Say Ah, 

Pelican
By Park Min-gyu
Translated from Korean by Jenny Wang Medina
Park Min-gyu's amusement park worker finds his workplace transformed.
April 1, 2014
Published in Writing from South Korea
South Korea

Boat People
Yawn. Yawning always makes me sleepy. There are still two boats out
on the water, but I lie down anyway. There’d be trouble if the boss
saw me. It would be so great if the polar ice caps melted right now. No
one would care about a ticket-taker asleep at an amusement park if
there were a flood, would they? Slowly melting, melting . . . so tired. I
lie down and close my eyes like a dying rat. I’m a rat. Dying.
Four o’clock in the afternoon. I can tell, even with my eyes closed.
What an exciting afternoon, and so on and so on, the radio prattles on,
marking the time. I usually leave it on all day. It’d be too hard if I
didn’t. Without it, it would be boring, boring, and even more boring.
When I first got here it was like I’d landed on an alien planet. The
radio was my only friend—at least it’s a signal, or something. Drowsy
again. How are you melting, all you icebergs out there in radioland?
I’ll just take a little nap.
I opened my eyes.
Hey! The words rushed into my ears like the runoff from an iceberg.
Anybody there? I’m here! I’m here, I cried. I wiped the drool off my
face with the back of my hand and stood up. Yes, yes, sir! I run
outside, grab the boat coming toward the wobbly dock and pull it in.
Pull the rope tight, tie it up. A man in his forties steps off the boat,
followed by a woman. By the time I check the knot and turn around,
the pair are nowhere to be seen. Two discarded life jackets dropped on
the pier look like a couple of cracked duck eggs. I pull out a cigarette.
Little puffs like duck down float into the air. But what about the other
one? I can’t see it. Unless . . . no, it’s gone. I thought it might have
disappeared but, damn, it’s way over there, glinting and bobbing like a
plucked feather. Flash, it went. It’s a nearly impossible path. Just fall
off the edge of the earth, please. I puff and curse. That’s why he
prepaid.
You don’t really get it, no matter how much you think about it. It’s
called a boat, but to be more precise, it’s a “duck boat.” I couldn’t
possibly understand the mindset of a person who rents a duck boat and
tries to take it too far out. But there’s always someone like that. It’s
not the USS Enterprise, it’s a duck boat. A duck boat. If I could, I’d
dunk their heads in the water a few times, but I hold myself back. I
pull out my whistle instead and blow. Tweeeeet! I blow and blow, but
there’s no reaction. Is it really, like, a nuclear reaction?
This place says it’s an amusement park, but it’s really just a reservoir.
That’s what I’d call it. As you pass the edge of the reservoir, you can
see thirteen duck-shaped boats, a claw crane game, and a broken
Whac-A-Mole. That’s it. There are cockroaches crawling around in
the claw game, and only one mole pops its head up out of the
holes. Boing! ka-chunk, boing! ka-chunk. It’s the most disturbing five
minutes of your life.
My boss, the one who put up the Yeoncheon Amusement Park sign, is
a little disturbed, too. He’d shut down some business he was running
and took over this amusement park with the leftover money. He
basically went bankrupt. The problem is his wife and daughter.
They’re in LA, he says. What can I do? Well, it’s just for the time
being, he says, but I know it is a big deal. Before I showed up, he’d
been living alone in the room behind the boat rental office. It’s a big
empty room that runs on night-rate budget electricity. A Christmas
card from his daughter was taped on the edge of a mirror. I-L-O-V-E-
Y-O-U-D-A-D-D-Y, it said in English, with a picture of her squinty
face stuck in the middle. Is that your daughter, sir? Huh? Yeah. The
boss’s daughter has a face like a mole, and that’s being generous. That
was the first time my heart went boing! ka-chunk, boing! ka-chunk at
the sight of a girl.
