Seoul Survivors

by Naomi Foyle

  “Jake, I’m fucked.” Damien plunked himself down on a stool and cradled his head in his hands. His stomach was in shreds and all the blood had drained out of his brain and was pooling in his socks. He probably did look as bad as he felt.

  “Whaddya mean? We’re getting the passport next week, then it’s Rocky Mountain High.”

  “I’m telling you, everything’s gone tits-up. Immigration hauled me in today, took my passport and my MoPho contacts. On Monday they tell me what the fine will be and if I don’t pay, I go straight to jail; if I do, I get deported back to the UK.”

  “Nah—no way.” Jake snapped his fingers. “Sam, what’s the story with Immigration?”

  Sam was counting beer bottles. His face bleached in the light from the fridge, he rolled his eyes. “Immigration dumb fucks. Don’t go Monday; just hide out. Leave apartment and keep working, get new passport. No problem.”

  Damien shook his head. “They know about all my jobs so I can’t keep working. They said this was just the beginning of a new crackdown: all hagwons and apartment complexes are going to be patrolled. I’ll have no money; I won’t be able to buy the passport or the ticket. I’ll be stuck.” Christ, he was whining worse than Young Ha.

  “Sam, pour this man a whisky. Look, Day, it’s gonna be okay. The hagwon still has to pay you, right? Sam can pick up the money for you next week, no problem. So then you get the passport, and with your apartment deposit, you leave the country. Easy-peasy.”

  Sam passed Damien a double Scotch. He took a hit, then rubbed his temples. He was feeling feverish. Not good. “I dunno, mate—the hagwon pay’s minus next week’s wages, and if I want the key-fee right away, I’ll have to find someone else to take over the apartment. And anyway, two million won won’t go far. If I can’t work before I go, I’ll barely have the money for a plane ticket, let alone setting up in Canada.”

  “You don’t have to go to Canada,” Jake said, reasonably. “You could skip over to Japan, get some work there. You’d be back up to speed in no time.”

  “I’m telling you, Jake—” Damien heard himself shout and stopped himself.

  Jake raised his eyebrows and stepped back from the bar.

  Damien back-pedaled quickly. “Sorry, Jake—it’s just, there’s some heavy shit coming down, very soon—everyone knows it. And I don’t want to be on my own in an earthquake zone when it happens. I want to be somewhere far from the sea, where everyone speaks English. Okay?”

  “Okay Day,” Jake said at last. “Canada was your plan, and you’ve been working toward it for ages. We’ve been impressed, haven’t we Sam?”

  Sam nodded solemnly. “Damien work harder than taxi ajosshi. No sleep with our women, no vomit on our streets. Very good guest of Korea.”

  Damien rubbed the side of his glass. Could he ask, after his pathetic outburst? But Jake glanced at his cousin and cleared his throat. “We’d front you ourselves, Damien, wouldn’t we, Sam? But we’re a bit short at the moment.”

  Sam sighed. “Air-con broke. Behind on bills. Sorry.”

  “What about buddies back home?” Jake asked briskly.

  Damien shook his head. “Nah.”

  “Your mum?”

  “Fat chance.”

  Jake took a matchbook out of the oversize snifter by the till, bent the cover back and used the flap to clean a fingernail. “And you’re sure you don’t want to go back to England? The fine won’t be that much; you’ll still have loads of money. You could go and find a mountain in Scotland for the Solstice, take your chances with the Picts.”

  Sam quietly opened the dishwasher and began to take out glasses, inspecting them under the light before putting them onto the shelf. Damien could see every pore on Jake’s nose, each odd, spiky hair poking out of Sam’s jaw. These guys were his best mates in Seoul. Right now, they were his best mates in the world.

  He took a deep breath and pressed play. “Look, Jake, Sam—I appreciate you never asked me any questions about England. You know I never robbed any old ladies or diddled any kids; I was selling knock-off sunglasses, that’s all, down by the pier. I got picked up a couple of time, given warnings—then Housing Benefit hit me with a fraud charge, going back five years—they’re really tough on benefit fraud now and I could’ve got a couple of years inside. When I got Jake’s letter, it seemed like a scheme, so . . .” He paused, then went on, “so I decided to miss the court dates. If I get deported, the cops could nab me at the airport—and then I’m well and truly fucked.”

