The Mountain

by Paul Yoon

  Yonha’s daughter kept going. Faye had an urge to follow her but Yonha, still wearing the sunglasses, jumped down from the tires, took her hands, and they ended up dancing together in the playground. Then she let go of Faye and danced up the stairs of the complex, leaving her there.

  Faye had trouble sleeping that night. She wasn’t used to having her own room. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept in one. The last time she had one to herself. In South Korea, there were the shelters and the riverbanks and the bridges but this was a room, a narrow single room with a lightbulb on the ceiling and one bare window that faced the outdoor corridor. The size of a storage shed. Still it was hers.

  Life seemed simple here: they worked, they were given coins for meals, they were given a room. When they arrived the van driver had told them they were happy to find somewhere else. No one had left. But she didn’t know where they were now, what floor. She had yet to see any of them again, unaware that most of them she would never see again in the vastness of the complex and the rhythm of their new days.

  Her first night she had opened the door to find litter scattered all across the floor. Stale air. Dusty blankets. She had pushed everything to a corner, too tired to do anything else, but the next day she borrowed a broom from Yonha and swept. She picked up a crushed, empty pack of cigarettes. Chocolate wrappers and a porn magazine. Newspapers. She banged out dust from the blankets and used them as a bed. She threw everything away except the newspapers and the porno, hiding them under the blankets.

  She tried to imagine who it was that had been here before. Why they left. If anyone in the building noticed them gone. She traced the holes in the wooden wall beside her where someone must have pinned something. She had once stayed in a room behind a noodle shop. Every night the owner left her Styrofoam containers of leftover soup. To her, warmth in the winter was forever the smell of broth, chicken, barley, and kelp.

  This was home now. How long she would be here? She always wondered that wherever she was. And what did she have? There were some clothes she kept in her bag. Money now from the factory. A stack of Styrofoam cups from the noodle shop. Her last bottle of shampoo from the motel.

  She had been here before. This part of the river. This piece of land. She had walked by here when there wasn’t an apartment building. She picked up the newspapers and read the dates on them. The headlines. She was orienting herself again. She thought it would feel different. She didn’t know what it was she was feeling. She was tired. Tired from the factory. Still tired from the journey. The years. But she couldn’t sleep. She coughed and rubbed her side. She missed swimming.

  At the chemical plant, they were never warned to avoid the water. So they all used to swim the river. The parents taking their children. Her father finding her there after his shift and joining her, leaping. Across the road, the plant owner would get into his car and drive away.

  Her father. She used to boil rice and try to feed him as he died. She would bathe his body with his own shirt, soaking it in the sink. Never tall or strong enough to help him cross the room. Her father who loved to swim. To meet her there in the water.

  She thought she heard the faint noise of roller skates. She flipped through the porno. The pictures were faded. Some of them were torn, their heads missing so that there were only bodies. The faint shadows of characters. She wondered if she threw away the missing heads when she was cleaning the room.

  She thought of the field with the strange tree. A tree and horses. She listened to the people next door arguing. Then someone appeared by her window. And someone else. She hadn’t yet gotten blinds and they looked in and moved on.

   •

  One day, after work, Faye heard a knock on her door. She thought it was Yonha. But when she peered around the blanket she had hung up she saw the Karaoke Champion standing there. She hadn’t seen him since the van ride. The light in the corridor had gone out, so he was just a silhouette as he walked in.

  She had been asleep. She yawned. She lay down. He crawled on top of her, pausing for a moment to look down at the magazine she had been flipping through earlier, studying the headless women. He moved his hands over her, up her stomach to her breasts. She lay there and let him but he stopped. She heard him groan. She thought he stopped because of the magazine. Or because she hadn’t reacted. She said it was okay if he went on but he groaned again and moved away and sat against the wall across from her. He sighed. He stretched out his legs. He wasn’t wearing shoes and his bare feet touched hers.

  You’re alone, he said.

  Faye sat up. They were in the dark.

  I have four others, he said. In my room. You’re alone.

  I think so, she said. So far.

  She could feel his moving toes. They were at first cold and then warm. It felt good, like the soft touch of a hand. She pressed her own feet against his.

  A spotlight turned on in the distance. The beam rotated in the sky. It touched the wall and him and then she saw the bruises all over his face. She held her breath. Her hands tightened. He was drooling blood. It kept dripping and he caught it in his palm and brought it up to his mouth as though not wanting to stain her floor. Or not wanting anything else to leave him. She looked down at her own shirt and saw a splatter of blood there, too. She hadn’t felt it.

  Come here, he said.

  She slid over beside him so that they were both leaning against the wall, looking up at a corner of the window. She heard roller skates tumble by. A far song.

  Do you know the first traveler? Karaoke Champion said.

  He was having trouble speaking but still he talked, and she leaned against his shoulder, wondering if the touching hurt.

  He said the first traveler had large hands. That every year the man would rest somewhere and open them and from those hands his children were born. But the traveler was afraid of water, so he caught the children before they fell, placing them on his shoulders, where they were forced to live, forbidden from ever coming down. So the children stayed up there, peering down at the oceans and the rivers. They saw their own faces reflected below. They waved and from across that distance their hands waved back. They sang and their songs formed the wind that broke their image.

