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That Boy’s House by Park
Wan-suh Translated by Brother Anthony of
Taizé
1
A
younger friend who had been living in an apartment
told me recently she was
moving out to live in a house with a garden. I
automatically replied that it
sounded like a good idea, but I did not get the name
of the neighborhood where
she had bought a house. I seem to have fallen into the
habit of not paying
attention to what people say. Ever since I realized
that one sign of growing
old was a conspicuous decline in one’s ability to
remember names and numbers,
my habit of listening to such things absentmindedly
seems to have grown worse.
Instead, I became intensely curious about what the
house and garden looked
like, how many rooms it had, what the view was like.
Yet that was not really
what I wanted to say.
I too, several years ago, had
brought to an end a lengthy period of life in an
apartment and moved into a
house with a garden. The first night, as I lay alone
in that isolated house,
wondering what on earth I had come all that way in
quest of, my decision seemed
so pathetic that I was unable to sleep. A beautiful
view, fresh air, peaceful
surroundings, some degree of solitude, surely those
were things I had long been
dreaming of? What more could I hope for? All the time
I was living in the
apartment, equipped with every kind of convenience,
its value as an investment
guaranteed, I had constantly felt that was not right.
But what exactly was it
that had not been right? The way my secret, silent
memories slowly lost their
significance until finally they were nothing, just an
empty feeling, was not
the apartment’s fault, and likewise the house did not
breed such memories by itself. The more
recently a house was built, the more it simply
imitates the structure and
conveniences of an apartment. Thus, one might expect
to settle in without much
discomfort; it ultimately depends entirely on the
owner. Why was it only now
that I realized that I was a helpless
person who wasn’t even capable of replacing a faucet?
Actually, that was the most terrifying of my anxieties
on that first night in my new house. But
still, it was spring. The moment I stepped down into
the garden the next
morning, I saw lovely, delicate shoots piercing the
ground and springing up. I
seemed to hear them saying: We’re glad to see this
world’s light, we’re happy
together, so that I felt a response springing up
inside myself: I’m glad I moved here. It
was an unexpected joy, and a consolation. That friend
was twenty years younger
than me. She was still far from reaching an age when
sacrificing practical
interests and convenience to gain at most a few
flowers, marvel-of-Peru or moss
rose, does not seem to represent any kind of loss.
Perhaps it was because of
those cautious misgivings that I held back from asking
forcefully: For
goodness’ sake, what are you hoping to find, giving up
an apartment and moving
to a house? Irrespective of what I might or might not
think, my friend moved
and then told me about the new sights of her
unfamiliar neighborhood. Since it
was an old residential area mainly inhabited by
respectable middle-class folk,
she had been expecting a settled kind of atmosphere
but, perhaps because it was
close to a university, all day long she only had to
look out the window at the
bustling vitality of the streets to see there was
never a dull moment. I asked
the name of the university. She said it was Sungshin
Women’s University.
Sungshin? But surely that’s in
Donam-dong? I asked, slightly taken aback. That’s
right, she replied. But now the neighborhood had
been divided up into several parts, each one with a
different name, and she
told me the new name. I was very familiar with that
area. I asked the exact
location: it was between Sungshin Women’s University and
Seongbuk Police Station.
The last house I lived in before I married had been
located between Sungshin Girls’ High
School and
Seongbuk Police Station.
My family had moved to another neighborhood at almost
the same time as I got
married, so that I’ve never had a chance to go back
there. Even if a chance had
come, I would probably have avoided it. I left that
neighborhood fifty years ago.
Fifty years, that’s a long time. Donam-dong is no
remote locality. It’s not far
from the city center. In those fifty years, how could I not have
traveled along the street up the hill beyond
Hyehwa-dong, passing through
Miari, Gireum-dong and
Suyuri, more than just
once or twice? It has been a long
time since the Dongdo Cinema that I used to
frequent regularly disappeared. I must have noticed it
had vanished as I looked
through
the window of a bus or car. Squirming, twisting my
head painfully to look behind,
I bade a sad farewell to Jean Marais and Charles Boyer
on the fuzzy
black-and-white screen. Did that mean my friend had
gone to live in a
Korean-style house? Since
I have never once been back after leaving, I could
still quite vividly recall
the neighborhood as it had been then. Those tiled
houses in Joseon style,
dignified like an elderly lady with her hair drawn
back in a bun, and suitably
dilapidated. My friend said no, it was a modern
two-story house, built so that
the basement and the upper floor could be rented out
separately. There were not
so many Korean-style houses left, she added, and those
that remained had mostly
kept nothing but the traditional tiled roofs, the
interiors having been
transformed into cafés, fast food
places, or fashion shops. She added that since a
university had been
established there, it was only natural that the
residential area should turn
into a student neighborhood. Well, yes. Had the things
I could vividly remember
as having been there ever really existed? I felt sad,
and relieved at the same
time.
