Chapter 16

Chapter 16

A long, light siren announcing lunchtime rang.

"Hoo. So it's lunch now."

Even in cool autumn weather the sun beating down was hot, and I suffered quite a bit.

Under the sunlight the heat rises fast, and go only under shade and the temperature drops fast and it gets chilly cold, strange weather.

Cutting the forklift engine and pulling the key, I headed for the tap set on one side of the plant.

Black oil and iron dust, no knowing when it had gotten on, were thick here and there on the work uniform.

I brushed the clothes, and scrubbed hands and arms hard with industrial gel soap mixed with rough grit.

Then I walked to the outdoor rest area.

"Jeong-su! Come here and sit!"

Peter called me from a distance and waved gladly.

That friend really seems to have a good temperament.

At his table, Foreman Gary and the workers who had matched hands and feet with me in zone B all morning were waiting for me.

From the mood, everyone seemed to have been talking about me.

Carl, who had picked a fight rashly in the morning and been shamed, was seen crumpled alone far off, unable to join the crowd.

I pulled an empty chair and sat beside them square.

Then Foreman Gary sipped coffee and asked me with a satisfied face.

"How was the morning work? The zone B guys were praising your forklift touch as art until their mouths dried, is it manageable?"

At those words I shook my head and spilled a complaint full of sincerity.

"The work itself is manageable. But there's exactly one thing that's a dying taste."

"Hm?"

At my words Foreman Gary set the coffee down and looked at me with a serious face.

"What problem?"

I answered, deliberately long-faced.

"Talking face to face like this is no problem, but that Aussie English coming over the radio, I really cannot understand a bit. Earlier I radioed Rosie in the office once about an invoice, and at that tremendous accent bombing mixed with machine noise I poured a basin of cold sweat. They were clearly saying something in English, and I really could not understand a bit. So in the middle they said office something, and I just sent the truck driver to the office by sense."

At my exaggerated description the workers sitting at the table all burst "Puahaha!"

On site it is better to say a difficulty like this quick, not groan alone.

Rather than hiding a weakness to keep pride and pretending to understand words you do not, and causing a major accident, show the weakness cool like this and the people who like you look after you on their own.

If they are not an ignorant bastard like Carl.

I too burst a hollow laugh and asked them good-naturedly.

"Please, I beg! If there's a reason to call me on the radio, speak a little slow. Pour it like rap and I might really get scared, abandon the forklift, and run."

Foreman Gary laughed and patted my shoulder.

"Haha! Got it. Our precious new-hire ace must not run. From now when you radio Jeong-su, everyone speak slow and clear like a broadcast announcer."

A cheerful laugh burst once more, and I took from my work bag a simple sandwich made by roughly putting ham and cheese in bread.

Peeling the foil and biting the sandwich, Foreman Gary sitting opposite furrowed his brow and asked.

"Jeong-su, lunch is only that? You going to hold the tight afternoon work eating that?"

"Well, just filling it simple."

"Man, on a site like ours, eating is life. You have to fill the belly solid or you lose focus among the lumps of iron and get hurt."

That is my worry these days too.

Coming to Australia, my weight has already dropped 4 kilograms.

At this rate I do not know if the body I built in Korea will all break.

At Gary's advice mixed with a scolding I looked around, and indeed the lunch scale of the big Australian workers was different.

Peter beside me, saying it was left from last night's barbecue, had brought a roast-beef chunk the size of a forearm and mashed potato packed in a plastic container and was shoveling it.

The other workers too were clearing meat pies as thick as an adult face, and pasta packed with sausage, piled like a mountain.

'Did those Namsan bellies all come from eating that?'

Seeing their flashy lunch, juice dripping, saliva turned in my mouth chewing the dry sandwich, and a strange envy pushed in.

"Haha. I want to grill meat and cook solid and bring it too. But the situation doesn't follow at all."

"Situation? Why, you can't cook?"

"No, I cook incredibly well."

How many years I lived alone.

"The problem is the house I'm living in now."

I dumped the rest of the sandwich in my mouth and sighed light.

"I'm staying at a share house in the city center, and ten people were swarming in a narrow two-room apartment. Now four have left, so six live there."

"What!? Ten lived in one house? That's illegal?"

Hearing me, Peter asked back, startled.

I nodded.

"Right. Illegal. But just in from Korea, a job not even caught yet, I couldn't rashly rent a decent house first."

"Ah, a kind of temporary lodging. You don't know where the workplace is, so staying a while is wise in its way."

"Right. But there are so many people the kitchen is always a war. No space to use one pan at ease. Especially the bathroom is a hell you cannot speak of every morning. Anyway I've found a stable job now, so I mean to leave that chicken-coop place and look for a proper house."

