of people hiked up the mountains to catch the rising of the moon for a year’s worth of luck, and bonfire festivals replayed the fires of the past that had driven away evil spirits. Tonight the apartment was Gilho’s mountain where he was caught in the moon’s light. He was ready to go anywhere with Wuseong. Anywhere to be far from Gilho’s position, the eyes of his parents, his friends, anywhere where they could be themselves. He wanted to ask the goose for forgiveness. For wanting her son in an unforgivable way. For being a marriedman betraying his family. Forgiveness, because he was prepared to scandalize. Tonight he was going to kiss the boy he loved. He turned to Wuseong.
“I’ve been lonely,” he said, and shuddered, when the woman’s arms, the goose’s good, stiff feathers, circled over them. “I’ve been lonely all my life.”
THE SALARYMAN
W HEN YOU ARRIVE at seven in the morning, your exhausted colleagues are already at their cubicles. Once again you stride past, trying to appear necessary. You are wearing the only suit you allowed your wife to buy at full price beyond your means, a navy wool blend with a red silk tie from Hyundai Department Store that disguises your stomach’s pouch and your rural upbringing in Iksan of street markets and communal toilets.
On the way to your cubicle, you bow to Manager Han, who stares back with glazed eyes in what has become his only expression. He lost his savings in the plummeting company stocks, then lost his wife, and may be contemplating suicide. You, too, lost your savings, but thankfully didn’t have much to lose. Ms. Min, the only woman in marketing with you, has divorced her husband, employed in the strategy planning department. You suspect this shameful state of her affairs is a paper divorce only, for companies like to fire married women who can rely on their husbands. Justlast month, after his company released him, an acquaintance of yours drowned off Seongsu Bridge in the Han River. The truth of his suicide was muzzled so his wife and children could subsist on the life insurance money. Nightly the nine o’clock news parades such stories. These clips, rare to Korea before the 1997 IMF crisis destroyed the job-for-life policy, are suddenly so ordinary that when you attended your acquaintance’s funeral, your mourning felt like a forgery.
As she does each morning Ms. Min delivers newspapers and memos across the floor. Perhaps because you have the kind of face that people easily forget, she smiles as if you two have just been introduced. This doesn’t perturb you; being singled out is what flusters you. You turn the computer on, scan the memos, and admire your immaculate desk: documents arranged in color-coded files, books stacked on a two-tier shelf, pencils honed to fine points, all which accurately reflect the desk of a person who takes care in the work done. You have never pocketed a single office supply. Unlike your wife this morning, colleagues express pleasure in your company.
Your wife, Jayeong, began your day with kisses that traveled your neck before the children were awake and crawling into your double bed, but by breakfast she launched into you with talk of money. Children are expensive. Rent is expensive. She said if your parents had planned for their future, you wouldn’t have to send a monthly allowance to them in Iksan. But they live off of what little money their alleyway eatery brings in and you are their only son, the one whom they worked hard to send to college, and they depend on you. You made the mistake of adding, well, what about her new scarf, the one designed by some Frenchman, that cost asmuch as your parents’ monthly grocery bill? You suggested that she had unreasonable shopping habits.
Jayeong’s eyebrows peaked. She said, “At least we don’t have to support my family.”
When necessary, she will remind you of this.
You wanted desperately to make her happy.
“I’m just a stingy
ajeoshi,
” you
“I’ve been lonely,” he said, and shuddered, when the woman’s arms, the goose’s good, stiff feathers, circled over them. “I’ve been lonely all my life.”
THE SALARYMAN
W HEN YOU ARRIVE at seven in the morning, your exhausted colleagues are already at their cubicles. Once again you stride past, trying to appear necessary. You are wearing the only suit you allowed your wife to buy at full price beyond your means, a navy wool blend with a red silk tie from Hyundai Department Store that disguises your stomach’s pouch and your rural upbringing in Iksan of street markets and communal toilets.
On the way to your cubicle, you bow to Manager Han, who stares back with glazed eyes in what has become his only expression. He lost his savings in the plummeting company stocks, then lost his wife, and may be contemplating suicide. You, too, lost your savings, but thankfully didn’t have much to lose. Ms. Min, the only woman in marketing with you, has divorced her husband, employed in the strategy planning department. You suspect this shameful state of her affairs is a paper divorce only, for companies like to fire married women who can rely on their husbands. Justlast month, after his company released him, an acquaintance of yours drowned off Seongsu Bridge in the Han River. The truth of his suicide was muzzled so his wife and children could subsist on the life insurance money. Nightly the nine o’clock news parades such stories. These clips, rare to Korea before the 1997 IMF crisis destroyed the job-for-life policy, are suddenly so ordinary that when you attended your acquaintance’s funeral, your mourning felt like a forgery.
As she does each morning Ms. Min delivers newspapers and memos across the floor. Perhaps because you have the kind of face that people easily forget, she smiles as if you two have just been introduced. This doesn’t perturb you; being singled out is what flusters you. You turn the computer on, scan the memos, and admire your immaculate desk: documents arranged in color-coded files, books stacked on a two-tier shelf, pencils honed to fine points, all which accurately reflect the desk of a person who takes care in the work done. You have never pocketed a single office supply. Unlike your wife this morning, colleagues express pleasure in your company.
Your wife, Jayeong, began your day with kisses that traveled your neck before the children were awake and crawling into your double bed, but by breakfast she launched into you with talk of money. Children are expensive. Rent is expensive. She said if your parents had planned for their future, you wouldn’t have to send a monthly allowance to them in Iksan. But they live off of what little money their alleyway eatery brings in and you are their only son, the one whom they worked hard to send to college, and they depend on you. You made the mistake of adding, well, what about her new scarf, the one designed by some Frenchman, that cost asmuch as your parents’ monthly grocery bill? You suggested that she had unreasonable shopping habits.
Jayeong’s eyebrows peaked. She said, “At least we don’t have to support my family.”
When necessary, she will remind you of this.
You wanted desperately to make her happy.
“I’m just a stingy
ajeoshi,
” you
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