  But as the years went on their curiosity grew. And so one night, as the traveler slept, they snuck down. They entered a river. And the traveler woke from the sound of their bodies and their singing and he saw what they had done and, furious, he reached down and began to gather them, lifting them into the air by their hair and their limbs. He licked their hands and their feet. He bound them, child by child, forming arches, and he scattered those arches across the earth. Their laughter he used to light lanterns. Their sorrow turned their skin pale. Their eyes dulled, their songs faded.

  Winter came. The spring. Then more years. The man grew old. The lines on his palms vanished. New travelers came, crossing the first bridges.

  Faye hadn’t moved. She watched his toes curl.

  I like the impossible stories, Karaoke Champion said.

  He let go and struggled to stand, holding his bruised face. Faye tried to help but he waved her away. He approached the door.

  I don’t want to stay here anymore, he said, and stepped outside.

  Faye followed him. All the way down and across the lawn. There was an umbrella someone had left on the playground and he paused, picked it up, and closed it. A power generator hummed. Karaoke Champion left the umbrella on the bench and walked down the river road, following the path of the streetlamps.

  She didn’t know if she would ever see him again. She was blinded momentarily by a scooter approaching the apartment complex. The floor manager was driving and Yonha was sitting behind him. Neither noticed Faye in the playground as they headed in. She had climbed the slide. She looked up as she slid down. Cigarette ash was falling from all the balconies.

   •

  At the end of her first week, someone stole Faye’s bag from her room. There was money inside, some spare clothes, and her Styrofoam cups. They lef
t the blankets alone. Also, the clothes she wore that day, hanging on the wall. She thought the sunglasses were gone but remembered Yonha had borrowed them.

  She had forgotten to lock her door. She had gone to the showers. Gripping her father’s pocketknife, she stayed under the water, massaging the side of her stomach.

  As Faye returned down the corridor, a small camera almost hit her as it flew by and out toward the country. She leaned over the railing, saw two children controlling it from the playground. She followed the camera’s path into the growing dark, farther up the river, where the chemical plant used to be. She had yet to ask anyone if it was still there. She was about to call down to the children, wanting to know what they were recording, but grew shy.

  Wrapped in her towel, unaware her door was ajar, Faye stayed by the rail, waiting for the camera to come back from the distance.

  III.

  There was a party at the apartment complex. It was a Friday and some women were hosting. They changed into their party clothes after their shift. They thought it would be more fun that way. They sat on the benches and put on makeup in front of their lockers, taking turns holding up a mirror for each other.

  Faye didn’t know about the party and hadn’t brought any clothes with her. She didn’t own party clothes. She didn’t own makeup either. She didn’t think she would go. She had vomited in the morning and hadn’t eaten.

  Yonha sat down and opened her lipstick. Hold still, Yonha said, and painted Faye’s lips, and then told her not to blink and pulled on her lashes with mascara. Faye was holding the mirror. She didn’t know why but she was avoiding her own eyes. She looked down at the reflection of her lips instead, bright pink. She tilted the mirror up and caught, through a narrow window, the moon. Yonha told Faye to open her mouth. Faye thought it was more lipstick but Yonha placed a pill on her tongue.

  It won’t make you hungry anymore, Yonha said.

  They joined the others and moved through the X-ray machines. They waved to the guards. They crossed the street to the bus stop and when it came they went to the back, sharing a row, being loud, an older woman turning and Yonha sticking out her tongue. Above the windows were advertisements for the new model of the camera they assembled every day. It was just the small sphere against a blue background, like the sky. Perhaps it was the sky.

  She didn’t know what Yonha had given her. She waited for her body to feel different in some way, or her vision, but nothing happened. She massaged her side and watched a boat pulling cargo inland. For a while the bus kept pace with it until the road elevated and the boat disappeared. They stopped at other factories to let people off and they headed out into the country, past the farms. The fields turned into large lots where there were the apartment complexes.

  The other women all lived on the eighth floor. They had taken the floor over for the evening. They had hung lights. They opened the doors to their rooms and brought out speakers so that the corridor was filled with music. It was already crowded. She wasn’t sure if it was the pill or the music or the crowd but she felt a hovering lightness and let go of Yonha’s hand, losing her.

  Faye lost all of them, moving across the floor that looked like the other floors as everyone danced. She felt a body brush up against hers. Another. Her own body swayed. Her head bobbed. She didn’t feel sick anymore. She didn’t feel tired anymore. She wasn’t hungry. A camera flew over them, in the air. Or she thought it was a camera, it was hard to tell. Someone was twirling a string of colored lights over the balcony. She heard singing. She recognized the voice. She clung to it as she wove her way through the corridor and kept looking. Her body was all air. She couldn’t stop swaying. She reached the end but there was no one.

  A door was open to one of the rooms. She walked in and found Yonha with their floor manager from the factory. They were half dressed and their limbs were wrapped around each other. Faye’s sunglasses were on the ground beside them. They didn’t notice as she picked them up and put them on.

