Your Republic Is Calling You (31 page)

Once, he read a story about a man, Évariste Galois, who was permitted a single day of freedom before his demise, just like Ki-yong. Like a classic Stendhal or Balzac story, it opened with Napoleon. Galois was the son of a radical republican politician in the early nineteenth century. Emperor Napoleon had been banished to Elba, and Louis XVIII had come to power. At one point, Napoleon escaped Elba and marched to Paris, but was arrested and exiled to an isolated island in the Atlantic, St. Helena. Galois's father, who had been elected mayor when Napoleon returned to Paris, suffered a political ousting, following in the steps of the emperor. His father then committed suicide. As a result, the younger Galois became a sensitive antigovernment radical. Galois fought with the royalists, joined the National Guard, and walked the path of a professional radical. He was imprisoned. When he was released, he attended protests daily and became an alcoholic.

At the time, the mathematics world was trying to solve the proof of the general quintic equations. Galois, having shown a latent talent for mathematics at a young age, immersed himself in that problem, and finally submitted a paper to the Académie des Sciences. But his paper wasn't even judged, because the judge assigned to evaluate it abruptly died. Galois believed it was the result of a political conspiracy and was rightfully angry. He fell in love with a woman called Stéphanie-Félice du Motel, who already was engaged to one d'Herbinville, France's most renowned marksman. D'Herbinville, deeply dismayed by his betrothed's betrayal, suggested a duel with Galois. The young genius tried all he could to avoid the fight, but nothing worked. The night before the duel, he sat at his desk, opened a notebook, and started solving the general quintic equation, as intently as if his life depended on it. Scribbles, evocative of desperate cries, covered the margins of the barely legible and disorganized notebook—"I do not have the time!" and "Oh, Stéphanie, my love." That night, after he finished the calculations and the proofs, he wrote a letter to his friend Auguste Chevalier, asking him to send the notebook to the greatest mathematicians in Europe if he were to perish in the duel the following morning.

The next day was Wednesday, May 30, 1832. Galois and d'Herbinville met at a field and aimed their guns at each other. The ace shooter calmly fired and the young genius was hit in the stomach. He left the wounded, bloodied Galois lying on the ground and walked off. Galois was transported to a hospital a few hours later. The next day, he died from extreme blood loss and infection. The mathematician who had solved the quintic equation, an important contribution to the evolution of the history of mathematics, was only twenty-one years old.

Ruing his lack of time, Ki-yong thinks about the last day accorded to Galois, that young man who struggled to solve an abstract idea. At least Galois had something to occupy himself with all night, something to leave behind. Maybe that is a better way to go.

Ki-yong wonders what he has accomplished at the age of forty-two. He has lived in stability, without making too many mistakes, working a slightly more dangerous job than is normal, having avoided any major failures. The first twenty-one years of his life were spent in the North, the latter twenty-one in the South—his life is divided between the two cleanly, exactly in half. The two halves—the student who studied
English at Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies and believed he owned the world, and the illegal immigrant who lived quietly as an orphan—are disparate and float around separately, much like puzzle pieces that don't fit together. He didn't expect this to happen to him. Ever since he started living his current life, he was forced to forget about his past. He wonders if this is how it would feel to discover what you were in a previous lifetime. His past, which he thought could be forgotten, has really been lying dormant like a virus, awakening itself at the most inopportune moment.

He's reminded of one of his films; he purchased the distribution rights at the Cannes Film Festival but has never been able to release it here. It's called
Shout,
directed by Hans Schwanitz. This German film is about a man who re-covers from amnesia after undergoing treatment by his doctors. Lying on a hospital bed, the man waits for his memory to come back to him. He tosses and turns, chasing memories that are on the verge of appearing, on the brink of being caught, and desperately wonders who he is and where he's from. Finally, through the fog, a memory comes back to him: a few weeks before, he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He wandered the streets in shock, got in a car accident, and became an amnesiac. With drugs and electroshocks, the doctors revived the memory of the death sentence. He gets up from bed and says, "Thank you, Doctor! I just remembered that I'm going to die soon."

