City of Ash and Red Read online

  After the divorce was finalized, whenever he found himself alone with nothing else to occupy his thoughts, he would be overcome with longing to talk to his wife again. They had never talked about anything very important; most of it was so trivial that he couldn’t keep track of whether something they’d talked about had happened that day or the day before. For example, there was the time a salesman got past the security guard at work and tried to sell everyone knife sharpeners. “Even with all that technology, a peddler still got into the building? Where was the guard? How did he get through the security system?” “It’s been out of order lately.” “Seems like everywhere you go, things are out of order.” “You can get in anywhere as long as you know how to.” The conversation continued as they were reminded of more things, and soon they were marveling over the fact that peddlers had progressed from hawking knife sharpeners on the subway to going into people’s offices, and their meaningless comments followed one after the other, as if worried they might run out of things to say: “What are they selling on the subways nowadays?” “One guy was selling an iron-on patch for mending holes in your stockings.” “You should have bought one.” He told her that he had wanted to buy a knife sharpener, but Trout bawled him out and ordered him to call security. Then, when the peddler was dragged out of the office between two security guards like a common thief, he had quietly stood up from his desk, intending to follow them, but Trout was watching, so he pretended he had to go to the bathroom instead, though he really didn’t. Their conversations had nothing to do with their lives, and their lives never changed as a result of those conversations, nor would they have changed if they had not had them, and anyone listening would have thought them fools to get so excited over topics so trivial.

  But he and his ex-wife knew that there was more to talking than just sharing their future dreams, the impossibility of ever realizing those dreams, and the faith that it would all come true somehow anyway. Talking about their pasts instead—about embarrassments and longings, about the things they wanted back and the things they did not—was a way to express regret for the times when their lives had not overlapped, and to gladly serve as witness to each other’s lives. They participated happily in a present that was bound to vanish from memory because it was trivial and insignificant. And they did speak, despite themselves, of hope and determination, of the will to put the same into action, and of broken wills, and when they did, they gave each other words of unexaggerated encouragement, heartfelt consolation, and simple cheer.

  He had not raped his wife out of hatred or some renewed surge of lust, he did it because he lacked the confidence to talk to her the way they once had and so he chose a foolish approach instead. Shortly before the divorce, they had taken an expensive and much-anticipated trip together, but even then he had been unable to talk to her and wound up returning home alone with only injuries to show for it. It made him lonely to realize that he had no one to listen to him and no one for him to listen to, but he did nothing to overcome his loneliness. He did not have any friends whom he could call up and have a long conversation with, and whenever he did meet someone, all they did was drink and bitch about life. He didn’t want that.

  When Soyo had told him about his ex-wife getting remarried to Yujin not long after their divorce, he had felt shocked and hurt. His first thought was that he would no longer get to lay in bed with his ex-wife, their heads resting on each other’s bodies, as they passed the time chatting or retelling old stories that popped into their heads for no reason, stories that had already been told multiple times and had nothing new to offer. Those moments were among his favorites. He felt like crying when he realized that those moments were gone for good, but he didn’t want to reveal any of this to Soyo, so he had hidden his reaction behind the rim of his beer glass, which had turned as lukewarm as his tears.

  It was disappointing that his wife’s taste in men was so bad that she had stooped to marrying someone like Yujin. Of course, he should have known her standards weren’t that high, since she had also married him. He was not fond of Yujin. In fact, he sort of hated him. In his opinion, Yujin talked too much, exaggerated about his work, and pretended to be friendly and impartial until he sensed a disadvantage to himself, upon which he would turn mean and violent, brag that he was doing extremely important work, and flaunt his connections. He couldn’t stand men like Yujin, so he would criticize Yujin’s pretentious way of speaking and question the absurd things he said, only to be attacked for being too narrow-minded.

  His ex-wife probably thought Yujin was charming—all the more so if she had tired of her ex-husband’s own wishy-washy, introverted, insecure, and passive ways. Despite her tendency to do whatever she felt like, his ex-wife was timid and lacked confidence, and therefore did not reveal her feelings to other people easily. No matter how long you had known her, the moment she thought you were not on her side, she would clam up and respond defensively in order to protect her dignity, and then do something she regretted. To get her to open up, you had to take your time and listen to what she had to say, always be the one to start the conversation, and never rush her. Did Yujin really have that much patience? He pictured Yujin demanding to know why she was so quiet all the time, or responding with sarcasm or nagging her instead, but of course this imaginary version of Yujin had more to do with his desire for them to have problems and less to do with Yujin’s actual personality.

  His ex-wife had probably listened to Yujin’s constant chatter and inability to hold his silence and thought it meant she knew him, then mistook knowing him for loving him and decided to get married again. She was a warmhearted person and bonded easily, or so he thought, and would open her heart in an instant to anyone who was friendly to her, and when that someone was of the opposite sex, mistaking simple openness for love was all too easy. That clearly must have been the case in her relationship with Yujin. Of course, he realized too late that it had probably also been the case in their own relationship.

