by Cho Se-hui
Spring brought fragrances that filled the neighborhood. Double cherry blossoms, climbing roses, lilacs, yulan trees, mountain rhododendrons, viburnum, redbuds, and whatnot came into bloom. Bees buzzed about. Sounds from the past could not be heard in this neighborhood. What Yun-ho saw after a rain was lovely beyond words. He often heard there the sound of a small spirit that was shrinking. But he lived on, stifling himself. There was no better book than The Worker’s Handbook.
“What’s that book?”
“Hmm?”
“The book.”
“It’s not a book.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
With April gone, the girl next door struck up a conversation. She was leaning against her red car, her eyes boring into Yun-ho. Yun-ho didn’t say a word in reply. Girls were all alike. Just like the cram school courses and the private tutors, the thought of them made him feel like throwing up. When it came to sleeping with girls, he had no memories of a happy ending. He had only wanted to cry. But then this girl from next door had swept up to Yun-ho and snatched the booklet. She read the title, and Yun-ho watched as she read the table of contents. Kyŏng-ae was now seventeen, and in the second of her three years of high school. She scanned the contents, then turned to the first section and read the gothic headings one after another: Observance of Working Conditions, Equal Treatment, Prohibition of Violence, Elimination of Intermediary Exploitation, and Guarantee of the Exercise of Civil Rights. She was blushing when she returned The Worker’s Handbook.
Yun-ho couldn’t understand why she had blushed. She was wearing a dazzling white sweater and dazzling white pants. Her grandfather was dying, though Yun-ho didn’t know this at the time. Kyŏng-ae’s clothes clung to her body. The next time they saw each other she wore a dress. She had come to his house.
“Our cell is meeting,” she said with no preliminaries.
“Your what?” Yun-ho asked.
“Cell.”
“What’s a cell?”
“C-E-L-L—like in ‘cell technique,’ you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” Yun-ho looked into Kyŏng-ae’s face. “But why the visit?”
“To invite you?”
“Me? How come?”
“Because our discussion topic is teenage workers.”
“You figured me wrong. Not much I can say about that.”
“Where did that Worker’s Handbook come from?”
“I got it at Ŭngang.”
“And you met some workers there—right?”
This time it was Kyŏng-ae peering intently at Yun-ho’s face. If only he had turned his face away he could have avoided it. Yun-ho found himself being drawn to this seventeen-year-old girl. At that moment Kyŏng-ae’s grandfather was dying. Kyŏng-ae’s grandfather was very wealthy. But in spite of that great wealth he heaved one last great breath and closed his eyes. The cord of his life was easily snapped. The neighborhood was awash with the thick fragrance of flowers. Automobiles arrived bearing large wreaths on their roofs. There were too many wreaths to count precisely. Yun-ho’s sister couldn’t stand the fulsome fragrance and shut the windows tight. All the flower shops in Seoul must have run out of flowers, she said.
That night Yun-ho’s father and his lawyer friends drank at the bar in his basement. They had dropped by Kyŏng-ae’s house. None of them would have been able to shake hands with Kyŏng-ae’s grand father. Yun-ho studied English. He also studied mathematics, and hated every minute of it. By and by he went to the window and saw Kyŏng-ae’s house beyond the lawn and the climbing roses. Kyŏng-ae, wearing black, emerged from the house. The girl touched the withering flowers on the wreaths. Her grandfather’s body had begun to reek by now, he thought. But when they met the following day Kyŏng-ae shook her head, saying his body would never decompose. After the girl ushered Yun-ho into her red car she talked about what the morticians had done all the previous night. They were amazingly skillful.
“I don’t get it,” Kyŏng-ae said. “I know I’ll die someday. And I’ll be buried in the ground. And after I’ve turned into dirt Grandfather will be lying there in his coffin just the way he is now.”
“Your grandfather’s a king.”
“An autocrat.”
“Didn’t you cry?”
“Why should I have to cry? Nobody else did. Right now the grown-ups are squabbling.”