Foreman Gary, who had been listening quietly to the talk with Peter, stroked his beard and asked sudden.

"Yeah? Have you set a location or conditions?"

"Any house is fine. I have a car to commute, so no need to live in the expensive, complicated city, and close to the company would be better."

I casually let my conditions flow to the ones here.

Coming to Australia and watching, this country was a 'connection society' no less than Korea.

Only it seemed not to scatter irresponsible parachute connections like Korea, but to run on a thorough reference system.

If I make a mess on site, the reputation of Sam who recommended me falls to the pit together.

So Sam trusting me and recommending me to this good spot was terribly grateful and tremendous.

Then Gary leaned over the table slightly and threw a fairly interesting proposal.

"Then, want to come into our house?"

"Yes? Your house, foreman?"

"No, not the house I live in now. Actually there's a detached house my parents lived in, in the Fairfield West area. Ten minutes by car from here."

"Fairfield...? Is that the area southeast of here?"

"Right! My wife said she didn't want to live in an industrial zone, and we moved to Lidcombe."

Isn't that a place where Koreans gather a lot?

For now I quietly listened to what Foreman Gary said.

"My parents passed a few years ago, and the house has been empty until now. This is an outer industrial zone, so selling the house was awkward. Leaving it sitting like that, better if a person's warmth turns. If you want, I'll rent it much cheaper than the market. Instead just mow the backyard lawn regularly."

A wide detached house.

No parking worry, a fat kitchen, only ten minutes by car from work.

And rent far cheaper than the market on top?

A pumpkin that had rolled in, literally, but even so a rash decision had to be careful.

I hid the glad look with effort and said calmly to Foreman Gary.

"The conditions are too good, but first I'll see the state of the house."

"Haha! Right, sure as expected. Then later, when the afternoon work ends and we leave, let's go see the house once with me."

"Good!"

Australia's dazzling blue sky, a cool wind cooling the sweat on the forehead.

Though lunch was one piece of bland sandwich, the thought of escaping that sickening chicken coop and getting a space of my own opened the chest wide.

'Is it my feeling that coming to Australia my life is going better?'

Four in the afternoon, I filled the first finish time sheet and came out of the office.

I had been tense in my way, and suffered adapting to the Australian site way for the first time, but it was fairly fun.

There was no greatly hard physical labor, and the slingers loading the goods, driving a heavy forklift and running the vast yard, was exciting too.

"Jeong-su! See you tomorrow!"

"Good work, Peter. See you tomorrow!"

Having traded cheerful greetings with the workers who had finished preparing to leave, I left the white New Korando as it was in the lot and got into the passenger seat of Foreman Gary's crude pickup.

Not yet used to Australian geography, I decided to see the house and then come back to the company and collect my car.

Beyond the window, the late-afternoon sun of April in Australia was still beating sharp.

Thinking that on a Korean construction site you left only when the sun set and it grew dark, this leisurely situation seemed quite unreal.

The heat of day not yet gone from the road, I opened the window wide and reached a hand to meet the Australian wind.

"Lots of dust and the air isn't good, why open the window?"

Foreman Gary said, as if scolding me.

"Haha! Foreman. Next to Korean air full of exhaust, this much is tremendously clear."

"Hey. Just call me Gary. What's this embarrassing foreman. I was wondering if I should fix it, since you speak formal only to me."

"Come on. How can I. Honestly calling the foreman just by name doesn't quite fit Korean feeling, so it doesn't stick in the mouth."

Foreman Gary glanced at me, nodded, and said.

"Then call me chief."

"Chief?"

"Right. It's the nickname they call me on site."

"Haha. Yes! Understood."

Probably he had been a soldier once, or had a career like that.

Chief, holding the wheel with one hand, went on explaining the house.

"Originally I meant to run a share house for working-holiday people and immigrants too. But Fairfield West is an outer area very far from the city, and immigrants of several races gather, so the safety is a bit bad. Even the surroundings are all industrial complex. So people I liked didn't come in as well as I thought."

He lowered the window a little, irritated, and sighed deep.

"Then once, to save fixed costs, I rented the whole house to Europeans, and these crazy bastards made drugs in there and got caught by the police."

The moment I heard those words, my brow furrowed hard.

Drugs, especially if it had been a lab of the kind made by boiling chemicals, there was a fairly serious problem.

Every kind of toxic chemical evaporates and soaks into walls and floor, so a stench beyond imagination soaks in.

"The house is old and worn, and having gone through a crazy thing like that, I hated the look of it and have left it quite a while."

Clearly the street scenery passing the window was a complete different picture from the flashy city.

For one, the races that caught the eye were Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, South American immigrants.

Old single-story brick buildings were lined, and the heat of the real-estate construction boom blowing like mad across Australia now seemed not to have reached here yet.