I’ve been here for three months now. I came in response to a help-
wanted ad. I’d applied for seventy-three jobs after I graduated, but
didn’t get any responses. Seventy-three jobs. Seventy. Three. Jobs. I
didn’t understand it. I guess you could say I felt like a mole whose
head won’t pop up because the machine is out of order. This country
is out of order. I keep thinking that. It’s serious. I know it’s hard for
anyone to get by, but there’s still that one little head that pops up. And
that one beast monopolizes the hammer seventy-three times. Boing!
ka-chunk, boing! ka-chunk, hearing that sound in the dark, it’s enough
to make anyone feel like they’re going crazy. You call this an
amusement park?
Even though I only graduated from a two-year college, I wouldn’t say
I don’t have the skills to get a real job. I majored in tourism
management, and my spoken English is above average. I even got
above a 900 on the TOEIC after a few tries. I was president of the
school’s dance club. Hey, I can do anything. That’s the attitude I have.
I’m healthy, and I served in the engineering corps during my military
service, so I’m no stranger to manual labor either. This isn’t just
depression talking—all I’m saying is that I’m not the type to get
rejected seventy-three times. That’s what I think anyway, no matter
what anyone else says. Is it really that bad? That’s what I’m telling
you. The truth is, that’s why I’m kind of disturbed myself. And that’s
why I need a place to work and a place to rest.
My mouth fell open in shock when I first got here. When I saw that an
amusement park was looking for employees, I was thinking of a big
place like Everland or Disneyland or something. It was toward the end
of spring, so the ugly place looked even more run-down. On top of
that, the boss told me later that he wasn’t the type of person to do this
sort of work anyway. But since everything he said sounded almost
uncannily like something I would say myself, I didn’t have much
more to add. I suddenly felt sorry for the place and its heavy
namesake, Yeoncheon, the “stream of fate.”
I said I’d do it. I took the job thinking it would be a break after all that
rejection, and I’d be able to study for the civil service exam while I
rested. The boss nodded enthusiastically, and I came back straight
away, all my stuff in tow. As the boss had nearly emptied out the
space, the cavernous back room was practically all mine. I’d make
rice, eat it with some simple banchan, have some ramen, listen to the
radio, do some laundry, sleep, stare endlessly at the surface of the
reservoir and the mountains off in the distance; and so began the day-
to-day of studying for the exam. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would
be. Every now and then there would be a lonely night when my youth
seemed like a light bulb burning on night-rate electricity. If I had any
complaints, that was about the extent of it.
So who the hell rides these boats?
That was my biggest question at first. The thing is what it is: a “duck
boat.” It feels strange the second you sit down. Plus, I wouldn’t really
call it a duck. And then you have to constantly pedal the thing. Plip-
plop plip-plop plip-plop, it’s not really as weird as it sounds. Anyway,
you get on and plip-plop plip-plop, float around on the water. Maybe
that’s all you want, and that’s all you get. I felt like I’d become an
idiot after one turn around the reservoir. It’s the twenty-first century;
do people really ride these things? And yet, a lot of people do. I’m
telling you, I was surprised too. The boss’s incredulous face made me
believe him. And to my surprise, he was telling the truth.
On the next holiday, as many people as could possibly come came to
ride the duck boats. There was a small town nearby, and a little further
away there was a development zone for one of those “new cities.”
Most of the customers were residents of the new city. Every time I
saw the sign that said twenty miles to Seoul, it reminded me of the
sign for the college I went to. The words “trade school” probably
always make you think of a place twenty miles from
somewhere. Plip-plop plip-plop plip-plop. Sometimes, when I look
out at the families or couples sitting in one of those duck boats, I feel
strangely, vaguely sympathetic. It’s—how should I put this—it’s like
looking at off-peak electricity flowing between bargain beings.
The boss shows up at the office without fail on Saturdays after
crisscrossing the country all week. Straightaway, he takes care of the
weekend receipts. After work on Sunday we go and grill meat at a
nearby barbecue place. This is where I first learned that pigs have
necks in addition to bellies. Go get some coffee from the machine.
Yes, sir. When I get back with the coffee, my weekly pay is always
lying on the table. Just use the weekday sales as walking-around
money, the boss would say. I laughed and he laughed. We could laugh
all we liked because the weekdays were slow. Weekday boat people
are . . .
