our heads to the ground. On that day in particular, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses hadn’t left the house at all. He said it was because there was a live broadcast of an important horse race. He was lying down as he told us to do a good job and waved at us. We waved back at him as well.
We stood up, brushing the dirt off of our heads. Si-bong’s and my face had both turned red. There was sweat streaming down the backs of our necks.
We sat down across from the client’s wife at the table she was sitting at. There was kimbab placed on the table.
The client’s wife handed us chopsticks. “Here, have some.”
We began to eat the kimbab. It was soft and warm. Si-bong ate the kimbab with his bag clung to his chest. The kimbab kept getting caught in our throats. That was on account of our eating so fast.
“I don’t know why it is that you two are doing this . . .”
The client’s wife spoke with her hands folded on top of the table.
“But please, go to him and tell him this for me: There’s no need to apologize.”
We both put our chopsticks down and took sips of water. Si-bong spoke with his mouth full.
“But your husband did something wrong, didn’t he? He left you and your son!”
I picked up a piece of pickled radish and added while chewing, “That’s clearly a great wrong.”
The client’s wife looked down at the table and then spoke again.
“So is he . . . still living with that woman?”
Si-bong and I looked at each other, speechless. We’d never let a single word about the woman slip out of our mouths. That was on account of the client asking us not to. Still, the client’s wife knew about the woman. From that moment on there was nothing we could do but keep our mouths shut.
That night around dinnertime we sat with the man with the horn-rimmed glasses in a circle around the tape recorder. The client came as soon as he’d finished work. He sighed a lot and smoked a lot.
As soon as the woman’s voice came flowing out of the tape recorder, the client closed his eyes. As soon as he did that, he hung his head down low. From the tape recorder we also heard gagging noises. They were coming from us. When he heard those noises, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses glared at us. The client’s wife spoke from within the tape recorder.
“After he left like that . . . there were maybe four times I carried our son on my back all the way to his work. That’s when I . . . that’s when I learned a lot about him. So ever since then I stopped waiting. Huh . . . it’s already been quite a long time since all of that.”
As the client’s wife said that, she even went so far as to smile. We wanted to tell that to the client, but we didn’t. That was on account of the client’s neck having turned completely red.
“At first I resented him so much . . . but as time passed, I actually came to be very thankful. I mean, that I was able to find out what kind of person he was early on. I was even thankful that he’d left us before our son learned to talk. Luckily for him, it made it that much less painful. So I’m happy with that. Now, apologizing, forgiving . . . we’re not even at a point where any of that is necessary.”
The client unfastened the top button of his dress shirt. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. We remained on the floor, sitting with our legs crossed.
“And so . . . I think there’s no need for the two of you to come here anymore. Please just tell him that I think we should just keep on living the way we’ve been.”
The client’s wife’s voice stopped there. After that, mostly our voices were heard. Excuse me, do you think we could have some more fried snacks? Could you please give us some more water? Those kinds of things.
Even after the tape recorder had been turned off the client kept his head low. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses spoke.
“Well, it seems like you don’t have to worry too much now. After just a few more times it seems like she’ll accept the apology. Women are always pretending to want the opposite of what they think, don’t they?”
The client spoke slowly. “No . . . I think that’ll be enough . . .”
The man with the horn-rimmed glasses inched over on his knees toward the client.
“What’s with the sissy talk? Just ’cause she says that’s that? She’s just saying that.”
The client shook his head.
“No, no, that’s not it . . . I was only thinking of myself. I thought this whole time she was still thinking of me . . . But that wasn’t it.”
The client covered his face with both hands. He sat there like that for a long moment. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses bit his lower lip and stared at the client. Si-bong and I kept staring at the tape recorder. As I looked at it, I wanted to eat fried snacks and kimbab again.
When the client was gone, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses scolded us. It was right after he’d followed the client all the way to the main entrance of the apartment building and come back again.
“What’s wrong with you? I’m not just doing this for myself! It’s not supposed to be just me telling him that everything’s going right!”
Si-bong replied. “But we didn’t say anything.”
“That’s what I mean! That’s exactly what you’re not supposed to do! Our first customer and this is what you do?! And I worked so hard to get this guy!”
“But if the woman really thinks that it’s not a wrong then what are we supposed to do?”
“Then you have to keep making her think it’s a wrong!”
The man with the horn-rimmed glasses was striking the floor with the palm of his hand as he spoke. We just sat there and watched him as he did. I spoke.
“Well then, we just have to get him to do something else wrong.”
“What?”
“Since she said that’s not a wrong, now we have to get him to do something else wrong. If there’s another wrong, there can be an apology.”
“Now you’re just talking nonsense! So now he’s just supposed to come and do something else wrong?!”