Still, seeing wide parks here and there and thick green trees, the natural environment itself was not bad.

Only, being around an industrial complex, the neighborhood looks a bit dingy and old.

"The house structure is quite big. Three rooms, two bathrooms, a wide kitchen and living room, all there."

That much is at least over 34 pyeong in a Korean apartment, and since the house is big, in Australian terms it means it goes to 50 pyeong.

Gary glanced at me and grinned.

"Right now in the Sydney outer areas, a three-room house weekly rent, however low, is usually about 380 to 450 dollars?"

"Eek! That's too expensive. Get the pay and it'll all go to rent!"

"Haha! No, listen. The Sydney outskirts are that much, and this side is of course cheaper. The Fairfield West area is about 250 dollars. But if you come in, I'll rent it at 130 a week. That much is a price you really cannot find searching all of Australia."

Not a bad proposal.

If only the house is good, it is renting the whole house for a little more than share-house price.

As the worry deepened Gary added.

"If there are too many rooms to live alone and the rent is a burden, take other working-holiday people in the spare rooms yourself and run a share house. I won't interfere on that part."

I gave a short laugh inwardly.

'Look at this? A smell. A smell. Managing the house is annoying and there's no answer, so he's passing it to me?'

For now the good news is the workplace boss saw me quite well as a person.

The bad news is that house could become a tremendous burden, more than I thought.

Calling half the market from the start already means a tremendous defect is hidden in this house.

Originally there is no free in life.

I laughed it off light, looked only ahead, and answered.

"First see the state of the house, then decide."

Gary cleared his throat awkwardly and focused on driving.

And so, running a little over ten minutes by car, a quiet residential street in Fairfield West.

Where Gary's pickup stopped, a worn single-story brick house with a red tile roof, which would originally have been white, gone yellow, sat.

Getting out and looking around, the neighborhood itself was quiet and still, not like the rear of an industrial zone.

No large trucks passing.

"Right, let's go in and see. It hasn't been managed long, so it's dirty. Understand that."

"Now. Stop laying the ground and let's go. Chief."

Gary gave a short laugh, took a heavy bunch of keys from his pocket, and opened the front door with a clatter.

Creak—

The door opened, and the moment the first step went into the house that had been shut.

"Uuk!"

A sour, disgusting stench stabbing the nose, enough to sting the eyes, hit.

This is not a problem from not managing...

"Fucking hell! Shit, really!"

Gary hastily covered his nose with a hand and spat a curse.

From the owner's side, irritation would rise.

Lending his parents' sound house and addicts making it a drug den and spreading a mess like this, my lid would blow too.

"I really tried every trick, and whatever I do this rotten smell doesn't come out! Clean and it's only that moment. Really, every time I smell this I go crazy!"

Gary poured a complaint as if wronged.

I covered my nose with a sleeve and tapped the floor inside with a toe, and said calmly.

"Of course it doesn't come out. This kind, the toxic-chemical smell sticks completely between the carpet weave on the floor and is rotting from inside. Unless you tear all the carpet out, chemical-clean even the walls, and paint new, ventilating from the outside a hundred days is no use. And not water-based paint, you have to spread a strong oil primer thick and then paint. Then the molecules are blocked by the primer and the smell doesn't come out."

At my firm diagnosis full of certainty, Gary brightened and turned to me sharp.

"You know house structure and interior, things like that, well?"

In that moment my nose went up.

Building houses, tearing them down, fixing them, that was precisely my real specialty, a lifetime rolled on construction sites.

"Chief. I may look like this, but in Korea I'm a guy who has completely mastered building and repairing houses."

"Oh! My god, Jeong-su! Then please help how we can save this rotting house!"

Gary put both hands together as if he had met a savior and asked earnestly.

I said let's look around the house a bit more first, and began examining each part inside step by step.

I thought the exterior was decent enough that the inside would be a solid house, and the inside was a mess, more than I thought.

First the dingy gray carpet laid overall from the living room to the rooms was burned by chemicals into black stains, and every step the shoe sole stuck.

The paint on the walls, having eaten damp and chemical gas, had gone yellow and was peeling ragged, and the doors were dug in a few places, a level to use as kindling.

Going to the kitchen, a usable stainless sink faucet or a sound induction, whether already taken off and sold, only holes gaped, and the bathroom too, from bad ventilation, black mold had risen creepy in every tile joint.

Drawing an estimate fast in my head, standing in the middle of the moldy living room, I slowly opened my mouth toward Foreman Gary.

"Chief."

"Yeah, how is it? Can you save it?"

Instead of answering, I looked straight at Gary's eyes, full of expectation, and asked back serious.

"This house, if you sell it whole, not rent, how much would you sell it for?"

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