At Least We Can Apologize

136 Pages·2013·0.65 MB·English

by  Lee Ki-Ho & Christopher J. Dyka

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.