—Girl, you’re ruining your life!
That’s what my mother shouted when she learned I was suspended. Seeing the despair on her face, I couldn’t ignore what a terrible blow it must have been.
I couldn’t get my mother to understand what I’d done. No, to be honest, I couldn’t understand it, either. Did I have such strong convictions that I’d become a leader like that? And even if I did, was that worth so much to me that I was willing to crush the hopes and dreams my mother had clung to her whole life?
The funny thing is that I didn’t feel the slightest bit proud of what I’d done. And I didn’t feel any regret, either. Even if I had felt regret, what would be the point? That water had already been spilled.
But my mother believed that the water could be put back somehow, that I had to be readmitted at any cost, resume my studies, graduate, and be a schoolteacher. That was her dream, one she would never give up—even if the sky split in two!
One day she forcibly dragged me back to the university. She said if I apologized for my wrongdoing, they would forgive me. I tried to tell her it was no use, but she’s so stubborn I couldn’t change her mind.
Returning to campus for the first time in the months since I’d been kicked out—with my mother dragging me back against my will—imagine the humiliation! I kept my head bowed because I was afraid I might be recognized. But I had no choice. I went where my mother took me. She was holding my hand tight, thinking I might run away at any moment, and she took me to the dean’s office—to Professor Song.
—Go in! Get in there and apologize—with your own two lips. Say your crime was unforgivable, but beg him to forgive you!
She spoke in a low voice with such a determined look on her face. I couldn’t refuse.
—But Mom, please…
—Hurry! You knock on the door, or I’ll knock myself!
Finally, I knocked and walked into the office. Professor Song was wearing his beret as usual. A pale purple smoke rose from the pipe in his hand.
—You! I was hoping I’d never have to lay eyes on you again.
He didn’t even ask me to sit down.
—I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since what happened. I keep thinking about it in the middle of the night, and I can’t get to sleep. I keep telling myself—everything I’ve done up until now as a poet, as an educator—that I’ve wasted my life.
I had nothing to say.
—I’ve lived fifty years, and there was always one thing I was certain about: that the most important thing in the world is trust. The one thing we should never, ever betray as human beings. But after what happened, everything’s gone to pieces.
—I’m sorry, Professor. Please forgive me.
—Do you really want to come back to school?
—Yes.
—Under two conditions. If you accept them, the school can reinstate you.
—What are they?
—One: give us the names of all your student activist friends and tell us what they do. We have no ulterior motives here except to prevent anything like that from happening again. As for the other condition…
I just looked at him, speechless.
—You will write an article for the student paper, in which you’ll admit publicly that you regret everything and that your views have changed. You are a good writer, after all. I think if you compose it in the form of a letter to the dean, it’ll be much more compelling for both the students and the faculty.
He went on:
—You know, it was your mother who persuaded the faculty to agree to readmit you under these conditions. She came to see me, of course, but she also went to the dean of the university—all the way to his house—and begged him to take you back. Everything is thanks to her. Don’t you ever forget your mother’s devotion.
My mother was crouching in a corner down the hall, and as soon as I got out of Professor Song’s office, she ran up to me and grabbed my hand.
—How did it go? Did he say they’d forgive you? You can re-register next semester, right?
I told my mother I needed to go to the bathroom. I could see the bright yellow forsythia outside the bathroom window, and an indescribable anger and sadness welled up in me. Then I saw my mother standing there a ways off at the corner of the building, waiting, endlessly waiting, for me. That’s when I decided I had to get away from there. I had to leave my mother. So I went out the other door of the bathroom and left campus by myself. For the first time in my life, I left my mother’s side. I ran away.
Where did I go after I ran away? Once I was out in the street, I realized I had nowhere. I hadn’t planned anything. I didn’t even have change in my pocket. I couldn’t think of anywhere to go, so I went to Sooim’s.
She was already working at that time. I wanted to work in the factory with her, but it wasn’t easy because the surveillance for undercover workers was getting stricter. Sooim told me I shouldn’t feel obligated to work in the factory and said I should give night classes instead.
I started teaching a class somewhere in the Guro industrial district but had to stop because of the police crackdown. Then I moved to Seongnam, in the outskirts, where I started night classes for workers in the basement of a church.
Sooim lectured to me. That we should try to think and feel like the workers, that it wasn’t us teaching them but learning from them. It wasn’t just that we had to be like them, but we had to become one with them and be reborn.
I really tried to do what she said.
