I'll Be Right There (23 page)

I picked up his letters at random and read them.

Yoon
.

I have a new address. This letter I’m writing now will not be sent through the military mail service. I asked a friend of mine in the Civil Defense Corps to mail it to you from the post office in town. That way I can write to you without worrying about the censors
.

So much has happened to me. The special forces are quite tough. The training is bad enough, but life in the barracks is awful. Though they’re very strict about rank, many of the guys were in gangs before they joined the army, and they get into fights at the drop of a hat. They throw field shovels at each other in the squad room, and in the middle of evening call, one guy will knock the soldier next to him over with a jumping side kick. Once or twice a week, they muster us up to remind us that such misconduct is forbidden. We’re woken up in the middle of the night and forced to bend over in our briefs, balancing for as long as we can on the tips of our toes and the top of our heads with our hands behind our backs. The sergeants beat the corporals who beat the privates first class who beat the privates who beat everyone else. Officially, they’re not allowed to beat us. The only corporal punishment that’s permitted is physical endurance punishments. But they secretly do it all the time and justify it as maintaining military discipline. Among the senior conscripts, the softhearted ones can’t bring themselves to beat us, so they get drunk together first and then do it
.

One day, they had us mustered at midnight, but the club they brought broke so they brought out the handle of a pickax instead. While I was getting beaten, the club landed on my lower back instead of my butt. The pain was so intense that I thought I was dying. I screamed and fell to the ground, but the senior members cussed at me, called me a crybaby, and kicked me. At that moment, I really, truly thought I was going to die. When I came to, I was in the infirmary. While the medic was checking my spine, I heard him cluck his tongue and say, “Those bastards!” If the higher-ups found out about it, everyone, including the commanding officer, would have had hell to pay, and several people might have even been thrown in the brig for it. The first sergeant saw to it that I was exempted from further drills and sent me to a clinic outside the compound to get acupuncture. A soldier who was the same rank as me carried me there every day on his back. After more than a month of treatment, when I was able to move around on my own, the first sergeant told me that I wasn’t cut out for the special forces and sent me to this base as a kind of temporary duty. This place isn’t much better, but compared with the last one, I may as well be on vacation
.

I am stationed on the west coast, close to the front line. My new assignment is coastal guard duty. I sleep in the squad room during the day, wake late in the afternoon, and am deployed at dusk to one of the observation points staggered along the beach. I stay up all night with the sea in front and barbed wire behind. Since I’m not doing drills like I did in the special forces unit, it’s not as taxing. But the tradeoff is that you don’t get any leave when you’re stationed at the coast. Nor do they allow overnight passes. In this remote exile, I aim my rifle at an invisible enemy who could invade at any moment
.

I think I nursed a certain misunderstanding and fantasy about military life before I joined. I thought that, while it might be demanding physically, becoming part of an organization would help free me of the inertia that has always plagued me. But on my first day of basic, I saw how foolish that assumption was. I was ordered around and pushed around by the drill sergeant and other officers, and I realized just how deluded I had been. (My ears are still ringing from when the officers treated us like animals and screamed, “There are soldiers and there are human beings!
You
are not human beings!”) Then there was the individual combat training, and running—or sometimes crawling—from the fallback area to the firing line. At first, it was bewildering; later, infuriating. But my anger soon made up for the resignation, the depression, and the disillusionment. After surviving as a “conscript” and again as a member of the special forces, suffering through cold, sleep deprivation, and hunger, I started to feel like I really wasn’t a human being. I never guessed that I would feel as lost here as I did in college, where I struggled to fit in. I can handle the tyranny of the older soldiers and the physical exhaustion. But realizing the belief that
I am me—
the idea that I am worth something—is just dust, nothing more than wind with no substance, fills me with the bitterest of agonies that gnaws at my insides. Here, in the army, I am learning all over again that human beings are nothing more than rats in a maze with no exit, running in circles forever. So maybe that’s why I feel this way. Every time I stand on guard duty in the dark of night, facing those empty mudflats as the searchlights play over them and the sea crouching just beyond, I feel like I am facing my own darkness within
.

