At Least We Can Apologize PDF
Preview At Least We Can Apologize
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.
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