The problem was, no matter how much I lived with the workers, I couldn’t get rid of the skepticism and doubts that constantly rose up in me. I did my best to share their sufferings, their thoughts, their anger. But no matter how much I tried, I was myself—I could never be them. The more I tried to be like them, the more I felt like I wasn’t being honest. I felt like I wasn’t me, but some silly clown onstage in a play I didn’t know anything about. I couldn’t become them, and I wasn’t myself anymore—no matter how much I tried to deny that, I couldn’t. And I couldn’t stop feeling guilty because of that.
The truth is, if you consider we were born and grew up in the same circumstances, I wasn’t any different from the workers. Then or now. If anything, I just had more education. And my hands were pale and soft from having only held a pen. But why couldn’t I be like them? Why couldn’t I think like them? Was it because I was selfish and my head was already corrupted beyond redemption with petty bourgeois ideas?
I really envied my friends like Sooim, who worked so hard with their unshakable faith, who never had any doubts. I could clearly see it wasn’t hypocrisy or wanting to be a hero that motivated them. But if their convictions were true, what about the truth that I couldn’t get over my own doubts? I was constantly tormented by that question.
I just wanted to go on living like I had been. I wanted to go to movies, listen to music, buy something nice to eat once in a while. But I couldn’t do any of that if I stayed with them. The things I wanted to do seemed immoral and always made me feel ashamed.
I wanted to believe that I was doing the right thing. That what I was doing was something everyone should be doing, that if I could improve the lives of the people of my country even a little bit by doing this, it was enough.
But my mind and will were too weak to go on with that kind of faith alone. I couldn’t endure. No—inside me there was another self that kept saying I should escape.
Then, one day—it must have been about six months after I left home—Sooim paid me a surprise visit to my dorm room. She was wanted by the police after she’d organized a strike at the factory, so she had to impose on me and stay for a while until she found another hiding place.
That day, just by coincidence, some students from the night class also came by and they started a discussion with Sooim about working conditions. But for some reason, I couldn’t participate in that discussion. “Organization,” “working class,” “class contradiction,” “liberation of the worker”—all of the terms they used, which I’d also often used until then, sounded strange to me. They sounded like a foreign language and made me feel uncomfortable. I was overcome by the thought that maybe I was somewhere I shouldn’t be, where I didn’t fit in, in a place where I didn’t belong.
I was sitting alone behind them like an outsider who had nothing to do with them. Suddenly, I had a craving for pizza. It was inexplicable to me. They were having a heated debate about the harsh reality of labor, how workers, with all their blood and sweat couldn’t even earn the bare minimum to live like a human being—and I was thinking of pizza! But once that thought had entered my mind, I was helpless. To this day I think there must be something wrong with my head or my stomach.
I slipped out without their noticing. I started walking down the main street looking for a pizza place. But I was in the industrial area, and there was no pizza place no matter how far I walked. As time passed, I felt like I was choking. My craving was like an unbearable thirst. I could see it all vividly before my eyes, as if I could just reach out and touch it: the cheese covering the hot dough, the slices of ham, the onions.
I couldn’t find a pizzeria, no matter how far I walked, so I ended up taking the bus to Seoul. The traffic was bad that day, so it took almost an hour before I was able to get to a pizza place somewhere in Jongno. But how do you think I felt walking out of that place after ordering and eating a pizza all by myself?
It wasn’t fullness, like I’d just filled my belly with something I wanted to eat—it was an intense feeling of shame and guilt. I was disgusted with myself.
My punishment came all too soon. When I got back to my dorm room, I instantly knew that something had happened. It was a shambles. My roommate, Sunok, was sitting there all by herself, in a daze.
—They took Sooim! Thirty minutes ago. The police surprised us…we didn’t have time to run.
Sunok was shaking. I stood there motionless for a long time, as if I’d been struck by lightning. All I could think of was the fact that I was eating pizza while it all happened. That’s when Sunok asked me:
—Where the hell were you?
I couldn’t answer. It would have been easier for me to tell her I’d just murdered someone or even that I’d just returned from reporting Sooim to the police. I would have felt less guilty. How could I tell her that I’d sneaked out alone to eat pizza? I couldn’t have said that even if someone tore my mouth open.
The next day, I called my mother. She came to the night school, and it ended up with her dragging me back home.
Shinhye turned to look every time the door opened. It was strange. For a long time now, she had been possessed with the feeling that someone who knew her was going to walk through that door and take her out of there. She knew it was childish, unrealistic, and too hopeful, but even so, she couldn’t keep her eyes off the door.