“The world is full of wrongs upon wrongs, so there’ll be something else that he can apologize for.”
As soon as I said that the man with the horn-rimmed glasses stopped asking questions. He sat in that same spot for a long time smoking. It looked as though he were thinking about something.
Si-bong and I went to bed early.
11. Creating Wrong
The following day, in the afternoon, Si-bong and I waited for the little boy in front of the main gate of the elementary school. Although it was dizzying when all of the children came pouring out of the school, it was easy enough to pick out the kimbab restaurant woman’s son. That was on account of there being only one kid who limped on his left foot.
Si-bong spoke to the child. “Hey, so you live over there in the kimbab restaurant, right?”
“Yes, I do. Why?” The child replied.
“Can you talk to us for a minute?”
“I’m a little busy right now . . .” The child walked right past us toward the kimbab restaurant.
“It’s about your dad.”
The child stopped. He turned around and looked at us.
“Wanna go with us to meet your father? We’re about to go meet him.”
The child continued to look at us without saying a word. He looked a few times as well at the kimbab restaurant. There was already a long line of children standing by the pots in front. The child looked for a moment at his wristwatch. He then slowly walked toward us. It was all exactly as we’d planned.
We went with the child to the client’s house. We knew his address. It was written down with his phone number at the bottom of the map to the kimbab restaurant he’d drawn for us.
We
walked for more than two hours. Granted, it was far, but it was mostly on account of the child walking so slowly. The child looked frequently at his wristwatch, and he even tried to make phone calls to somewhere from phone booths a few times. The calls didn’t go through. As we walked, the child spoke.
“So I know you guys.”
Si-bong spoke back to him. “Yeah, we know you, too.”
“So you kept coming by our place because of my dad?”
“Yeah, he asked us to.”
The child didn’t speak for a moment. Then, another question.
“Does my father want to meet me?”
“Well, if he meets you, and he can apologize, he won’t run off again.”
We kept walking. The child didn’t say anything else. He didn’t even look at his watch anymore. He just kept walking, his head hanging low, bobbing up and down.
The client’s home was on the third floor of a multiplex apartment building with an orange roof. We sat crouched in front of the building, waiting for the client. The day was quickly coming to an end and the streetlights began turning on one by one. The people passing by in the small street stared at us. The child took out a workbook from his bag, put it on his lap and began to write something. Si-bong asked him.
“So there’s nothing you want your dad to apologize for, either?”
The child spoke as he wrote. “No, there is. There’s a lot.”
“What kind of stuff?” I asked. “We’ll accept it for him.”
The child stared at us.
“Are you guys stupid or something? If I wanted you guys to accept the apology then why would I have come all this way?”
We nodded. That was on account of what the kid said being right. He started writing in his workbook again. We didn’t ask him any more questions. And that was on account of our not wanting to interrupt him.
The client didn’t come home until after ten o’clock. He was carrying a black plastic bag in one hand. When he saw us with the child, he stopped where he was. The child limped toward us, and stood by our side.
The client asked us, “How . . . what’s going on?” He kept staring at the child. The child stared at the client. I spoke.
“You need to do something else wrong. Something new.” Then Si-bong spoke.
“That way there’s something to apologize for.”
“What . . . What’s that supposed to . . . ?”
The client wanted to say something else, but we couldn’t hear. When he’d gotten that far, we left the child with him and ran to the end of the street. As we ran, we kept looking behind us. The client and the child stood there looking at us for a long time. Then, suddenly, they turned their heads and looked directly at each other. After we saw that, we didn’t look back again. That was on account of that being good enough for us.
Si-bong and I simply kept on running.
12. What We Weren’t Able to Say
The following day we stayed inside the house all day long without going out. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses had taken one of his horse racing papers and left the house early in the morning.
Si-bong and I spent the morning either sitting against the wall, looking out the window without speaking, or staring at the small cactus standing in front of the shoe cabinet. On one of the cactus’s leaves that looked like a ping pong paddle there was a total of seventy-five needles. On the next leaf, there was a total of sixty-seven. Outside the window the cicadas were buzzing, and the shadow of the windowsill slowly shifted its slant from left to right. From time to time the refrigerator made a sound as if it were clearing phlegm from its throat.
In the late afternoon, when Si-yeon had left for work, I even took out the superintendent’s diaries from under the sink and read them. In the diaries were the stories of the middle-aged man who hung himself from the window of our room as well as the woman who killed herself next to the toilet. Both days began with the words “One resident death,” and ended with “Handling of corpse and burial carried out by the two caretakers and the two kids.” It was clear that the “two kids” were Si-bong and I. In various places in his diaries “the two kids” appeared frequently. “The two kids” were always there, “eating together,” “taking medicine together,” “packaging together,” and “sleeping together.”
