Beauty Looks Down on Me Page 9

  When they’d nearly finished eating, the man looked across at B and asked emotionlessly, “Does leading me to your home make you feel that victimized?”

  As a sign of her agreement, B made no reply.

  “They are your books, so it’s your responsibility to pay for them.”

  “Even if I didn’t purchase them?”

  The man snorted derisively. “So you’re telling me you’ve preserved the books like a treasure and haven’t read a single volume?”

  B felt a prick of conscience, but managed to find a reply at once. “I don’t like the World’s Classics for Boys and Girls. I’ve never even taken The Iliad or Plutarch’s Lives or Journey to the West from the bookshelf. I don’t know why people read difficult adventure stories like Two Years’ Vacation and Rasmus and the Vagabond. I find absurd stories like Cinderella and Snow White really childish. And the stories with only unconditionally kind characters, how is that anything like the real world?”

  “In any case, you have read the books, haven’t you?”

  The man placed a piece of ddeokbokki in his mouth and chewed it, making a sound as if he found it very tasty.

  “I guess you don’t like it, judging by the amount you’ve left uneaten.”

  Picking up the last piece with his chopsticks, he added, “So you don’t intend to pay for it because it didn’t taste very good, right?”

  For just a moment, B felt a deep regret for having hoped to appeal to the man’s sympathy with tears. How naïve she’d been to take solace, however fleetingly, in the possibility that he wasn’t a bad person. But the man was simply making a joke, not illustrating the difference between right and wrong. Still, no matter which of the two he was doing, the result was the same. The man was as obstinate as an unmoving mountain; from the beginning, he was like a cold, haughty river flowing toward a fixed point. It wasn’t easy to feel yourself being pulled along by its gentle current, but you still ended up arriving at a cliff. It was B’s own problem, but there was nothing she could do by herself to change it. She was simply being carried off in the unrelenting flow. If there was anything that she could still do, it was to pray that the water changed course, that bad times would flow not toward her, but toward the man; in other words, the only thing to do was to desperately imagine that the man got trapped by an unknown boundary line.

  As she was coming back from a trip to the washroom, B saw the man standing there, his keen eye keeping watch on the door to the ladies’ washroom in the same way he’d watched her school’s entrance. He had his eye on all doors. In that respect, there wasn’t a single door open to B.

  Stairs in the Alley; Escape

  THE MAN WATCHED the street closely. He didn’t walk right next to B, but he didn’t let her get more than a few steps in front of him either. When B’s pace changed even a little, he became aware of it immediately and adjusted himself to the new speed. Fast if she walked fast, slowly if she walked slowly, he wasn’t caught off guard. When the bottom of a long staircase to her neighborhood came into view, B started to fret. She’d tried many times during their trip to her home to imagine a boundary line that would bring the man misfortune, but no sign of one appeared. A sewer manhole cover hadn’t given way, nor had a hammer fallen from a construction site. He didn’t twist his ankle or have his bag snatched or get bitten by a faithful dog, like the one in Lassie Come-Home. Nobody even asked him to become a prince for a single day, as in The Prince and the Pauper.

  One more thing made B fretful. It was the anxiety she felt at the possibility that her mother didn’t have any money. Of all the tragic scenarios that inevitably occurred to her every time she imagined what would happen when the man entered her home, this one was the worst. B started to consider the possibility that her family had become poor. Several things were different compared to when they were living in her hometown. Her mother looked weak many days and would lie down with a blanket wrapped around her, but she didn’t go to the hospital. Maybe she didn’t have any money to pay the hospital fee. It was possible, too, that a money problem was the reason her father and eldest brother were absent. B guessed that it was also the reason why her second eldest brother frequently told their mother in a sullen voice that he wasn’t planning to go to college.

  As B’s mind wandered with tragic visions of her family’s poverty, it repeatedly arrived at her suspicion that her mother had moved in order to avoid the bill collector. B bit her lip yet again. Her mother, who had weakened considerably, might collapse in a faint the moment she saw the man, even if it weren’t true. She’d manage to come to her senses, but she wouldn’t recover from the situation. She might grab the man by the collar and tearfully beg him not to have her evicted from the house. B’s second eldest brother, sitting in his room silently mopping his tears with his fists, would then use those same fists again to strike the wall. B regretted her secret suspicion that her second eldest brother was her mother’s only real child. The poorer a family was, it seemed, the more the members of that family needed each other’s warmth and love. Even if her real mother turned up, B wouldn’t go with her, and she could then give up her identity as an exceptional being.

  B suddenly stopped on the stairs.

  “Is it okay if I go to the bathroom?”

  “You just went at the restaurant. You need to go again?”

  As the man spoke, he took one step up toward where she was standing. B quickly moved up one stair from him, as if to warn him to keep his distance.

  “I’ll just leave my bag here and go.”

  Since she had no intention of running away, B took on a dignified attitude. First, she’d run home and explain the situation to her mother, ensuring that she’d have enough time to make appropriate preparations. Then she’d come back and lead the man to her home.

  “Go on, then.”