She was barely able to eat her lunch. She left more than half of the gomtang they’d delivered from the restaurant. But for some reason, the interrogation didn’t resume, and she had no choice but to wait for a long time alone in the corner of the office.
“I can’t do this fucking job anymore.”
It was late afternoon when Detective Kim finally appeared, his face red, angry about something. He threw a stack of thick black files on the desk and glared at Shinhye.
“Who did you come with?” he asked.
“Who? What do you mean?”
“Hey, it doesn’t matter how ballsy you might be, you certainly did not come down here to a little coal town in Gangwon-do all by yourself. So tell me—right now—who came with you?”
“You really have the wrong person. I only came here to earn some money, like other girls.”
“To earn money? Do you even know who you’re dealing with?”
He grabbed one of the files and slammed it down on her head. The cigarette butts and ashes in the ashtray scattered all over. Shinhye scrambled to clean up the mess, as if it had been her own fault.
“It’s true,” she said. “I need a lot of money to pay my registration fee for next semester.”
“Registration fee? What registration fee? You said you were suspended indefinitely.”
“I still have to register even if I’m suspended. If you don’t register, they automatically expel you.”
Shinhye hadn’t given up on registration even after she was suspended. It might have been very naive of her. Among her friends who had been suspended from school, Sooim immediately gave up on registration and accepted expulsion on her own. The rest of them, in the hopes of being readmitted, had registered for a semester or two afterwards before dropping out.
“Indefinite suspension is the same as being expelled,” Sooim said. “So it’s stupid to think they might reinstate you. Until the fascist administration unconditionally surrenders, there won’t be any readmittance unless you go crawling on your knees and agree to be their dog. Why should we hand over the money we earned with our blood?”
“But that’s exactly what the administration wants, isn’t it—automatic expulsion for failing to register?” Shinhye objected. “If we don’t want to walk into the trap they dug for us, wouldn’t it be better for us to register until the bitter end to show that our punishment was unfair?”
“That’s just semantics! Our legitimacy has nothing to do with whether or not they let us back in.”
Shinhye knew Sooim was right. But she couldn’t give up on registration. It wasn’t because she wanted to cling to the futile hope of returning to school, it was because of her mother, who could not give up on that dream. She did not have the right to abandon that dream—it belonged to her mother, who had sacrificed her whole life for her daughter’s sake.
“So you wanted to pay the registration fees, like you said. But why be a café waitress in a coal town?”
“I heard you could make a lot of money in a month.”
“What else?”
“It’s true that I was interested in a coal mining town. But it was just curiosity.”
“Just curiosity? You came all the way out here because you were curious? What, are you a comedian now?”
From the look in his bloodshot eyes, Shinhye expected him to punch her then, and she realized she had been mistaken. For a moment, she had thought even detectives who had to do this kind of work would be ordinary human beings capable of listening to other people and empathizing with their stories.
“What’re you looking at? I’ll pluck your eyes out, you arrogant bitch!”
Detective Kim curved his finger into a hook and thrust it at her face.
“I’m sorry. But, honestly, I came here with pure intentions.”
What she said sounded a bit ridiculous, even to her.
“Pure? Now I’m gonna die laughing! So a girl with pure intentions like you has nothing better to do than come down to a coal town to sell her snatch?”
“I told you already, it was to earn money for registration. And I never did anything like what you’re saying. You can ask the madam and other waitresses at Café Yonggung. They’ll tell you.”
“You think I’m some kind of pushover? A thoroughly committed student activist like you comes down here to serve coffee so she can pay her registration fees? You actually expect me to believe a lie like that?”
“I asked myself a lot of questions, too. Like, if there was no other way. You say I’m thoroughly committed, but if I did this, it was because I wasn’t committed enough.”
The detective looked at her blankly, as if he had no idea what she was talking about. Suddenly he mashed out the cigarette he’d been smoking.
“You really are something else, huh? Turning the conversation this way and that way so you can weasel out of this? You think I’m a pushover because I’m just a little country detective? I won’t put up with that shit. It’s gonna take some disciplining to bring you back to your senses. Get up!”
He stood up first and approached her, and in spite of herself, Shinhye’s legs began to shake.
“I really don’t understand why you’re all treating me like this. I really haven’t done anything…”
In his hand, he was suddenly holding a stick. It was grimy from lots of use. Is he going to hit me with that? Shinhye gave him a pleading look.
