My Ondol, a Love Story

 

Korean floors are heated, standard. It’s a wonderful invention to have in my dumpy little apartment.

Until it breaks in the dead of winter.

My control for the heater is some puzzle box on the wall, all Korean save for some stickers for “heater,” and “shower.” Through some monkeying I’ve figured out what does what, though it didn’t take me long to realize what a flashing red “01” meant. No heat. No hot water. Temperatures plummeting. At first it was a matter of flipping the switch a few times. Not a problem, mere inconvenience.

The problem grew like a tumor over the next week. What once took one reset now took five, ten. An hour of jumping up to reset it—five minutes of operation, then failure. Begging, pleading with the box. Additional layers of clothing. A wife-beater under a t-shirt under a sweatshirt under a coat, still shivering. Slippers on at all times. I wrote out a fevered journal bitching about the cold.

2013: 02:13, 11:20 pm.

So cold. Wearing a hoodie and sweat pants huddled under the blankets reading the curse of lono

Tried for two hours to get the heater to work. Sitting at a cold 16 celsius. It’s a different 16 celsius from most days, this is colder and meaner.

Heater ain't working tonight. Light the signal fires, keep twice as many men on watch. Binoculars and flashlights, watch for icebergs.

Tap the switch on, off. Heater blinks red, angrily tells me in korean to “점검”. That’s in Korean. Translates to check. Check what? The heater flashes the 16 display, shows the yellow hurricane swirl icon that indicates water heating. Ten seconds later it flashes back to angry red, check, temperature reading 01 celsius. Turn it off. Cycle it. On, off, on, off. This typically brings the orange cyclone back, and at that point it’s a crapshoot to see if the heater turns all the way on. Only now the red light is staying. No orange swirl. Cold. Frost forms on the display.

Let it sit. Rest. These things take time. The heater needs its space, that’s fine. Let it go. Let it get cold, let it miss the heat. In the meantime, put erica’s thick wool coat that she stole from our grandmother on her. She’s on the floor, bless her soul. Taken in by the bait and switch of a heated floor which does not heat. I dive back under the covers, fully submerged in three layers of comforter, blanket, and winter jacket. Slide my feet back and forth to make heat from the friction of flaky feet on 300 thread count Egyptian cotton. Just like the pilgrims used to.

The trick is to let the heater want it. Read. Go back, turn it on. Off. The cyclone reappears. Rejoicing. 15 degrees. Panic. We’re dropping, fast. I wait for the red anger to reappear on the display. Nothing. I hear a loud crunch deep within the apartment building. I shoot my head back at the display to check it. Holding at 17. After each of these sentences I look back over my shoulder to see that the fire’s still burning, that we won’t be frozen tomorrow. We did it. Someone get me a baby to kiss. 

---

I asked around at work the next day. My bilingual co-worker Ted’s my liaison for any sort of apartment problems, he had a technician sent over. That night the problem persisted. A knock at the door in the evening, I opened it to see an old Korean man with a clipboard. He muttered something in Korean.

“영어주세요,” I tell him, which is a rough butchery of “English, please.” Nothing. He looks inside, sees my sister huddled in cocoon of blankets on the floor. Something else in Korean, I’m not getting any of it. “Wanna come in?” I ask him. He shakes his head at my motioning.

He clicks his tongue rapid-fire, tck-tck-tck-tck, then turns and walks down the stairwell.

I check back with Ted the next day. The problem is the location of the water heater. My landlord doesn’t know where it is, the technician couldn’t find the thing, and apparently no one in the building can lock down exactly where it’s hiding. It’ll cost me ten-thousand won to pay the technician, roughly ten bucks. I give the money to Ted. Twenty minutes later he gives it back to me, saying the landlord would take care of fixing it, that we shouldn’t pay the technician. I've learned to not question these matters

I go home that night, it’s working slightly better, but not operating above 19c. To get to that point is another half-hour of flipping the box off and on. Erica tells me the technician came in again, just barged through the door, saw her, turned around without a word. Time passes. I try the heater a few more times. Suddenly, life. Not just at 19c, either, but climbing up to 23. Life flows back into the apartment, all is well. I wash my hands with warm water for the first time in days. Boiling water for hair washing is no longer necessary. Sleeping on the floor is again a luxury. All is well, until the next core component of my apartment breaks and the dance starts again.