One Left: A Novel

by Kim Soom

  She knows all too well how gruesome war can be. After four years of work as a live-in maid at the Pusan bathhouse, she was on her way back to her home village when the Korean War broke out.

  Her memories of the war are inseparable from the image of the dead baby. Carried this way and that in the whirl of refugees, she happened to see two women abandoning a baby in a field. After the women hurried out and rejoined the flow of refugees, she went into the field and found the infant cold and dead. She crouched there holding the baby close, thinking it might return, bawling, to life. She followed the refugees with the baby to her chest, then came across a pumpkin field and all her senses came to life. The field was dotted with pumpkins huge as millstones and littered with soldiers killed by gunfire. Dyed a soiled red with the soldiers’ splattered blood, the pumpkins looked like pork liver. She couldn’t hold the baby indefinitely and finally she left it there.1

  Suddenly the television goes dark. The fluorescent lights in her room and the veranda as well as the kitchen have gone out and the freezer has stopped running.

  It all happened in an instant. She wonders if that’s what will happen to her body in the end. Will she go blind and come to a stop all in an instant?

  She was about to take a spoonful of stew but lays down her spoon and waits calmly until her ears are accustomed to the stillness and her eyes to the darkness.

  She feels the world has come to end, and yet she’s not afraid of the bleakness that envelops her like a walnut shell. As a child she believed the most frightening things were natural disasters that involved darkness, drought, or flooding. But after she turned 13 she learned the most frightening things are human beings.

  She rummages through the drawer of the television stand and finds a candle and matches. She strikes a match by feel and touches it to the candlewick.

  The tiny pepper-leaf-like flame flutters faintly, making her feel it’s the last flame that will ever come alive for her.

  Jumpy though she feels about the possibility of losing this last flame, she takes it through the recesses of her room and past the meal table and the dishes—the pickled sesame leaves, the earthenware pot, the spoon, the clear plastic water cup—and then along the window, her wardrobe, and the mirror and toward the ceiling.

  She holds it toward the television and flinches—the paper mask looks just like a face.

  The flame flickers and a thread of sooty smoke rises. The candle at the end of her outstretched right arm illuminates the fuse box. The circuit breakers, the wires in their black sheaths, and the meter come into view.

  Sure enough, the circuit breakers are acting up. It’s become frequent by now, and more often than not one of them will trip by itself. It’s not a problem she tackles proactively, for she’s still not knowledgeable about the workings of electricity. Her home village didn’t have it when she was taken away at age 13. The notion that electricity runs not only through wires but through all sorts of other things intimidates her. She conjures up the various items that can conduct electricity— nails, coins, gold and silver rings, nickel silver pots, ladles, cast-iron caldrons, wires, chopsticks, water . . . people.

  She did once consult with the meterman about the fuse box. His verdict was that the box might be too old and the whole thing ought to be replaced. Then he scared her by saying if the shit hit the fan an electrical fire might break out, leaving the house in ashes, and finally he suggested he could hook her up with an electrician he knew. She declined, feeling his kindness becoming burdensome, and in any event the matter needed to be discussed with her nephew. Besides, she figured the old man who collected wire could probably fix the circuit breaker without replacing the whole thing.

  She climbs onto the chair she’s positioned beneath the fuse box. Standing on tiptoe, she reaches for the circuit breaker.

  After doing the dishes she fills a pail with water and places it on the stove. Before it starts boiling she turns off the gas and transfers the hot water to the red plastic tub.

  She secures the latch to the kitchen door.

  Her ivory-colored blouse is already off, folded and placed next to the electric rice cooker. Next comes the pleated olive green skirt, which she likewise folds and then places atop the blouse. Socks off, she’s down to the apricot-colored long-sleeve undershirt and loose rayon bloomers. She checks the door again. Now only her bra and panties remain. She unhooks her bra and steps out of her panties, covering her breasts as if someone is watching.