At one point I stopped reading the diary and asked Si-bong.
“Hey, so I was thinking . . . You think there’s anything you might want to apologize to me for?”
Si-bong looked at me quietly. “Something to apologize for? To you?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm . . . Not yet, I don’t think.”
Si-bong tilted his head to one side. Then he asked me, “Why? Do you?”
I thought for a moment about how I got up every night and sat by the bathroom door. Si-bong would be asleep and I would be awake. In that way it was something that Si-bong didn’t know about and that I did. I didn’t know if I was supposed to apologize for it or not. And that was on account of in the act of apologizing, in that act, that instant, it would become a wrong.
I looked into Si-bong’s eyes for a while and then said slowly, “Me? I don’t really know, either.”
We continued reading the superintendent’s diaries. Nowhere in the diaries did it come up that we went to the superintendent’s private residence. After a long time, Si-bong spoke.
“Hey.”
I looked at Si-bong.
“You know, if there’s anything you want to apologize to me for, I mean, later on . . .”
“Then what?”
“Just apologize to yourself.”
“To me? You mean the apology for you?”
“Yeah.” He cracked a half-smile and nodded his head.
“How’s that?”
“Well, ’cause you can accept the apology for me.”
I nodded and told him, “Same to you.”
We kept looking at each other and laughed for a moment. Then, we continued reading the superintendent’s diaries.
So that’s it. Even up until that point I had no idea that the moment I would apologize to Si-bong would come so quickly. Even if I’d known, the answer to his question would have been the same, but still, because I keep thinking about what Si-bong said that day, it’s obvious I wasn’t able to say to him everything I wanted to say. But what was that? I still don’t know.
13. The Apology that Couldn’t Be Made on Someone Else’s Behalf
We stole a glance at the woman from the kimbab restaurant. The door of the restaurant was open but she wasn’t working. Even the gas burners underneath the large pots in front of the restaurant were turned off. There were a few children who went inside, but after a moment they would just come back out. The woman was sitting right next to the door, looking out the window. Her two hands were folded neatly on the table. It was the third day that the child had not returned.
We went inside the restaurant. Si-bong spoke first.
“We know where your son is.”
The woman did not turn her head towards us. She continued looking out the window.
“Your son is with his father now.”
The woman spoke. “Yeah, I know.”
The woman’s voice was different than before. She wasn’t using honorifics.
“How do you know that?”
“My son . . . he called.”
The woman stood up and began wiping down the tables with a cloth. The tables were clean, free of even a speck of dust, yet she continued to wipe them down.
“So that’s clearly a wrong, right?” I asked.
“So now if we apologize for him you’ll accept it, won’t you? We can even bring your son back for you,” Si-bong added.
“No.” She answered right away. “He’ll be back soon. That’s what he said, so he’ll be back soon.”
We walked closer to the table where the woman was standing. “But then, how are we supposed to apologize? We really want to apologize for your husband.”
The woman stopped wiping. She closed her eyes ti
ghtly. The forearm of the hand that held the rag was trembling.
“Well then, would you be willing to die for that piece of garbage?” She asked in a low voice.
Si-bong and I looked at each other without saying a word. We then looked back at the woman.
“Because if you’re not, then just go home. Because I . . . Before that day comes I have no intention of forgiving him.”
The woman began to wipe the tables again. We stood next to her for a good while as she did, and then bowed to her politely and exited the kimbab restaurant. That was on account of it being an apology we had never even thought of before. We didn’t know if both of us had to die, or just one of us. On account of our not knowing, it became a difficult apology for Si-bong and me.
We quickly went to the client’s home. We decided to ask if the client might commit a different wrong. But the client wasn’t home. The child was home alone, cleaning the bathroom.
Si-bong asked him. “Did your dad go somewhere?”
He answered as he cleaned the toilet with a white brush. “He went to work. He should be home soon.”
“And how come you didn’t go to school?”
The child didn’t answer. He lowered his head further as he scrubbed the bathroom floor.
“Wanna go back to your mom with us?” I asked.
We thought it would be best if we first returned the child to where he was before. Then it would be good to think of a different wrong.
But the child shook his head. “Later.”
“Later? How come? Is there something else you want him to say sorry for?”
The child limped over to the sink and began to wipe off the mirror on the wall. Drops of water splattered onto our legs.
“There are still a lot.”
We saw the child’s reflection in the mirror. His face was blank.
Si-bong asked, “So . . . why are you cleaning? You’re the one who deserves the apology.”
The child stopped his hand. Then he glared at us in the mirror. “I want him to feel even sorrier. That’s why I’m here.”
