City of Ash and Red

by Hye-young Pyun

  “We’ve been over this. How many more times do I have to tell you that this isn’t some public toilet that just anyone can use? You can’t keep letting everyone in here.”

  “We’re sorry, sir. He said it was urgent.”

  After the guards apologized, they turned to the man, bowing their heads slightly as if to apologize to him as well, and took him by the arms, one guard on each side of him. He offered up his arms willingly. Now that he knew Mol was not there, he had no further reason to stay.

  While waiting for the elevator, he heard the employee call his name.

  “You’re not infected, are you?” the employee asked. “It was so long ago that I can’t be certain, but I recall hearing that an infected foreigner vanished from the airport.”

  “I’m not infected.”

  “I guess our memories can always be wrong. But do you even know what Mol looks like? I bet you don’t, do you?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “It’s going to be pretty hard for you to find him then.”

  The employee smiled knowingly and turned and walked back into the office.

  As the man got onto the elevator with the guards, he remembered that Mol was the only person in the country who knew his name. But that did not necessarily mean this employee was Mol. He did not believe in such coincidences. Maybe the employee had taken over Mol’s duties after all, despite claiming otherwise. Nevertheless, he could not shake the thought that maybe he had finally met Mol.

  His workday began with greeting the homeowner. Once the exchange of formalities was over and he began looking around the yard, most homeowners wished him luck and left for work. He used this time to pretend to work while keeping a close eye on the homeowner as they rushed out the door. Their short, quick steps around the house, their repeated glances at the clock, the way they looked energetic and tired at the same time—it was all so familiar to him. Back in his home country, he and his coworkers probably looked the same when they were rushing off to work. Seeing those busy homeowners reminded him that everyone was still going to school, going to work, going on dates, going shopping, going to the swimming pool for exercise, and each time that happened, his head emptied out and went blank, as if he were realizing for the first time in his life how peaceful the world was without him in it. A cool breeze had begun to blow after nightfall. He’d only been in Country C just long enough to see the seasons change, and yet the life he had lived before coming to Country C felt as distant as something from a previous existence.

  Once the homeowners were out of sight, he busied himself with inspecting every corner of the yards and storage sheds that had become his new workplace. There were many paths a rat might take, but the low trees and shrubs that grew behind the houses were among the more probable locations.

  It pleased him to sprinkle rat poison along the paths a rat would likely travel and then wait for a rat to appear while gazing at the shadows cast by the shrubs and the dead, dried-up weeds lying in their shade. If he waited long enough, eventually one would emerge from the shade, then a couple more, and then dozens, all letting their guards down, bursting out of the dark toward the food on the surface, and the moment their bodies met the light, their little skulls would explode and they would die. Of course, the one who made that happen was him.

  Since rats were not like trains and did not appear right on schedule, the man had no choice but to stay tense. Sometimes he spent nearly half a day waiting, his eyes glazed over, his raised hand numb, before a rat finally appeared. By then, his body would have turned sluggish, his legs cramped, and his arm stiff. As he inhaled the toxic dust that billowed with each thud of the stick he used to smash the rat, he would realize anew that this desperate fight to the death was all for the sake of stopping one measly rat. It reminded him each time of how a single, filthy, ugly rat had recharted his life’s course. This rat, too, might very well force him into some strange, new life. Coming to this country, throwing himself into the garbage, living as a vagrant in a park, drifting down the sewer—as unbelievable as it was, it had all started with a single rat. His killing of a rat was what had made the branch manager consider him in the first place. And here he was again, with no particular feelings or attachment to his current life, waiting for chance to bring him another rat, and putting everything he had into killing it.

  He heard footsteps approaching. He knew the moment he heard them that it was the homeowner, but he remained crouched and pretended not to notice. When her footsteps were right on top of him, he swung his wooden stick at the ground even though there was no rat. A cloud of gray dust billowed up. The woman stepped to the side to avoid the dust. With a sheepish look, he fingered the food laced with rat poison that he had placed all along the curbstones bordering the flowerbed.

  “I thought you were just sitting around, but I guess you’ve been working after all,” the woman said.

  He turned to look at her. She must have just come from work. She was smartly dressed and carrying a nice bag. She had the look of a woman who had never experienced anything fearful in her life. Perhaps, at most, being startled by a rat while out walking at night.

  “This is how we work,” the man said. “Most of our time is spent waiting for rats to appear. We cannot very well go down the rat holes after them. Once we know how they are getting around, we set traps, sprinkle poison, and wait.”

  “Must be boring.”

  “It’s like digging up fossils or excavating chunks of rock. We must wait it out the same way.”

  He felt compelled to offer some sort of justification, as he knew it was easy to misinterpret staring vacantly at the shadow of a bush as loafing, but he wasn’t sure if he had explained himself properly. He couldn’t think of the words he really wanted to say, so he substituted others in their place, which caused him to stammer, and the more he tried to correct his pronunciation, the worse he stumbled. He used words and expressions that meant something similar to what he hoped to say, but he always ended up sounding stiff and formal. Nevertheless, the woman nodded right away as if she had understood him.

