Of Shapes & Shadows June 2005   Click to view Table of Contents Click to view photo gallery Click to view cover story

Fiction

Alleys
By Darrin McCloskey

 
It’s late in the afternoon. Fiveish? Probably, but he’s not sure. Somewhere he lost his watch and he’s been telling time through shadows, shadows that now lie on the street like dark pools, inching towards him in a night that is pulling like a strong tide.

“Yeah,” he thinks out loud to himself. “It must be fiveish.”

What a strange jumble of thoughts he had today; so many ideas came to him, but just as many departed; so many visions he had, but he drew just as many blanks; so many words, but in such a cacophony; so many starts, so many stops; so many promises, so many broken; so many of so much that has proved to be of so little importance. So many, ‘So much for this.’ And so many, ‘So much for that.’

“So what!” he says to himself. “So what! So what! So what?”

“God, where in the hell am I going?” he asks himself.

This morning he awoke on the floor of a Korean bathhouse - the soju from the night before seeping from the pores of his skin, and mixing with the pools of putrid sweat that lay on his body. His flesh glistened in juxtaposition to the repulsive, almost vinegary odor that hung over him. The moisture in the air began to tickle the sides of his parched throat. He coughed lightly, hoping to appease the tickle, but only worsened it. He began to cough harder, raspier; his body jumping, heaving until he felt the arm that had been draped across his body like a wet tissue quickly slide off his naked belly and disappear into the shadows. He stood up, cleared his throat one final time, found his composure, but not his towel. Showered. Dressed. Departed.

And he walked. He walked into the burning noontime sun. Pasty faced and painfully aware of it, he walked through the alleys, twisting and turning, making every attempt not to end up in a throng of people. One wrong turn could have him standing in the midst of Myong-dong or Insa-Dong. He wouldn’t be able to handle the crowd today, so he remained in the alleys - his clothing and shoes suggesting to the world that he didn’t make it home the night before. He walked, twisting and turning in lefts and rights, ups and downs, overs and unders, insides and outs, short-cuts and roundabouts.

“Today,” he thinks to himself. “Today I will stay in the alleys. But, today I will have a purpose. I will have direction. Today, I will locate the Seoul Tower, and today I will climb the hill that surrounds it.”

And that’s what he sets out to do; to locate the Seoul Tower without leaving the labyrinth of alleys.

But then he stumbles upon the market, that very same market he stumbles upon every Saturday ­ always around the same time. It’s as if he were programmed to end up there. But of course he realizes that he will always end up there because he takes the same path week after week after week. And the feeling is always the same ­ disorientation. He stands in the midst of a hardware desert, completely entangled in a world of hinges and hooks, panels and tiles, gauges and gaskets, gears and pinions, scraps of metal, plumbing fixtures, and DRY, DRY, DRY! It’s all so arid to him, so foreign. He feels lost in this world. Even if he were back in Canada this would be foreign to him; even in his own country, this would be the market of the obscure.

But then something familiar, something with relevance. It’s a machine ­ a generator or compressor, he’s not sure. But he has seen it before. He has seen the machine before, along with the group of men surrounding it. He has stood in this very spot before, and he has watched them work with the machine, attempting to get it started. And he has stood in this pose before, cupping his chin like someone who has a million ideas but doesn’t have a single clue. He has stood here before, like a genius, or idiot, perplexed with their perplexity.

Today, however, is different. Today there is an event. A stranger emerges from the crowd and approaches the machine. He pulls a few plugs, manipulates a few wires, pulls a cord, and the machine jumps, coughs, sputters, and then settles into a smooth flowing ‘hummmmmmm.’ The men jump as well. Delighted. Ecstatic. They clap their hands and fall into a chorus of "Kamsa-hamnidas.” And then the stranger dips into the crowd and disappears. Our friend tries to follow him but he can’t keep up and he ends up journeying deeper and deeper into this strange and obscure desert of hardware. And before he knows it, he has lost all purpose. He forgets who or what he was looking for, and he stands alone, bewildered.

“I must have a purpose,” he says to himself. “I have to have a purpose,” he repeats.

So he develops a need, fabricates a goal.

A short while later, wandering aimlessly through a labyrinth of alleys while carrying a bag of pipe fittings and a three quarter inch drill bit, he wonders what time it is.