Your Republic Is Calling You (17 page)

Beeeep beeeep.
The sound alerting pedestrians that the
light has turned green wakes Ma-ri from her reverie, and she unthinkingly steps off the curb. She takes four steps and an SUV screams by in front of her—really only a few inches from her nose—without slowing down. She sees a brief darkness in front of her, and the forceful backwind makes her falter. Her heart in her mouth, she turns to her right to glare at the car that almost careened over her, and spots a policeman. He lumbers onto the road, waves at the SUV to slow down, and motions for it to pull over.

A cop pulling over a driver is just like a bear hunting for food; he looks lethargic but zeroes in on his target with great precision. The driver's window slides down as the cop approaches. Ma-ri draws in a deep breath and heads toward the car.
And I bummed a cigarette off a cop this morning,
she thinks, amused. If the driver argues that he didn't do anything wrong, she's going to make sure that he doesn't get away with it. She's going to tell the policeman that the car most definitely ran a red light. At this point, she's still confident. The cop glances at Ma-ri and the driver's head pokes out, to see what's going on. Ma-ri expects a young, muscular, and virile man, but the driver is a woman in her twenties wearing a stylish dark suit with a deep V-neck, probably Prada, her carefully styled layered hair shimmering gently around her small, cute face.

Shooting Ma-ri a look of disdain, she flirts with the cop. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I have to be somewhere and I'm late. I only got my license a few weeks ago, too. See?" She gives him a coy glance and hands him her license. Even then, she doesn't lower her guard toward Ma-ri. The cop, unable to continuously ignore Ma-ri's chilly presence, finally asks, "Can I help you?"

She tries as hard as she can to remain calm, and enunciates clearly, "This car almost ran me over in the crosswalk."

The policeman looks at her cast-bound arm, then her face. "So are you hurt?"

"No, I wasn't hurt, but I almost died," Ma-ri says, becoming indignant.

The girl in Prada interjects. "Look, lady, that's because you jumped out when the light wasn't even green, you should wait before..."

As those words reach Ma-ri's ears, an uncontrollable rage overtakes her. It's the kind of anger that the average person experiences at most a couple of times in her life. Like a poisonous snake darting away from the foot that has stepped on its tail, her hand shoots into the window and grips the girl's mane. The girl starts shrieking. Undeterred, Ma-ri shakes the fistful of hair back and forth as she yells, pointing to the crosswalk splayed across the twelve-lane road: "You're the one who ran the red! What the fuck's wrong with you? Can't you even say you're sorry?"

If the cop didn't yank her off, she would have pulled out a handful of that silky hair. Ma-ri loosens her grip unwillingly. The girl, her hair covering her face, is shocked into silence. The cop warns Ma-ri gravely, like a soccer umpire, "What are you doing? If you keep at it, I'm going to arrest you for assault."

Ma-ri's eyes swim. Everything is so unfair. She's the one who almost died, but the cop is taking the side of the hot young girl. She feels attacked and criticized, like the whole world is against her, even the cop treating her as though she's falsely accusing the girl. The cop blocks the Prada girl from getting out of her car, telling her, "Look, I'm not going to give you a ticket, so just leave."

The girl smoothes her hair and puts her hand on the steering wheel. She jerks the gear into D, glares at Ma-ri, and spits, "What a psycho." She doesn't forget to smile at the
cop, calling, "Thank you! Have a good day!" as the SUV jets off, leaving behind a roar and fumes.

"Why did you let her go?" Ma-ri demands.

The cop stares at her. "Lady, give me your ID."

"My ID? What for? What the hell did I do?" she screams.

"Just hand it over."

"You have no right to do this! You think being a cop gives you all the power?" It's been a long time since she felt this crackle of electricity coursing through her, making her hair stand on end, but it isn't satisfying. Her enemy has disappeared and now she's fighting with the wrong person, a witness.

"Excuse me, what's going on?" someone asks, approaching them.

Even before she turns around, she knows it's the branch manager. He stands behind them, concerned. "Can I help? She works for me," the manager explains in a gentle but firm tone, a tone only successful men possess.

The cop's attitude changes completely, and he asks deferentially: "Are you her supervisor? Please take her with you." The cop goes on to explain that Ma-ri was interfering with his duties, and the manager listens silently. Ma-ri gives up defending herself and follows the manager across the street.

