Drifting House (12 page)

“America!” Daehoon snorts. “And I’m President Roh ­Tae-woo! You got the kind of money to pay off visa sharks?”

“And what if I do?”

“I don’t care about your fancy foreign suit covered in dirt, or your fancy education,” says Daehoon. “If they let you in, I’m capable of marrying me a rich bitch from the Kangnam neighborhood. I’d just as soon chop off my legs, sell what I’ve got.”

“Did you know that on the black market, one of your kidneys could be valued at over twenty thousand dollars?” says Yeongsuk. “That’s at least thirty million won. No, near forty, I think, with the present currency devaluation.”

Both of you stare at him. Yeongsuk entertains himself by doing things like reciting the periodic table, tracing word etymologies, and deducing the possible whereabouts of former dictator Chun Du–hwan’s reputed illegal fortune of two hundred million U.S. dollars. He knows the strangest things.

At noon the three of you head toward Jongro where a thin ­meat-bone soup and rice will be served by humorless Christians. Past enormous yellow cranes that slumber over the many halted building projects, already the line weaves around the block. That doesn’t stop Daehoon from cutting in front of the smallest, youngest man he finds.

The man, though slight and stringy, collars Daehoon and says,
“Gaesaekki!”

He stitches curses together so quickly it sounds like a foreign language. The man drives back Daehoon, who clearly expected instant capitulation.

The man adds in
­ban-mal,
his language casual and disrespectful, “It’s
saekkis
like you I hate.”

“Who’re you using
­ban-mal
to?” Daehoon cocks his fists. “You’re talking to someone older than you!”

You secretly wish that Daehoon will be vanquished; it is difficult to like a man who mimics your ­high-pitched voice when you are excited and tells you that you walk like a woman. He is so large, he makes you feel insufficient. But there are too many people watching and he cannot lose face, so he grabs the man’s shirt and caroms into him. Only after Yeongsuk pokes you with a chopstick, you help drag Daehoon off to the side. He struggles just enough to show he is eager to fight.

The pickled radish is fresh and spicy, the clear, meaty broth salty and smooth, but Yeongsuk, as usual, eats rapidly, then rises. He will call his parents and his wife, as he does every week, pretending to be in America. He will tell his parents that he, the oldest son, is their guarantee. He will promise to bring his wife over after he gets settled. When you once asked how he can lie so creatively, he said that he’s not, quite, for he has set aside an emergency fund and paid a reputable immigration company. Give me time, he said equably. Even though he went to graduate school and was an investment banker and knows many useless things, you don’t believe him.

After the soup is gone, you think about Jayeong, the children. You touch your inner suit pocket where the dried chrysanthemum rests. You miss your wife’s rapturous laughter, sleeping against her
soft, irregular snores that wake you up. You even miss the arguments.

Daehoon watches the fan above and demonstrates his usual conversational skills by wondering if your skull would split apart if it fell off. When you tell him that you will return in five minutes, he grins as he scrapes Yeongsuk’s and your leftovers into his bowl. He is as hefty as a wedding chest; maybe that is why his constant hunger disgusts you. You straighten your yellowed collar and sling the briefcase over your shoulder. From a distance you are still a salaryman.

“Hello? Who’s speaking?”

It is Jayeong. Since you hang up if your mother–in–law picks up, it has been a month since you two have spoken. Her small, quick hands, her arms of pressed lavender and lavish, dogmatic certainty; you can almost smell them.

You deposit your last coins. “Yeobo, it’s me.”

“Yeobo? Are you safe?” Her voice strains with forced welcome, and you hear this immediately.

“What’s wrong?”

There is a silence.

You say would it hurt to be a little positive? She has the warm bed, and she has the children. You force a laugh. She responds that she has been thinking. She recounts your drinking and the cycle of debt. The money you sent your in–laws. The creditors that have be­­gun circling. Now this. The debt, you say, helped pay for the children that she’d wanted. You are startled by your cowardice, your cruelty.

She says, “They say more than half of divorces are about money.”

The word
divorce
silences you for a moment. “Who are ‘they’?” you finally say.