  The man’s response was reluctant. He couldn’t very well follow a young girl into the alley where she was going to relieve herself. On the contrary, it was a situation requiring him to stand there with his back turned. B handed her school bag to the man as if instructing him to keep an eye on it, then turned and hastily set off down the alley that was connected to the staircase. She thought that he wouldn’t be able to see the connected side from the staircase gate where he was standing. When he’d climbed a few stairs, however, he was at a point where he could observe everything in all directions quite easily. B ran with all her might. The moment she came out from the alley, gasping for air, having run quickly around it until she was once again moving toward the stairs, she was standing face to face with the man, already waiting for her at the point where the two roads met. B’s entire body froze.

  “Is there a washroom here?”

  This time, the man didn’t have a blank expression on his face.

  “You are a very bad child.”

  He spoke angrily, not caring if he was too rough. His eyebrows were raised fiercely, his mouth twisted cruelly. All of a sudden, he violently threw down the black bag that he’d been carrying at his side all along; it was a threatening action, as if he had a knife inside the bag and was about to take it out. The staircase was on a remote alley, so there were no other people going by. B continued to pant heavily, her mouth wide open and her shoulders moving up and down. Her entire body trembled as the sweat on it cooled. She stared vacantly at a point behind the man, who was standing one stair above her. With her mouth open and panting, B gazed up at the steep staircase continuing endlessly behind the man, and beyond that, the seemingly close but absolutely unreachable blue sky. The next moment, she buckled at the knees.

  B’s Road Home

  B STEPPED IN through the gate with a meek expression on her face, as if she were entering someone else’s home. Seeing her daughter with the man following closely behind, B’s mother seemed to grasp the situation at once.

  “You didn’t scold the child or anything, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  The man shook his head in broad movements and even waved his hands.

&n
bsp; “She cried a little on the way here. Maybe her legs hurt. I even bought her some ddeokbokki at a snack shop.”

  “Anyway, please sit down here on the floor.”

  At B’s mother’s invitation, the man sat on the edge of the floor, took his jacket off, and set it at his side. He brushed off his pants, his face showing comfort at having finally found a place to sit.

  “It was quite a long way to your house, and the buses don’t come out here either.”

  B sensed a slyness in the man’s tone, as if he knew something more.

  “By the way, your daughter seems very kind. She was worried that you wouldn’t have any money, even if we came to your home.”

  “She worries about every little thing.”

  “She told me her father wasn’t at home. She even begged me not to come here. She really gave me a hard time.”

  “I wonder why she did such a thing.”

  With an expression indicating the lack of importance she attached to the matter, B’s mother turned toward the kitchen and asked, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “A glass of cold water, if you have it. With May approaching, it’s already quite warm at midday.”

  There was no reason for B’s mother to welcome the debt collector. Still, if she just paid the money and was done with it, there would no longer be any need to be servile. It was an unanticipated expense, but six of the twenty four monthly payments didn’t amount to that much money. Above all, it was very fortunate that they’d brought the books with them when they moved instead of throwing them out. They would have had to pay for something that they no longer possessed. When the man told her that he was going around collecting the debts from the many outstanding accounts that his predecessor in the company had left behind when he quit, B’s mother even went so far as to say to him that young people really have a tough time of it. B’s mother brought a small tray supporting a glass of water and gave it to the man, who set it on the floor, lifted the glass to his mouth and leaned back to take a drink; then the two discussed the special discount price at which the World’s Classics for Boys and Girls had been purchased, acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  Leaning against the door to the room, B suddenly started screaming with laughter. With her hair tangled and her knees smeared with dirt, she laughed like crazy, her shoulders shaking. It was about the time when the movie her classmates were watching would be coming to an end. It would have a happy ending, of course. Even with the great number of codes to be deciphered in life, there is absolutely nothing in this world that should surprise us.

  B’s laughter seemed uncontrollable. Even as she hobbled into her room on her knees, dragging her dirt-stained school bag behind her, the sound of her laughter grew loud in sudden bursts. Furrowing her brow, B’s mother turned her head from the man and watched her daughter’s retreating figure. There were red stripes distinctly imprinted on the back of B’s neck. It was clearly someone’s handprint, someone with a hand large enough to wrap around a girl’s neck.

  How B Astonished the World

  WHEN B AWOKE this morning, she pulled a sweater over her pajamas and stepped onto the floor with bare feet, as usual. The first thing she did every morning after getting up was open the curtains. As she pulled them back, she wondered what kind of a day it would be. She took great pleasure in that short time she stood at the window, looking out with that thought in her mind. After closing her eyes to revel in her anticipation of what the day might bring, she slowly made her way to the kitchen to make coffee.