K
I-YONG LOOKS AROUND
the tent he's sitting in, feeling cramped and short of breath. The old man across from him is wearing thick glasses, as if he is embracing the stereotype of an old man. He flips through the yellowed pages of a book, scribbling Chinese characters only he can read on a piece
of white paper, kept in place by a paperweight. "Your parents passed away early, and you had a difficult childhood," he announces.

"When I was still young, my mother—"

"Yes, that's exactly what happened," the fortune-teller cuts him off. "You don't have much luck in terms of riches, and you don't have luck with your spouse, so I see that you will get married twice."

"Is that right?"

The old man looks over his glasses at Ki-yong. "I can see everything."

"What do you mean?"

"I can see what your problem is, even though you look perfectly normal."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your problem is worrying. You have a lot of worries." The fortune-teller lights a cigarette.

"Why would I come here if I weren't worried about something?" Ki-yong asks.

"Were you cut?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Were you cut from work? If not, why are you out and about at this hour, instead of going home?"

"I'm feeling frustrated," Ki-yong explains.

The old man looks at his fortune again, and starts explaining the results somewhat mechanically, as if he is reading a book. "Your middle age fortune is as follows. You don't have self-confidence, so you are very aware of others. You think of others all the time and try to make things pleasant. You're always smiling, but you're doing this to get other people's attention. You are nice to everyone so as to not make enemies, and you try to be generous, but you don't like yourself when you act that way. You're considerate and peace-loving, but you're overly indecisive and have a hard time making decisions."

"How's my luck this year?"

The old man peruses the fortune again. "Let's see, let's see, let's see. This year you're very lucky. Life has been very hard for you even until last year. You had a parting and you suffered a monetary loss. But this year, things are looking up. Everything you touch turns out good for you. Everything you've done so far for others is coming back to you as good fortune. People will value you and treat you well. But you have to be wary of moving. It's better to stay put and gather what you've been working for all these years."

"I don't think that's true. Can you look at it again?"

"No, that's it."

"I think I have to go somewhere far," confesses Ki-yong.

"You mean you're moving somewhere? You shouldn't move this year. But if you must, go east."

"East?"

"Yes."

"What about north?"

"North?" The old man tilts his head, looking bewildered. "What's up north?"

"Oh, nothing," Ki-yong stammers. "I was thinking about all the directions—east, west, north, south."

"No," the old man concludes. "If you must move it should be east, or southeast."

"Thank you." Ki-yong gets up from the rickety folding chair.

The old man calls out, "Listen. Who doesn't have a hard time with what life throws at them when they're young? It's the toughest when you're young. Just persevere. That will bring luck to you later."

Ki-yong doesn't reply and leaves. Ki-yong is taller than the
tent, but from the outside, one might think it's cozy. On one flap is written "Fate is the rock that comes flying at you from the front. If you know it's coming, you can duck, but that knowledge will exhaust your body and soul." He smiles bitterly.
What? I don't have self-confidence, so I am always worrying about what others think?
He has a sudden impulse to pull the tent apart, but as always, he restrains himself. "You are nice to everyone so as to not make enemies..."

He takes out his phone again and presses the talk button, dialing the last number he tried. He hears the message that his wife's phone is powered off. His headache starts up again. Or maybe it was there all day and he just stopped noticing it. In any case, it doesn't matter when his headache started. He massages the back of his neck.
Should I be listening to Yuki Kuramoto, like Hyon-mi was saying?
He starts walking down the darkened street, rubbing his neck, as drunken people straggle out from bars, one by one, bobbing and weaving like poisoned cockroaches.

M
A-RI, HER
legs spread open, thinks that having sex with two guys at the same time is like a blockbuster action flick—it's good only for the first half. You're hooked by the explosive preview and action scenes, but after a while, when you take a good look, you realize that the same scenes keep repeating. As time passes, the action sequences intensify, but the initial surprise and excitement dull. She's already come twice. Usually by this time, her nerves are beyond relaxed, having reached a point where she doesn't need any more stimulation. But the twenty-year-old boys have different ideas. They position Ma-ri on her stomach, then flip her on her back, and then, unsatisfied, they put her on her side and push into her. One of them approaches her head and pushes his long, limp penis in her face. As she wrestles with the two boys in the big rotating bed, she suddenly hears her dead father's voice ring out, as if a message from God: "You have to live just like you sing a song." The last words he insisted he heard from his spiritual brother, Rikidozan.