“How come?”
“They’ve got their eyes on Grandfather’s position.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Student Center.”
When they arrived some girls were standing in front of the gift shop that sold sacred items. They surrounded Kyŏng-ae and took her hand. The boys were in the rec room inside the Student Center waiting for the girls. As the girls went inside, one boy was making a telephone call, one was at a candy machine searching his pockets for coins, and one had opened his schoolbag and was making sure he had his candles, his Bible, a text titled Conversations on Belief, the cup he would use, and other items he had brought for the occasion. The boys’ general affairs representative arrived with the key to the basement chapel. The others followed him downstairs. Above the entrance to the building Yun-ho read “Freedom, Justice, Peace”; on the wall above the rec room registration area he read in Latin “Pax Romana.” Kyŏng-ae guided him.
They descended twenty steps and a wooden cross came into sight. Yun-ho watched as Kyŏng-ae approached the wall to the left, dipped her fingers in holy water, and made the sign of the cross. Kyŏng-ae recited a prayer: “Lord, with this holy water please cleanse me of my sins, bid Satan be gone, and remove from my mind all evil thoughts.” That day the students in their basement chapel held a thirty-minute discussion on the subject of teenage workers. Yun-ho sat quietly, listening. Each time his eyes met Kyŏng-ae’s she gave him a smile. Beyond the students’ shoulders could be seen an alcove that held a holy statue and, within the marble altar, a ciborium. Crimson electric light filtered through the half-open curtains. The students’ voices rose. Fervently they gave voice to their thoughts. The students were clutching at shadows. And then they called on Yun-ho.
“Oppa!” Kyŏng-ae called out to him. The others laughed.
“Our adviser couldn’t come,” said the president, “and so we’ve brought our sŏnbae Han Yun-ho. We’ll ask him to speak now.”
“I’ve just realized why your adviser couldn’t come,” said Yun-ho. “He must have had nothing to say.”
The students laughed.
“He must have been awfully embarrassed.”
Again the students laughed.
“And I feel ashamed of myself. But I’m suprised that none of you do.”
“Why is that?” asked a girl.
“You’ve taken teenage workers as your theme,” Yun-ho said, “and talked for thirty minutes or so. You talked as if you were knowledgeable, but you aren’t. There isn’t one person in our country who can talk about teenage workers without feeling guilty. And that includes me. When I lived in Felicity Precinct I was introduced to a dwarf. I got to know him. That man had nothing but trouble all his life, and then he passed away. That man’s sons and daughter work in a factory zone. The work they do is complicated and tiring. Their young friends don’t know how to express themselves and they wouldn’t know how to react to humane treatment. The work they do at their workplace stunts their growth. Every day an enormous production plan looms over them. The workers operate machines. The young workers fit the rhythm of their daily lives to machines. Thoughts, feelings—they’re lost to the machines. Remember what you studied at school? The force of a falling object becomes mechanical energy, and the force of a wound spring, and so on. Well, these workers are the same: They’re used for mechanical energy. And so, you may be able to talk about teenage workers—about work, duty, natural rights; I cannot. And you may suggest that we help them; I cannot. Your feelings are of no help to them. I saw what the young companions of the dwarf’s son and daughter experienced, and I felt something. In the year 197X, Korea is full of criminals. There
is not one person who is not a criminal.”
Before Yun-ho finished he heard a guitar. One of the boys had gone to the corner and started playing.
“Please continue,” said a girl to Yun-ho.
“Very quietly,” said another girl to the boy.