  Jake tucked the matchbook into his jacket pocket. “Jeez, Damien, that’s rough. A wanted man—but why didn’t you say so before? Instead of going on about all this Hammer guff?”

  Damien rubbed his temple. Now was not the time to mention the latest news on the Hammer, hacked from Pentagon sources: the meteor was now projected to land in the Atlantic Ocean, causing severe geological, social and economic chaos in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, not to mention the global knock-on effect. Nor was he about to remind Jake that tent-towns of religious freaks and survivalist cults were already being established on Korea’s mountaintops—there was one right above Yonsei. No, now was the time to hold his hand up, confess what a deep-down schmoe he really was, win back his friend’s trust.

  “I dunno, Jake,” he said. “I felt daft, that’s all—a real loser. You managed to be a drug dealer in Toronto, you pulled loads of scams, and I can’t even sell crap sunnies without winding up in the dock—which might be better than going to jail in Korea, but I’d still like to avoid it if I can.”

  Jake tried not to look sage. “Scams, schemes; to-may-to, tom-ah-to,” he reflected, modestly. “You just had a bit of bad luck, that’s all.”

  Sam rubbed at a bit of grit on a Grolsch glass. “Korean jail not so bad.” He sounded hurt. “Very clean. TV. Good food—okay, so not enough banchan, but rice, kim chee, doengang jiigae . . .”

  “Oh fuck off, Sam.” Jake’s gold cufflink glinted as he swung a lazy air-punch in the direction of his cousin. “Damien doesn’t wanna watch Arirang soap operas for two years. We gotta get him outta here.”

  “Yeah, okay, so how, wise guy?” Sam retorted.

  Jake threw Damien a “let me handle this” look. Then he spoke in Korean to Sam. Damien could tell his reply was not cooperative. The two leaned against the beer fridge, rapidly conferring: Sam shaking his head, Jake wheedling, wearing him down, until, reluctantly, after a final burst of objection, Sam sputtered to a halt.

  At last they both stepped back up to the bar. They exchanged one more glance, then Sam spoke. “Okay. I don’t do this for everyone, but you big friend of Jake. Our cut of fake ID deal is two million. Risky business dealing with mafia, and we need money for Azitoo, yeah?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Damien agreed. He’d always assumed Jake and Sam would make a commission; he hadn’t liked to ask how much. “You deserve your share.”

  “So, Jake say we can trust you. You did drug run, big danger; mean we owe you favor. So we gonna lend you our cut. You can send when you have it, anytime. Meantime, we going to help you get your key-money back.”

  “Really?” For the first time since that doorbell rang in Chamshil, Damien could see a splinter of light in the darkness. The key-money and an extra two million would get him to Canada, buy enough time to find a job. “That’s brilliant—thanks, guys, so much, Sam, Jake—I’ll send you the money the instant I can.”

  Jake banged his beer bottle on the bar. “Good. That’s settled. Now, Dames, we’ll post an ad on the usual websites, but we gotta tackle this on all fronts. So this weekend we fan out. Sam, you take Itaewon; Day, Hongdae; I’ll do Shinch’on. Check notice boards, classifieds; ask everyone you meet. There’s bound to be a new kid off the boat, or someone who just split up with their girlfriend.”

  Sam pulled a box of Lucky Strikes out from between the Bombay Sapphire and Gordon’s and offered Damien a cigarette. Damien shook his head, then took one. Jake leaned over with a light, as Sam pulled out his MoPho.

  “I know student
, going crazy at home. I call him now,” he said.

  Damien sucked back a lungful of nicotine. His lungs burned and his brain crackled. It was a crazy plan, but what the fuck. It might just work.

  When he woke up Saturday morning he had a splitting headache, a fur-lined mouth and an empty packet of Lucky Strikes scrawled with the numbers of two people who were maybe looking for apartments, or might know someone who was. One of the numbers was illegible. He called and left a message on the other, then he rang his hagwon and arranged for Sam to come in and pick up his pay. The secretary was sympathetic, but he knew she was just being polite. There were always people looking for hagwon jobs; she had a drawer full of CVs to choose from whenever a teacher quit.

  Come December fifteenth the kindergarten would owe him a week’s wages; the director would not be happy about him quitting with no notice, so he might have to write that money off. Thankfully, apart from Mrs. Lee, none of his privates owed him anything. He didn’t fancy ringing all of them, but he made an effort with the ones he liked, giving them a sob story about a family illness.

