33
White Human Shape and Leaks, 2001~2003
A big fire meant a fright to Dano. The mountain fires of Sun Valley had left an incurable trauma on Dano as a boy which had lasted three days and three nights with the deafening blasts of shells and ammunitions which had left undetonated during the Korean War. The word fire used to be a reminder of all the horrible things that broke loose.
Now there was a fire again. It appeared to be a quick yet blunt blow to all the residents. Luckily it happened on a broad daylight. And the luckiest part of all was that the fire was on a top floor house only. The fire was going on but there was no deafening blasts, not a whiff developing to a conflagration, either.
But the scene was disastrous. Since human shapes were not seen at the disaster scene, the proprietors of the tragic house must be going out. It was so sad that an uninhabited house was on fire. Black smoke was billowing into the air. It was two or three p.m. Dano was just back from a casual outing and was on his way to a hurried home on the 2nd floor house on the same line.
Fire engines arrived with roars of screams, with the firemen dashing onto the scene. You should have seen them. They really shook the earth; Their eyes were on fire, too; They shoved anyone in their way; Their desperate steps vied with each other for forward progress. Dano, standing near the elevator, was bluntly shoved aside.
In the midst of the tumult over the control of the wayward firework, smashing and shattering noises of the household goods were heard even down under on the ground floor. The throngs of concerned crowds were gathered in threes and fours, pounding their feet and blurting exclaims of astonishment.
Though agitated in one hand, they were evidently relived to see their own houses safe and sound and to see the fire broken out on the top floor, but not in the middle floors. In 30 minutes or so they seemed to get the blaze under control as the firemen came out from the elevator, smeared with dirt and smelling of gasoline smoke. They appeared angry and sad.
Clustered, the residents were wondering about the whereabouts of the sad proprietor of the burned-out house, kibitzing about the fire-prevention tips. A fast-paced gossiper kept rumor mills rolling that the culprit of the fire calamity was
the lady of the tragic apartment house, who unwittingly had forgotten to cut the flow of the gas by switching off the gas valve, leaving something boiling on the gas burner.
The poor family were not informed of their tragedy because they had no means of outside contact by wireless and no means of mobile communication at the time, either, only kept in the dark until they stepped into the apartment compound and near at the 26th Block. They could see their top floor house disappeared from sight and the hollow cluster of the wreck left. The lady of the household fainted at the scene and her husband was pretty much struck speechless and motionless. The neighbors of the same line got to the scene but found no words to comfort them.
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Why forget? It'll be useless to deride or blame those who're liable to forget. Dano almost always found himself without an umbrella when he returned which he had kept company early in the morning. It's been a fatal habit and Dano had almost always felt remorse for the lost companion. He felt himself a very ungrateful person from time to time. How about the other people? They would be likely more or less forgetful of their thankful companions. He was wondering at leisurely times where the umbrellas of the world had gotten together.
Episodes about forgetful people, particularly of those ladies in their mid-50s abounded. Dano himself happened to watch with his open eyes a middle-aged Seoul lady step into the swimming pool area naked, with no swimming suits on. A woman pool guard swiftly raced toward her, muffling her with her whole body and turning her around, with no more fuss. But among lots of amnesiac episodes, the episode on the top list would be that of a middle-aged lady, who, going out to the beauty parlor to do hair for her daughter's wedding, when the job done, returned to her home and slept it away.
Women's Sorority of the 26th Block passed the hat among the residents that they chip in to help the tragic fire victims. Through discussion, they agreed to donate five dollars each household, an expression of a modicum of sympathy. The women's sorority club also circulated along pamphlets alerting about how to handle gas and electricity.
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Of all the living places of Seoul Dano had lived out, he thought, Eunma (Silver Horse) had had the worst living conditions. Too cold among all things. Through the four years, Dano, Tschai and their three sons had literally gotten themselves frozen out. The heating system was pristine and ineffective. An apartment management union body, which was deployed from the Central Apartment Management Corporation or something, ran Silver Horse, for which the 20,000 more residents had no voice.