It was sad music. The sound of the guitar made Yun-ho think of the stars in the Milky Way. Yun-ho thought about the movement of tiny stars. Kyŏng-ae, not saying a word, observed Yun-ho and no one else. In conclusion Yun-ho gave a few concrete examples of what the sons and daughter of the dead dwarf had experienced at the factories. The dwarf’s older son had worked with a drill at an automobile assembly plant. His younger son had done polishing work. His daughter had gone to work at a textile plant, where she tended a weaving machine. The older son was unable to work now. The students, though, failed to understand Yun-ho’s words as they should have. To win over the students and make them understand, Yun-ho would have to have read The Worker’s Handbook to them from start to finish, would have had to cite examples of how human beings had been treated in the workplace, would have had to explain the workplace in concrete terms, describe in detail the light from the sky there, talk about where they ate and slept, talk about the power imbalance between employer and employee and how this affected the distribution of power, bring to light the history of the labor movement, and describe the expressions on the faces of the young workers as they rose from uncomfortable beds after dreaming a dream of their ancestral home. Yun-ho gave up trying and finished his talk.
The students wanted to move on to the next activity. Among the boys were several impatient ones who clearly had decided at the outset not to listen to Yun-ho.
Kyŏng-ae approached and apologized for them. “Don’t let it bother you,” she said. “The others like you. Can I get you something to drink?”
“It’s all right,” said Yun-ho. “I’d better get going.”
“Why?”
“I don’t fit in here.”
“You don’t want to disappoint the ones who like you.”
“Nobody like that here.”
“Yes there is!”
“I feel like I’m suffocating here. I want to leave.”
“You said we’re all criminals. And so we all live in jails, right?”
The boys had risen and stepped back behind the chairs. The girls took seats in every other chair. Two of them put some slips of folded paper in a container made of aluminum foil and mixed them up. The boys chose from this.
“Your partner’s the guest,” said a girl.
“You’re my partner,” said Kyŏng-ae.
“Who decided on teenage workers?” Yun-ho asked.
“Why?”
“I can’t forgive whoever did it.”
“I’m in mourning.”
“I’d sooner forgive someone for selling his own freedom.”
“Grandfather’s body won’t decompose. Tomorrow’s the funeral. I’m in mourning. You shouldn’t do anything to me.”
Yun-ho saw an image of the Virgin Mary next to the alcove. The boys unfolded the slips of paper and located their partners. The girls looked at the boys who had sat down beside them. Some of the students were satisfied, some were disappointed. The students began setting a table with the things they had brought: rainbow rice cake, hamburgers, cookies, and fruit, along with milk and Coca-Cola. One student plugged in a coffeepot to the left of the door.
The students’ preparations were complete. They had succeeded in sneaking in a portable stereo and records. The guitar had posed no problem. It had long been accepted as a necessary part of these co-ed meetings. The girls lit candles. The boys turned off the lights. The students sat around the table and consumed what was arranged there. They couldn’t have been happier.
“Playing house,” said Kyŏng-ae. “I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t leave early.”
“Why are you going for me?” Yun-ho asked Kyŏng-ae, who had drawn close to him.
“Because I like you,” Kyŏng-ae said in an undertone. “If the subject had been freedom, I couldn’t have talked with you.”
“So all this business about poor working kids was just an excuse.”
“That was a great talk you gave. You opened my eyes today.”
“All that business about poor working kids and now even your God is debased.”
“Don’t say that.” Kyŏng-ae scowled.
“Quiet, everyone,” a girl said. “Okay—all set?”
A boy played the guitar. He was the boy who had set Yun-ho to thinking about the movement of tiny stars. As he played he sang, “… the wind knows …” Yun-ho watched this boy’s partner reposition the candles while drinking Coca-Cola. Once again the impatient ones among the boys wanted to move on to the next activity. One of them left. The students sang together.
“Can you hear us?” someone called out.
The boy who had left reappeared. “Nope,” he said while locking the door.
“Get the stereo going.”
“Time for dancing already?”
“Hold on,” said the general secretary for the boys. “First the games.”
“You play too,” said Kyŏng-ae.
“I’ll just watch,” said Yun-ho.
“Wait and see. You’ll get involved.”
