Table for one, p.18
Table for One, page 18
That day, I spent a long time shopping after work, as if I were buying things in preparation for the holidays. I knew I was dealing with the issue belatedly. I started with period panties, then looked at various types of pads, then even checked out aromatics oils and patches to stick on your stomach to alleviate cramps. As I bought items that I’d never used myself, I realized something. If I gave the child her hygiene products without any discussion, I’d probably be conveying the wrong message. I’d be telling her, “Don’t make the house smell like your period. Don’t have a period.” When the child took the box full of products from me, she made a face like it was homework. Each month, she used a small number of items, leaving no trace, as if she were a cat.
Women who live in the same house end up syncing hormones. Cycles are highly contagious. If my husband hadn’t died, the child and I might have ended up with the same bodily rhythms. But my husband’s cancer cells moved faster than the hormones of two women. They say that pancreatic cancer is the one that progresses fastest from diagnosis to death.
My husband was the sole point at which I intersected with the child, and after he died, things became very awkward between us. As soon as the funeral ended, the child’s aunt took her away, like I wasn’t the only one aware of the awkwardness. But no one in my husband’s family acted with any hostility: the many relatives I met at the funeral were sympathetic.
After the funeral was over, I slept for several days in a row. Funerals are more for those still alive than they are for the dead. Those of us left on earth need some sort of gateway where we bid our farewell to the deceased, as they cross over into a new world.
Four days later, I awoke alone in what had once been a bed for two and sometimes three. I didn’t sit up; I turned over and held my nose close to my husband’s pillow. It emanated the child’s scent. I turned the blanket over and saw several of the child’s hairs spread across it.
Those four days gave me time to resurrect myself, but little changed afterward. When I got out of bed and went through the doorway, into the hall, I faltered, even though no one was blocking me. The only thing on the floor below my wavering steps was the clumsily installed threshold, lying there impassively.
* * *
I hadn’t seen it, but I could imagine it well enough. In the scene I envisioned, the child neatly disposes of all evidence of her period: she places the evidence in a black sack, then in another plastic bag, then, because she can’t find a trash can at home that’s beyond my gaze, she throws it away outside. I couldn’t find a place to throw out the empty CD, so I carried it in my bag: it’s similar to what I imagine the child did. Maybe, for the child, reaching womanhood meant becoming a criminal who had to destroy the evidence of her crime for one week each month. A first period was a flare signal indicating the start of a lengthy crime, and I’d taught her to feel ashamed of it.
The child threw away her period waste outside the house because she couldn’t do it inside. I don’t know how to throw things away, either. Instead of ridding myself of unwanted possessions above the earth’s surface, I dispose of them beneath the ground. In 1994, when the Namsangol time capsule was under construction, I cried for days, sobbing until my ears hurt as the four compartments inside the vessel were being completed. My ear-paralyzing cries grew louder and louder, and fireworks at the construction site flared above welding metal while a burning smell tinged the air. That was when I began to believe in time capsules. A tight seal relaxes people: credibility is proportional to tightness.
I set the first compartment on my worktable, and in its place I put copies of the original relics. One other person surveys the compartment alongside me. All he does is read the names and serial numbers stuck to the surfaces of the replacement video equipment. Standing on the other side of the table, he gives me a thumbs-up after checking the requisite labels. The first compartment is full. We place it inside a sterilizer and raise the temperature. Fifty degrees Celsius takes care of microorganisms and mold. Inside the metal frame lies the year 1994, fully restored. The discarded empty CD rests between other items held in the compartment. Sterilization isn’t going to recover the CD’s original contents. The truth is, we don’t know what on the disk was damaged, so it’s a bit awkward to say that there’s anything to “recover” in the first place. I didn’t know how to destroy the CD above ground, so I let it linger in my bag for several days before sending it fifteen meters below the earth’s surface.
No one is suspicious about the secret addition. No one would imagine that nothing is on the CD. As the section chief has instructed, all we need to worry about is whether or not something’s on the list. A serial number has been boldly added to the list’s newest addition: an unidentifiable, unfixable CD, labeled “restored.”
The time capsule hugs all four of its compartments tight. We fasten the nozzles. As the capsule undergoes dozens of X-rays, invisible light claws at it. Now the time capsule really is restored.
* * *
After losing her father at the age of twelve, the child spent two years living with her aunt. The child fit into the family very well during those two years, like she was a piece of furniture that had been a part of their home for a long time. Or maybe she wasn’t an especially good match in the aunt’s house: maybe the child was like furniture that would have matched the décor in any home. But after two years, the girl ran away, still dressed in her school uniform when she fled.
The child had told her relatives that she was going to find “Mom,” so the aunt contacted me. “The child’s run away from home—she said she wanted to see her mom.” Neither the child’s aunt nor I had a clear idea of who that mom was. This was six months ago. The girl must not have found her mother yet. That’s because she doesn’t know her biological mother’s number, nor mine since I changed it.
