Your Republic Is Calling You (5 page)

"I'm here to see Ms. So Ji-hyon," Ki-yong announces to a teacher wearing a black cardigan.

Before that teacher can respond, someone says behind him, "Are you Hyon-mi's father?"

Soji and Ki-yong look at each other for a moment. Soji bows and Ki-yong follows suit.

Soji breaks the silence. "Please, come with me to the conference room."

She leads the way. The conference room is at the end of the hall, about 150 feet away from the teachers' office. When he steps into the hall, he feels a chill typical of a concrete building. There isn't much inside the conference room; it resembles an interrogation room. Like many spaces without a designated owner, it doesn't feel welcoming. Just a long table, a three-person couch starting to look shabby, and a few metal chairs. On the wall hang student poems that were once submitted in an exhibition.

"I wasn't expecting you." Soji drags a metal chair to the table, making a terrible scraping noise, and sits down. Ki-yong settles in comfortably. Soji props her chin up with one hand and looks at him. "Is something wrong? I was surprised to get your message."

"I didn't want to say on the phone," Ki-yong explains.

Soji smiles and narrows her eyes at him. "What, did you and Ma-ri get into a fight?"

"No."

"So I hear you said you were the parent of one of my students, even though I'm not a homeroom teacher. That was bold."

"Well, I am a student's parent. You're Hyon-mi's Korean teacher."

"If Hyon-mi's homeroom teacher finds out he's going to think it's odd."

"Well, let him."

"So what's going on?"

Ki-yong pulls his chair closer to the table. His collar starts to choke him. The needle in his head that was wriggling earlier is starting up again. His mind flits back to Order 4. Glancing up, he catches her staring at him.

"I don't have much time. I have another class," Soji comments.

Ki-yong rubs his face and looks away. "You know the thing I asked you to keep for me?"

"What?"

"You know. The thing I asked you to keep for me a long time ago."

Soji squints. "Oh, yeah. What about it?"

"I need it."

"It's at home."

"It's not far from here," Ki-yong says.

"I don't have time to go home and come back right now. Do you need it today? Can't I messenger it over tomorrow?"

"I'm going to need it today."

"You came all the way here just to say that? You could have called me."

"I just stopped by. I was in the neighborhood."

"What's in that thing, anyway? Can't you tell me?"

Ki-yong looks up at the clock on the wall. The red digital numbers read 9:21. Soji notices him checking the time. "I guess you're pressed for time. How about this? When I get off work at four, I'll run home and get it. Where should we meet?"

"Can it be earlier?" Ki-yong tries.

"I'm really sorry, but I have a lot of classes today so I don't think I can before then." She studies him carefully.

"Then can you make it at six?"

"Of course."

"You do have it at home, right?"

Soji seems a little unsure. "Well, I know I saw it when I moved. It should be in my closet if nobody touched it."

"Okay, good." In his head, Ki-yong goes over the steps he needs to take. It would work even if he gets it at 6:00
P.M.
He wants to rush back to the office for the details of Order 4. Whether he decides to go back or not, he should know more about it. A wave of regret washes over him. He should have read the e-mail before he left. Why did he avoid it? This isn't the proper behavior of someone who used to be a member of Liaison Office 130.

"Okay, well, I should go. See you later," Ki-yong says, getting up. Soji's expression doesn't change. She looks like she's blaming him for something but she's oddly detached.

"Okay? Soji?" Ki-yong peers closely into her face. Even when he moves his head, her gaze doesn't follow. He waves his hand in front of her eyes, then settles in to wait until she comes to. A little later, her eyes regain their sparkle. She rubs her cheeks with her hands.

"Oh, I did it again, didn't I?"

"Yeah. Does it happen often these days?" Ki-yong asks tentatively.

"It's gotten more frequent. I'm pulling all-nighters to work on that novel I told you about. I think it gets worse when I'm tired. Whatever, it's fine. I come back quickly enough. How long have I been out?"

"Maybe three minutes. Do you really lose consciousness?"

"No, it's not like that. Like I told you before, I can hear everything. I just can't react. It's a kind of epilepsy."

