A hairdresser in Euljiro said, as she cut the ropes of my hair down to a fuzz above my skull, “I’ve never cut African hair before. It’s just amazing!” and her apprentices gathered round to stare and fumble with the falling knots.
A department store at Myeongdong. I stole a T-shirt, jogging bottoms, thick padded jumper with a grey hood. I stole a smart white shirt, suit trousers, a pair of trainers, a pair of black leather shoes. On the street outside, I bought a slice of pineapple served on a stick from an icy slab, and green-tea ice cream from the doughnut shop beneath the noodle bar. From a stall pushed through the streets on two tiny, creaking wheels, I bought three mobile phones. From an international bookshop above the subway station, I bought a travel guide and a phrasebook.
My hotel was “traditional”; bed mats in bright neon yellow and green rolled out across the floor, Wi-Fi and seventy channels on the TV. By night, red neon crosses blazed from the Protestant churches that lined the railway tracks out of the city. In Itaewon I found hamburgers and American service personnel. I joined them for a meal of ribs and beer, and there was a private who looked at me with wide, terrified, lustful eyes, and he said he was afraid the continued presence of US troops on Korean soil would never allow for peace between the divided nations of the peninsula, and that socio-economic forces were now a greater source of disunity than history herself, and that was strange, because history was a powerful mother, in his opinion, ma’am.
In the morning, my face was on Interpol’s most wanted, and more quietly being circulated through the darknet. From a dealer in Yeoksam, I bought three USB drives the size of a fingernail, copied the base code of Perfection onto them, and sent them to PO boxes around the world.
whatwherewhy: I’m heading south, towards Namwon. Find me there.
Byron14: Regretfully, I will comply.
A train ride from Seoul, heading south, towards the sea.
A child cheered as the screen showing our speed surpassed 300km/h. A woman in a grey uniform got an electric shock off the door as her flat-heeled shoes rubbed static off the carpet. On the cuttings by the railway track were squeezed vegetable gardens and tiny, two-person paddies, plastic bags tangling on the fences; cars went backwards along the motorway.
A man in a sharp blue suit sat down next to me, stared at me for a long while, though I was avoiding his gaze, and at last said, “Jesus rubs you.”
I met his eye, waiting to hear what Jesus might do next. He gave me a leaflet. On the front was a picture of the Saviour in a brown robe and white tunic, holding a startled-looking goose. Behind him two lambs grazed peacefully, and a rabbit nestled against his feet. The title of the piece was “How To Escape Hell And Live Free From Mental Illness”.
“Jesus rubs you,” repeated the man firmly, pushing the paper into my hand. “Jesus rubs everyone.”
So saying, he rose from his seat, and went to spread the word of Jesus’ rubbing in his more fluent native tongue.
Mokpo: an industrial city, an ugly port, wide belching roads heavy with lorries, buildings of grey, roofs of iron, a noticeable decline in the number of women on the streets.
The receptionist stared at me as I signed into the hotel, then blurted, “American?”
“Yes.”
“Come here for husband?”
“No.”
“Come here for lover?”
“No.”
Her face crinkled up in bewilderment. “Why you come here?” she asked at last. “I think here no good for you.”
At night, in a fast-food dim sum bar off a pedestrianised shopping street, I met a passport dealer whose handle was cantopopisdead. The passport she sold me was French, and I’d requested German.
“This good!” she exclaimed, shovelling pork dumplings between her lips, chewing with mouth open, eyes wide, cheeks bulging with meat, like a woman who isn’t sure she will ever eat again. “French good, good work, good passport, you see!”
I considered arguing the point, and decided against it. The passport would be good for one trip and then I’d destroy it, get to the Schengen zone or into the US and pick up something better, from a more reliable source.
Outside a restaurant specialising in fried rooster feet, a waiter struck up a conversation in halting English.
“I don’t get to practise very much,” he explained, one word at a time. “It is so good that you are come here.”
I stayed and talked with him for half an hour, until the mistress of the restaurant came out and shouted at him for neglecting his work, and he ran indoors, no saving face before this matron’s wrath.
A woman with Perfection, snubbing the food her partner offered her at the café where I ordered breakfast.
A man with Perfection, updating the app on his phone, a sports bag slung over his back, arms bulked up with protein shakes, chest heaving, sweat on the back of his neck.
A teenager with Perfection, looking at the prices for the perfect haircut.
Open your eyes: it is everywhere.
At night, I sat at a laptop in the hotel, while in the background a twenty-four-hour TV channel showed a top-down view of a go board, over which hands sometimes moved, laying a counter, removing a piece, while off-shot voices “Aaahhed” and “Oooohhed” and sometimes were moved to applaud the elegance of the play.
Byron14: I’m in Namwon.
whatwherewhy: I’m in Mokpo.
Byron14: I do not appreciate being led a dance.
whatwherewhy: Come to Mokpo; get a mobile phone.
I lie awake, and do not sleep.
I count down from a thousand.
In my dreams Luca Evard is dead, and I killed him.
Chapter 55
The ferry port at Mokpo. Grim, single-storey buildings surrounded by empty car parks. Distant yellow cranes loading and unloading the freight ships. Tourists heavy with bags going to Dadohaehaesang national park, to its mountains and its beaches, its spa resorts bathed in the light of the setting sun.
I call the number that Byron14 has given me and tell her to come to the ferry port.
Her voice, when she answers, is refined, English, soft, and reminds me of Gauguin. I am brisk — too brisk — and something northern comes out in my voice. I sound frightened, didn’t realise that was what I am.
Byron14 is easy to spot, as she waits in the terminal. She and I both stand out, but I wait on the other side of the car park with a pair of binoculars, watch the windows, call her mobile phone and say, “Now let’s have the real Byron14, please.”
The woman who answers is tall, blonde, her hair wrapped up high in a bun, smart suit, two-inch heels. She explains, “I am Byron.”
“No you’re not,” I reply. “Byron was always going to send someone in her place, it was inevitable. I’d like to speak to the real Byron, please.”
“I am Byron…” the woman tries again, then stops, listening to a sound I cannot hear, then smiles at nothing much, shakes her head, hangs up, walks away.
A moment later, my phone rings, and a different voice, inflected with a hint of something older, warmer, real, says, “Would you be the young lady watching the ferry port from the car park?”
I lower the binoculars, nod at nothing much, looking around but not seeing her. “Would you be Byron14?”
“That I would.”
“I’m boarding the 14.03; would you care to join me?”
“I don’t care much for these antics, whatwherewhy. We had an understanding, and this sniffs of abuse.”
“The 14.03,” I repeat. “I’ll text it to you, just in case you forget.”
I hang up. Rudeness doesn’t bother me.