At Least We Can Apologize Read online

  TITLES IN THE LIBRARY OF KOREAN LITERATURE

  AVAILABLE FROM DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS

  1. Stingray

  Kim Joo-young

  2. One Spoon on This Earth

  Hyun Ki Young

  3. When Adam Opens His Eyes

  Jang Jung-il

  4. My Son’s Girlfriend

  Jung Mi-kyung

  5. A Most Ambiguous Sunday, and Other Stories

  Jung Young Moon

  6. The House with a Sunken Courtyard

  Kim Won-il

  7. At Least We Can Apologize

  Lee Ki-ho

  8. The Soil

  Yi Kwang-su

  9. Lonesome You

  Park Wan-suh

  10. No One Writes Back

  Jang Eun-jin

  Table of Contents

  Part One: Finding Wrong

  1. The Pillars of the Institution

  2. The Home We Knew

  3. The Caretakers

  4. The Institution

  5. Our Wrongs

  6. The Wrongs that Follow the Confessions

  7. Medical History

  8. Meeting Si-yeon

  9. Packaging

  10. The Man with the Horn-rimmed Glasses

  11. The Job Search

  12. The Search for Medicine

  13. The Old Woman’s Wrongs

  14. The Head Residents’ Duties

  15. The Thing We had Forgotten

  16. The Two Men

  17. The Beginning of the Apology

  18. Finding Wrong

  19. The Man with the Horn-rimmed Glasses and His Situation

  20. Little Changes

  21. The Light Left On

  22. The Great Fight

  23. Teaching Wrong

  24. The Ones Who Died

  25. At Least We Can Apologize

  26. The Things Left Behind After the Apology

  Part Two: Creating Wrong

  1. Visiting Hours

  2. The Thing I Wanted to Know

  3. The Flyer

  4. The Director General and the Cafeteria Lady

  5. The Child’s Apology

  6. The Little Bird

  7. The Client

  8. Mother and Son

  9. A Question of Stance

  10. In the Case of No Wrongdoing

  11. Creating Wrong

  12. What We Weren’t Able to Say

  13. The Apology that Couldn’t Be Made on Someone Else’s Behalf

  14. Father and Son

  15. Waiting

  16. Helping with the Apology

  17. Helping Keep the Apology

  18. The Apology That Comes from an Apology

  19. And Then Someone Else

  Part Three: Cultivating Wrong

  1. Reunion with the Caretakers

  2. The Wrong That Still Lived

  3. Digging Up Wrongs

  4. Leaving Si-bong

  5. The Lie

  6. No One

  7. The Apology I Didn’t Know

  8. Cultivating Wrong

  Part One:

  Finding Wrong

  1. The Pillars of the Institution

  Si-bong and I first met in the institution. I was there first, and Si-bong entered a week later. From then on we shared the same room. Neither Si-bong nor I know how many years we spent there together. That’s because we can’t remember. I know that there, I grew six centimeters taller. Si-bong gained eight kilograms. Some time ago Si-bong had reached 84 kilograms. He was the only person in the institution who gained weight. The caretakers always told him to thank them for that. They would add that our growing taller, or our growing heavier, was because of the pills they gave us. Si-bong and I religiously took the pills we were given: four a day, in the morning and at night. When we first started taking the pills we felt sick and dizzy, as if teetering on a seesaw. Now, when we don’t take the pills we feel dizzy. That’s why Si-bong and I were always waiting for pill time. When the caretakers would stomp over to our room, pills in hand, and stand at our door, we would rush over, our heels barely grazing the floor, and kneel down with both hands outstretched. We never had a problem swallowing those pills; they slid perfectly down our throats and disappeared into our bodies.

  When we weren’t taking our pills, we worked, either packaging socks or labeling soap. On the sock crates we would attach a group picture of the institution’s residents. When we took the photo, Si-bong and I were in the back row on either side, standing at perfect attention. We both liked that picture. That was on account of our looking like perfect pillars of the institution. Every time we weren’t feeling well, Si-bong and I would take that picture out and look at it. Then we would go back to packing the socks in their plastic. Perhaps it was thanks to that picture, but the socks sold well.

  The point when trouble started at the institution came when a new, older man with long sideburns moved into our room. The man would put his pills into his mouth and, after the caretakers left, spit them out again. One time the man said he wasn’t ill. He said that he’d done nothing but fall asleep in the square at the train station, and woke up in the institution. Si-bong, too, said that he had gotten into a van at the square in front of the train station, and that when he got out he was at the institution. I didn’t say anything.

  The man with the sideburns lowered his voice and spoke. “Look at you! You guys are fine and you’re locked up in here! We have to get out of here as soon as we can—and I’m telling you: That’s not gonna happen by taking those pills!”

  Si-bong and I looked at each other for a moment. The man looked at us as well.

  “But, sir . . . it’s like we’re the pillars of the institution.” Si-bong imitated the man’s tone, speaking in a low voice. All I did was nod silently. The man just stared at us without a word. Then he rolled over toward the wall. After that, the man stopped speaking to us at all.