"You know what it was like? It felt like being on the phone even after the other person already hung up, but you keep talking because you don't realize it's happened."

"You were saying you were busy?"

"So you did hear me."

"Well, you should get going."

"No, I don't have to right away." Ki-yong forces himself to relax a little.

"Then can you stay a little longer? How about some coffee?"

"Sure."

Soji opens the door and goes outside. He hears coins clanking and paper cups being dispensed. She returns with two cups of coffee from the machine.

"I'm addicted to this stuff. I drink this even at home." She offers one to Ki-yong, who takes a gulp. Sweet but otherwise tasteless. "Hey, I was at home last weekend and that movie was on OCN. Remember
Swordsman II?
"

One day in April 1992, Soji and Ki-yong saw
Swordsman II,
starring Brigitte Lin and Jet Li, in a theater in Chongno. Brigitte Lin starred as an invincible martial artist who became more of a woman the more she trained in martial arts. They'd felt a little uncomfortable because of the homoerotic scenes.

Ki-yong closes his eyes at the memory. "You didn't trust anyone. You made yourself that way. Who's still standing next to you now?"

"What?" Soji widens her eyes at Ki-yong's gibberish.

"That's what Jet Li said to Brigitte Lin. In
Swordsman II.
"

"Really? You still remember the dialogue? Are you sure it's right?"

"I don't know, I just remembered it. You don't remember? You saw it last week!"

That day, after the movie, they went for a bite on the first floor of the Nagwon Arcade. On TV the L.A. riots were being broadcast as breaking news. They watched as black men stormed into stores and grabbed electronics. The image of Rodney King, driving along in his Hyundai Excel, then beaten by cops, repeated on a loop. Gunfights and arson ensued. The City of Angels became a city of lawlessness, and Korean immigrants guarded their shops and streets with guns.

"Remember, it was the day of the L.A. riots," Ki-yong says.

"Yeah. But the name of the martial arts manual was..."

"
The Sacred Flower Scroll.
"

"Wow, you really do remember everything. And I'm the one who saw it last week!" The thought that Ki-yong might remember everything makes Soji a little uncomfortable. She sweeps up her hair with a tired flick of her wrist. "So you remember what I told you back then, too?"

Ki-yong nods slowly. That night in 1992, on April 30, Soji confessed something after getting drunk at the blood sausage soup joint, something she'd never told anyone. Sex followed, as if it had been some kind of transaction. As if it were required because a secret was revealed. She tore down Ki-yong's hesitancy with deep, passionate kisses. That day, college students swarmed into the National Tax Service, demanding a widescale reinvestigation of conglomerate tax evasion tactics. While she was sleeping with Ki-yong, Soji's father, who worked for the National Tax Service, was clucking as he read the propaganda leafleted by students at the National Tax Service building in Susong-dong, Chongno.

As a child, she had thought working for the government was the most lucrative job in the world, as her father's assets
grew miraculously. Top-quality imported liquor was stacked everywhere and bundles of American dollars were wrapped in plastic and laid below racks of short ribs in the freezer. Only when she was in high school did she discover the secret to her father's amazing accumulation of wealth. She disapproved. The ethical standards she learned in school were different from those followed at home. Her father would often utter vague pronouncements: "Things are done because they can be done." It was the kind of theory paraded around by imperialists who colonized and murdered natives. "That we can do this means that we are allowed to do it, that it was approved by God." By the time she got to college, she was ashamed of her father; she couldn't even eat at the same table. He embodied society's evils and the corrupt dictatorship. She threw away Byron and Wordsworth and picked up Marx and Engels. She separated from her father emotionally and economically. In those days, nobody thought twice about it; others had done the same thing. Some of her friends were a little jealous of her. She did have the emotional luxury that students from poorer families didn't—the luxury of casting off rich, immoral parents. The poorer kids instinctively knew that the rich parents, as long as they were parents, would use that wealth and power to protect their children. Everyone around her understood this.