. . . they’re always special people. I can’t say that I haven’t felt a little
scared. But there are people who come to a place like this on a
weekday to plip-plop plip-plop on a duck boat . . . lots of couples who
come here after spending the night at a nearby love-motel. A bald,
roly-poly, chubby, cross middle-aged man will pound on the boat
rental window. Give us an hour! Then the couple steers the boat as far
out as they can, and picks a spot where they can kiss or grope each
other. Since the hull of the duck boat is practically open, I can see
everything they do even from this distance. As I watch them, feet
still plip- plop plip-plop paddling as they passionately embrace, I feel
that miserly night-rate electricity buzzing in my heart.
Once someone even stole a boat, then plip-plop plip-plopped on a
little joyride around the reservoir. As soon as I put a hand on my hip
and blew the whistle, though, they ditched the boat on the opposite
shore and ran off. There was no way to find out who they were or
where they lived. I wanted to know if it was someone who really lived
somewhere, I mean, if they really existed.
And then there was the housewife who brought her twins. The two
little peas in a pod looked about five, and the mom had a look about
her like she was really well-educated. She thoroughly grilled me about
the hourly rate, the rules, and asked if we did proper safety
inspections. Taken aback (since I didn’t even know such things
existed), I answered that of course we did. These children are five
years old. She looked me straight in the eye as she spoke, making it
impossible for me to look her in the eye back. Yes, yes, Ma’am. I
fished around in a box and found two children’s life jackets. They fit
just right, luckily—and the stitching is especially strong, I told her as I
caught my breath, and then she was off, asking more weird questions.
They say you always have to warm up before you get in the water.
Only bad little children don’t do their warm-ups, right? OK, now the
teacher is going to show you how to do it. And she stared straight at
me. There was nothing I could do; I had to start stretching, as
commanded. The only warm-up exercises I knew were PT drills from
the army, but it wasn’t the place to quibble over such a thing. They got
on, and a second later the kids’ faces had turned as yellow as
forsythia.
There was also a time when, I don’t know if they were a couple, but
there was a pair of migrant workers. Where are you from? Ah . . . we
are from Bangladesh. They rented the boat and I thought they
were plip-plop plip-plopping around the reservoir just fine, but then I
heard a plip plip plip-plop plip before the sound suddenly stopped.
After a long while, the boat came back but the woman was crying. She
had incredibly large eyes, making her teary face look even sadder. Can
I help you? I asked. It felt like the power had gone out, even though it
was the middle of the afternoon. The poisonous yellow dust from over
the Gobi was really bad that day, making my eyes sting.
Some people ride boats on the edge of the world. Even if you try to
help, you’ll never know who they are or where they’re from. They
flow like budget electricity, going plip-plop plip-plop, plip.
Those are the boat people.
As the Bird Flies
The man came just as the monsoon season was ending. It was a
Wednesday morning, and he handed over his money without a word.
He was extremely well-groomed, probably about the same age as the
boss: middle-aged, but dressed in a suit that was too nice for a duck
boat ride. That’s thirty minutes, thunk thunk, I stamped a ticket and
handed it to him as he glanced down at the “new” English Reading
Volume 2, Revised Edition in front of me.
Are you a student, by chance?
Not really, sir . . . I’m planning to take the civil service exam.
Level Nine?
Yes, sir, the entry level.
He nodded, smiling genially. It was as genial as the word smile itself.
Without another word he got on the boat and pliiip, plop pliiip, pliop
plip, slowly headed out toward the center of the reservoir. And then,
he stopped. I couldn’t really see clearly because I was sitting at the
desk and he was backlit—he was unfolding something, probably a
newspaper. And then the man started reading. Squeaaak squeaaak.
The ducks, their heads tucked down, were scraping against each other
in the early summer breeze. What an incredibly drowsy scene.
And time passed. It was just a regular amount of time, but it felt like a
very, very long time. I closed my book and yawned. Stretching, I
suddenly got the most ominous feeling. The world, it was too quiet. In
the bright glare at the far end of my field of vision, I could see the one
lonely duck boat.
He was dead.