  Every day the man with sideburns took pieces of paper from the sock crates in the workroom and, back in our room, wrote on them:

  We are being held captive. If you find this note, please report this to the police. You will be generously rewarded.

  The man would always sign his name at the end of the note. He would stick a grain of cooked rice on the back of the paper to glue it to a stone. Then, every morning during cleaning time, he would throw the messages over the fence.

  The image of the man staying up late each night to write these notes was so pitiful that Si-bong and I decided to help him. Before loading each box of socks into the crates, we would write a note inside:

  We are being held captive. If you find this note, please report this to the police. The man in our room said that you will be generously rewarded.

  We wrote these notes inside the sock crates. We would always end the note by signing, The Pillars of the Institution. We didn’t want to cause the man with sideburns any trouble, so we always wrote the notes quickly so that no one else would see. The socks sold well.

  One morning, exactly one month after we started writing the notes, the institution was swarmed with police officers, government workers, and TV news reporters. We greeted them like true pillars of the institution, standing at perfect attention.

  2. The Home We Knew

  The first person to come out of the institution was the superintendent. He got into a black car along with two police officers. Before getting in, he turned around for a moment to look at the main building. Si-bong and I remained standing at attention in front of the building. The superintendent’s eyes met ours for a moment. As always, Si-bong and I greeted him politely with a bow.

  The two caretakers, the director general, and the cafeteria woman were also taken by a police van. As the cafeteria woman was being taken away
at the hands of the police officers, she yelled, “I’m a patient, too! A patient! I’m not normal!” The police said nothing.

  Some of the reporters came up to us and asked, “Could you please tell us who ‘the Pillars of the Institution’ are?”

  Si-bong and I answered politely that it was us. As soon as we did, even more reporters and other people gathered in front of us. They asked questions in quick voices.

  “How were you brought to the institution?”

  “Have you suffered any abuse here?”

  “What exactly does ‘Pillars of the Institution’ mean?”

  Just as Si-bong and I were about to answer the questions one-by-one, the man with the sideburns cut through the crowd and came up to us. The man took our hands and shook them vigorously. He was beaming. We were not. The man answered the reporters’ questions for us: We were all taken from the train station, we were all beaten daily by the superintendent and the two male caretakers, we heard every kind of insult from the cafeteria woman, but, despite all that, we were able to hide our plan, win the confidence of the superintendent, and were entrusted with the sock packaging operation. And “Pillars of the Institution,” that was our code name, our mission: to tear down the pillars of the institution. The entire time the man spoke he kept hold of Si-bong’s hand and mine. Sweat was collecting in our palms.

  After the reporters left, the government officials brought in a doctor. Guardians of some of the residents began to show up as well. The government workers stood by the doctor, asking the residents questions.

  “Would you like to go to another facility? Or would you like to go home?”

  The doctor sat there, tapping his pen on the table as he stared at the residents. From time to time he even yawned and drew pictures of trees on his paper. He smelled of alcohol. The government workers did not ask me and Si-bong questions. Instead, they pointed to us and whispered in low voices, “There, the whistle-blowers.”

  When everyone was done being questioned, one of the government workers came up to us and handed us envelopes.

  “You two can go home now.”

  Inside the envelopes was money for us to get home. The man with sideburns came up to us as well.

  “Get home safe, Mr. Pillars. Maybe we’ll see each other again. If you ever wanna see me, just come on over to the square in front of the train station in the town over there.”

  We walked out of the main gate of the institution. Spread out in front of us were low-lying hills, pine trees and firs, all coated sparsely with the final remnants of snow. Si-bong and I looked at the clouds above the firs for a while. The trees looked like pillars, holding up the clouds.

  Si-bong asked me, “So, you’re gonna go back home now?”

  I answered honestly, “I don’t know where my house is.”

  Si-bong continued to look at the clouds, then said, “Really? I know where my house is . . . ”

  I said nothing as I looked at the dirt road that led up to the highway. The crisscrossing tire tracks in the dirt looked like the metal grates on our windows at the institution.

  Si-bong brushed off his pant legs and spoke. “So, you wanna just start by going to the house we know, first?”

  I nodded silently. Only then did we slowly start walking. After walking for a while, Si-bong and I turned around for a moment to look back at the institution. With all the people gone from inside, the institution looked somehow in danger, as if it might come tumbling down at any moment. I felt queasy. The institution was the place where we had lived for a number of years, a place that had taught us so much. That was certainly something to be thankful for. Now, Si-bong and I were leaving that place.