"It's a sheer nonsense," Dano thought. "It's so preposterous," Dano said publicly. The union members, with red-colored head bands tied around their heads, with their fists shooting into the air with blood-shot eyes, beating drums and bronze ggoenggari, chanting threatening slogans, made routine rounds of the apartment complex two or three times everyday, which made the residents transfixed dazed and scared.
"Why make so much noise?" Dano once stepped forward from the watching crowds. "Stop nuisance!" Dano stood firm before the marching union demonstrators. "What the hell is this fella?" The clamorous troops, restrained out of the blue by a strange man, mobbed around Dano, with one of them dashing to Dano to grab him.
"I'm a resident of this apartment complex. I want to live in peace!"
"What the hell are you talking about? Who is there that forces you not to?"
"You're the ones that destroy the peace of us residents, ain't you?"
"This is about our rights, do you know, this fucker?"
The union members and the throng, milling about for some seconds, most of whom were middle-aged ladies, agreed to convince themselves to disperse.
The moves to Eunma had been made for Tschai's sake only, for a small accessory store she had been running at Daechi-dong. It was a source of family financing. The moves from Mokdong to Kepodong to Eunma had shortened the time needed for her commute from hours to a few minutes. Dano did most of the trouble of packing because books had always comprised the most portion of the moving package.
Tschai got wind of the apartment folks' backbites about her husband Dano. She said brusquely one late autumn morning of 2001, demanding that he not inspire or motivate the residents by facing up to the union members of the management body. He was not entitled to do that. "What kind of entitlement am I supposed to have?" Dano demanded to know. "You're supposed to have the ownership of the apartment house," she answered. "We only live in a rental house, paying two years' rent in advance."
Despite Tschai's concern about Dano's meddlesome tendency and her advice that he refrain from interfering in the conflicts between the residents and the unionized management office, Mrs. Elderly, who was chairperson of the Conference of the Residents' Representatives, telephoned Dano to come out and help her with her outing. Mrs. Elderly, who was in her middle seventies, said pleadingly, "Mr. Wang, please come out and come with me to the meeting of the representatives." Fact was that the representatives of the residents of Eunma Apartment Complex were not able to hold meetings hampered by the militant union members from the management office.
Mrs. Elderly, who had been moved, consented by her erstwhile residents of three decades and unanimously recommended that she preside over the representatives' meetings of the big apartment complex, said to Dano, "The union members are in the way. Mr. Wang, escort me to the conference room of the residents' representatives, will you please?" "I'm sure I will, Mrs. Elderly!"
Her apartment house was on the 12th floor, situated on the southern sidewalk side Her rooms were aptly heated for the aged woman, which was so contrasting with the Siberian cold of the northern tip of the blocks, the 23rd to the 26th. Her rooms were simply furnished and on the wall closet mounted on the kitchen sink were tablewares neatly arranged.
"This is Mrs. History of Eunma, who has been living since the establishment of this apartment building," a resident representative once introduced Mrs. Elderly to Dano. She was tall, a little too tall, with her shoulders not stooped a little bit for her age, and slender, of course. "Her hobby is horticulture," the representative explained to Dano. She was leading a single clean life with the domestic aid of a middle-aged daughter. All assortments of flowers and plants filled her veranda garden.
Mounting an elevator and heading down the ground, Mrs. Elderly told Dano not to have an argument or a fistfight with the union people. "Be patient," she said. Getting near the management office, Dano found himself holding the old woman by the hand and the union people gathered in groups on both sides of the path they were to pass. "Where're you going," a union guy challenged. "Do ya have the right to ask such a question and do we have any obligation to answer?" Dano challenged back. "We have some things to talk with the representatives," Mrs. Elderly also defied them.
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In the midst of the clamour of the marching union members, and in the midst of the din of the sirens from the police cars which used to show up for calls of the repeated clashes between the management folks and the residents, Congressman Long of the district, whose office had been situated on the uphill overlooking Eunma, did not pop up his head. Dano was wondering whether Congressman Long had been pondering over his status only as a representative of the people, but not of the Gangnam people to which Eunma had belonged.