  Even with the benefit of several layers of clothing, she sometimes feels she’s standing naked in the middle of the street or lying on the cold ground with her privates exposed.

  She steps into the tub and sits with her knees to her chest. The water ripples and rises all the way to the brim.

  Her senses and her body don’t work very well together, she feels.

  She cups water and splashes it over her shoulders. The water feels silky compared with the water in Manchuria. How she longed for the water at home when she was at the comfort station in Manchuria. She used to believe water was the same everywhere, but her hair became stiff as twigs when she washed it in the Manchurian water.2

  She washes her privates with salt water. For ten years after her return the itching down below drove her crazy. If she was out and about she would have to jump into a secluded alley to scratch.3 At home, while rinsing rice or doing laundry in the yard, she would have to escape to the toilet, where she scratched until her panties were stained with blood. Peeing made her feel like bees were stinging her.4 At night, massaging herself with hot water lulled her to sleep. If her privates were fingers she would have lopped them off long ago.

  Drying herself down below with a towel, she flinches as a bead of water drops onto her sparse pubic hair, reminding her of a crab louse. As much as she’s washed, she still feels unclean.

  Kim Haksun said her husband used to call her a dirty bitch in the presence of her child.

  She changes into clean clothing, all of it white. She changes her underwear daily and her outerwear every three or four days. She trims her nails attentively and brushes her teeth after every meal, because of her obsession over suddenly dropping dead and being found by a trespasser. She wants her dead body to look neat and clean, and the stranger not to feel soiled when he touches her.

  If at all possible she would like to meet death here in this house, drawing her last breath in the presence of the furniture and other items she has used.

  How many people meet death in their home? When she was younger she expected that only animals would die away from their home. But people are no different from animals. Her three sisters died away from home, one at a hospital and the others at a nursing home.

  She wonders who would discover her body. Her nephew? Better a total stranger.

  It’s after midnight when one of the television stations shows photo clips of the last surviving comfort woman. The photos along with the melancholy music are a replay of a feature aired more than ten years ago. When the girls dwindled to forty survivors, the television stations began broadcasting daily reports about the comfort women, using the photos to detail the everyday life of one of the women. She herself was living in Ŭijŏngbu at the time, doing piecework where she lived, and she took to leaving the television on twenty-four hours a day. The mere mention of comfort women had her head jerking up toward the screen as she attached labels to necklaces. She held her breath as the women testified to their experiences at the comfort stations. They were telling the story she had never dared tell a soul.

  She never missed this feature, her curiosity aroused by the life stories of these women with whom she had coexisted.

  She’s disappointed that it’s a rerun. She’s curious as to how the last one lives now, where and with whom, and if she’s mobile.

  What’s more, this rerun is coming on too late at night. Still, without realizing it, she’s sitting closer to the television.

  So she lives by herself, just like I do. The camera shows the living room, the kitchen, and the ro
om where she sleeps. It’s a small apartment but it doesn’t look needy. Everything seems to be in place. The baby green curtain in the living room flutters dreamily.

  The camera captures the last one sitting on a brown fabric sofa. She wears green slippers and a mustard-colored sweater over gray pants. She’s slender and sits upright. Her face looks like a face in a passport photo. She has well-defined features and a long groove beneath her nose. She’s a gutsy-looking woman. Her salt-and-pepper hair is pulled back, making her forehead all the wider and more handsome.

  “I like flowers,” 5 the last one says. There’s an array of yellow mums and orchids beneath her living room window. She caresses the mums as if they’re babies, the flowers seeming to shudder at her touch.

  “And not just flowers—I like dramas, dogs, cats, rice cake, red-bean gruel, coffee too. Can you guess why I have so many things I like? I just don’t think about what I don’t like.”

  The last one gets up and goes into her kitchen. She peels a peach she’s just washed.

  “A person shouldn’t live without a purpose, not even for a day. Those flowers are there for a purpose. I water them so they won’t die and so they’ll bloom when they’re supposed to. I need to get up, keep my energy up, and get myself busy, just to water them.”