We can assume that he probably took the pills he brought with him
after he finished reading the newspaper, the police told us later. Life is
really nothing but the twists of fate. If I hadn’t been trained by those
seventy-three rejection letters, I probably wouldn’t have been able to
handle it and would’ve passed out right then and there. That thought
did cross my mind. The man had a strange smile on his face that
wasn’t quite peaceful, and wasn’t quite sad. It actually looked a lot
like the expression on the duck boat’s beak, with its peeling
paint. Plip-plop plip-plop, plip, I hurried back to the office and called
the boss. What?! The boss asked a few questions about what
happened, then told me what to do. Is he wearing a life jacket? No, sir,
he wasn’t wearing one. Then put one on him and call the police. I’ll
come up right away. I went back to the plip-plopping boat, and
strained to put the life jacket on the dead man. I couldn’t look straight
at him as I finished my job, hazily recalling the moves and commands
from my PT exercises one at a time. One two three, one one two three
two, and so the work of doing running squats and turns and standing
again was almost done. I was so drenched in sweat by the end that I
looked like I’d taken an entire rainy season and dumped it over my
head.
The police investigation was almost over. A suicide note was found in
the man’s pocket. He had run a small to mid-sized business, gone
bankrupt, and was on the run from his creditors. His family was
falling apart. He’d done his best, everything he could really, but there
was nothing that could be done, and he was sorry, he’d said. The
police didn’t press us very hard, but they persisted in asking whether
the situation was by the book and in compliance with the law; if there
had been any negligence or the like. In the end they left with a little
hush money. The boss, he seemed like he’d changed after that. He
would stare off into space, and started smoking a lot more, even
though he’d been saying before that he was thinking about quitting.
Wholesale, or real estate deals, whatever it was he was chasing his
friends all over the country for, he didn’t do that anymore either.
Haven’t you been spending a lot of time here these days, sir? I asked
as I boiled up some ramen. That could’ve been me. That’s all he said.
And then a lot changed. First, it was hard for me to get my rest
because the boss was always there, and then I started getting nervous
every time a customer came. This is a perfect place to commit suicide.
One of the detectives had left us with that, and really, the more you
thought about it, the more true it seemed. And then, not a single
interesting person showed up for ages. It’s a boat ride twenty
miles away from anywhere. You don’t do it because it’s fun, you do it
because it isn’t fun—that’s what I started thinking. Whatever it was
that the boss was supposed to do with his life kept getting screwed up,
and maybe he was becoming the kind of person who does this kind of
work. And I just wanted to go out to the reservoir and skip
rocks. Plip-plop, plip-plop. The ratio of passing scores to total
applications for the civil service exam broke the records that year.
Ripples, ripples, across the stream, plip-plop, plip-plop, I hummed the
children’s ditty to myself.
I guess my boss decided to stay permanently. He asked around and
brought in a coffee vending machine one day. There are two choices
for tea, too: yuzu or Job’s tears, that’s what the rental company people
said. And I said, yuzu please, the boss crowed. He put up a bunch of
floodlights and speakers on the roof of the office, making the area
glaringly bright. We were eaten alive by mosquitos under the new
lights, but it did feel fresher and brighter, like it was better somehow.
We took turns putting calamine lotion on each other’s mosquito bites
that night as we talked about the future of the park.
I’m going to try to fix the Whac-A-Mole tomorrow.
That mole thing?
Yes, sir.
Leave it. Let’s just throw it away.
The next morning, the boss and I started repairing and cleaning the
thirteen duck boats. We replaced seven pedals and piped silicone into
all the little cracks and crevices on the hulls. After we’d scrubbed off
all the dirt and polished them, the ducks started looking much
more . . . ducklike. I took special care wiping down 47-R and applied
yellow paint to its awkward, naked beak. It’s the one the man was in.
The feel of putting a life jacket on a dead person still stuck to my
hands like oily paint. That’s why.
Is there anything you can’t do? my boss said as he took a drag on his
cigarette. Well, I was in the engineering corps in the army, remember?