My friend set a day for me to come
and see the house. On account of repairs to the house
and tidying up the
garden, my friend often phoned me for advice, and each
time, rather than reply
to her questions, I would indicate curiosity about
this or that aspect of the
neighborhood, which bothered her since she took it to
mean I was pestering her
to hold a housewarming party. I was the only guest
invited and since the
repairs were not completely finished she suggested we
eat lunch somewhere
nearby then go home for a cup of tea. She came all the
way out to the Sungshin
Women’s University subway station to meet me. I told
her that I could meet her
anywhere, she only had to say where, but I was
grateful that she did not listen
and came all the way out. The
neighborhood I followed her into was not the old
Donam-dong I had stored up in
my head. It stretched out, bright, sophisticated,
lacking nothing, a typical
university neighborhood brimming with vitality. Given
the university’s relatively
short history, the
vitality was not overflowing noisily; rather it gave
the impression of classy
poise, intent on self-restraint, perhaps on account of
the traditional Korean
tiled roofs that just occasionally struck my eye,
sedately perched above shop windows decorated in
modern
style. My memory was flustered,
trying to check if they were
the same old Joseon-style roofs. My friend had gone exploring
in advance and the restaurant she had chosen served
seafood stews. It was an
excellent choice. Various kinds of vegetables and
seasonings could be added
according to taste to a basic selection of seafood,
and cooked on the table; the resulting
taste had intensity and depth. The price, too, was
reasonable. Cheap, tasty and
plentiful, it was an outstanding meal. Our table was
beside a large plate-glass
window, and the feeling of being in an outdoor
café was not at all unpleasant.
Nowadays, society does everything for show, whether it
be eating, dressing,
earning money, or making love. In the distance, at the
foot of the hill, could
be seen the lofty campus of Sungshin Women’s
University. When I emerged from
the alley where my former home used to stand, I could
see Sungshin Girls’ High
School at just the same angle, just that far off. Had
I been eating lunch on
the site of my old home? I began to feel strange. When
I said that, my friend
suggested that we try to find the house where I used
to live first, before
going to her place.
I thought that it would be easy to
find the house once I found the Angam Stream. That was
what we used to call the
little stream that emerged in the Seongbuk valley and
flowed past our
neighborhood after passing Samseon Bridge and Donam
Bridge. Since the water was
plentiful and clean, the local residents would head
for the Angam Stream
whenever they had to do a
big load of washing. Alongside
the stream ran a street
wide enough for pedestrians and cars to pass each
other, while beside the
stream weeping willows dangled their branches, so that
in those days, when cars
were few and far between, it was sufficiently quiet
and romantic for people
from other neighborhoods to come and enjoy a stroll
there. The Angam Stream,
that pierced my mental map like a major artery, was
nowhere to be found. It was
invisible. What was I looking for, some kind of
waterway? I should have known
that it had been covered over long ago. Yet even if it
had been covered, I felt
that the stream and the road beside it taken together
ought to have left space
enough for an eight-lane highway. When
I first visited Europe, in the 1980s, and saw the
River Seine, I found myself
thinking: “Why, this famous River Seine is barely
wider than the Angam Stream,”
so much had the stream of my memories seemed like a
wide river. Emerging from
our house, I could see the grim rear view of the
Seongbuk Police Station with
its wide yard, just across
the stream. Our family could surely not have lived
very long with the view of
such a building so close
nearby. The modern
neighborhood possessed no such
wide side streets, however.