  “Well, I don’t know if this work is as worthwhile as digging up fossils, but it’s certainly timely.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Rats and epidemics. Before, a job like yours would have seemed quite lowly, but now it’s a useful and practical profession. Especially compared to someone like me, who can do nothing but scream and wave her hands around when there’s a mouse in the kitchen.”

  He shrugged and smiled but said nothing in response. Despite what she said, rat-catching had always been a timely profession.

  “I take it you’re not afraid of rats,” she said.

  “I am afraid.”

  “How do you deal with it?”

  “I don’t. I fear them.”

  “And yet you’re so good at catching them.”

  “Because I get paid to.”

  “Yes, I forgot this is not a hobby. But there is one thing that’s scarier than rats. Do you know what that is?”

  “What?”

  “People.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because they transmit disease.”

  “Rats transmit far more.”

  “The virus this time is transmitted by people. I could be carrying it, too.”

  There was an edge to her voice. He looked at her in surprise.

  “You can tell whether someone is sick by looking at their face. Especially the color of their lips. Judging by your lips, I’d say you’re either sick or about to become sick.”

  He unconsciously raised one hand to his mouth and remembered that his face was covered by the protective mask on his suit.

  “How can you see my lips?”

  “I can’t, of course. I was just making that up. It’s a superstition anyway. A story that’s been going around. But everyone believes it.”

  “Do you always talk to people this way? Scaring them by telling them they’re sick?”

  “It’s just a joke. We always joke that way
at work. On days when we don’t feel like working, we say we wish we were sick instead. Because then we could take time off work while being treated for free by the government.”

  “Surely working is better than being sick.”

  “I don’t always feel that way.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of the virus?”

  “Cancer is scarier.” She looked at him intently and added, “Besides, this virus that’s going around is nothing more than the common cold.”

  “For just a cold, it has killed a lot of people.”

  “Everyone thinks that. But the mortality rate isn’t out of the ordinary. It’s not that serious. Sure, people have died from the virus, but more continue to die from cancer and car accidents. And, of course, most deaths are from old age.”

  “All the same, those people could have lived longer if they didn’t get sick.”

  “That could be said for all deaths. If you don’t get in a car, if you don’t cross the street, then you won’t get in an accident. What’s more is that rats have nothing to do with this epidemic. Killing them won’t make any difference.”

  “Says who?”

  “Everyone knows it. No one knows if it’s true or not, but they’re all thinking it. Don’t you know it, too?”

  “I’m just here to get rid of the rats.”

  “I sell life insurance for a living. I scare people into thinking that they could die at any moment from the epidemic, but the truth is that I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s infected. I’ve never even met someone who’s met someone who’s infected.”

  “But couldn’t that be because everyone who’s met someone who’s infected has died or is dying?”

  “People die for all sorts of reasons. Disease is just one of many causes. Like cancer or traffic accidents. And murder.”

  “Murder?”

  “There are all sorts of terrible ways to die. Consider the rats. Was there any way of knowing they would end up with their guts splattered everywhere? Well, except of course that you’re the one who did it.”

  The woman laughed as if she had made a joke. He didn’t find it amusing, but he laughed with her. It occurred to him that it had been a long time since he had laughed.

  After the homeowner went inside, he walked around the backyard, collecting the poisoned rats and killing a few strays. When it was almost time for the work van to pick him up, he slowly cut off the rats’ tails. His pay was based on the number he caught. The homeowners were supposed to count the corpses, but few welcomed that task. He tied the severed tails together in bundles of ten. Most homeowners didn’t even look at the tails when they paid him. He was, of course, supposed to turn over the cash they gave him to his boss, but he soon learned the trick to making more than he had actually earned. Since the homeowners never took the tails from him, he would add in the tails from his previous day’s catch while collecting his pay. And since no one ever wanted to examine them too closely, no one had yet questioned why some of the tails were dried up or no longer wet with blood. That was how he had saved enough to bribe his boss.

  That day, he was so distracted thinking of other things that his knife moved much slower than usual and he made a rare mistake. The knife came down while his hand was still in the way, and he nearly chopped his finger off. Luckily the blade just missed. But when the blood oozed from the rat’s severed tail, he felt his own finger ache as if the blood were flowing from him. He cupped his uninjured finger and gazed in the direction of the woman’s house.

  While bundling the tails together, he took the previous day’s tails from his pocket and smeared them with blood from the fresh tails. By the time his work was done, his protective suit was spattered with blood as usual.

  The homeowner took a long look at what he held out to her without even making a face.

  “You won’t have to worry about rats for the time being, ma’am,” the man said. “But it won’t last long. It’s impossible to kill all of them with poison, and the surviving rats will quickly multiply.”

  She nodded absentmindedly and stepped closer to him as if to get a better look at the tails.