So you were. What happened to the new business, sir? I looked into
it . . . but there was no way to make it work. I see. Squinty mole. The
boss’s daughter popped into my head and I shook it clear. Boing, ka-
chunk boing, ka-chunk. Water striders were diligently teleporting
themselves across the murky surface of the water.
This is a good song.
The boss suddenly closed his eyes. I really loved this song when I was
young. A sad melody gushed from the speakers on the roof as the
boss’s sharp voice hummed along. What song is it, sir? It’s the famed
Simon and Garfunkel, of course. “El condor pasa” . . . The condor
flies by . . .? The condor. Flies past.
I’m not sure if it was real, but right then, a bird burst out of the bushes
near our room and flew off toward the forest. Come to think of it, I’d
never once seen a condor fly. I’d never even seen a common wild
goose fly. Why do condors migrate, I wonder. I never had any reason
to know what they eat to survive, either. What would I do if something
like that turns up on the civil service exam? I thought to myself,
suddenly. Well, that’s not the only reason, but random questions like
that were always popping into my head. Why does a condor fly away?
The boss stopped humming long enough to ask as he lit another
cigarette. Do they have a choice? They just go somewhere warm when
it’s cold.
The song was over.
Global Coalition of Duck Boat Citizens
Ella, Mary, and Alice: we got three typhoons in a row, a rare
occurrence. Ella and Mary turned toward Japan, but Alice hit Korea
hard. The rain pounded down like stilettos doing the cha-cha. One,
two, cha-cha-cha, one, two, cha-cha-cha, until late into the night. The
boss and I had to go out and secure the boats. Are you pulling? Yes,
sir! I know it always rains the day you wash your car, but what the
hell is this? You’re completely right, sir. Pull! Yes, sir, I’m pulling.
Bob, bob, the yellow beaks nodded in front of us as 47-R stared at me.
Rain pelted the duck bodies. The night was a dream sequence of wind,
water, and the cha-cha-cha, with a little human effort mixed in.
I woke at dawn. Must urinate. My bladder, taut and swollen with
water like the reservoir, was filled to bursting. It was the beer from
last night. The boss’s snoring followed me to the bathroom like an
annoying puppy. Cha-cha-cha. Outside, the rain kept falling. The
stream of my piss, steamy and seemingly endless like the rainy season,
passed through my system and into the earth.
Thirsty. I opened the fridge to find three lonely bottles of beer. My
head throbbed at the sight of those brown bottles. I grabbed some
coins, thinking let’s have some coffee instead then. I could stand
under the eaves next to the coffee vending machine and watch the
rain, too. I stood there and drank the coffee. My life was standing
there too, hum drum, drum. Maybe that’s why it suddenly felt even
clearer. Could I really make it in a government job? I crumpled the
question up with the paper cup and tossed it, but the cup hit the edge
of the trash can and fell to the ground. Brick. I could hear something
on the shore, or whatever the shore of a reservoir is called, a low
murmur cutting through the rain. It was weak, but it sounded a lot like
human conversation. So I stared searchingly into the darkness. I
couldn’t see anything, but I definitely at least felt the murmuring. I
perked up my ears and leaned in closer. The murmuring continued in
some foreign language. There were several people.
I ran inside and shut the door and the windows with a screech. I woke
the boss. Bolting upright, he babbled some nonsense about how he
hadn’t been able to transfer the money this month yet, and what’s to
be done. His forehead was drenched in a cold sweat. I’m so sorry, I
apologized, but . . . and I laid out the whole story for my now fully
awake boss. He lit a cigarette, his forehead all furrowed like Donald
Duck’s. There was a furniture factory nearby, and there were rumors
buzzing all over town that the foreign workers hadn’t received their
pay for months. We managed to come up with that much between us.
Let’s go see, the boss said as he stubbed out his cigarette. Slickers on
and each gripping a two-by-four, we went around the bushes, carefully
approaching the other side of the reservoir. We could hear the
murmuring in the darkness again. Treading gingerly on the wet sand,
we went up to the top of the hill, thinking we’d strike from behind.
The dim dawn heaved itself over the muddy sand of the hill, the
ground sucking at our feet as we walked.
