I…I’d never dreamed that they’d been keeping us in the university.
The building where we’d been kept was the new lecture hall, just behind the sports ground where me and my friends had used to play football at the weekends. Now, with the army occupying the campus, there were no other signs of human life. The truck itself was rattling along, but otherwise the road was silent as the grave. Then I saw them, lying on a patch of grass by the side of the road. They just looked like they were asleep, at first. Two students in jeans and college sweaters, with a yellow banner laid across their chests as if they’d both been holding up an end. The letters had been done in thick Magic Marker, so I could read it even from inside the truck. END MARTIAL LAW.
It’s really extraordinary how those young women, their faces, ended up scored into my memory so deeply, you know? I mean, I only caught just a fleeting glimpse of them.
But now, each time I fall asleep, and each time I wake up again, I see those faces. Their pale skin, their closed mouths, their legs stretched out straight…it’s so clear, so vivid, it’s like they’re really there. Just like the face of the man with blood dripping from his jaw, his eyes half closed…etched into the insides of my eyelids. Inside, where I can’t get at it. Where I’ll never be able to scrape it off.
Your own dreams are filled with sights that are quite different from the ones haunting this first witness.
At the time, you were more closely acquainted than most with brutalized corpses, yet there have only been a handful of times in the past twenty-odd years when your dreams have been vivid with blood. Rather, your nightmares tend to be cold, silent affairs. Scenes from which the blood has dried without a trace, and the bones have weathered into ash.
The streetlamp’s feeble glow encases it in a lead-gray aureole, but beyond the reach of its light the night is pitch black. It isn’t safe to stray beyond the bounds of this lit place. You do not know what might be lurking in the darkness. But you’ll be all right as long as you don’t move a muscle. You don’t venture outside the circle of light. You merely wait, stiff with tension. Wait for the sun to rise and the outer dark to dissipate. You’ve held out this far, you mustn’t waver now. Safer to keep your feet absolutely still, rather than risk taking a false step.
When you open your eyes, it’s still dark. You get up from your bed and switch on the bedside lamp. This year you will turn forty-two, and there has been only one single period in your entire adult life during which you lived with a man. And you didn’t even manage a year at that. Living alone means there’s no need to consider whether you’ll be waking another person up, so you walk straight over to the door and switch on the light. You switch on all the lights, in the bathroom, the kitchen, the entrance hall, and fill a glass with cold water, your hand trembling only very slightly, and drink.
Now
You rise from your seat at the unmistakable sound of someone turning the door handle. You bend down, slide the dissertation back into the locker, and call out “Who is it?”
You’ve locked the door.
“It’s Park Yeong-ho.”
You walk over to the door, turn the key in the lock, and open it.
“Working at this hour?” you both chorus, and then, as if on cue, burst out laughing.
Team leader Park affects nonchalance as he peers over your shoulder into the office. Traces of laughter still linger around his mouth, but you can see the suspicion in his eyes. His thick-set frame is tending toward a paunch, his fringe an attempt to mask a receding hairline.
“It’s because we’ve got the Kori meeting tomorrow, of course. There’re still a few documents missing.” Park drops his bag by his desk and switches on his computer. He carries on justifying his presence, like someone who has dropped by another’s house unannounced. “Something’s come up that means I’ll have to head down to the plant myself. Anyhow, I’ll need every file we have if I’m going to convince them to finally shut down the reactor. I was really surprised when I saw the lights on,” he continues, his voice now excessively genial. “Naturally, I’d assumed the place would be empty.” Suddenly he pauses and glances around, looking faintly disconcerted. “What’s with the heat?” He strides over to the wall and flings the windows wide open, then switches on both fans. He walks back to his desk, shaking his head in bewilderment. “You thinking of renting the place out as a sauna?”
—
You are the oldest of the employees here. Your juniors are extremely reserved around you, possibly slightly intimidated by the way you keep to yourself, diligently getting on with your allotted tasks. They address you using the honorific seonsaeng, but you respond with equally polite language, maintaining a respectful distance. When there’s something they can’t find, it’s you they’ll come to. “I’m looking for the documentation from such-and-such a forum in such-and-such a year; I’ve had a look in the records room but there’s only some loose papers. Isn’t there an official booklet containing all the speeches?” You search your memory, then explain: “That particular forum was only arranged at the last minute, so there wasn’t time for a booklet to be produced. The speeches were recorded and then later transcribed, but those transcripts only exist as loose copies. Nothing was ever officially written down.” Now and then, team leader Park likes to joke: “You’re a human search engine, Miss Lim.”
—
Now Park is standing in the middle of the office, waiting for his documents to print. His sharp eyes scrutinize the contents of your desk. A wad of damp tissue balled up in the ashtray, several cigarette butts, a mug of coffee. The Dictaphone and tapes.
He starts speaking the instant you intercept his probing gaze, as though conscious of the need to excuse himself.
“You seem to genuinely enjoy your work, Miss Lim. I mean, I look at you and I think, that’s me in twenty years’ time, if I keep on with this line of work…”
You understand that he is thinking of the meager pay, the laborious, irregular duties that are never sufficiently recompensed, your bony hands with their protruding veins running along the backs. Park is silent for a short while, and there is only the low, impatient whir of the laser printer as it spits out sheets of paper.
“We’re all curious about you, Miss Lim,” he resumes, his jovial tone even more pronounced than before. “We hardly ever get an opportunity to talk to you…you never have dinner with us after work, and you never let any of us know what you’re thinking.”