  She lives alone but keeps to her mealtimes, and she always sets the table, even if the meal is only a single dish.

  On the table is a pot with a tiny cactus.

  “Isn’t it a miracle that a flower blooms inside all those needles?”

  The cactus looks like an upside-down bowl in the middle of which an orange blossom is besieged by spines.

  “Sweet but worrisome . . . that flower is just like me.”

  The interviewer, who looks barely 30, is seated across from the last one. Cautiously she asks why the last one has never married.

  “I was born from the purest mother, but I got ruined over there. How could I marry anyone? I wouldn’t want to ruin that person. I would have to deceive him, and how could I live with that. . . . I had this disease, a terrible disease, they say I’m cured but it still makes me itch, spring and fall.” 6

  The last one forks a peach slice into her mouth. “Mmm . . . so sweet. Now if you can hold the questions and just listen . . .”

  The last one made a living running a small eatery.

  “Nobody knew a damn thing. And then the girls started registering, the news came out on TV, and people got to know. Until then everyone was in the dark—but of course the news would have been so appalling. Once the words ‘comfort woman’ began circulating, friends and acquaintances kept their distance from me. It wasn’t the same anymore, so I shut down my little restaurant.7 The ones who kept in contact and stayed with me, they’re my real friends.” 8

  The last one’s greatest joy is reading. She got hooked on a world literature series a neighbor discarded when moving. She never made it to grade school but taught herself hangŭl at age 30.

  The last one gets up from the table, goes to the room where she sleeps, and returns with a book. “Resurrection; it’s by a Russian writer. I’m reading it for the sixth time.” She settles herself on the brown sofa. Retrieving a magnifying glass from the corner table, she reads in a soft voice from the very beginning of the novel. And then, transferring her gaze to the interviewer, she says, “How miraculous that the shoots spring up and the birds do their nesting even after hundreds of thousands of people tried their best to turn that small parcel of land into a wasteland. You can’t imagine how I cried when I read that for the first time. I don’t cry usually . . .”

  Grinning at the interviewer, the last one resumes reading, from a passage that emphasizes the happiness of all living things and the God-given beauty of the world.

  At night she herself is alone. She will slip beneath a quilt that is gorgeously embroidered with plum-colored flowers in full bloom. Like every other night, although she leaves her lamp on as if for a guest, no one will tiptoe in and slide in next to her.

  Before laying out her sleeping pad, she wipes down the floor with a rag. But before she eases herself beneath the quilt, she has to check the veranda.

  She kneels before the sliding door to the veranda. The panes of glass tremble.

  She slides open the door and the cool air jumps into her bosom like a frisky child. She reaches down to the shoe ledge and retrieves her shoes. She scans the veranda then hides the shoes behind the trash can—if Nabi can’t find her shoes maybe it won’t leave her a dead magpie.

  Now she can lie down, but sleep won’t come easily. Turning down the alteration shop woman’s offer of the dog bothers her: what’s the woman going to do with the dog now that it’s too feeble and old to bear puppies? It doesn’t seem right that the fate of a dog depends on a person.

  Ever since she began keeping her shoes out on the veranda at night, Nabi has brought no gifts. Nor has she had visitors—no nephew, no one to read the electricity, no one to read the water meter. She waits for no one but feels uneasy having no visitors.

  Kim Ch’unhŭi: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 2.

  Chang Chŏmdol: Yŏksa rŭl mandŭnŭn iyagi.

  Chang Chŏmdol: Yŏksa rŭl mandŭnŭn iyagi.

  Hwang Suni: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 3.

  An Pŏpsun: Kiŏk ŭro tashi ssŭnŭn yŏksa; Im Chŏngja, Yŏksa rŭl mandŭnŭn iyagi; Kim Poktong: “Nyusŭmaegŏjin Shik’ago” broadcast, December 27, 2013.

  Kim Poktong.

  Mun Okchu: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 1.