  That night, after leaving the party, he found himself drinking alone with Yujin. He worried about the packing he still had to do, but once it was just the two of them, they had nothing to say to each other and he was in no mood to talk anyway, so he figured the best thing to do was to get drunk quickly and use that as his excuse to hurry home. It was the only way to avoid the awkwardness.

  He drank far more than usual but couldn’t seem to get intoxicated, and the more shots he took, the fuzzier Yujin’s face became until his ex-wife’s began to appear in its place. He didn’t like that. How could two faces that didn’t resemble each other in the slightest overlap? He felt repulsed, as if he’d caught a glimpse of them in bed together, and he kept downing more shots.

  He did not ask Yujin why they divorced. Just as he had unilaterally denounced his ex-wife to other people by saying that she had never once made him a home-cooked meal, Yujin as well might have made excuses about food, her spendthrift ways, or her habit of coming home late and sometimes staying out all night. To truly understand Yujin and his ex-wife, he would have to start by listening to the story of when they dated, followed by every last detail of their married life, and he absolutely did not want to hear that.

  Yujin asked him something, and he reluctantly answered. The drunker the man got, the more his defenses came down, and soon they were answering each other’s questions, sharing complaints, offering agreement, and laughing at themselves. Though he could not remember most of what he and Yujin talked about, the one thing he did remember vividly was when Yujin asked whether he knew that his ex-wife had cheated on him with Yujin when they were still married. It was more statement than question. He’d already guessed as much and felt hurt but was reluctant to let Yujin know that he felt hurt, so he swallowed hard and said that he knew she had been sleeping with someone but did not know it was Yujin, and that if he had known at the time, he would not have stood for it. Yujin stared him straight in the face and retorted that he understood exactly what he meant. The man didn’t want to know what Yujin was thinking, so
he said nothing and tried hard to avoid Yujin’s sharpened gaze.

  Had they still been married, he would have ignored the fact that he was in no position to criticize her. He might have pressed her for an explanation, got angry, shouted at her, and then, unable to control his anger, beat her or done something even worse. He knew he was capable of hurting another person when he was angry, even if it meant risking injury to himself. And just because they were divorced now, it didn’t mean he could contain his anger.

  But when he thought about his ex-wife, he missed her terribly. He was furious that she had abandoned and betrayed both him and Yujin, but he pitied her at the same time. And yet despite that pity, he felt no pangs, no torment, and he realized at once that his sympathy for her was greatly exaggerated. What truly broke his heart was not his ex-wife’s life but his own, made all the more lonely because of her. The sudden thought softened him a little. And it dawned on him how lonely it must have made her to be constantly suspected of cheating on him the whole time they were married. It didn’t make it any easier to understand her, but he did feel sorry for having showered her with doubt instead of love. It was possible that, in his drunken state on that last night in his home country, he’d dialed her number and apologized recklessly, or gone to see her in person, or even pleaded for her to come over. As usually happens when one drinks oneself into a stupor, he found himself the next day, on the morning of his flight, burdened with a hangover so massive that he could remember nothing of the night before—along with regret, unexpected muscle pain (he thought maybe he and Yujin had come to blows but could not remember), and dark blue bruises that would take a long time to go away.

  The only person he could entrust the dog to was his ex-wife. He was thinking of telling her that she could stay in his apartment if she was having trouble finding new living arrangements after her second divorce. During the six months to five years that he would be spending abroad, he would get several vacations, but he had no intention of returning home for them. His father, who had remarried after his mother died many years ago, was the only family he had, but he felt no particular need to visit him. His apartment was just sitting empty. And since he had to leave it empty for at least half a year, better that she move in while he was gone. Being divorced felt like being one of those weekend couples forced to live in separate cities for work. It filled him with jealousy to have to see Yujin at social gatherings, but when he really thought about it, it wasn’t so different from being an older brother who has lost his little sister, with whom he was once very close, to a playboy brother-in-law. In other words, he still thought of his ex-wife as family. The only problem being, he wasn’t much of a family man.

  He didn’t know his ex-wife’s phone number. He knew her old number but had not bothered to memorize her new one when she married Yujin. If he could find out Yujin’s number, he could track down hers. Of course, he didn’t know Yujin’s number either, but he knew where he worked, and they would be able to tell him.

  He called information in his home country and got the phone number for Yujin’s company. A recorded message instructed him to dial the extension for the department he was trying to reach, so he entered the number for human resources. He had no idea what department Yujin worked in. Other than having married and divorced the same woman, he knew little about Yujin. He thought the extension for human resources would connect him directly to an employee, but instead it led to another menu. He didn’t know there were so many separate divisions within the human resources department, and of course had no idea whose extension he should enter, so he followed the recorded instructions and pressed a number at random. The phone rang twice before someone answered and recited the name of the division followed by their own name in the friendly voice of a telephone company operator. When he told the employee his name and explained that he was looking for someone’s contact information, the employee’s voice turned brusque, as if they got that sort of phone call all the time.