"Ms. Jang," the manager starts.

"Yes?"

"Is everything okay with you these days?"

Ma-ri's newfound calm dissipates and her blood starts roiling. It's unfair that people assume that a woman's anger is abnormal and that something emotional is lurking beneath her wrath. That damn girl in the SUV is the one who violated traffic laws, not her. And the cop ignored a citizen's righteous complaint and let the violator go free. That's the only thing she's angry about. There's nothing deeper or emotional. She wants to turn to the manager and unleash everything on her mind, but stops herself. It's not worth it. And, well, it's true that things aren't exactly okay with her these days.

"I'm fine. I'm just really angry, that's all."

"Ms. Jang, as members of the service industry, we wrangle with emotions. You have to know how to stay calm. If you get overwhelmed by your anger, how are you going to control other situations?"

Everything he says is true, but her fury is about to reach the breaking point. She wants to ask, sarcastically,
Then why, if you can control yourself so well all the time, did you have to take drugs?,
but she manages to keep her mouth closed. The pair walks silently past the showroom and go to their desks in the office. Ma-ri's dying for a smoke but doesn't want to push the manager. She takes a series of deep breaths and succeeds in staying in her seat. With great effort, she conjures a memory of Song-uk—his body, his scent, the way his skin feels against hers, the way he moves his limbs. Her anger shrivels bit by bit; perhaps her brain understands her intentions and is emitting dopamine. She begins to think of Song-uk's suggestion, which she considered impossible only yesterday, as her revenge on the world.

C
HOL-SU STUBS HIS
cigarette out in front of the adults-only game room and, out of habit, looks around surreptitiously. He goes up the stairs. Three young men are leaving the pool hall on the second floor, laughing. One of them has a bit of dark sauce around his mouth, remnants of the black bean noodles people order while they're playing pool. Chol-su bypasses the pool hall and continues up to the third, through a metal gate. The sign on the door on the third floor
says,
TAEDONG TNC
. He presses his right index finger on a black strip under the sign. With a beep, it recognizes his prints, and the door automatically opens and slides shut behind him.

"I'm back," Chol-su announces.

"Did you eat?" asks his superior, Supervisor Jong.

"Yes."

"What'd you eat?"

"Spaghetti."

"By yourself?"

"Well, yes, I often do."

"How can you eat something like spaghetti by yourself?" Jong asks.

"There's a place I go all the time," Chol-su explains, leaning on his desk.

"Do you cook it at home, too?"

"Sometimes."

Jong shakes his head, as if he can't understand Chol-su, and changes the subject. "How is she?"

"I don't think she's figured anything out," Chol-su reports.

"Really?"

"Well, unless she's pretending she doesn't know anything."

"You really think his own wife, who sleeps in the same bed, wouldn't know?" Jong asks.

"I think it might be possible. How's Kim Ki-yong today?"

"I think the son of a bitch figured it out. He went to his kid's school today and stayed there for an hour."

"You think he went to talk to his daughter?"

"I don't know what he did inside." Jong probes his ear with a cotton swab, a habit he acquired after his stomach cancer surgery. After they cut out half of his stomach the inside of
his ear was always itchy. He eats seven small meals a day and digs around his ears with cotton swabs hundreds of times. It's as if his life's purpose is to eat and clean out his ears.

"Where is he now?" asks Chol-su.

"Oh, he parked his car near his office, then brought some stuff out and got on the subway."

"Then what happened?"

"Then I lost him. He used his cell in Chongno and then after that, nothing." Jong switches the cotton swab to his left hand and starts going at his other ear. "But this Kim Ki-yong is a really bizarre guy. It looks like he hasn't been active for the past ten years. How's that possible? He just imports movies that make you fall sleep, and that's it! Crazy son of a bitch. Why is Pyongyang leaving him alone?"

"Maybe they have some secret mission for him."

"You mean like that hag Lee Son-sil? That was amazing, coming down here in nineteen eighty and doing nothing until nineteen ninety-one."

"She was ranked twenty-two in the Workers Party of Korea, right?"

"Yeah. Rank twenty-two means she was at a premier level. A high-ranking spy comes down and for ten years she's befriending housewives, haggling over the price of bean sprouts, and participating in informal cash pools. She never gets caught, then she ends up going back north on the midget submarine that docked at Kanghwa Island, like nothing happened. She was a hugely talented agent, a natural. Just the fact that she was able to do nothing for ten years..."