A few months earlier, in January, she had been asleep in her friend's apartment when detectives from the Seoul Police Department burst in and took her away. There was already a warrant out for her. In the police van on the way to jail, she had only one thought in her head. She just didn't want her father to find out. She wasn't the ringleader of the student movement, so she wouldn't have to serve a stringent sentence. She couldn't stand to see her father use his connections to get her out, then lecture her arrogantly. She regretted that she hadn't violated the National Security Law; even her father couldn't rescue her from something that serious. But the police already knew who she was and there was no reason not to notify her parents right away.

But a small miracle happened as she awaited her fate in the interrogation room with her head bowed. One of the higher-ups of the Seoul Police Department recognized her as he passed the room. He walked in slowly. The detectives stood up and saluted.

"Hey, aren't you Ji-hyon?"

Soji looked up. He casually flipped through a file that was being compiled by a young detective. He was from the same hometown and had attended the same high school as her father, so she had called him Uncle since childhood. He was one of the people her father kept up with regularly, sending him liquor and money in the days leading up to the holidays. Sometimes when he came over to her house and played Go with her father, Uncle would leave with a plain unmarked plastic bag.

Soji screwed her eyes shut and said, "Please don't tell my parents. I'm not a minor anymore."

Uncle stared down at her, placing the file on the desk. "You're all grown up," he said, and grinned.

She detected servility in that smile. It was an expression you would expect from someone who was entering a bank first thing in the morning to get an emergency loan. Uncle told the detectives to bring him the file when it was completed, and reassured her, "I'm not going to tell your father, so don't worry."

He left the room without even unleashing a standard lecture about how she shouldn't go around protesting. The detectives' attitudes changed visibly. They became polite and gentler. Hot coffee and cigarettes were provided. When evening came, they brought her to Uncle. Perched on a fluffy couch, she smoked a cigarette he offered her.

"We can't undo a violation that's already happened. You'll probably get a stay or be paroled. You didn't throw a Molotov cocktail and you didn't violate the National Security Law, so it isn't going to be a big problem. The prosecutor will summon you a couple of times. You do need to go to those. Okay?"

Soji smoked quietly. When she finished her cigarette, Uncle took her out to dinner. In a fancy restaurant with private rooms, she tasted fermented skate, a delicacy, for the first time. Uncle kindly told her the names of the dishes and offered them to her. She was tired, but ate too much and drank a couple of beers, which caused her face to flush.

Uncle said, "Everyone has dreams, right?"

Soji agreed.

"When you're my age, dreams vanish and, how should I say this, desire grows in you. You know what I mean?"

Soji glared at him, understanding what he was trying to say.

He bit his nails anxiously. "I'm not talking about sex. Just, you know, everyone wants something different. But if you can't get it, it stores up inside you and turns into a sickness. Do you know what I mean?"

"No," she retorted.

"I did what you wanted. I hope you'll do something for your uncle, too. People want different things, and exchanging these things to mutual benefit is what capitalism is all about. Even if you don't like it immediately, it becomes beneficial for everyone. That's what's missing from socialism. Socialism doesn't take into consideration that people want different things." Uncle avoided her gaze and picked up his glass.

Soji didn't say anything. But a little later, they ended up in a shabby hotel downtown. He took off his clothes and lay down on the bathroom floor. Trembling, he closed his eyes. Soji, standing upright, pissed on his face. Her hot urine splashed the face of the senior superintendent for public security and dripped to the floor, into the drain. It felt like all the beer she'd consumed at the restaurant was gushing out. When she finished, he opened his eyes. Smiling in a servile manner, he closed his eyes again. She spat in his face. It made him happier. To climax before all of that wonderful piss ran off his face, he masturbated hurriedly. Crying, Soji left the bathroom and wiped herself with a towel. But she couldn't deny the primal pleasure she experienced from pissing on the face of a high-level police official, the ultimate symbol of the state. She felt a theatrical thrill. The man with power and influence acted like a naked child, while the defendant humiliated him, standing above him like a goddess. She was the actor, and at the same time, the viewer. Soji felt relieved. Uncle would keep his promise and her incident would be hushed up. She felt like a young thug being initiated into a mob family. She figured that now she was a grown-up, getting a sense of how the world worked—a place where different powers struggled against each other, where one act was exchanged for another.