Aah.
Our mouths fell open. There before us was a scene like you could
never imagine. Our hoods puffed out with the wind, then flattened
down under another sheet of rain. Whatever it was, the scene before us
crashed around inside our slickers, like, in our souls. The reservoir
was packed with duck boats as far as the eye could see. Even with the
basin swollen to overflowing, you couldn’t see the water for all the
floating ducks. Bob, bob, each one nodding its lowered beak up and
down—like a swarm of birds, hunkering down against the gusts of
rain. Holding tight to our two-by-fours, we walked slowly toward our
now unfamiliar reservoir.
How do you do?
We didn’t initiate the conversation—they did. There were two to three
people seated in each four-person duck, and they were all foreigners.
The man who spoke first looked South American, but he spoke fluent
English. A flock of workers looked on. Uh, is that so . . . Well, when
you put it that way . . . We’re well, but it’s just that . . . And well . . .
it’s also not that . . . you know? The boss had those meaningful words
to offer in response to the man’s simple “How do you do.” The man
smiled brightly. Not wanting to seem awkward, we smiled back.
But what’s going on here? And where did you come from? The boss,
businessman that he was, spoke English pretty well. The man didn’t
answer, but had a lengthy exchange with a comrade in a different boat.
He seemed to be asking for some kind of agreement. The other man
nodded. We have come from Argentina. We are the Global Coalition
for Duck Boat Citizens. Coalition? Of duck boats? The boss’s brow
furrowed again. He looks like a Donald Duck transformer toy, I
thought. The Argentines looked alarmed as well.
We led a few of the Argentines to our room. They seemed very
grateful when we got them some coffee from the machine. Another
man offered that they’d been battered by the heavy rains for two days.
He was the younger brother of the man who’d spoken to us; his name
was Juan. The older brother was José, and he introduced himself as
the leader of the group. They’d lost their way because of the typhoon,
and requested our assistance. Is that so? But I still cannot understand
this. You must be very surprised, indeed . . . Juan ventured cautiously.
We are going to China. We are looking for work, of course. There is
work there . . . so the people say. And what about the duck boats? And
this coalition? Ah yes, that . . . José opened up again. There are people
who cannot fly on planes, yes? To start with, although there are
economy seats, the fare is still very expensive, and then there are the
visa issues . . . it is perhaps good for you to think of our situation in
this way. Well, that’s that . . . and it’s just that . . . but it’s not just that,
said the boss’s face even as he nodded sympathetically. In a word, he
thought José was a crook.
We worked for the Green Giant. Yes, that horrible company that
makes canned produce. My father and my uncle worked there, too.
But one day the factory closed. When we asked about it, we found that
the US headquarters had started to build a factory in China many years
ago. Then one morning we were all unemployed. In the beginning we
protested the change, but chaos erupted in our country, and we fell
into difficult times. And now it has been some time with no resolution
for us. Since that time, we have done every job that can be imagined,
but the work is disappearing. That is why we take the duck boats.
Those duck boats.
We learned about them from a friend from Peru, Juan continued. In
Argentina, there were fewer and fewer jobs, but many told us there
were new jobs in new industries in the developed countries and other
developing countries. We just needed to go there. But we do not have
the money for airplanes or boat fare. Our friend at the Green Giant,
Fernando from Peru, by chance one day he showed us how to use the
duck boats. He took one to New Mexico to work at a farm and
returned to Argentina. So he became the first of the Duck Boat
Citizens.
How do you mean, he took one?
He flew, of course.
José looked on, not batting an eye. And that is the thing, the secret
function of the duck boats. After Fernando told us his story, we were
in a similar situation and learned the secret of the boats. As for
Fernando, he had been in a very difficult situation, and by chance had
been sitting in a duck boat reading a newspaper when he read an
article about a farm in New Mexico that was in trouble at the time
because they had no workers. At that time Argentina was also in
trouble for there were no jobs. How wonderful if I could leave, maybe
I could go there and survive . . . he began to pedal and all at once the
duck was floating in midair. Everything was very simple after that.