According to her aunt, the child had no problems sleeping at her new home. She didn’t sleep with the lights on, and she didn’t cry out at night. Her aunt says that she never came into the master bedroom carrying a pillow, or stepping noiselessly so you couldn’t tell if she was really there or not. The child always slept with her bedroom door locked and woke up before her aunt.
I was the person who couldn’t fall asleep then. From the day I heard about the child running away, I slept fitfully. The girl was knocking. She knocked at the cracks in my sleep. She squeezed between my dreams, entered them, and took up a corner of my king-size bed. She lay there with her body curled up like a dog at its owner’s feet. And before morning, she squeezed herself out of my restless sleep and departed.
Maybe what I needed to do was leave the house. It wasn’t easy falling asleep and waking up each day alone, in a house where three people once lived together. Everything looked just like it had before: the structure of the home, and all the furniture, remained unchanged. The only thing that differed now was that the house was under my name, but I still had the feeling that I was freeloading. The fact that my husband’s ex-wife had chosen some of the furniture weighed on my mind. The wallpaper felt damp, and the small stains on the floor irritated me. I had the uncomfortable feeling that someone else’s fingerprints were on the water faucet and gas valve that I’d touched without issue over the past four years. The discomfort was like SARS: it spread from contact. One day, when I turned the doorknob and felt a mysterious body heat lingering on it, I decided to change everything: the faucet, the toilet seats, and all the light switches.
After throwing away a bunch of household goods—one here, two there—I finally disposed of the king-size bed. When I threw it out, I saw that a huge spring at one corner had collapsed. In the empty lot behind the apartment, sitting between items that had passed their prime, the bed looked shabby. A strange wind blew through the crooked spring.
I went down to the empty lot again a few days later and saw that my furniture was now a part of someone else’s home. As night fell, several cats stepped through the door of an old wardrobe that had become their domicile. The discarded cushions around me had absorbed the smell of the street like a sponge. Beds separated into mattress and frame stood stooped, like clumsy walls blocking the wind. I couldn’t tell if anything among the rubbish was mine.
There’s a bed at home that definitely is mine. A bed that’s all mine: that no one else has touched. The twin bed still emanates the smell of newness, and it’s so narrow that you feel like you’re in a coffin when you lie on it. As the night deepens, the mattress loses its plumpness and grows thin as newsprint under the weight of my body. Only after the sun rises does it swell up again. Time passes like it’s a musical score. I have countless bars to play even in the dark, and sometimes I’m out of breath as I try to read the notes. Maybe this is the path the child walked alone each night. Maybe she walked and walked until she was swept up in a passionate beat, until she had to push open my door without even a knock—all in order to make it through a single bar of music. This nocturnal path allows for no stops, no braking.
The child began to appear and then disappear all over the place. I didn’t know the color or pattern of her uniform, but whenever I saw a middle school student in a school uniform, the child’s face was superimposed above the student’s body. Holes lingered in the air after the child vanished, holes shaped like the squares of plaid on her uniform skirt. Before I knew it, the threads of the child’s uniform were sewing together patches of air all around me.
I lie on my narrow, coffin-like bed and think. Why can I still not leave this house? Why haven’t I even changed the code to the front door? One of the three people who knew the password has died, and another has disappeared. I’m still here, the only witness to the past. Being the only earthly witness to our family’s history is more than I can handle. Lifting such a burden off my shoulders should be simple. All I have to do is change a few numbers, but for some reason, I keep putting off the task. I don’t want to admit it, but I’m waiting for the girl to return home.
The day the circular plaza opens again, several other time capsules throughout the city are revealed to have corroded as well, like land mines exploding one after another. In spite of the news, we bury the replacement time capsule—and a few new ones, too—deep underground. The capsules descend fifteen meters, unaccompanied by music or the traditional parade, a congratulatory speech from the president, commemorative tree plantings, or boisterous cheers. It’s just members of the press, clicking their camera shutters. Several people take turns filling a shovel full of dirt and tossing it on top of the time capsule. Once the tomb is sealed, I see someone milling about around the stone above the time capsule. It’s another witness, someone who shares a secret with me: the child. The girl slowly fades away until I can’t see her anymore. She sparkles somewhere between the many numbers carved into the chunk of stone above the time capsule.
* * *
From the outside, the circular plaza looks like a tomb. To get to it, you have to walk through a stone passage that resembles a casket for an enormous snail. At the end of the passage, what appears is a space that looks like a moon crater, with the time capsule buried beneath it. There’s no sound inside, no wind, not even gravity. Even time moves slowly here. It’s like a crater formed by an ancient meteor, unchanged for millions of years.
The two ginkgo trees on the plaza turn their backs against each other. Or maybe they just happen to be standing back to back, with only air in between. It seems like you could plummet into this place, and the fall would somehow shoot you into the distant future. You might stay here until you become a corpse, an eternal mummy. And maybe timid monologues or uncertain propositions spoken inside this stone depression could become vows, made of letters carved deeply into the surrounding walls.