After the covered-over stream, the next landmark was
the police station. We
found it at once. I was not the one to find it; from
the spot we had been
circling around my friend pointed a finger: There it
is. It was only then that
I realized we were standing midway between the
Catholic church and the Sinseon
bathhouse. My former home had been in the alley
directly behind the bathhouse
and that boy’s house had been behind the Catholic
church. The church and the bathhouse had both stood
by the
streamside road.
The church must have been enlarged or rebuilt, for
although it was still in the
same place, its exterior looked very different, much
larger, but the bathhouse
was exactly as it had been in those days, right down
to the name. That
bathhouse had remained just as it was fifty years
before, although surely fifty
years was time enough for it to have been turned into
some kind of spa, sauna,
or jjimjilbang.
Because of that
wretched bathhouse, I was obliged to
believe that this not-so-wide side street was the
covered-over Angam Stream.
The street in my mental map was not a real street; it was nothing more
than
the street I had been hoping to discover. In the alley
behind the bathhouse,
the old houses with their Korean-style roofs had not
survived. Multiplex
housing had invaded the area and it was impossible
even to identify the exact
site of our house.
We went to my friend’s house, looked
around, and drank tea. It had, indeed, a garden,
though not a very big one. The
previous owner had not looked after it, leaving it
like an empty lot, but my
friend seemed to have fallen for it. Since it stood on
somewhat higher ground,
it overlooked the whole neighborhood. Where would that
boy’s family house have
been? My friend went raving on about the various kinds
of trees she was planning
to plant there the following spring. Moving from pine
trees, silver magnolias,
flowering cherries, azaleas to fruit trees such as
cherry, plum, jujube, etc., she then went on to
perennials such as peonies, tree peonies
and irises. I gazed at my friend as she went on
multiplying endlessly the
number of species she would cram in her palm-sized
garden, but my thoughts were
elsewhere. I am not sure why the thought arose, but I
kept thinking that that
boy’s family house might still be standing. 2
His family moved to the area beside
the Angam Stream less than a month after we moved there. I had
accompanied
Mother to the hardware store and as we were returning
home, carrying such humble items as a bucket,
dustpan, shovel, and rat trap,
we came across his family unloading their belongings.
The owner of the house
greeted Mother gladly. Mother grudgingly responded
with a cold expression. She
was an elderly woman some ten years older than Mother,
with a very bent back.
Apparently she was a distant relative. Even if Mother
was above her in terms of
their position in the family tree, she was clearly her
senior in age, and such
stand-offishness was not typical of Mother. Standing
beside her, I was both
disconcerted and amused. I knew why Mother was acting
in that way. She had
previously enjoyed living in ever larger
houses, but now, for reasons she could not explain,
she found herself in
straitened circumstances and was obliged to make do
with a far smaller house.
Compared to the neighborhoods where she had lived
before, the houses here were
much cheaper, and moreover the house we had moved into
was ridiculously cramped
for three generations to live together, what with
daughter-in-law and a
grandchild “small as a nose-picking,” as Mother put
it. So it was only natural
that Mother should feel abashed in front of other
people. Yet at home, she was
more forceful than ever. If our large family had
managed to avoid becoming
homeless, and owned a
home, even if it was just a shack, that was all thanks
to Mother.
Regardless of whether Mother was
happy or not, the old lady beamed as she urged us to
come in and view the
house, and insisted on taking us inside. Claiming she wanted to show her house to
unwilling
visitors amidst the hustle and bustle of moving, she appeared
to be both overly kind
and rather silly. A few strapping fellows were
carrying bundles into the house.
Some were workers, but others were sons and
sons-in-law. Belongings packed for
moving show plainly a family’s standard of living.
Mother must have been
disheartened at the sight of such elaborately
decorated wardrobes, antique
stationery chests, nicely
finished étagères
and so on, while I cringed before roughly
tied bundles of
what looked like several thousand books. The old
woman’s house, too, that we
toured, unable to resist her insistence, was on a
different scale to the
ordinary run of houses in that neighborhood. Although
there were several trucks
parked in front of the house, the street was wide
enough for them not to be in
the way of passing cars or people; the house was
located in an alley leading
off the main road. We could see that it was a blind
alley, but it was wide and
it was a space that the house had all to itself, there
being no neighbors to
share it with, so that it looked like an outer yard.