The boss didn’t have much to say. There isn’t much you can say about
a story like that. José and Juan and the boss smoked their cigarettes.
José, who said he’d worked in Vietnam two months before, offered
me some Vietnamese cigarettes. I am fine, thank you. They’d passed
through Japan on the way here too, he said, offering me a pack of
Japanese cigarettes. I couldn’t refuse and accepted the pack. S-E-V-E-
N-S-T-R-I-K-E, it read in English. SEVEN STRIKE. At some point
the rain had stopped. There are still many jobs in Korea, yes? Juan
asked. The boss exhaled a long stream of smoke before speaking.
There are, it seems.
Thank you very much for your help. And with that, José took Juan and
the rest of their family back to the boats. The boss looked like he was
thinking something over, and he suddenly looked to José, who was
already sitting in the boat and asked, How do you like living like this?
José smiled and said—Ah, yes . . . well, since you ask that way . . . I
would also ask how it is, but that is, then, something . . . and so I
would also . . . I do not know if it is not right or how it is . . . it is
something like this, you know—looking like he might say any one of
those things, he didn’t say a word. There is but one world. Juan
jumped in abruptly, winking with his index finger in the air. José gave
the signal and they started pedaling in unison. In an instant, the
reservoir became an opera house, trapping, diffusing, and echoing the
sound around us in a beautiful chorus.
Plip-plop plip-plop plip-plop plip-plop . . .
And the duck boats flew up into the air. José and Juan waved to us.
We waved back automatically, but we were stunned. Eventually the
boats were no more than little dots in the sky like a flock of wild geese
getting into formation. The quivering V moved steadily onward and
shrank in the direction of China. I pulled out the Seven Strikes and lit
one.
Open Wide and Say “Aah”
And so three years passed. After that night we became a public Duck
Boat Coalition stopover. There was a network of people who rode
duck boats and, true to its name, the Coalition of Global Citizens
overflowed with a variety of people from a variety of countries. We
met six families from Vietnam headed to the US, two Iraqis headed to
Japan, seventy Peruvians going to Beijing, and we even met nine East
Timorese who came here to Korea. The nine East Timorese docked
their duck and worked here for a year before moving on to the
Philippines. Business wasn’t bad either. We made a little money on
the docking fee, and we sold coffee and snacks, basic stuff like ramen
and hamburgers. English was standard for the Global Citizens so it
was pretty easy. The plip-plop plip-plop opera that sounded so strange
at first was all too familiar now. But . . .
There must be a lot of people in the world who can’t speak English,
right? There must be. The boss and I discussed this as we watched
the plip-plop plip-plop drama unfold again, and I would think to
myself that life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Plip-plop plip-plop
plip-plop plip, I completely bombed the exam that year. The odds of
passing were a hundred and forty to one. 140:1! Maybe I should just
take one of those ducks and disappear. But it was the boss who ended
up with the duck boat. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything left for me
to do here, he said as he climbed into R-47, and I couldn’t do anything
to stop him. He left the park to me, and he plip-plop plip-plopped over
to America. That was two years ago. And, of course, things changed
after that.
I bit the dust on the exam the next year too. What’s wrong with this
stupid machine? I opened up the Whac-A-Mole machine in a corner of
the warehouse, and peered at its insides with single-minded
determination. In short, it was a crappy machine. This is the kind of
junk they sell these days. I patted each mole on the head and lit a
cigarette. S-E-V-E-N-S-T-R-I-K-E. I decided that day to give up on
the civil service exam and repainted the park sign with new
determination. It looked like seven moles had dragged it through
seven different tunnels, it was so dirty. So I started to feel sorry for old
Yeoncheon Amusement Park again.
José came back. He only had a few cousins with him this time, but I
didn’t see Juan anywhere. He was detained; caught by the Public
Security Office. What can you do? That is how it is, you know. José
smiled as usual. One of his cousins was heavily pregnant. They were
on their way to America for the sake of the baby. The boss is in
America right now, too. Is that so? Yes, it is so.
Every now and then the boss would call or email to let me know how
things were going. In no time he and his family in L.A. were aboard
R-47 together, and he told me recently that it wasn’t such a bad life.