F
aces float to mind like salvation. Laughing faces that shine like stars. Loving voices, bright smiles, sometimes even a sulk
 … 
Each time that frigid ocean breeze hits me, I call out the names of my far-off loved ones one after the other as if saying the Lord’s Prayer
.

Yoon
.

After I get to my observation point around six in the evening and set up the guns around the bunker, there is usually a little time left before the sun goes down completely. I use this time to jot down my thoughts, including letters to send to you, and draw sketches of the ocean and mountains in pencil. A soldier who is in the same formation as me sits at a distance smoking a cigarette. This moment, when there are no higher-ranking soldiers or officers to worry about, belongs entirely to me. I think these—when I am surrounded by waves and wind and am writing to you—are the happiest moments in my life right now
.

A
few days ago, at dawn, right before finishing our shifts and retreating from the coast, we scooped up the straw that was spread on the floor of the bunkers during the winter and burned it. On the other side of the sand dunes, where the tide had pulled out, I saw fishermen and their wives on their way to work. The discolored straw wouldn’t burn at first, but the flame soon caught and burst into heat and acrid smoke. I stood with five or six other soldiers and stared into the glowing fire for a long time. In an instant, the flames collapsed into black ash, and I felt the fortress walls that had claimed their space inside of me also slowly collapse
.

I
woke up late this morning to find that it was foggy and drizzly out. I stood outside for a while, enjoying the sweet feeling of those thin drops of rain brushing over my skin. Even by afternoon, the fog was still so thick that the water’s edge was just a faint outline between the pine trees. Both sea and sky were sunk beneath a depressing gray. I had nothing to do and nothing to read, so I spent the whole day thinking about you. Do I get this sentimental each time it rains because I am still stuck in puberty, psychologically speaking? Back in college, whenever it rained, I would wander around the city all day. There was a café I used to go to where a DJ took song requests. I would go in, drenched with rain, and ask for some low, quiet song, like “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” by Leonard Cohen or “Old Records Never Die” by Ian Hunter or “Private Investigation” by Dire Straits. Now that’s all just a distant memory. There was another song I used to listen to a lot. I can’t remember the singer’s name, but the song was called “Time in a Bottle.” Yoon, how I wish I really could save time in a bottle and take it out as I needed it
.

L
ast night I was on border patrol when the battalion commander pulled up in a jeep. Luckily I wasn’t dozing off, so I was able to salute him properly. He did an inspection, gave me a few encouraging remarks, and was about to get back in the jeep when he turned around suddenly and asked, “Hey, Corporal, you got a girlfriend?” It’s an unspoken rule in the army that if a senior officer or anyone who’s been in the service longer than you asks if you have a girlfriend, you say yes regardless of whether it’s true or not. I thought of you and said, “Sir, yes, sir! I do, sir!” Then the commander asked, “You think she’s faithful?” I hesitated, and then barked, “Sir, she’ll wait for me, sir!” He stared at me for a moment, like he was going to say something, but then he called me a dumb fuck and hopped back in the jeep. I stood and watched until the taillights of the jeep disappeared into the darkness, and I thought about what he’d said. Why did he ask me something so childish and trite and then call me a dumb fuck? Did it just pop out as he was trying to think of something comforting to say? One thing I am sure of is that our brief conversation in the dark showed him who I really am. I
am
a dumb fuck
.

Y
esterday, one of the guys on KP duty caught four snakes by our unit. The snakes, which are called rock mamushi or red-banded snake, had yellow venom on their tails. They said snakes crawl all the way into the squad barracks in the summer. Imagine that. Lifting your blanket and seeing a snake crawl out. When I came back from the beach this morning, they told me the platoon leader and some of the older guys roasted the snakes and ate them with soju. I wasn’t disgusted by that. I did worse things in the special forces. If I told you what people resort to in order to survive in the mountains, you would probably never want to see me again. People eating live snakes still squirming after their skin is pulled off like a sock and their guts scraped out
 … 
I’ve seen and done so many bizarre things since I joined the army
.