Nor was that all. Looking
toward the house, no front gate was visible; instead,
as in old palaces, a
stone arch could be seen. The arch opened onto the
garden in front of the men’s
quarters; the front gate leading to the women’s
quarters was located at a spot
where the wall attached to the stone arch made a
ninety-degree bend. For some
reason, I was more impressed by the graceful old arch
than by the awe-inspiring
lofty gate with its threshold of stone. Compared with
ordinary tiled-roof
houses, it looked to be in a different class. One
of the youths who had been unloading the furniture was
lingering beside us,
indicating that he wanted to be introduced, and the
old woman presented him as
her youngest son. He was affable and good-looking. As
she gazed at him with a
contented smile, her face was full of wrinkles. Given
the difference in their
ages, it would surely have been more suitable to say
he was her grandson, so
that she seemed even sillier. The youth was dressed in
working clothes but he
was wearing a school cap, so I immediately recognized he was
attending a high school in the same neighborhood as
the girls’ high school I
was attending. In those days, there were more than ten
middle and high schools
for boys and girls crammed into the area stretching
northeastward from
Gwanghwamun and including Sinmunno
street, Anguk-dong, Gye-dong and Susong-dong, so it
did not
strike me as some kind of strange coincidence. I felt
relieved since the school
he attended was considered by the
kids in my school as being
a not-so-special,
mid-range kind of school, so I could get over any
feelings of my inferiority.
Something similar happened again afterward. On that
day, since the whole house
was in such disorder, we only peered at the main
building from the middle gate
then went out again, but the way the old woman had so
kindly insisted on
showing us around seemed to have stayed on Mother’s
mind. She was six or seven
years older than Mother, but she was only some kind of
distant niece on the
maternal side, so that it would be alright for her to
treat her like a
stranger, but since she had been so kind Mother seemed
to feel that she had to
return once, and had apparently gone bearing a gift of
matches. That family’s
eldest son is a high official working in the main
government building, the
daughter-in-law is extremely courteous, she reported,
with indications of being
seriously jealous. Still, she did not forget to add
some tart comments:
“But so what? When she got married
not only was her family of a lower standing, her
husband was much better
looking and had studied a lot, so that her older
relatives worried they might
not get on well together and even now she has a hard
time with her old man.”
“You mean that old woman even told
you that?”
“Do you think I have to be told
before I know? Seeing how she can’t avoid getting her
own hands wet when she has such a
well-mannered daughter-in-law.
The way she is good to others, too, has become a
habit, showing how inferior
she feels toward her husband and his family. I don’t
know why a rich man’s wife
lives such a miserable life, poorly dressed with hands
like rakes.”
I reckoned this was my self-assertive mother’s
way of consoling herself. Finally it fell to me to
provide Mother with a sense
of superiority. Soon after I
became a university student, I went
out with Mother to buy
shoes and we met the old lady. Mother boasted that I
had been admitted to Seoul
National University and we were on our way to buy some
shoes. When it would have been
enough to say I was going to attend university, I
suppose she added the name of my school because
of her pride that no university could be more
prestigious than SNU. The old woman’s youngest son was also entering
university. It was a good school, but it was not Seoul
National University. At
the sight of Mother’s bragging, for the first time in
my life I felt proud of
being a good daughter, and took it as an
encouragement.
When it was time for school in the morning,
the peaceful, beautiful street leading from
Wonnam-dong to Anguk-dong would be
filled with students,
boys and girls, in their uniforms. If I found the street less crowded than usual, that meant I might
be late and I would start to run. The school I
attended was well known for the
way the principal himself would keep watch at the gate
and scold any students
who arrived late. Since I was particularly interested
in the students from the
school the youngest boy
of the stone-arched house was attending, our eyes met
several times along the
way to school. But I would
rapidly look away without
seeing if he had recognized me or not.