  Even the ring of the telephone that broke the silence made B happy. Is it some unexpected news? When she got home from work, she’d open the mailbox and take out the mail, of which the first things she’d tear open were the ones whose sender or contents she couldn’t guess at first glance. Though quite often disappointed, she accepted even that as a formality to getting news. She hadn’t lost her fondness for the unfamiliar. For example, it was her habit to look at the car in the next lane when she was waiting at a red light, just to see who the driver was; or she’d stare at length at the not particularly meaningful emergency exit arrow whenever she went to a bar for the first time. When she went hiking in the mountains and happened upon a graffiti-covered rock, she’d stand for a long time in front of it; neither could she simply pass by an amusement park’s wooden fence with a specific date that lovers had carved into it. On her days off, B liked to put on her sneakers and wander aimlessly around her old neighborhood. Then, on a late spring night, when she discovered a rusted iron door deep in the darkness of an unknown alley, she stopped and lost herself in thoughts about the world behind that door. She also thought about her family members leaving one by one and never coming back.

  B’s life was as ordinary as ever. She knew well that life wasn’t something that turned out as one wished. But she knew that there was also nothing wrong with flights of fancy. The fish swimming quietly at the aquarium, as if resigned to their fate, enjoyed such rare and brief moments, too, when they’d leap up, twisting and flapping their entire bodies in the air. “With the whole body bound, being carried away in dark water toward some deeper, unknown darkness, such is the life of a human.” B had copied this phrase from a book. Though she was being carried off somewhere in a great current, she still wanted at least once to suddenly stand up in the boat and joyfully wave her small, white hands high in the air, as if she were dancing.

  B remembered standing on a long staircase that stretched endlessly toward the sky and bursting into laughter, a long, long fit of laughter, utterly unable to stop. Was it from a dream she’d once had? Even of late, she’d occasionally burst into laughter for which she didn’t know the reason, just as in her dream, and the people around her would stare at her with astonished eyes.

  Boundary

  SINCE MORNING, THE sky had been overcast with low-hanging clouds. B turned on the headlights. There weren’t many cars on the road, but the wind was blowing hard, and from somewhere, perhaps an overturned freight truck, an endless stream of colorful fabric and pieces of Styrofoam were flying around in the air. It was one of those days. The whole sky was a dreary ashen color, the guardrail was broken, and torn pieces of tire were lying here and there. A little farther on, there was broken glass scattered on the black highway, and rolling around among it, the debris of some unidentifiable object. Now and then, torn bits of polyethylene rose up from somewhere like a flock of black birds searching for food. In the middle of the road, the mangled remains of a furry animal, flat and red, caused the passing cars to reduce their speed. In places, black tire marks veered from the lanes at sharp angles. Today was one of those days.

  Everyone was driving wildly, their headlights on as in an emergency, racing as if to flee the plagued and cursed city. It was a day of minds being troubled without reason and evil nightmares of the night before coming to life. What in the world happened in this city last night? B wondered. Am I at a boundary?

  At that moment, rain began to pour down. One car was crossing the center line of the highway from the other side and coming toward her at a dangerous speed. B saw two large discs of light penetrating the darkened world, speeding straight at her. A wicked glimmer, as of an evil spirit’s eyes; a brief whimper, momentarily portentous and suffocating, in the face of catastrophe; the hazardous, burning smell of something on fire; the piercing sound of metal striking metal; all of these struck her head painfully. B slammed on the brakes with all the strength of her entire life.

  A torrential downpour from her youth appeared on her retinas. On a balmy spring day, a young B was riding on the back of her eldest brother’s bicycle down a newly-constructed road. Darkness suddenly surrounded her. The sky, the most frightening and expansive sky she’d ever seen, was completely covered with dark clouds, and an unusual wind brushed against her, sticking to her skin. Her brother pedaled with all his might to get home, but the heavy rain eventually began to pour down. Her entire body was soaked in an instant, and with the rain hitting her in the face, she couldn’t se
e directly in front of her. It became more and more difficult for her brother to pedal as his pants clung to his body. He seemed ready to abandon her to the rain and take off alone on the bicycle. B had no way of knowing what was going on inside her brother’s mind as he pedaled frantically, his lips tightly shut and his face wrinkled as best he could to prevent the rain from getting in his eyes. B clung desperately to her brother’s back. Just as they finally managed to reach their home, with all their energy spent making their way into the yard through the open gate, B noticed something strange. There was no rain coming down there. With the itchy crape myrtle tree and all the roses, standing in line, casually looking at her, there was her mother, standing in front of the kitchen door, trimming the tender, lustrous sweet potato shoots. Not one drop of rain had fallen in the yard. Perhaps it was a different world.

  MAP ADDICT

  1

  HAVING QUIT HIS fifth job, B is posting on his blog almost every day. When he jots down a passage from a book he’s browsing through, and then has to take a walk around his neighborhood, just for fun he takes pictures of back alleys with his cell phone camera and uses them for new posts. He works hard at digging up things like funny parodies or weird serials making their way around the Internet and linking them to his blog. But most of his posts, as you might expect, are trivial stories about him and his friends and the news he shares with them. I’m never finished work before midnight, so I often can’t join my friends for drinks, but I actually prefer it this way. After my classes at the cram school are over and I get home and take a shower, I take a can of beer and sit down in front of my computer to read his posts, an indispensable part of my daily routine since I don’t know when. Late one night, there was a new post titled “My Friend M is Type 9.” M was my initial.