"Do you think Kim Ki-yong is a bigwig like her?" Chol-su asks, straightening up and heading toward the coffeemaker.

"I don't think so. He's a little young for that. Now that he's on the move, we'll keep an eye on him for a few days. He'll run someplace, now that we've shaken him up a bit. It's
also possible that he's just going to confess everything. These assholes are like grasshoppers, they all jump when one guy does."

Chol-su pours himself some coffee and sits down at his desk. Jong starts flipping through a newspaper. Chol-su's thoughts wander not to Kim Ki-yong, but to Ma-ri. Her youthful cheeks that lead to her graceful neck and then finally to her full, still perky chest. Her ivory blouse and contrasting brown eye shadow seem to reflect her conflicted self-perception, in limbo between youth and middle age. Her sophisticated makeup hides fine lines and dark circles but still reveals the fact that she's aging, demonstrating her resolve not to give up on her looks. Every pore on her body is bursting with this contradiction. Maybe that's why he felt suffocated sitting next to her in that small car. Even though it was only for a brief time, he felt ambushed by the strong womanly scent rolling off her in waves. It wasn't perfume; it was something different. Frankly, she wasn't that beautiful a woman. But something about her made her glow, enhancing her attractiveness. Everything about the test drive was different from Chol-su's everyday life—Ma-ri, wearing a sleek suit, the car worth over forty million won, the fancy showroom. Chol-su suddenly wishes—no, he craves—that he were rich. He's sick of his government employee life. On the same day every month, he uses his entire paycheck to pay his credit card bill. No matter what happens at work, he's trapped into staying, imprisoned by the pension he would receive upon retirement. Would he be able to grab the attention of someone like Ma-ri? What would happen to Ma-ri if Ki-yong were caught or went back north? She'd be shaken, the foundation of her life would crumble. Would it be possible then? Would he be able to be with her?

***

T
HE MUSIC CHIMES,
signifying the end of fifth period. Like a radio whose frequency is suddenly jumbled, the classroom fills up instantly with various kinds of noise. Kids shoot out of their seats and wander around the classroom, gabbing. Hyon-mi thinks this must be what life is like for molecules when water reaches its boiling point. Her desk starts buzzing and her pencil rolls off onto the floor. She takes out her cell.

"Come to the teachers' office."

It's a text from her homeroom teacher. She gets up and tells A-yong, "Our homeroom teacher wants me to come see him at the teachers' office. Can you tell Viper if I'm late?"

"Sure."

Hyon-mi pushes past her classmates and heads to the door. When her homeroom teacher sees her come through the doors of the teachers' office, he smiles and pulls a swiveling chair toward him. These days he's obsessed with the Book of Changes. He spends every available moment determining the fate of his students. "Sit, sit," he offers.

"It's okay."

"No, it's for me, so my neck won't hurt looking up at you."

Hyon-mi perches on the chair, which is padded with a flowery cushion.

"What's going on with the school beautification project?" her teacher asks.

"I'm going to do it with Jae-gyong and Tae-su, from the art club."

"Will two be enough?"

"I think so."

"What about Han-saem, too?"

"Han-saem?" Hyon-mi hesitates; she isn't fond of Han-saem.

"Get her to do it, too," he instructs.

Hyon-mi nods. "All right, I will."

"Okay, that's it. See you later."

Hyon-mi stands up, bows, and bumps into Soji at the door.

"Hi, Ms. So," Hyon-mi says.

"Hey, Hyon-mi." Soji reaches out to stroke the girl's hair. "Want to sit?" she asks, going to her desk. "How's your mom?"

"She's fine."

"You're looking more like her the older you get."

Hyon-mi purses her lips, unhappy. "No, everyone says I look like Dad."

"Hmm. Ma-ri used to be really smart and cool."

"Really?"

"Of course. There were a lot of cool girls back then, and your mom was one of them."

"I don't believe it."

"Why not?"

"Mom's just, I don't know. I don't know." Hyon-mi shakes her head. She has never once thought that her mom was smart or intelligent. She thinks those words describe students like her. Of course, once upon a time her mom was a student, but it's still an odd way to think of her.