  3. The Caretakers

  When I first entered the institution I was beaten almost daily. I was beaten in the morning, beaten at lunchtime, and beaten before bed. Sometimes I wasn’t beaten in the morning and then beaten twice at night, and I was even beaten twice at lunch and three times at night before. I was beaten with a pointer, beaten with a steel pipe, slapped, punched, kicked with a booted foot, and even beaten with a thick book. I was beaten with a chair, beaten with a trashcan, beaten with socks, and beaten with a shovel. After being beaten like this for some time, one day I looked over and there was Si-bong. He had both arms wrapped around his head as he was being beaten. That was the first time that Si-bong and I met. After that, we were beaten together every day. We were beaten together under our beds, beaten together in the hallway, beaten together after being called into the office, beaten together in the workroom, beaten together on the hill behind the institution, and beaten together in front of the main gate. Being beaten together like that for so long, we became friends.

  The ones beating us were the two male caretakers. They were the same age, cousins, and also nephews of the superintendent. One of them was shorter and the other was taller. The shorter one always went around in one of those white gowns that doctors wear, and the taller one went around wearing jeans and army boots. The shorter one went around with his own fork, spoon, and toothbrush in the left pocket of his white doctor’s gown and, in the right pocket, his own latex gloves. Whenever he beat us, or gave us our medicine, he would always wear his gloves. The taller one barely had any hair on the top of his head. Every morning he would wash his hair for a long time and, after combing all the hair on the back of his head forward, would spray it down with hairspray. In the back pocket of his jeans he always carried a convenient can of hairspray and a comb and, after beating us, would take great care to fix his hair. Every time we smelled the scent of his freesia hairspray, we thought to ourselves, “Ah-ha, guess the beating’s over.”

  The two men lived on the second floor of the main building, in the room across the hall from ours. Unlike our room, theirs had wooden flooring and there was a large TV and a refrigerator. They would have the television on until all hours of the night, but the movies they watched tended to have more moaning sounds than talking. Sometimes after the movies were over the caretakers would make phone calls somewhere. They took turns asking questions like, “Might this be the home of that big-tittied gal I had sex with a year ago?” or “By any chance, are you wearing nothing but pantyhose right now?” and hang up right away. After that, all we would hear was giggling. Even after hearing all that, Si-bong and I never laughed a single time. That was on account of the two male caretakers not being particularly fond of us laughing.

  Sometimes the superintendent would come around to the two male caretakers’ room, looking for them. This was usually when the caretakers overslept and weren’t able to give us our pills on time. When this happened, the superintendent would call them “worthless pieces of garbage.” He would also call them “useless, good-for-nothing vermin,” and “crazy fucking street rats.” On days like that, the two would beat us even before breakfast, repeating exactly what the superintendent had said to them.

  “Worthless pieces of garbage!”

  “Useless, good-for-nothing vermin!”

  “Crazy fucking street rats!”

  Once, the shorter one had the flu and spent four days straight lying in bed. The taller one wasn’t able to sleep a wink, as he spent the whole night running back and forth in the hallway, using a wash basin to wet a facecloth. Both Si-bong and I were awake, but he didn’t order us to do anything. He brought plain white rice porridge directly from the cafeteria woman himself, washed the shorter one’s white gown himself, and waited outside the bathroom with toilet paper in his hand. When the superintendent came to their room to yell at them, calling them “worthless pieces of garbage,” the taller one stood up and yelled back, “Jesus Christ, Uncle! Don’t you think this is a little much?! I told you, the kid’s sick!” The superintendent glared at them for a long moment and, without saying a word, slammed the door shut and left.

  When the shorter one finally got out of bed, the first thing he did was beat us. In order to make it easier for the shorter one to hit us, the taller one stood behind us and held our shoulders.

  “Don’t overdo it.
You still have to take it easy for a few days,” the taller one said, concern in his voice.

  “Yeah, okay.” The shorter one put on his plastic gloves and showed a faint smile.

  He didn’t overdo it, punching us only a few times in the chest with his fists. His fists were the same as they had been before. And that was how Si-bong and I knew that he was all better, and we thought about how it was all thanks to the taller caretaker.

  4. The Institution

  All together, the institution had three buildings. With the main gate to your back, the first building seen straight ahead was the main dormitory building, where we and the other residents lived. It was a white, two-story building, and on the first floor were an administrative office and the superintendent’s office, a staff lounge, a washroom, and the laundry room. On the second floor were the residents’ and caretakers’ rooms. All of the windows of the dormitory building were covered by thick, interlocking metal bars and in the halls the fluorescent lights were kept on day and night.

  All of the residents’ rooms had the same set-up: six steel beds and a sink on one wall. All of the residents used this sink to wash their faces, shampoo their hair, brush their teeth, wash their clothes, and get drinking water. In the laundry room, there were two washing machines that had been donated, but we never once washed our clothes there. Usually the only thing we did in that room was get beaten with a thick hose.

  To the left of the main building was the superintendent’s residence. It was a small house with three rooms, a storehouse, and a red tile roof. The superintendent lived there by himself. He was a man far older than even the director general, with the hair all around his ears turned completely white, but he said that he had never once been married. He had no children or anyone.

  Sometimes the caretakers would say things to us—whether we were listening or not—so that the director general could hear, like, “And that’s exactly why we’re here. If Uncle makes a wrong move, what would happen? We have to take care of the family business.”