  Finally, he called Jake.

  “Hey, Day,” Jake chirped, “listen, Sam’s got a lead—the guy’s gonna call back, so come down about seven, after you’ve done the campuses, and I’ll take you for kalbi, okay?”

  He was off to stick notices up on the bulletin boards at Edae and Hongdae, some in English with his number, and a few in Korean, with Sam’s. Before he left he tossed a few clothes and his laptop into a rucksack, together with the five fat envelopes of cash he’d hidden in his wardrobe. If he needed to run, he just wanted the basics. Trouble was, there was nowhere to hide the rucksack. He stuffed it under the sofa, then pulled it out again, put it in a binbag, tied the handles and left it beside the front door. That would have to do.

  Doing the campuses took an hour and a half and felt like an exercise in futility, so he went and played 3D vidgames for a few hours afterward—he hadn’t done that since Chusok. By seven he was drinking Grolsch in Woodstock and listening to grunge at volume eleven. As Jake slipped into the booth, Damien’s MoPho heated up in his breast pocket. He checked the screen: Sydney. Shit, he couldn’t talk now.

  After Woodstock he and Jake went for soju and a Korean barbecue, and then on to Azitoo. The bar was swimming with people Damien had got high with when he first arrived in Seoul. All were filled with dismay at his predicament, but no one was looking for a place to move into on Monday. Several were planning to vacate the country by the Solstice and he gritted his teeth as they joked about the Hammer. He let a gaggle of Korean girls fuss over him, stroking his sleeve and suggesting places for their new outlaw folk hero to hide out, but by midnight, the girls’ laughter was beginning to grate, the Aussie surf boys were acting like oafs, and he was bored with spending all his energy avoiding the sloppy advances of a pissed redhead. Sam’s lead hadn’t called back. He made his excuses and left.

  As he undressed for bed, his MoPho fell out of his pocket. Picking it up, he saw that Sydney had left a voice message.

  Damien, she whispered, like a member of the French Resistance, Da Mi can meet us tomorrow. Her office is at Yonsei. I’ll see you at the gates at one o’clock.

  Well, why not? he thought as he turned out the light. If he had to walk down the tunnel, he’d like to say goodbye to her first.

  34 / The Homecoming

  Saturday, after breakfast, the women were sent back to their houses to rest. Mee Hee sat sewing on the veranda as Chin Mee swept the front path clean of leaves. So Ra sat beside her, polishing a set of silver cups. Across the courtyard, Older Sister was walloping a rug strung up between two pine trees. At last they heard the sound of two cars pulling up the driveway in front of the Meeting Hall.

  “Dr. Tae Sun said to wait until they called us,” So Ra said softly, leaning over to stroke Mee Hee’s sleeve. Chin Mee put her broom back in the kitchen as Older Sister bashed the carpet one last time. A strained hush fell over the houses as they waited to be summoned.

  At eleven o’clock Dr. Dong Sun appeared on the path. His face was somber, his body tensed like a bow. Wordlessly, the women rose and followed him back to the Meeting Hall.

  Dr. Kim, flanked by Mr. Sandman and Dr. Tae Sun, was standing at the top of the room, beside an open coffin. Su Jin’s profile was just visible beneath its cushioned lid; her head was propped up on a pillow. The scent of lilies hung thickly in the air.

  “They don’t smell real,” Mee Hee whispered. Behind her, an undercurrent of excitement moved through the cluster of women at the door.

  “Mr. San-duh-man!” she heard someone say.

  So Ra squeezed Mee Hee’s hand and gave her sisters a stern look. At the front of the group, Dr. Dong Sun took Older Sister by the elbow and gently propelled her into the room.

  “Please. This is your chance to say goodbye,” he murmured.

  Her mouth set in a tight line, Older Sister marched toward the coffin, followed, in single file, by the other women. At first the only sound was the shuffling of feet, but as the procession passed the casket, a broken rhythm of sobs and moans built up a jagged momentum in the Hall. Behind Mee Hee, Chin Mee began crying uncontrollably and had to be supported by So Ra. As she inched forward in front of them, Mee Hee braced herself for an awful outpouring of the grief she must have been bottling up inside her for weeks, but even when she was standing right in front of Su Jin’s body, though her throat was dry and her chest heaving, she couldn’t squeeze out even one tear.