“I need to protect myself and our babies. They’ll take the money that’s left if it’s in your name. If I’m not careful…Others are doing the same, too. It’s just a piece of paper.”

Your armpits become hot. You start to see white spots. Odd, you say, how a man loses value overnight without a salary.

She says, “It’s not about that, not at all. I can’t be derailed this time.”

You say, even over the phone, you can smell her lavender and garlic.

She says something about Seoul and court documents and how she needs a guarantee against any possible future debt of yours; you retort that she is being capricious as usual. You say that she will regret this tomorrow, so let’s just not continue. She persists, so you begin chanting some of Yeongsuk’s etymologies of words over her rising cant. You cannot let her continue because your family is your last possibility for a world that seems more and more distant. You cannot listen because losing your wife will rend the little left of you. You will not because you want to live.

When she says, “Please, please cooperate, don’t make me crazier than I already feel,” you hang up.

The passing crowds overwhelm ­you—their talk of school and meetings and weekend plans. All these ordinary people with their lives intact.

You enter the nearest convenience store and open up a bottle of
soju
and drink it right there between the Pringles and the dried cuttlefish. After you pay the clerk with your last bills, you spit on a hairdresser’s towels hanging outside on a clothes rack. The world
you see is your enemy. You kick the glass doors of each business establishment, determined to break one in. You only bruise your toe.

In the morning you still visit the employment center because that, at least, is reliable. Miraculously, they are able to set up an interview for you. They require someone with computer skills and job experience, no advanced degree. That is you exactly. But you are a little nervous. Last night you almost called your wife, but instead you drank with your comrades.

Yeongsuk coaches you once again on interview techniques and tucks bus fare and a little lucky money into your inner jacket pocket. You call him Older Brother for the first time, and mean it.

After you arrive at the interview, you wait with hundreds of other applicants. Your suit is freshly pressed and your hair washed and cut, but you slur when you speak. You hadn’t meant to but you were so nervous. When you had stopped by the store on the way to the interview, you had meant to have only one little sip.

By fall, you agree to meet your wife. You washed as best you could, shaved, shined your shoes and briefcase, and while strolling through the department store sprayed yourself with a sample of Ralph Lauren Polo cologne. You almost look presentable. You had come to the designated café in a gentler neighborhood of Seoul braced to finesse, to persuade, to argue if necessary. But you lose confidence as soon as Jayeong arrives. Those are wild, uncertain eyes, desperate for change. She has even armed herself with the children, dressed in their Sunday finery, which you had not prepared for.

Yoona hangs back shyly, but on command pecks your cheek. Afterward, she darts back as if afraid of you. “Appa,” she says, “your eyes are red and you smell funny.”

You clutch her palm but still feel stained with the stench of the streets. As you present Yoona with pink delphiniums, you say, “That’s because Appa’s been up all night picking these for you.”

“When things are better for you, you can give Yoona flowers anytime.” Your wife’s voice is brisk and vigilant. “We’re ready to come back anytime, really anytime you want.”

“Visit?” Yoona pulls at her lace collar as if to tear it. “No more visits! Let’s all go home!”

But you know that there is no home to return to, and Jayeong is right to have made up her mind. There are the remaining assets and the children to protect. When your wife rises, it seems impossible that you once knew her body so well.

Along with the divorce papers, she presses an envelope into your ­hands—money, as you knew it would ­be—and though you will regret it later, you throw her charity at her. It slaps her chest and falls, scattering King Sejong’s somber face across the floor like nightclub advertisements.

Her arms tremble; as she picks up the money, you flounder in your dark thoughts. The children have gone so still and quiet, they do not seem like children.

You tug at the top button on your jacket until it comes off in your hand.

“You need it more than we do,” she says.

“Don’t make me pathetic!”

Your agitated hands knock down the house of sugar cubes that Jeongmin has built, which makes him cry. You are astonished and
ashamed by your ability to hurt them. Your wife hugs Jeongmin with her right arm and Yoona with her left, calming them.

“Keep your mind together,” she says. “Think of the children.”