If I place my ears against the slab, I can hear the child walking toward me. The child wears a middle school uniform; she looks at the slab and tries to read letters that she cannot decipher. The child asks me, “Is this a code?” The fine lettering carved into the stone lists the names of cities that sent Korea notes of congratulations when the time capsule was buried. There are also signatures from important people commemorating the freezing of time. The letters stretch in all four directions—north, south, east, west. The child asks, “How deep is it, the time capsule?” When I tell her that it’s fifteen meters below ground, she gasps.
“I, I knocked when I entered,” she says.
My chest sinks. There’s no need to knock here. This place doesn’t have a door.
The girl speaks again. “I knocked because you’re here, Mom.”
With those words, I’m completely disarmed. The child is watching me.
“I have to knock if you’re around, Mom, so you’ll have time to answer.”
The girl’s wrists and ankles are exposed as she says this. Her clothing is now much too short—my heart may have grown still since her disappearance, but the child has continued to grow.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask.
“I’m not cold, but I’m tired. I want to sleep.”
I climb onto the stone first and lie down. What I can see of the sky is round, as big as the circular plaza. The child climbs onto the stone after me. We fall asleep separated by a distance, a distance where knocking and thresholds and locks are unnecessary. To the child, this craterlike slab of stone is somehow a comfortable cradle. In this tomb where everything is frozen, only the child grows. The girl ages like she has progeria, until her height exceeds the diameter of the stone. Even so, I still detect the innocent scent of ice cream emanating from her body. We sleep like we aren’t going to wake up for four hundred years. When I do wake up, there’s nothing but darkness left in the child’s place.
The space where we were lying is as quiet as the eye of a hurricane. I lean an ear against the cold slab. My heart thumps. I feel a strange orgasmic pulsation: probably my heartbeat pounding inside me.
7. ICELAND
Guidebooks didn’t have plots. What they did have were foreign place-names, littered throughout their pages like puzzle pieces. It was the reader’s role to make a story out of the names. That’s why I liked guidebooks. Last week, I’d read Japan. It took me one week to go from Fukuoka to Hokkaido. The week before, I’d read Russia. I rode the Trans-Siberian Express between Vladivostok and Moscow. Today, it was time for me to read Iceland. My trip, which took place for one hour each night, required a bookmark instead of a suitcase. Apart from my imaginary vacations, I’d never actually ventured beyond the borders of Korea. I had no real need to.
Iceland was a country of emptiness. Its area was similar to that of South Korea, but little of the land was inhabitable. Because it was so far north, the guide told me, Iceland was sometimes absent from world maps. Iceland: a land casually omitted from the earth, like the invisible words following an ellipsis at the end of a sentence. A country located on a fault line, where volcanoes exploded as if they were fireworks. And lastly, a country with an ill-fitting name, thanks to greedy Vikings who wanted to deter visitors. I imagined that if I traveled to Iceland, I too would vanish, with only my footsteps remaining behind like the periods of an ellipsis.
I set my sights on Iceland after learning about a website. It was a site where users could take a quiz to learn their compatibility with the country of Korea. The website also informed users which other countries might be more suitable for them. After answering 120 questions, I learned that my match with Korea was not good: only 2.3 percent. I don’t know what the test’s criteria were, but according to its results, I had spent over thirty years living in a country I didn’t fit into at all.
Did my poor results indicate a simple problem between me and Korea, or a broader problem between me and the world? There was no need to waste time worrying. The website that judged my Korean-ness—its name was Laundry—had another test in which it assigned participants an alternate nationality, from a more compatible country. Perhaps there were others like me, because Laundry always had a high number of “users online.” If you took the second test, the website would select a country for you like a doctor selecting the appropriate treatment for their patient. I answered nearly two hundred more questions and was informed that my country was Iceland.
It was a 42.5 percent match, a greater percentage than I had with any other country on earth. It was twenty times higher than the number for the country in which I was currently living. My body and mind were worn out after years of trying to satisfy the demands of this country. I’d had to jump over hurdle after hurdle, interconnected like the links of a sausage. I’d made it through the unemployment crisis and gotten a job, but I still questioned my quality of life. Considering my constant worry, the answer was clear: “2.3 percent” was nothing more than sheet music that made visible the disharmonious symphony I’d begun to hear long ago.
“Who does this website think it is, telling us whether or not we should leave for another country?” asked my coworker Kim from behind the partition that separated our desks.
Kim quickly found himself just as ensnared by Laundry as I was. Kim was destined for Jamaica. He didn’t know if Jamaica was in Africa or America, but after receiving the verdict that Jamaica was his match made in heaven, he noticed connections to the country everywhere. He began to plan his daily life around the assumption that he’d eventually travel there. Perhaps he thought that if he went to this perfect match of a country, everything from his personal relationships to his health would improve. Maybe all test takers attached such hopes to their new countries. If not, there would be no way to explain why people filled out fifty-question application forms to become members of groups like Café Iceland.