The students moved the table toward the wall. Yun-ho saw the fourteen stations of the cross on the wall opposite. A game began. From the boys and girls came loud shouts and loud laughter. The boys removed their jackets. A few girls had begun to perspire and they too liberated themselves from their jackets. When it came time for the countdown game, Kyŏng-ae returned to Yun-ho and sat beside him. She placed her small hand between his. The boys placed their partners’ hand between theirs. The boys and girls closed their eyes. Yun-ho watched as the game leader instructed everyone to count exactly to fifteen and stand up, then extinguished two of the candles. Of the remaining three candles, one cast a faint light on Kyŏng-ae’s face. The boys began to stand up. Some stood early, some stood late. The short span of fifteen seconds gave rise to many miscalculations. The group leader asked each pair in which the boy’s timing was far off to stand on one of the small chairs. This proved impossible, and down they came. Some girls pushed their partner off. Unless the partners embraced, they couldn’t turn in a circle on the small chair. A boy extinguished one of the candles. Two girls shielded the last two candles with their hands. Yun-ho heard people climbing onto the chairs.
“Come on up,” Kyŏng-ae said.
“You can’t order me,” said Yun-ho.
“Then you order me, just this once.”
“No reason to.”
“Think of something.”
“I’m going to lay you out on the torture rack.”
Kyŏng-ae silently held out her hand. Yun-ho took it and climbed onto the chair. Kyŏng-ae took his hands, placed them in the small of her back, and linked them together. Then she circled his back with her arms and embraced him. As she felt Yun-ho’s arms tighten about her she lifted her feet from the chair. The two of them turned about on the chair in a small orbit. Others fell over along with their chair.
“All right,” Kyŏng-ae whispered.
Yun-ho released her.
“You were fantastic!” a girl said to Kyŏng-ae in an undertone. Her partner put out one of the two remaining candles. Someone else turned on the stereo. As the boys and girls listened to the music they began talking, partner to partner. This was the time they had all been waiting for. The remaining candle cast its light against a single wall and the ceiling. The boys and girls dared not put out this last candle. As the record turned, a woman’s voice sang: “One summer day two goldfish fought in a pond; the body of one rose to the surface and turned foul; the water too turned foul and nothing could live there.” Yun-ho sat with his back to the wall. For a time Kyŏng-ae didn’t look up. The sensation of Yun-ho’s arms tightening about her was with her still. The morticians were amazingly skillful. But there was nothing they could do about her dead grandfather’s sensory organ
s. Kyŏng-ae’s grandfather was a man who had lived his life in the thrall of basic physical sensation. Yun-ho had Kyŏng-ae look up, then reminded her of his promise.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Lay you out on the rack and torture you,” he said.
“For what?”
“Time for you to spill out your crimes.”
“Fine, do what you want,” Kyŏng-ae said.
Yun-ho stood her up and said, “Take off your clothes.”
“You’re crazy,” Kyŏng-ae laughed.
The others turned off the stereo. They surrounded Yun-ho and Kyŏng-ae. Yun-ho grabbed the neck of Kyŏng-ae’s dress. The same hand suddenly swept down, and Kyŏng-ae shrieked, covering her face. The others laughed. Kyŏng-ae imagined her clothes being ripped open to reveal her nude body. Momentarily ashamed, she bit her lip. Yun-ho pretended to tie her hands together. The torturer intended to hang the naked prisoner from a vertical rack. “I’ve committed no crime,” Kyŏng-ae said. The girls laughed. Yun-ho stood her up on a chair and had her raise her arms. She gave the appearance of being roped to the rack. “I’ll let you hang there till you confess,” said Yun-ho. To the others this looked like the start of something tedious. And so they turned the stereo back on and resumed their conversations. Kyŏng-ae’s head drooped. In that position she slumped toward Yun-ho. He took her in his arms and lay her on the floor. Kyŏng-ae thought of the wreaths standing in front of her house. The flowers were withering. After the torturer had positioned Kyŏng-ae squarely he tied her arms and then her legs together and then secured them to posts. Yun-ho pretended to turn the posts.