“Hey, Detective Kim! You can stop now.” The policeman in the suit she had met that morning had entered the room. “Send her up to the anti-communist section. They’re taking over now.”
Shinhye stifled a sigh of relief. She had at least avoided a beating for now. But immediately, she wondered, Why are they sending me to the anti-communist section?
“Shit! It’s always the same! As soon as I get started, they interrupt me! My whole morning was for nothing!”
Detective Kim continued his grumbling as he walked Shinhye out the door. The anti-communist section was on the third floor. When they entered, there was a man sitting at a desk in the middle of the small office, and standing next to him was a large man in a shiny black leather jacket. When he turned to look at them, Shinhye’s heart began to pound again. Each time she met a new face here, she felt a new uneasiness and fear.
“Sit over here.”
The inspector, who remained seated at his desk, motioned Shinhye to a chair next to him. His attitude toward her was gentler than she’d expected. She noticed a large nameplate, inscribed in mother-of-pearl, on the desk in front of him: Shin——, Chief Inspector, Anti-Communist Section.
“Having a rough time?”
“No, sir.” Shinhye bowed her head. His voice was so soft that she felt a heat in her throat as if she were about to burst into tears.
“Maybe you’re under the impression that you can continue to hold out even in here, but that would be a mistake. Waste our time and you’re the one who loses.”
Shinhye raised her head. But the chief went on with his gentle voice and expression.
“We had information that agitators infiltrated this area to spread propaganda among the coal miners, so we started an investigation. Until now, we were looking for a man. We never would have imagined it would be a girl like you working at a café. But now you’ve been found out, so it would be in your best interest just to lay everything out.”
Shinhye couldn’t tell whether what he’d said was true or false, whether it really was the case or was just part of the interrogation.
“Even if what you say is true, it’s not me,” she said. “I really don’t know anything.”
A hint of annoyance passed across his face. The inspector stared at her for a moment, without a word, as if he were trying to control his anger. But then he softened, as if he had forgiven her. He turned and pointed to the man in the leather jacket standing next to him.
“From now on, he’s the one who’s going to question you. He’s very good but can be rather impatient. So you’ll cooperate with the investigation, all right?”
She replied, “Yes,” confused. The inspector patted her head, just like a schoolteacher, and stood up.
“Detective Cheon,” Detective Kim said before he left, “this bitch is a lot tougher than she looks. She’s going to need a little handling before you start questioning her.”
The man called Detective Cheon did not respond. When the two of them were alone in the room, he lit a cigarette.
What time was it? Automatically, she glanced at her wristwatch. The needles were indicating precisely the hour of some other day when it had died without her knowing. She saw a black-rimmed circular clock on the far wall. It was five thirty. She had been there for nearly ten hours.
Out of nowhere, her mother’s face appeared before her. How would she feel if she knew I came all the way out to this little coal mining town in Gangwon-do? That I got arrested by the police? She felt a sharp pain in her heart as if someone had stabbed her with a knife.
After giving the night classes, she’d returned home to her mother, and she’d been confined in that tiny house on the hillside in Seongbuk-dong for several months.
Those months of doing nothing had been hard to bear. Moisture oozing down the walls of their single rented room, constant headaches from smelling the toxic fumes of the coal briquettes, the suffocating view outside the window of the countless flat little houses, and all those little noises that seemed to hover around her that would suddenly lump together and come crashing over her—amidst all of that she lived day by day, doing nothing. It was like a period of complete inaction. Her ability to think seemed to have atrophied, and she could barely read a line in a book. Her only productive activity was to change the coal briquettes twice a day.
There were whole days that went by without her saying a word. Of course, she had no one to talk to, but it was also because talking scared her. Sometimes, afraid she would become mute, she would talk to herself out loud.
“Jeong Shinhye, what are you doing now?” “I’m not doing anything.” “Then what will you do in the future?” “I don’t know. What is there that I could do?”
Since her return, her mother watched her constantly, afraid she would run away again. Shinhye found it all hard to endure. At some point she realized she had to leave again. To continue living like this was too stifling. She was in terrible pain every time she met her mother’s gaze. Every night, when she saw her mother return from work at the market exhausted, on the verge of collapse, she felt an unbearable guilt.
Every night, her mother moaned from the pain in her knees and shoulders, and yet every morning she would get up at dawn to go to the auction and buy the fish for that day at the market. She watched her mother’s suffering, that hopeless life, and she would think of leaving. And sometimes she would reproach herself: Don’t I have a conscience—or the least bit of sympathy? But the more she witnessed her mother’s pain, the more she felt that she could not realistically help, and that itself was an unbearable pain.