It was
not that I was being especially good or sly; in those
days such behavior was
taboo. On learning that we had both entered
university, the first thought that
came to me was a foretaste of thrilling freedom, since
we would no longer have
to act in that way if we ran
into each other. I was such an
innocent that my heart would
race when I
only imagined
the freedom of being able to go to the movies without
tucking in the white
collar of my school uniform,
so it was no unusual emotion. 3
Repairs to my friend’s house were far
from complete. Once an aluminum sash
had been fixed to the rear veranda, a truck arrived bringing topsoil for
the
garden. As I was about to take my leave amid all the
confusion, she came after
me, insisting that she would accompany me as far as
the subway station. Perhaps
because the search for our old house had shown how
little sense of direction I
had, she treated me as a hapless senior who would
never be able to find the subway alone. As I
walked along I kept looking around and trying to
refuse help until at last I
mentioned that boy’s family house. The harder you try
to hide or cut short any
talk about something involving a boy and a girl, not a Mr. Kim and a Miss
Lee,
the more you arouse the other person’s curiosity. With
the face of a girl just
beginning to enjoy love stories, my friend became my
guide. She reckoned that
since we knew now where my old house had stood, it
should not be difficult to
find that boy’s house if we started from there. His
house had been behind the
Catholic church,
across the concrete bridge beside the Seongbuk Police Station,
beside the main road. Although the house had been a
step or two off a side road, the main street had run
alongside the
outer garden. There could be no hope that such a
spacious property would still
be a family residence in such an increasingly thriving
university district. Of
course, the kind of family home I was thinking of was
a two- or three-story
Western-style building such as that my friend had
moved into, not an old
Korean-style mansion. Contrary to my expectations,
aloof from the arrogant
currents of time, that house had remained intact, an
old-style, tiled-roof
house. Perhaps because the other houses, their main
gates shunning the main
street, had all been transformed into four- or
five-story buildings, the house
which had formerly looked more impressive for being a
step or two further back
now looked sunken. The space in front, which had
opened onto the main street, was now closed off
by an
iron gate; that was the only difference. The gate was
firmly shut. Because of
the gate, the old house behind seemed to have opted
for seclusion, surrounded
by modern buildings but refusing all contact with
them. From breast height, the
iron gate
consisted of bars you could look through, but trees
had grown so densely inside that the
stone arch could barely be seen. The trees must
originally have been planted so
as to leave room at least for someone to pass between
them but the branches had
spread into such a dense tangle that there was not
even space to peer through.
The thought that houses too might
have a kind of soul made my heart shudder as though
touched by a sliver of ice.
The house with a stone arch had
many trees and flowering plants, not only around the
men’s quarters but in the
main courtyard too. At the back of the house there was
a cellar for storing
oleanders, pomegranates, plantains and suchlike,
plants that could not survive
the winter out-of-doors. In May, when the lilac in the
garden of the men’s
quarters was in full bloom and came over the wall,
people passing in the street
would all look above the arch, flare their noses, then
slow down or stop, as if
hoping the fragrance might permeate their clothes and
bodies. I climbed up onto
the stone base of the iron gate, raised myself to my
full height and peered
inside, but apart from confirming that there was
indeed an authentic
traditional tiled roof, there was nothing else I could
recognize. Traditional
roofs take a lot of work. Nowadays it has become very
hard to find good roof tilers. Even before, the pay
for a roof tiler
was three times that for a plasterer. It is easy to
end up with someone who has
not been properly trained, an unskilled worker who
believes all the rumors
about the rate of pay. When you see the hapless,
dilapidated state of the roofs
of the old Korean houses that have happened to survive
among the city’s forest
of high-rise buildings, you soon realize what
irresponsible nonsense all this
fuss about preserving traditional hanok houses really is. The rows of concave
tiles
on that house’s roof were so even and smooth that it
seemed they must be
overhauled almost every year. If a house owner did not grudge
the
money and effort needed for such troublesome upkeep,
it would never be someone
obliged to stay living there because they could not
sell the house, it would be
someone wealthy who loved such old houses. I was moved
and happy that that
boy’s old house had found such an owner. The
boy’s family had left the house soon after I left to
get married, so that in
the time since then its ownership might have changed
ten times. Yet still, the
way trees had become so thick in the outer yard that I
could not so much as
peek through the stone arch left me feeling sad. The
trees had dense, glossy
leaves like spindle trees, only taller. When I
wondered aloud what kind of
trees they were, my friend immediately said they were
Bodhi trees. She knew all
about the names of trees. And not only trees; I knew
that there were times when
she would not be able to simply pass by a flower whose
name she did not know,
but would insist on finding out its name. If she said
they were Bodhi trees,
that was surely right. Only they were nothing like the
Bodhi trees I knew. I have seen a Bodhi tree just once.