  “Well, they’re not exactly dripping with blood,” she said.

  “The blood has mostly dried by now.”

  “May I touch them?”

  “Of course, you may, but I wouldn’t want to if I were you.”

  “You’re touching them right now.”

  “Only because I have to.”

  “It’s times like this that I envy rats.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They die instantly. How often do people get to do that? Even with this virus, they say you’re sick for a minimum of several months before you die.”

  “I heard you die within days.”

  “We must be talking about different diseases then. But, these tails—something’s off.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The ends are dry. It looks like the blood was smeared on them from the outside rather than coming from the inside.”

  The woman stared hard at him. Her expression had lost all kindness.

  “I believe you’re mistaken, ma’am.”

  “My eyes don’t deceive me. That’s why I stalled for time. The blood on these dried faster than on the others.”

  It did not take a second glance to see that the blood was already flaking off of some of the tails.

  “This is not the right way to earn money,” she said. “I’ll pay you, of course. But I want to be clear on that.”

  The woman went back into the house and up to the second floor to get cash. The stairs went straight up with no landing and were enclosed by walls on both sides, making the passage look extremely narrow. The top of the stairs was cloaked in shadow. She looked like she was dissolving into the dark. By the time her bare feet poked back through the darkness and began to descend the stairs again, he was feeling low, as if he had just woken from a terrible dream.

  “Frankly,” she said, “I’d rather live with rats than have to hire someone like you. Now I see why you keep the rats even after you kill them. I wonder if your boss knows about this.”

  She put the cash in his hand and slammed the front door in his face. He stood there a moment. Though it hadn’t lasted long, he had enjoyed talking to her. She was the only woman he’d met since coming to Country C who understood his pronunciation with relative ease—or, at least, who pretended to understand him.

  She was also now the only person who posed a threat to him. He marveled over the fact that he still had something that could be taken from him, that there was something he could be threatened with, but he feared it at the same time. He cracked open the woman’s front door. There was a little time left before the work van arrived to pick him up. His boss, who doubled as their driver, would lay on the horn several times to hurry him up but would never, ever get out of the car.

  The sensation of cold air against his body when he slipped back into the house stayed with him until much later, even when he eventually quit his job. Goosebumps covered his skin inside the protective suit. It was a remarkably unfamiliar sensation. He had been revolted by the stink of sweat coming off of his body while wearing the suit, but he had never before felt cold in it. He paused for a moment to take in this strange new sensation, and then continued inside. The house was so dark and quiet that it felt deserted.

  While listening closely for sounds of the woman, he saw her coming through a door on the other side of the dining table and ducked into the dark stairwell on reflex. She had not yet seen him, but it was only a matter of time. He held his breath and regretted not having rung the doorbell instead and sought her permission to enter. But he had no time to correct his mistake. Just then, the woman spotted him hiding in the stairwell and froze as if seeing a ghost. She looked ready to scream and run out of the house. He had indeed trespassed, but it was not his intent to cause a scene. He just wanted to plead with her and explain his situation. As he blocked her from leaving, she let out a terrified scream. The scream did not last
long. His strong hand wrapped around her mouth. He stammered out apologies, confessing his wrongdoings and begging her forgiveness. He had to cover her mouth or else she wouldn’t be able to hear him over her own screams.

  He stopped talking and released her. Scared and breathing hard, she backed away from him. As he started his stream of apologies again, she reached for a pair of scissors sitting on top of a chest of drawers. They looked like the kind of scissors used to cut fabric. She aimed the long blades toward him. She was squeezing the handles so tightly that the tendons stood out in clear relief on her hands. He took a step closer, and she raised the scissors a little higher. Having to bow and scrape in shame because of a few measly rats made him miserable, and he resented her for making him feel that way. He took another step closer, and she swung. The blades grazed the back of his hand, but he felt nothing. It frightened her more than him. He wished she would come at him harder. He wanted her to bite him and punch him and drive the scissors into his stomach. That way, in the future, when he was looking back on this moment and on all of the moments that were about to follow, he might feel a little less distressed about it.

  The woman bit her trembling lip. He wavered for the briefest of moments, but as he looked around at the darkened house, he reminded himself that he had never dreamt of a life spent killing rats. Nor had he dreamt of a life spent trembling in fear that a career in rat-catching would be taken from him. He snatched the scissors from her without nicking a single finger and clasped her to him. She struggled to free herself. As he squeezed tighter, he wondered what life he had dreamt of for himself. He could not remember a single thing that had happened in the past. It was as if everything in his life had happened an eternity ago, or in a dream, or perhaps he had never dreamt of anything at all. The woman kicked at his legs. She was not doing a very good job of escaping him, but her squirming caused him to drop the scissors. If he kept running down the clock like this, everything would be ruined. The work van would arrive any minute, the horn would sound, his boss would wonder why he was taking so long to leave the woman’s house, and if the woman screamed loudly enough to be heard all the way outside, he would be arrested.