W
henever I look down at the ocean through night vision goggles, I feel like a nocturnal animal. Rifle slippery in my hands. Waves breaking against the shore and exploding into shards. Even now, in my dreams, I march around and around the training ground in formation until someone barks Ten-hut! and I wake
.

C
ompared with how desolate it is at night, the beach is beautiful in the daylight. Yesterday, the entire squad stripped down to our government-issue briefs and ran double-time to the shore and dove into the ocean. The water was so achingly cold at first, but as we shouted and crashed into one another, it felt almost lukewarm. It occurred to me that maybe if things keep going this way just a little longer, I, too, could become a simple, well-adjusted being, one who fits the label of soldier or enlisted man, and be able to return to society. I no longer feel as anxious as I did when I first started. I love to recite this clichéd line of poetry: “Should this life sometime deceive you, Don’t be sad or mad at it!” All the while wondering if perhaps it is not life deceiving me, but me deceiving life
.

Yoon
.

The sky is very overcast today. I grabbed a raincoat, just in case, along with my notebook, and patrolled the ceasefire line, huffing and puffing my way to the top of the bluffs. My face was red and hot by the time I got there. I sat at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the murky sea. Sketched a single small boat in the distance that looked like it was penciling a line across the water with its wake. I like the sketch, so I am sending it to you
.

D
ahn seemed to be braving his time on the coastal border patrol by writing to me. One of the letters asked me to come visit. He had changed so much. I stared at the letter for a long time. I couldn’t believe this was the same person who had refused to receive any letters or visits. He sounded lonely and overwhelmed and most of all worn down. That was the sense I got.

Yoon
.

Lately, the military has been on constant alert, so everyone is under great stress. At least once a day we get orders to increase our vigilance. Everyone below the rank of company commander is particularly nervous about next month’s full military inspection. Originally, our company was supposed to pull off the coast and regroup with the main force while another was sent in to replace us, but it keeps getting pushed back. As a result, we have not had even our regular days off
.

Yoon
.

Is there any chance you could come see me someday next week? Of course, since we have to deploy to our observation points on the beach every night, we are not officially allowed to have visitors. But if you can come, I’ll try to sneak out for a day. I’ll have to grovel to this one guy who’s younger than me but has been here longer. But I would be willing to degrade myself if it meant I would get to see your face, even if only for a few seconds. The mountains are dark behind me, and in front of me, the surface of the water glimmers like scales in the moonlight. I carry a loaded rifle, keep watch over the night, and think of you
.

I
put my face down on the desk. I remembered that night with Dahn so vividly. I had debated for several days whether or not to go. He had avoided contacting me, even when he was on furlough, because he didn’t want me to see him with a shaved head. To get to where Dahn was, I had to take a train and two different intercity buses. At the last stop, I met a civilian defense soldier who was on his way to night duty at the unit on the coast where Dahn was on patrol. He took me all the way to the unit where Dahn was stationed. Dahn rushed out, his rifle slung over his shoulder, hand grenades and bayonet on his army belt.

Armed to the teeth, Dahn and I walked along a forest path lined with dry pinecones. There was no one else around. We
came down a path along the bluffs and followed the coastal ceasefire line until we had left his patrol route. We walked forever down that dark path along the waterfront. I had no idea where we were. We seemed to be moving away from the water, because the sound of lapping waves grew faint. The stars gazed down at us, shimmering as if they might spill down at any moment. Dahn walked beside me in silence. I didn’t say anything, either. For me, there was nothing stranger than seeing Dahn dressed as if he could be sent into battle at any moment. I could not think of what to say to the Dahn who was no longer Dahn the individual that I knew but Dahn the nameless soldier in khaki combat fatigues. We walked on and on but never came across another person. Suddenly Dahn asked, “Want to hear something scary?”