  “This is not an information center,” the voice over the phone said.

  He apologized on reflex, but then felt he really did owe the person an apology: clearly they had their hands full at work, and here he was interrupting them for something as trifling as a phone number. And so, in a more gracious voice, he told the person where he was calling from and explained that he had left all of his contact numbers back at home, and that the only way for him to get in touch with his friend was to go through the company directory.

  “Wait, you’re calling from where? Are you serious?”

  Mentioning Country C seemed to have a certain effect.

  “Yes, I’m calling long-distance from Country C.”

  “What’s it like?”

  He didn’t know what to say, so he glanced out the balcony window.

  “Um, the weather’s nice.”

  “The weather’s nice . . . How ’bout that?”

  He was about to say that a contagious disease was going around, that the streets were filled with trash, and that because of the risk of mass infection, he was locked inside of his apartment, but just then the employee asked who he was looking for. He happily recited Yujin’s name. It turned out that there were three men with the same name, so he added Yujin’s age. Two of the three men were born the same year. Once he added which school Yujin had graduated from, the employee narrowed it down to one. He tightened his grip on his pen, ready to write down the phone number.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t give it to you. It’s listed under his personal information. I can’t just hand out his number or I’ll get in trouble,” the employee said. His voice had softened.

  “I don’t think Yujin would get angry at you for telling me his number.”

  “I’m sure you understand, but the longer you haven’t heard from someone, the less welcome their phone calls tend to be. I’ll give him your number and ask him to call you instead.”

  He started to agree that he should do just that, but then he remembered that he did not know his own phone number, and he told the employee he would call back in the afternoon and asked him to try to get Yujin’s permission in the meantime. After hanging up, he thought about what the employee had said, that the longer you haven’t heard from someone, the less welcome their phone calls are, and he nodded in agreement.

  When he finally called Yujin’s cell, having gotten the number from the employee who had gotten permission in turn from Yujin, the phone was turned off. Yujin must have been in a meeting. He waited to be connected to voice mail, where he started to leave a message, speaking calmly as he did so.

  “Yujin, sorry to call you like this, but I need to get my ex-wife’s number from you.”

  He paused for a moment, deep in thought, and then continued.

  “Never mind. I’ll just ask for your help instead. Can you go to my apartment and let my dog out? Just take it outside somewhere and leave it there.”

  He made sure to add the passcode for his front door at the end of the message, but it was a sudden impulse that had made him ask Yujin to simply let the dog go. He hated having to ask his ex-wife or anyone else to take care of his dog for him, or to find someone who could. Ever since remembering that he had left the dog in the apartment, he had been so overcome with anxiety that he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t concentrate on any other thoughts, and this made him very unhappy.

  It only occurred to him as he was leaving the message that he had absolutely no desire to care for the dog. Nor did he want to start things back up with his ex-wife. He hated the idea of her depending on him, but more than that, he hated the thought of wanting to get back together with her. He knew that the news of his ex-wife and Yujin’s divorce had left him giddy with unexpected anticipation. But he refused to be so easily defeated by his own heart.

  He doubted Yujin would follow through. Most likely Yujin would snort with laughter and delete the message. But it didn’t matter. Given the circumstances he was in, fearing for the dog and worrying about its safety was a luxury. The important thing was to protect hi
mself from the virus raging outside, from the piles of unsanitary garbage filling the streets, from the apartment building crawling with the infected. He had to put everything he had into surviving. In a city where disease spread like bushfire, in a city where pharmacies were put out of business by looters, in a city stalked by mountains of garbage and ghoulish quarantine officers in full-body hazmat suits, in a city where you had to eat whenever a bell went off, he had to keep from getting sick, he had to be ready to work. So no matter how he felt about the dog, and in truth he didn’t feel much of anything for it, or how much his ex-wife loved the dog, who really cared if that mutt, lucky enough to be living in a peaceful city, had to go hungry for a few more days?

  FIVE

  Two days after leaving the message for Yujin, he got a call back. When he thought about it later, those two days were the most peaceful he had spent since his arrival. He thought about the dog often and felt guilty each time he did, was hungry all the time because the meals were too small, grew impatient that Mol had not yet called him, and felt uneasy remembering what Trout had said about there being a problem with his assignment. But looking back on it now, it was time spent indulging in relatively peaceful worries.

  When the phone rang, he was overjoyed because he thought it was Mol. He was ready to complain about being confined to his apartment, about how badly he was suffering because he was unable to buy cold medicine, and how he wanted to start work immediately. If Mol knew what he was going through, having to eat rationed meals in that terrible stench, he wouldn’t dare refuse him anything.