This sudden show of sociability chimed oddly with Eun-sook. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder before, but now she began to doubt. The boss had also stopped in at Seodaemun police station, early yesterday afternoon—not that long before she had. How had he persuaded them to leave him alone?
“Thank you for the offer, but I’m fine with getting something myself.” Her answer might have seemed a little frosty, but she couldn’t really help that given that her swollen face hurt too much for her to smile. “You know I don’t like meat.”
“Ah yes, that’s right, you’re not a meat fan.” The boss nodded to himself.
It wasn’t so much eating meat that Eun-sook disliked; what really turned her stomach was watching it cook on the hot plate. When the blood and juices rose to the surface, she had to look away. When a fish was being griddled with the head still attached. That moment when moisture formed on the frozen eyeballs as they thawed in the pan, when a watery fluid flecked with gray scum dribbled out of its gaping mouth, that moment when it always seemed to her as though the dead fish was trying to say something. She always had to avert her eyes.
“So then, what shall it be? What would you like to eat, Miss Kim?”
Yoon chose that moment to pipe up.
“You’ll bend our ears for us if we go somewhere expensive and run up a huge bill. Let’s go to that café we went to last time.”
With Yoon making three the office would be empty, so they locked the door behind them before walking up to the café by the junction. It was next door to the barbecue place the boss had originally suggested—a fairly ramshackle place, where home-style boiled rice was dished up by a proprietor whose summer flip-flops exposed a toenail black with rot, then in winter she shuffled around with grubby socks stuffed into tatty old snow boots.
As they were finishing their meal, the boss turned to Eun-sook.
“Shall I stop by the censor’s office tomorrow?”
“That’s always been my job…”
“Well, there was a lot of hassle yesterday; I’m just sorry you had to be involved in that.”
She looked across at him, pondering his words. How had he contrived to come out of there unharmed? By sticking only to what were, strictly speaking, the facts? Kim Eun-sook is the editor in charge. The two of them met at the bakery by Cheonggye stream and went through the manuscript proofs. That’s all I know. He’d stuck to the facts, nothing wrong with that; but was that bitter thing called conscience quietly needling away inside him?
“It’s always been my job,” Eun-sook repeated, but firmer this time. She attempted a smile but the pain rendered it a sorry affair, and she twisted away to save the boss from being troubled by the sight of her swollen cheek.
—
Once everyone else had left the office and headed home, Eun-sook wound her ink-black scarf around the lower portion of her face, making sure that her cheeks were covered all the way up to her eyes. She gave the kerosene stove one last double-check, switched off all the lights, and even flicked the fuses to the down position. Standing before the door, its glass darkly mirroring the lightless office, she closed her eyes for just a moment, as though steeling herself before stepping outside.
The evening wind was bitter. It chilled the skin around her eyes, the only part left exposed by the scarf. Still, she didn’t want to take the bus. After a day spent sitting at her desk, she took pleasure in an unhurried walk home through the streets. This was the only time of day when she chose not to shut out the inchoate thoughts that surfaced, unbidden, as she threaded her way through the streets.
Was it because he is left-handed that the man hit my right cheek with his left hand?
But when he tossed the proofs onto the table, when he handed me the pen, he definitely used his right hand…
Is it that the specific emotional rush when you attack someone sparks a reflexive response in the left hand rather than the right?
The bitter taste at the back of her mouth was identical to the bile that surfaced before a bout of carsickness. Swallowing saliva was her usual trick to quell this familiar nausea, the sensation occurring simultaneously in the back of her mouth, her throat, and stomach, and unaccountably tied to thoughts of you. Yet it wasn’t enough, this time, so she got some gum out of her coat pocket and started to work it with her teeth.
Wasn’t his hand a little on the small side, compared with most men?
She threaded her way between men in monochrome blazers, schoolgirls wearing white surgical masks, women whose skirt suits left their calves exposed to the biting wind, walking with her head bowed.
Wasn’t it a hand like any other, not especially large or coarse, one you could see on any man?
She walked on, conscious of the scarf’s slight pressure against the swelling. She walked on, the strong scent of acacia coming from the gum she made sure to keep on the left side of her mouth. Remembering how she had sat there, neither seeking to flee nor uttering the faintest cry of protest, merely waiting, holding her breath, for that second slap to come flying toward her face, she walked on.
Slap Three
She alights from the bus at the stop in front of Deoksu palace. Just like the day before, her scarf is wound around her face all the way up to her eyes. Beneath the scarf, the swelling has subsided, leaving in its place the clear imprint of a hand-sized reddish bruise.
“Excuse me.” A robust-looking plainclothes policeman stops her in front of City Hall. “Please open your bag.”
At such moments, she knows, a part of one’s self must be temporarily detached from the whole. One level of her conscious mind peels away, a sheet of paper folding with the ease of habit along an oft-used crease. She opens her bag and displays the contents—a hand towel, acacia gum, a pencil case, the bound proof that the publisher’s niece brought to the office the day before, Vaseline for chapped lips, a notebook, a purse—without the slightest flicker of shame.
“What is your business here?”
“I have an appointment at the censor’s office. I work for a publisher.” She looks the policeman directly in the eye.