When I was much younger, I took a trip through a
sultry region steeped in Hindu
culture and our bus had stopped for a rest break in a remote
village.
The spot chosen for shelter from the scorching sun by
the group of some twenty
tourists, as if by common accord, was in the shade of
a Bodhi tree. The
towering tree, more than thirty meters high, had a
gnarly, twisted trunk that
soared upward without a single sprig of leaves then
spread its plentiful
foliage like an umbrella far
above. Our guide told us that it
was a Bodhi tree. There was no reason to suppose it
was the same tree as that
beneath which the Buddha had attained awakening, but this tree
looked so merciful and
majestic that it was easy to understand why it had
been called a Bodhi tree.
Perhaps that is what is meant by sacred. The
impression I received that day had
been so powerful that I had never once thought that
there might be Bodhi trees
in Korea. Our country does not have the climate for
such gigantic trees to
grow. So what about the Lindenbaum celebrated by
Müller? But surely those trees
growing so densely in the outer yard and blocking my
view of the stone arch
were too petty to dream sweet dreams under? Those
trees were in no way similar
to either of the two different images of what I had harbored, Bodhi
tree or
Lindenbaum. Yet I did not want to let go of the name
Bodhi tree that my friend had produced so promptly.
Perhaps the thought that a house may
have a soul had not been a
sliver of ice but embers instead?
Once back home, I looked it up in an
illustrated guidebook. It was a comprehensive listing
of the trees growing wild
in Korea and the Bodhi tree was there. Yet although I
looked at the photo and
read the simple commentary, there was not enough to
enable me to decide whether
those were Bodhi trees or not. Still, I firmly
consigned to memory the
explanation that in autumn its globular fruit, some
six to eight millimeters in
diameter, took on a red color. One day, when the
ginkgo trees along Sejongno street in the city
center had suddenly erupted madly in pure gold, the
purest yellow that they had
been storing up deep inside themselves, I took the
subway Line 5, but instead
of going straight home I transferred to Line 4 at Dongdaemun Stadium.
The bagful of books I had bought at Kyobo Bookstore was really
heavy but
I had no choice. I got off at Sungshin Women’s
University station. There was no
question of my having no sense of direction. I headed
straight for that boy’s
family home. Being alone, I had no need to hide
anything. The iron gate was tightly closed as
before. They were listed as being deciduous but those
dense green leaves had
merely lost a little of their gloss, while still
perversely forming a screen
between me and the stone arch. However, among the
leaves bunches of three or
four red berries were dangling from the jagged forked
branches. Perhaps in the
summer they had been the same color as the leaves, so
that I had not noticed
them. How long would it take for these trees to grow
high enough for there to
be room to dream sweet dreams in their shade? Some
fifty years? Timewise, I
went in the opposite direction to
the Bodhi trees and slipped into an illusion that a
young man as lovely
as jade dreamt sweet
dreams in that luxuriant shade fifty years ago. 4
The
next time I met that boy, there were only women and
children left in our house.
I hated being lumped together with “women and
children” but gradually accepted
it. Such had our family become once the war swept over
us. The men, departing
via Seongbuk Police
Station,
were no longer of this world. The war had been on for
over a year, but still
the front line kept advancing and retreating just a
few miles to the north of
Seoul, with the people in Seoul who had not managed to
flee all becoming
paupers. Since everyone was poor, real paupers were
quite rare. The working
people were all women. It was not only our family; it
seemed that women and
children were the only people left in the city. Having
heard that you could earn the price of side dishes by picking
radish
tops at Ttukseom and
selling them, I set off together with my sister-in-law
at dawn. If you followed
Angam Stream on and on, endlessly southward, the stream vanishing
here, then
reappearing there, you would reach Salgoji Bridge and
Salgoji Meadows.
Depending on how much we could pay, the owner of the
perfectly square field
allowed us to pick radish tops and carry them away.
Thus far we had done like
the other folk; from there on we could not do like the
others. The others
clamored to be given more; we held back, asking if we
could not be given less.
Because the bundles of radish tops we had to carry on our heads were so enormous, we would
often drop them to the ground along our way back home.