What do you think? I look different, don’t I? The attachment was a
picture of a family eating hamburgers at Burger King. They were
happy. And the boss, he’d sprouted a little paunch like he was the king
of the moles. Looks good, I’d respond, then tell him about the park.
Little by little, the park was finding its way. I used the money the boss
left to get a bunch of different fish to stock the reservoir, and started
working on my idea to turn the park into a combined space with a
fishing area and amusement park. The more I put in, the more people
came. As for me, I started paying into a pension fund. Really, you
have to contribute to one. The national pension fund representative
sputtered at me, practically foaming at the mouth as he told me all
about my comfortable retirement. It really covers everything, I thought
to myself as I nodded at him. At least for me, there were the twelve
duck boats that I could ride at any time.
The boss told me they moved to Canada, then Brazil, then back to the
US, and that he’d found a place in Shanghai not too long ago. He
added that they were going to stop by on the way there, and asked if I
could get a few things for him: some food, eyeglasses, and a few other
things. And of course, I know a global citizen has to be sensitive to
prices and exchange rates. Don’t worry about it, I wrote back. Just for
the boss, plip-plop plip plopping ten thousand miles to get here, I
traveled the twenty miles to Seoul to buy his things. Driving the boss’s
van up the highway, I encountered the forsythia and azaleas on their
way up north. Spring again.
I woke up in the middle of the night to an awful racket. I could hear it
clearly, and it was clearly a sound I knew. I went outside. I could see
the silhouette of a lonely duck boat standing apart from the others in
the dark night. I approached with my five big shopping bags. My heart
started pounding strangely the moment I saw the “R-47” stamped on
the back of the hull. But the boat looked a little different. First, you
couldn’t see the interior at all, and the duck’s face looked a little
strange. It was same bright yellow paint as before, but the bottom of
the beak looked a lot bigger. It looked more like a pelican or
something. I took in the little changes here and there, when an opening
like a manhole opened on the pelican’s back and a head poked out. It
was the boss. How have you been, sir? Ha ha, well enough. The
family is asleep. With just his head sticking out he smiled and lit up a
cigarette. I got one out too. Smoke plumed up like the down on the
back of a pelican’s head. It was a nice spring night.
The boat looks really different.
Doesn’t it? We were cold and thought we needed a lot more cargo
space.
Did you say cargo space?
Not a word. Don’t you know how much stuff we need?
Of course.
That’s how it goes. Hang on a minute.
And the boss went back inside the boat. I didn’t know if his mole of a
daughter had woken up, if his wife was sick, or what was going on in
there. You never know with this life, that’s why. It felt like it was just
me and the pelican alone under the bright spring moon, waiting until
he popped up to smoke another cigarette. Standing there with bags
stuffed with ham and cheese and seaweed and other goodies, I looked
at R-47 and felt the urge to say these words:
OK, open wide and say, “Aah.”
“Ah Haseyo, Pelikan” © Park Min-gyu. By arrangement with the
author. Translation © 2014 by Jenny Wang Medina. All rights
reserved.
Park Min-gyu
Born in South Korea in 1968, Park Min-gyu debuted in 2003. As his writing
style was so new, it sent shockwaves through the Korean literary world.
Unusual metaphors and descriptions, sentences and paragraphs that ignored the
rules of grammar, narrative structures that broke down logical causality, and
characters that behaved in exaggerated ways like cartoon characters—there was
no aspect of his writing that wasn’t unconventional. Though his unusual fiction
style earns him his self-designated title of “ruleless hybrid writer,” Park’s
writing is entertaining and accessible rather than difficult to understand. His
novels include: Legend of Earth’s Heroes (2003), The Sammi Superstars’ Last
Fan Club (2003), Ping Pong (2006), Pavane for a Dead Princess (2009). His
short fictions are: Castella (2005) and Double (2010). He has won many
literary awards including Munhakdonge New Writer’s Award (2003), the
Hankyoreh Literary Award (2003), the Yi Hyo-seok Literary Award (2007),
the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award (2009