You are, you are thinking of yourself without them. You touch your children’s faces, then yours, making sure that all of you are still there. You want to hold Yoona, but that will break you. So you kiss Jeongmin’s cheeks. You restack the sugar cubes.

You tell Yoona, “This is what our house will look like when we live together.”

Though Yoona’s hands ball up on her hips, her mouth prim with suspicion, Jeongmin, for whom the past is already forgotten, struggles into your lap.

He says, “Appa, I can read now.”

He can read, and you were not there to teach him.

It is winter when you skid across an ice patch. Yeongsuk is gone. He secured a visa to America after all. In your drowsy, drunkenness you miss him. You no longer visit the employment center. You have forgotten why you wanted a job in the first place. Late at night, you raid the bags of those new to Seoul Station while they sleep. You take money,
soju,
napkins, anything of use, just as people once stole from you. Outside, when winds scissor through your clothes, you warm up beside vendors firing chestnuts and sweet potatoes over coals, and when you walk the Han River’s many bridges, you occasionally entertain jumping.

When you are sober you think about your parents, or Jayeong. You now think that your wife, now ex–wife, since you finally went to city hall and signed the documents, was right to leave you. You,
a docile fool, had believed that if you worked hard enough, you could protect those you loved.

The drinking makes you content. The pavement is warm even when the Siberian winds hook into your skin; the universe and its people love you when you drink. You will do anything for a drink. Sometimes you prowl large discount stores and filch
soju
from the stacked aisles. If someone sees you, you go to jail for a few days where they feed you regularly. You even like Daehoon when you’re drunk.

But when you are not drunk, you wish you were brave enough to be alone. Just yesterday Daehoon told you with his usual cheeriness, “People care more about their hairstyles than a dead stranger.” During slow hours he demonstrates his ­one-handed push–up and tells you with a bravado you despise that you’re lucky because if he wanted to, he could really hurt you.

In Gwanghwamun most people, still unused to the sudden swell in the number of homeless, are embarrassed by you. You had first constructed a cardboard sign that read:
WILL WORK FOR FOOD.
You had crouched in front of the sign to hide your face, your hands outstretched to these people with jobs and families who marched up the stairs, who did not look left or right. Someone stepped over your legs. Now you wear a sign that says:
I AM DEAF AND DUMB. PLEASE HELP ME
. You walk up to people, hand outstretched, and shame them into giving.

It is rush hour, the time of day when you stare boldly at women in their ­dry-cleaned dresses and suck in their scented soap and hold the smells. A year has passed since you have been in the company of women.

Among all these untouchable women, you spot Haemin Lee,
who studied marketing with you at university. She sports no wedding band. Like many women, in a surge of patriotism she has probably donated her jewelry to the government in order to reduce the national deficit. It is a shock, remembering what you have lost, especially when she recognizes you and her face is transformed by pity, a look that follows you everywhere. You hide behind the waves of your ­shoulder-length hair.

“Obba!”

She calls you Older Brother as she used to, and noses her way down until her ­almond-shaped face is level with yours. Her once lovely features now submit to gravity.

“Dear Lord.” Her breath warms your ear. “How could this happen to you?”

With your face averted and your cap out, in your best imitation of a Busan accent, you say, “Please, help me. I’ve spilled my soup, all of it.”

“Obba.” She steps back. Already, there is curiosity to her pity. “Is it you?”

You realize that you, too, are no longer the man that Haemin knew, not the student who once saved up for summer cycling trips, not the student who feebly demonstrated against the military regime in order to skip a day of classes. You no longer play folk music or believe in progress. You became a salaryman. And now you are not even that.

Something drops into your hat. The sound, a soft rustle, is bills.

You keep your eyes to the ground but touch her skirt. “Haemin,” you say. “Thank you.”

“It’s all I have right now,” she says, apologetic for being a witness.
The next train of commuters, rising up from underground like riot police, pushes her along.

Your cap now cradles five mint-green bills. Fifty thousand won total. Enough for twenty bottles of
soju
and at least a dozen cups of instant ramen. Or? They say money can even buy testicles on a female virgin. You rub the bills against your papery cheeks. With this money you have choices.