She finally resolved to do something, anything. Even if it meant betraying her mother again. She had an excuse. She had a real reason to leave home in order to earn money: the registration fee was due in two months. Her mother said they would somehow manage by going into debt as they had done before, but Shinhye objected, saying that she couldn’t be a burden to her mother forever. A few days before Christmas, she went downtown, and just by chance, she noticed an employment agency sign on Jongno Street. She went in, blindly, and that was how she had met the madam of Café Yonggung, who was there to get girls.
“Come over here.”
Detective Cheon had finally decided to open his mouth. She sat in front of his desk as she was told.
On the whitewashed wall facing her, she noticed the Korean flag, a photograph of the president framed in glass, and slogans like Strive for Social Justice, Support National Development, a Society of Democracy & Prosperity. So many words that seemed an ironic and cruel joke to her eyes.
“Hey, like he said, I’m an impatient man. So let’s not test my patience, alright? I’m still stuck here at work because of you.”
His face was rough and dark, his lips were thick, and his eyes bulged slightly. In short, he had the plain and crude features of someone who—if she had met them elsewhere—would have struck Shinhye as a stubborn farmer. He opened his desk drawer and took out an interrogation form.
“Start by telling me about the organization you belong to.”
“The organization? There isn’t one. I don’t know anything about an organization. I’ve never belonged to one.”
“Then who ordered you to come here?”
“No one ordered me. Who would be giving me orders?”
“Is that how it’s gonna be?”
An invisible smile seemed to flit across his face. It was a leisurely expression, as if he already knew everything there was to know, as if there was no reason to rush anything
“You must be in communication with someone, right? You know, like reporting what it’s like to be living in a coal mining town? You talk about it with friends, don’t you?”
“I just came here to earn some money. I’m already ashamed to be working as a café waitress, so why would I tell anyone?”
“Look, let me give you some friendly advice. When I ask you nicely, you answer me politely. You heard what the chief said—I’m a very impatient man.”
His eyes seemed to bulge even more when he opened them wide to intimidate her. Shinhye suddenly came up with a nickname that suited his face and even said it to herself silently. And for a moment, she had the pleasure of savoring a little revenge.
“What’s the matter? Am I not making sense?”
His goldfish eyes bulged even more. Shinhye suddenly thought all of this must be a joke, that the detective and she were both engaged in something utterly pointless and unrelated to themselves. It felt ridiculous to see a man so excited for no reason, who was threatening to gobble her up with a frightening expression on his face.
“Bitch, are you making fun of me!”
Perhaps she had let a smile slip from her lips. He stood up, eyes even wider, his face trembling, like someone who had just suffered a terrible affront. His huge hand flew at Shinhye’s face, and before she could even draw a breath, he slammed her head against the metal desktop again and again. Everything was spinning, confusion, sparks exploding before her eyes. She wanted to beg for her life, but he didn’t give her time to say a word.
He lifted Shinhye’s head again and slapped her, hard.
She fell to the floor this time. “Oh! Mommy!” she cried.
Her ears were ringing, and when he yanked her back up to her feet it grew so loud and high-pitched she couldn’t even hear her own sobs. Now he stiffened his hand and sliced it down on the back of her neck in a karate chop.
The sound in her ears grew louder and louder, as if her ears themselves had turned into bells. Her body was a limp rag, and she was helpless but to go where he dragged her. Each time he hit her, it was the fear of the next blow, more than the pain, that terrified her, and she screamed every time. Her ears were ringing so loudly now her whole head was just a huge bell that someone was striking nonstop, and with each blow her entire body shook with enormous force.
Suddenly it was quiet. It was as if the clapper had broken. All the commotion stopped. Shinhye was curled up on her knees. Without thinking, she had crawled under the desk. Like a frightened animal, she pulled her legs up against her stomach, covered her head with both hands, and tensed her muscles. The last strains of the bell echoed in her ears. She was still conscious, sobbing so hard it must have been pitiful.
“Come out of there!”
Detective Cheon bent down and motioned to her. She complied and crawled out from under the desk. In a calmer voice, he told her to sit down. Shinhye’s legs were wobbling, her temples still pounding, as if struck by a hammer.
He casually lit a cigarette, exhaled a puff of smoke, and said:
“You know a guy named Kim Gwangbae, don’t you?”