  The Buddhists said that each person had a destined number of breaths to draw in their lifetime. That was why in meditation they breathed so slowly, holding the air in the depths of their bodies, releasing it to the count of twenty or thirty, letting it escape in a thin stream through one nostril at a time: the longer each breath took to complete, the longer a person could remain living on the earth. Perhaps, Mee Hee thought, staring down at the beautifully dressed corpse before her, the same was true of tears. Only a few months ago she was closing the lid of her own son’s coffin. Perhaps, since then, she had cried all the tears she had been born with, and now there were none left to bury with Su Jin.

  Or maybe she couldn’t cry because it was still too hard to believe that Su Jin was dead. The bodies Mee Hee had seen before, in her village, had been shrunken husks, the life dragged out of them like a rat pulled out of a hole by its tail, every painful moment of their passing etched on their faces as if with claws. Mee Hee had cried bitterly, looking down at those bodies, her own heart raked by memories of her neighbors’ struggles to suck just one more breath into their lungs.

  In contrast, Su Jin looked like an expensive doll. Her tiny body was lost in the folds of a dark green hanbok, her lips were painted pink and her eyes rimmed in brown pencil. Beneath the make-up, her face was relaxed, almost flattened, as if it had been poured like pajon batter over her skull and left to collect in tiny ripples beneath her ears and chin. Only her nose retained the character of the woman Mee Hee remembered, its pointy tip looking as if it was still sniffing at the world.

  In this room, with its narcotic perfume and graceful wave of mourners, death seemed not a savage ending but a transformation. Looking down at Su Jin, Mee Hee could almost believe that her friend had at last arrived at a place of beauty and dignity, the place she had been searching for when she left the village. All that her sisters could do for her now was to wish her spirit well.

  Mee Hee took the bluebird pin out of her pocket and slipped it beneath Su Jin’s clasped hands. The flesh was cool and waxy, but the weight of the fingers held the brooch securely against her belly. Maybe Su Jin had no further need of hope in this world, but her spirit might appreciate the gift.

  Behind Mee Hee, Younger Sister reached out for the edge of the coffin. Mee Hee took one last look at Su Jin’s face and stepped back.

  At the foot of the casket, Mr. Sandman shook her hand, his blue eyes empty as a summer sky. “VirtuWorld is very sorry for your loss,” he said in passable Korean.

  “Thank you
for finding my sister,” she replied. Though she wasn’t sure he understood, he nodded. His chin was set, as though he was grinding his teeth. He must feel so badly, she thought, being their protector but still unable to stop what happened.

  She wished she could hold Mr. San-duh-man’s hand for a moment longer, tell him that no one blamed him, that Su Jin had only ever wanted to follow her own will to wherever it would take her. But like a soldier in a military parade, his face was closed, his gaze fixed on a point floating somewhere above her head. Mee Hee made a half-bow and turned toward Dr. Kim. Dr. Kim would surely clasp her hands, offer words of compassion or wisdom to her village sister.

  But Dr. Kim was staring straight ahead, her beautiful face tense and frozen. What was wrong? Was Dr. Kim angry with her? Fear throbbed in the pit of Mee Hee’s belly. Her breath snagged in her throat and it was all she could do to keep standing.

  Just as the floor was beginning to swirl, two strong silk-clad arms reached out and pulled her close. Dr. Kim was clinging to her as a bereaved mother clings to her surviving child. “Lee Mee Hee,” she said, her voice faint with grief, “I have failed you.”

  “No, no,” Mee Hee stammered, “it was I who let her go. You have brought Su Jin home.” Mee Hee’s cheek rested on Dr. Kim’s blouse. A single tear spilled down her nose. She pulled away.

  “You are so dear to me, Mee Hee,” Dr. Kim whispered. “I will keep you safe forever.”

  Mee Hee stepped back into the line of women. Tae Sun was waiting beside Dr. Kim to greet her, both sadness and pride in his eyes. Shyly, she touched his soft hands, then, head bowed, moved on.

  35 / And a Rock

  “Wow, Damien. You look like a piece of Korean pottery. Sort of green and glazed.”

  Damien grimaced. “Cheers. I’ll be my own souvenir. Fuck knows I can’t afford to buy any.”