The geomantic energy of the yin might have prevailed. It was cold in winter and hot in summer. On top of the seasonal meteorological extremities, there were leaks. To cite a mode of speaking from the movie The United States President, leaks and nervousness was the problem. Naturally the major effect of the obsolete apartment buildings of three decades was leaks. A few days after the first-floor household ajumma complained about a leak from the room ceiling, there used to be a leak from the 2nd-floor ceiling, and vice versa.
The landlady of Dano and Tschai's rented apartment was Mrs. Kong in Pohang. Everytime there was a leak responsible to the owner of the 2nd floor house, Dano placed a long-distance call to Mrs. Kong to inform her of the water accident. He then hit the road for the prowl for town plumbers. To guide the plumber to the place of the leak and let him give the price for the plumbing job was Dano's homework. Then watching him fix the leak and after the work done, he paid the bill.
It wasn't a haunted house or something. It was merely hot and cold, situated at the tip of the northern west and, like an old dike, the old apartment house was leaking. Of the three sons of Dano's, Tai, Hua, and Kyo, Kyo had seen a spirit at his room on the night of the move.
The weather had been summer's in the middle of June. "I've seen a white human shape at the room, looking down at me," Kyo told his father Dano with pensive calm. Dano, feeling an onslaught of cold chill on his spine, didn't interrogate further on how it was like and what impression he had gotten. But inwardly he was praising his son's composure that he hadn't shrieked, and not made a scene, either.
"The world is replete with spiteful spirits," a local religious sect says. Dano had a belief in the theory but had a disbelief in their powers. Dano doubted that they were ubiquitous, that is, Dano suspected that they would have to reside at cold swamps, in deserted remote houses and at rainy grave sites. So Dano had once reclined on a roadside grave mound in the mountain hill around the midnight, which had turned out to be a very cozy place.
It was a great experience that Kyo, his third son, had spotted in his room "a strange white human shape." Dano was wondering why the being of the hinterland, that is, a spirit of the netherworld, had been left in the cramped and reinforced concrete wall, scaring the new resident. He was also wondering whether Mrs. Kong family had decided to vacate their house for the time being to a bridge family, which would have to encounter the ghost and get away with him--exorcise or not.
Obsession might have caused spirits, if any, to be lingering in the dreary patio of the urban living spaces. Malcontent might have been another cause that might be restraining him or her. Might have died from unrequited love. Might have not had an opportunity of consummation. A knowledgeable saying goes that cities have tons of malcontents.
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Months passed. The general atmosphere changed. Although patrol cars from time to time blared in and out of Eunma, militant posters of the union, which were hanging at major sites of the apartment complex, were torn down. Representatives, fleeing the fearful threats of the head-banded union members, sheepishly gathered to prepare for the litigation for the change of the management body.
Dano tussled with the union members but the tussles did not develop into fist fights. Dano saw to it that he would not be hauled away to the police box or something. But he was hauled more often than not off to eerie places by indescript human shapes or something. He was wondering why they were not resting at night, instead of disturbing his peace. He was lost often, led astray through thorn bushes, and after being awoken, he was angry at the previous night's abuses.
Has there been such weird terminology 'gweejeob' 鬼接, which would be loosely translated into "an intercourse with a spirit," or something. No, it couldn't be an apt term. He was forcefully laid. No, he was literally raped, kept in the dark and in powerlessness, by an uncanny malcontented female ghost. Why couldn't he be the master of his own body and soul and repel the evil spirit with one spank and yell?
Awoken, he was enraged with the condition he was forced to be put in, touched and attracted to an indescript force and indescribable heat, and clamped shut, and abused, with his bodily essence erupted. He was liberally violated with impunity and belatedly determined to seek and ferret out the one and throw it into the fire of hell which had done him insult after he will have been dead.
On the very afternoon of Dano's sexual abuse, the ceiling of Room 4, or Dano's third son Kyo's room ceiling collapsed and there were sudden bucketful downpours of water onto the room, which inundated the whole floors. A domestic catastrophe in 30 years' life in Seoul. Done out of the blue. There were yells up to the third floor neighbor. "What's all this about?" A male plumber hurried down the stairs and popped his head into the floor room and said. "It was all my fault. I mishandled the part of the water pipe..." Dano's sheepish interpretation was that the goddamned bitch had had a great belated ejaculation.
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