  Where’s the Karaoke Champion? she said, returning to the corridor, though no one answered.

  She kept moving. She walked down past the twirling lights and she didn’t remember heading down the stairs but she was suddenly on a different floor. There were dancers here, too, and music. She caught the familiar K-pop song again and bobbed her head and watched as two young boys took turns wearing a bracelet and controlling a camera she couldn’t see in the dark over the balconies. She leaned over the rail. She saw someone below. She kept heading down. Floor by floor.

  Outside, she found Yonha’s daughter in the playground.

  Hey! Faye called. The girl turned. Have you seen the Karaoke Champion?

  Yonha’s daughter hesitated, studying Faye as she approached.

  Please, Faye said. Don’t go. I know your mother.

  The girl skated away.

  Faye walked to the road. The party music followed her, another song. Someone was still twirling lights in the air high above on the eighth floor. She winced. The pain had returned on her side. She felt around and pressed against it. She grew dizzy and approached the river, wanting to go farther away.

  I promise I’ll come back, she said, not realizing she said it out loud.

  On the bank she fell to her knees and vomited. She shivered. There was a tightness in her chest. She punched the ground with her hands. She breathed and waited. She felt better but she was freezing. She was thirsty. She searched the debris on the bank. She crawled closer to the water but heard a car.

  It was a pickup truck. The truck slowed as she stepped out. There was a group on the flatbed and they were wearing dresses and tuxedos and party masks. The masks had briefly frightened her but she kept staring up at them. At the way they were all gathered closely together on the flatbed. The glitter that sparkled in the moonlight.

  One of the women reached down. She reached down with a gentleness that reminded Faye of an arm underwater, the completion of a stroke.

  Do you know the Karaoke Champion? Faye asked her.

  The woman smiled. She touched Faye’s hand.

  There’s a better party, the woman said.

   •

  The truck drove farther into the country. The farther they went the less she felt the drug. She thought she had vomited out most of it. She was awake and no longer shivering. She had forgotten she was still wearing the sunglasses. She pushed them up. There were no streetlamps here. There was a hush in the wind. In the people, too, wearing their tuxedos and dresses and masks, all of them looking up at the clear sky.

  They said it was more rare now, for the sky to be so clear. They said tomorrow or the next day there would be smog in the air. All day, the smog. They drove on, following the river. They passed an old farm. A silo. The hills and the first mountains.

  She didn’t know what time it was but now her mind felt clear. Clearer than most days. She lifted her arm and saw the night on her skin. The hairs on her arms. They were approaching an old wooden sign near the riverbank and that was when she remembered. She stood quickly. She felt one of the men take hold of her wrist to steady her as the truck shook.

  Stop, Faye said. Stop the truck. We’re here.

  We know, the man said, and she looked down at him, confused.

  The truck slowed. It turned down a dirt road near the river and the man let go. She jumped off. The men and the women in their masks looked back at her as they entered the woods. She went back across the main road. She was facing the river and beyond that a high mountain.

  That was where she swam, waiting for her father to finish his shift. She and the other children, all of them swimming.

  Here was where her father worked.

  She returned into the woods where the truck had gone. The farther she went she could smell garbage. She had been to the chemical plant only a few times but she could see it in her mind now. When she reached the road’s end, though, there was nothing. There was the truck already parked by an old chain-link fence and beyond that a landfill. Hills of garbage. The stench. Someone
had cut a hole in the fence. Faye covered her face with her hands and went in.

  The buildings were gone. In the dark, she could see no evidence of the chemical plant. She walked around, weaving through the mounds of garbage. She wondered where her father had worked, whether she was walking over it now, his floor, his locker. On occasion she caught a reflection: glass, perhaps, tin. She couldn’t get used to the smell.

  She heard voices. Or she thought they were voices. She stopped and waited. Through the canopy the sky cleared and then clouded. She heard the sounds again and rounded a bend. Up ahead a halo of bare lightbulbs hung in the air above a clearing. Below that was a roped-in ring. A small crowd had formed around the perimeter. She went down the slope.

  Faye approached the crowd, which was small, intimate. Two dozen. The men and the women from the truck were there, too, though they had taken off their masks, lit cigars, and undid their bow ties. They were all watching two men in the small, roped-in ring. Faye stayed in the periphery, listening to that new sound of skin hitting and breaking skin. Unable to move, she watched the fighters fall and fall again.

  She caught the face of one of them and moved closer. She moved to the front.

  It was the young man who had approached her on the bench in Incheon. The one who had convinced her to come. He fell and she watched as he struggled to find some energy in a far part of him and get up and then he charged and pinned his opponent to the ground. In the dust lifting around them, he began to strike. She saw the brief flash of pain in his face as his knuckles connected with his opponent’s nose but he did it again, she heard a crack, and that was all she saw.

  Two men stepped in front of her, blocking her view. She didn’t move. She didn’t know what happened. She didn’t move but listened, trying to follow the orchestra of his movements until there was clapping.