Startled, Ma-ri's eyes fly open, but there is no one but them in the room. Ma-ri pushes her ass into the air. One boy is trying to push into her from behind, and the other is sucking her nipple, his head mashed under her chest. It's hard to maintain the position because of her cast, but after striking various poses during the past hour, she has managed to figure out what works. She doesn't feel as lost as she did initially. Sweat drips off her chin and onto her cast.
Rikidozan probably felt like this,
she thinks.
When he got in the ring, he must have had moments where, in the middle of being tangled with opponents who were actually his friends, he wished that time would pass quickly. There are things in life you can't do anything about, and you can't always just do things you want to do. He would have consoled himself like I'm doing now, striking this or that pose according to the script and suffering through one round after another.
Sex is like pro wrestling. Only a game, but at the same time, a struggle. You have to be considerate of the other party while you attack, and you have to be somewhat aggressive to make it work.

She moans every time he thrusts.

"You like it? Like it? Yeah, you like it?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

"Talk dirty to me," Song-uk moans.

"No."

"Please."

"I can't. I've never done it before."

"Do it, you fucking bitch, you fucking whore," Song-uk says, pulling her head up.

"You assholes, you motherfuckers, you fucking assholes, ahh, ahh, fuck." With Ma-ri's every word, the guys become more turned on, and they press up against her more aggressively. Even dirtier words pour out of her onto the bed. Suddenly, someone's phone rings. "Toreador Song." Everyone pauses.

"Isn't that yours?" Song-uk turns to Panda, annoyed.

Panda gets up and slips his phone out of his pants, which were flung onto the floor. "Hell ... hello? Oh, hey. Are, are you here?"

"What's up?" Song-uk asks.

"It's Tae ... Tae ... Tae ... Tae-su," Panda says, looking panicked.

"And?" Song-uk urges.

"He called when we were at the restaurant..."

"You told him?"

Panda nods sheepishly.

"You idiot, why did you tell him? Just tell him no," Song-uk orders.

"He says he's right outside..."

Song-uk untangles himself from Ma-ri and takes a step toward Panda, but it doesn't look like he's going to take a swing at him. "How does he know we're here?"

"He texted me a while ago, but I didn't think he'd actually come..."

Song-uk turns to Ma-ri. "I don't know what I should do. He's a really close friend of ours ... He's trustworthy. We're in the same study group," he wheedles.

Ma-ri raises herself up on the bed, slowly. She puts a pillow against the wall and leans back. "Song-uk, can you bring me my purse?"

Song-uk hurries over with her bag. She's about to rummage through it, but stops. She turns to Panda. "Can I have a cigarette?"

Panda takes out a cigarette from his pocket, fumbling, and rushes it to her. She sticks it in her mouth, and Panda
lights it for her. Song-uk frowns momentarily. She blows out a stream of smoke. "What the hell is this? Do you think I'm some whore?"

Both of their dicks are now flaccid, pointing down at the ground.

"How can you be a whore when you didn't even get paid for it?" Song-uk protests. "Isn't that right? I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but what I'm trying to say is, things have already come to this point—wouldn't it be okay if just one more joined us?"

"I'm sore. I'm not doing this anymore."

The doorbell rings, at first gently, and then more and more energetically.

"You've already told him the room number, too?" Ma-ri shoots an accusatory glare at Panda, who hangs his head.

The bell stops ringing and this time the person outside starts banging on the door, another horny guy standing in front of room 503. Song-uk looks at Ma-ri, nervous, but doesn't do anything. She knows right then that this is the last time she will see him.
Isn't it too early for me to arrive at a dead end on the street of life? This is so unfair. It's too early. What did I do wrong? I worked hard, I was, for the most part, faithful to my family, and I lived life to the fullest. I made donations to charities every month and I've been there for every major event in my friends' lives, celebrating happy occasions and commiserating for sad ones. What did I do wrong, other than get old?