  Hwang Kŭmju: Kangje ro kkŭllyŏgan Chosŏnin kun wianbu tŭl, vol. 1.

  11

  SHE RUSHES OUT from the kitchen, where she’s been doing the dishes. It must be her nephew. But no, it’s a man from the city offices who looks about the same age as her nephew. He wears a navy blue windbreaker and charcoal gray trousers and holds a file folder. His black shoes practically glitter.

  He explains that he’s trying to determine who the actual residents of 15-bŏnji are.

  “Actual residents?”

  “Yes, not the fake ones, but the people who actually live here.”

  She doesn’t get it. Are there fake residents? What’s a fake resident anyway?

  “Some people report that they live here then go live somewhere else. They say they live here so they can get priority rights to a new apartment, but they don’t actually live here. It’s a royal headache.”

  She’s reminded of the peculiar rumor she heard from the alteration woman a couple of days ago: the city and the district can’t agree on the redevelopment plan for 15-bŏnji and so it’s been canceled. And now that the redevelopment plan that’s straggled on for seven years has gone up in smoke, the landowners have formed an association in order to privatize the project. She slept fitfully that night wondering what will happen with the lease-to-own rights for a new apartment.

  “Do you live alone?” the man asks as he looks about the Western-style house.

  “No . . . my nephew lives here,” she answers, in accordance with her nephew’s instructions.

  “Your nephew.”

  “Yes, and his wife . . . I don’t live here,” she says with a no-no-no wave of the hand for emphasis. And then adds that they’re off visiting their daughter, who got married and moved to Shanghai, and she is housesitting for them. Knowing that she’s fibbing makes it impossible to look the man in the eye.

  “Can’t leave the house empty . . . so—”

  “Then where do you live, ma’am?”

  “In Pusan,” she mumbles in spite of herself.

  “Pusan? Where in Pusan? That’s where my wife’s from, so I know my way around there.”

  “. . . in Pusan.”

  “Pusan is a huge city—where in Pusan?”

  “Near Chin Market . . .” The bathhouse where she worked as a maid was near the market.

  “Ah, the market! I’ve been by there several times—my wife’s home isn’t very far. . . . So when ar
e your nephew and his wife returning?”

  “When?”

  “Yes, you said they’re visiting their daughter.”

  “About . . . two weeks from now?”

  He opens the folder and jots down something.

  “What is it you’re writing?”

  “Oh, nothing much.”

  “But . . .”

  “So you’re going back down to Pusan when the nephew and his wife return?”

  “. . . I assume so.”

  She closes the gate behind him and turns back toward the kitchen but stays where she is, inspecting the house as if she’s never seen it before. It’s not her house, but she lives here. It’s not the house where she was born, but maybe it’s the house where she’ll die.

  Morning and evening she sweeps, wipes down, and tends to the house just like she tends to her body, but she makes sure to leave no trace of her life here, not even a nail hole.

  Afraid the man from the city might return, she doesn’t want to remain in the yard.

  She brings her shoes in, slides shut the door to the veranda, and stays inside. Maybe that way people will think no one lives here.

  She’s also concerned that her nephew hasn’t stopped by for well over a month. Deep down inside she’s worried that something has happened to him. If he won’t get priority on a new lease-to-own apartment, he has no reason to renew the lease on this house. She wonders if she should look for a place of her own. And if she finds one, then how would she go about reporting it?

  Before living in Ŭijŏngbu she occupied a leased multi-housing unit in the city of Suwŏn. There were six other families in the building, which was collateral on a loan taken out by the landlord, who ultimately vanished, and the building ended up being auctioned off. She had hoped to salvage her 30-million-wŏn security deposit but was dismayed to learn that she alone among the tenants had been excluded from receiving payments following the auction. The other tenants were too engrossed in retrieving their own security deposits to inform her. She believes the other tenants wouldn’t have shown her such disrespect if she weren’t an aged single woman. Even though she kept a low profile, they must have had an inkling that she was a single woman with neither child nor husband.