Bae Suah
Nowhere to Be Found
In 1988 I…
In 1988 I was temping at a university in Gyeonggi Province.
Mostly what I did there was send lecture requests to part-time instructors, make adjustments to their class schedules, mail them their pay stubs, and field complaints from students. As far as the work went, I didn’t have any major complaints of my own. It was the kind of clerical work that anyone could have done without any special qualifications or expertise. As long as you had a decent memory and an elementary work ethic, there was nothing to fear. In other words, it bore no resemblance at all to the type of job you could get only after having studied hard for years and years, turned in thousands upon thousands of pages of reports, written a tome of a thesis, earned a degree, and created a winning résumé composed entirely in English.
At this job we could chew gum or do our nails while answering the phones and take over two hours to type even the sparsest syllabus. We weren’t lazy or indifferent or anything. It was just the nature of the work. The office got a lot of visitors, so it wasn’t unusual for me to make more than twenty cups of coffee in a single day. Of course, it was muddy instant coffee.
Every person and every procedure marches on at a measured pace. That’s how things get done, just as the less delicate components of a machine submit to the will of the machine without any conscious thought or shred of volition while being steadily ground down. So while I was busy not having any conscious thought, I became a cog. The office I worked in was not a place where revolution happens. Nor should it have been. The general ethic there was of loyalty to one’s assigned task, whether that meant stirring twenty cups of instant coffee or fielding requests from professors for photocopies, for the purpose of solemnly achieving that ethic itself. Though that applied only to the members of the lower classes, of course. When I put it that way, you might think I’m being cynical, but that’s not it. The work didn’t bother me — except, of course, for the little things, like having to ride the bus for over an hour to get there and having no hope of ever getting a raise since I was only a temporary contract worker. As for my friends, one was a government bureaucrat, another had just started working at a brokerage firm, and another was teaching in an orphanage, but most were unemployed. It’s possible I harbored a vague sense of fear back then.
I didn’t have too many tasks, but I also wasn’t so idle that I could have passed the time knitting. When I was working, the hours went by at what I can only call a measured pace. My salary was, of course, very small. If not for that, I might have worked there longer. We got a month off while classes were out of session. I spent that month working part-time in a dye factory close to my house. My job was to screw caps onto tubes of dye using a mechanical device. That was a long time ago. I’m sure that dye factory has since found a more modern solution to that primitive final step of production. But then again, if they had modernized any earlier, I wouldn’t have spent that summer wrapped in the suffocating smell of acrylics.
Every now and then I picture a subway train at night packed with people I used to know and random people whom I will meet by chance in some distant future. Most of the people I knew long ago now live their lives without me, and those whom I will meet by chance one day do not know me now. They walk by apathetically, their faces gloomy beneath the dim lights of the city hall subway station, jostling my shoulders as they pass.
If you get off the subway at city hall and walk behind the Plaza Hotel, you’ll find the restaurant where I used to work nights after finishing my shift at the university. Inside the old wooden gate, a pine tree twists up out of the yellow soil of the courtyard at uncannily exquisite angles, and a gravel pathway leads you to the building where you must slip off your shoes, step up onto the raised wooden floor, and walk past a row of small rooms hidden behind sliding doors covered in white paper. The whole thing looks shabby and run-down. People go to this restaurant, which squats behind the hotel like an old man, to eat dinner or drink alcohol or to rent one of the private rooms on Friday nights to play poker, and sometimes even to smoke a little marijuana. I washed dishes, served food, mopped the floor, and fetched cigarettes for customers. Sometimes I even earned a thousand-won tip.
Tired. I was tired. I was only twenty-four, but I was tired. For a long time I’d been feeling dizzy just from getting up from the toilet. On the bus in the morning, I would doze off while standing, one hand gripping the hanging strap. Dry lips I couldn’t hide behind lipstick. Bloodshot eyes and the nausea of an empty stomach. The horror of rough skin, rough tongue.
I’d once dreamt of becoming a veterinarian. It was a dream I’d given up on long ago. In order to make that dream come true, I would’ve had to go back to college, but that was impossible. I was the only person in my family who was making any money. Our family looked perfect from the outside: a mother, a father, a brother ten years older than me, and a sister ten years younger. I don’t know how my parents created such an odd age gap. Even now I think maybe my family is just a random collection of people I knew long ago and will never happen upon again, and people I don’t know yet but will meet by chance one day. Their dim, indistinct faces will ultimately, and meaninglessly, become the faces of the people in my life, though at the present moment they are unfamiliar strangers with no influence over me whatsoever. The shoulders of strangers that bump against mine in the subway. The lukewarm touch of a hand proffering a tip in a restaurant. The voice over the phone of a guest lecturer on criminal sociology whose face I’ve never seen.
“This week’s topic is murder.”
“Oh.”
“Eight o’clock on Saturday night. I’ll be lecturing for three hours.”
“Will you be using video?”
“No.”
“If you do decide to, I’ll have to put in an equipment request.”
“There’s no need. I don’t plan on showing any videos. But…”
“Yes, go ahead.”
“I heard the midterm exam grading sheets were changed.”
“That’s correct.”
“You don’t normally mail those out?”
“All of the new forms were mailed to you.”
“I didn’t receive any.”
“I’m certain I mailed them. Aren’t you Professor Gang Jin-gu of Kangnam University? They were sent to your office.”
“I’m not Professor Gang Jin-gu of Kangnam University. I don’t teach at any university. I work for a company and teach part-time at night. You must have me confused with someone else.”
My mind went blank for a moment. For the past several months, I had assumed that the person teaching criminal sociology was Professor Gang Jin-gu of Kangnam University, and I had sent that person all sorts of materials and brochures. I had also taken the occasional phone call that I thought was from him. Professor Gang Jin-gu had taught something similar up until last year. I hurriedly rummaged through my files and pulled out the list of instructors. Sure enough, the man on the phone was right. I felt embarrassed.
“You’re right,” I said in a small voice.
“I’m sure it was a simple mistake.”
“I’m so sorry. I’ll send the forms again.”
“It’s no big deal.”
He seemed like a nice person.
“If you’re free on Saturday, would you like to come to my lecture? It’ll be an interesting one—”
I cut him off. “What kinds of people commit murder?”
“Murderers, I suppose.”
“Why do they do it?”
“I’m sure they have their reasons.”
“Is this how all of your lectures go?”
“Of course not. I make it a rule to read directly from the textbook. If I want to confuse the students, I read the chapters in reverse. That keeps them on their toes, since none of them have read to the end yet. It’s a simple method but an effective one. So do you think you can come on Saturday?”