The previous year, when they’d returned to work after the summer holiday, the director asked Ayami how her break had been, and she replied that it had been very good. They acted as though they’d only just met, or didn’t know each other very well.
Ayami explained that she generally spent her holidays with her wealthy aunt, who lived alone. Her aunt lived in South East Asia, a six-hour flight south, in a sandstone villa with a pool in the back garden. Early in the morning when Ayami went out to the pool, the surface of the water would be dotted with centipedes, spiders, even young snakes, alongside the unidentified dregs of black night. It never occurred to her to get rid of the insects, the various alien substances – she just dived into the water and started swimming. The water was a little chilly, but got gradually warmer towards the centre of the pool. Ayami’s aunt rented the spare rooms out to summer holidaymakers, something only possible thanks to the Malaysian maid, Mimi, who did all the odd jobs (Ayami’s aunt being over eighty). When Ayami felt inclined she would help Mimi make the beds and clean the rooms, but most of the time she spent lazing around, or going for strolls along the beach, feeling the coarse grey sand abrade the soles of her bare feet. Sometimes she would have a coffee and muffin at the McDonald’s in the centre of town, and in the evenings head to the hotel’s open-air bar, to sip a cocktail in the shade of the coconut palms.
‘A wealthy aunt!’ the director exclaimed. ‘There’s one in every family. I had one myself, though that was a long time ago. Wealthy, and also incredibly strict. She made us children walk on tiptoe in the house, so there would be “no unnecessary noise”. There were three grand pianos but we didn’t dare touch them, not even to tinkle the keys. For her, you see, even music was “unnecessary noise”. She passed away a long time ago.’
Ayami showed the director a photograph taken in the city where her aunt lived. In the photo, Ayami is standing on the far side of a road, wearing a coarsely starched white cotton hanbok with no detailing or decoration. Her thick black hair is secured in a low ponytail, and rough hemp sandals poke out from beneath the hem of her skirt. Since the focal point of the photograph is not Ayami but the building behind her, its huge facade decorated with carved reliefs, the faces of the people in it have come out very blurred; it’s unlikely that anyone would be able to recognise Ayami without being told. It’s also impossible to tell whether the effect is deliberate.
‘That building,’ the director said, ‘is that the municipal museum?’
‘No,’ said Ayami, ‘it’s the Hilton hotel.’
It was entirely down to the director that Ayami started taking German lessons. On her second day working at the theatre, the director had told her about a woman he’d known since university, who’d married straight after graduating, spent time as an exchange student with her husband in the same city as the director, but hadn’t been able to complete her graduate degree. Now back in Korea, she didn’t have a steady job and, after an abrupt divorce a while ago, urgently needed to earn some money. She’d hurriedly applied for a position teaching English at a cram school, but because she was older and didn’t have any experience they were reluctant to give her a permanent position. The money she did earn there wasn’t enough to cover her living costs, so she also gave private lessons at her home, not just in English but also French and German.
‘One of Picasso’s ex-girlfriends earned a living teaching French to American women in Paris,’ the director said. ‘It must be a classic step to take, one that transcends the ages.’
‘Which girlfriend?’ Ayami asked, but she’d already decided to take the director up on his suggestion and go for private German lessons (or French, it didn’t really matter. At any rate, she had the sense not to expect that either would be of any practical use).
‘Fernande Olivier,’ the director said. The name meant nothing to Ayami.
The director’s friend was small, slight, and unfailingly elegant, even down to her waist-length hair. Her face, though, was severely marked from a childhood bout of smallpox, making it impossible to estimate her age on a first meeting. Her skin was mottled, almost as though it had been burned. She had a strangely rolling walk, like a boat bobbing on gentle waves. She generally kept to the shadows, but when necessary would extend her right hand, its pale skin unmarked, into the light.
After the divorce was settled, she’d moved to an area three or four bus stops away from the audio theatre. Although the neighbourhood was technically downtown, its location up a steep hill and general air of dilapidation meant the rent was cheap. The woman occupied a one-room dwelling at the very end of an alley, where the sunlight never quite reached; it was a fair walk up the hill from the nearest bus stop. Ayami went there for a ninety-minute German lesson every day after work. Rather than have a conversation, they preferred to sit and listen to each other read from a book. Perhaps this was why, despite taking lessons for almost two years, Ayami’s German showed scant signs of improvement.
The German-language teacher always made them a cup of tea. Hair pulled back from her forehead, she put her small brown feet up on a chair and sipped at the hot drink. She fished out the piece of lemon peel from her tea and rubbed it on the back of her right hand. The German-language teacher was like a shadow glimpsed through frosted glass. When she wordlessly reached out to pass Ayami her cup, her hand was a pale gleam emerging into the light of a midsummer evening. On one recent occasion, their reading was interrupted by a radio located somewhere inside the room.
‘What’s that sound?’ Ayami whispered.
‘The radio.’ The German-language teacher’s voice was not dissimilar to the one that had disturbed Ayami.
‘Why switch the radio on just now?’
‘It must have come on by itself.’
‘Well, switch it off again.’
‘I can’t, it’s impossible.’
‘Why?’
‘The radio … the switch is broken, you see. So it turns itself on, and then turns itself off again.’
‘Just pull out the plug.’
‘I can’t, it’s impossible.’
‘Why is it impossible?’
‘I … because I’m frightened of electrical sound. It’s frightening, like gas, or knives, or lightning.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Ayami looked at the German-language teacher and nodded. They both returned to their tea. Beads of sweat formed on their foreheads. The room’s sole window opened directly onto the wall of the dead-end alleyway, thereby serving absolutely no purpose, and the humid air collected in the house’s dark interior, so dense you could almost have swept it up with a broom. The scent of yellow sphagnum wafted from the fishbowl – the goldfish had died long ago – to mingle with the sweet smell of the mould blooming on the lowest part of the walls. The house might as well have been a temple for the worship and propagation of tropical heat – heat that swelled like a bog within those four walls. Certain agonising apparitions were bred in this place, a mental state known as monsoon disease. Given that the narrow room had neither air conditioning nor a fan, if you opened the window hot air heavier than a sodden quilt rushed in, clagging your pores like the wet slap of raw meat, but with it closed the oxygen would quickly evaporate, disappearing at a alarming rate until the air was filled with nothing but heat.