By the time we reached
home it was getting dark. It was the time when the
others had bought rice and
side dishes
with what they had earned by selling the radish tops
and were already cooking their evening
meal. Even if we had time to sell ours, the bundles
suffered so much from
constantly falling to the ground that they had lost
their value. After
that I found a job on the U.S. military base. Even
before, a woman from the
neighborhood who did cleaning work on the base and who
felt sorry for us had
said she would introduce me, but that made Mother
jump, declaring that she
would rather starve than see me doing such work, and I
was not allowed to go.
The woman had actually said that there would be
something better than cleaning
for a university student like me, but Mother seemed to
understand that to mean
there was a vacancy for a whore. Either because the
failure of our radish top gathering was a shock to
her, or because hunger overcame her scruples, Mother
finally allowed herself to
be persuaded, as if surrendering, and I got a really
easy job on the base. That
solved the problem of food and housing but poverty
grew increasingly sordid as
the days passed, because the family felt humiliated at
being fed and housed
with money earned by a daughter working for the U.S. army. That
winter I met the boy again on a tram as I was leaving
work. He looked glad to
see me. He addressed me without hesitation as nuna,
elder sister, which seemed odd. I felt at ease, and at
the same time sad. It
was late and the tram was almost empty, but while we
were there we could do
little more than express our extreme pleasure at
meeting like that. Alighting
at the terminus, we entered a dimly-lit bakery. It was
a poky little store
selling homemade donuts
and steamed buns. Having ordered some steamed buns
that gave off a sour smell
of makgeolli,
I began by asking why
he had called me nuna.
The reason was simple, he said. Since we entered
university in the same year,
we should be the same age, but he had begun primary
school when he was only
seven, so he was almost sure he must be a year
younger. He was right, it was a
plausible way of reckoning. He was wearing a military
uniform. It was not the
shabby uniform ordinary privates used to wear: above
sharply creased blue serge
trousers such as American officers wore, and brightly
polished boots, he was
wearing a fur-lined parka. It was a time when, as I
was working on the base, I
was really longing to make the acquaintance, if not of
a U.S. officer at least a Korean officer.
In wartime, an officer in a smart uniform exuded
power, like a knight mounted
on a white charger. It did not even have to be an
officer. Any young man with
unassailable status would be a gift from the gods, I
felt. Before we had even started
on the buns he asked the shopkeeper
to wrap them and suggested we leave
there. He said he
knew a street-side cart-bar that was OK. Then why had
he not suggested going
there to begin with? I was not happy with his
inconsistency but since he was a
gift from the gods I did not want to lose him. I
followed him one tram stop back to Samseon Bridge.
There were lights beside the stream. They came from
lamps whose pallid glare
made faces look ghostly. I did not mind the smell of
carbide. It was even
plainer than the bun shop
yet, oddly, it was not at all seedy. Later I learned
that the boy was
particularly averse to seedy places. Of course, nobody
really likes them, but
he had an instinctive aversion to them, like some
eccentric who cannot stand a
certain smell. In
the tent-covered bar that evening I saw for the first
time a nine-hole
briquette stove. On a stove where powerful flames were
rising from every hole
of a coal briquette perched an iron cauldron with odeng broth aboil. The aproned man in
charge welcomed us
nonchalantly. Putting into china bowls egg and
tempura, chunks of radish, fried
tofu and some kind of meaty sinew
that he added a skewerful of, with odeng, he poured on boiling hot broth.
The broth, the things on the skewer,
even the eggs, were all a dark soy-sauce color. Yet
the taste was strong and
sweetish. The owner said nothing and
seemed not interested in us.
“Has anyone in your family been
wounded in the fighting? We only have women and
children left….”
I spoke quickly, before he could ask.
“Only Mother and I are left….”
“Really? In that big house? How many
were you before?”
“Seven. Mother, Father, my older
brother, his wife and their two children.”
“That’s terrible. You mean even the
children are dead? Yet you weren’t bombed….”
“Who said they were dead? They went
North. Brother was a leftist, you see.”
“We
heard he was a high official in the government; Mother
was jealous. So even
people like that can turn into leftists!”
“High official? Brother was generally
recognized to have a brilliant mind; he could probably hold a post like that
in the North, too.”
“Then what about you? Where do you
stand?”
I simply could not put together the
family of a defector deserving persecution and his
slick military uniform, so I
questioned him nervously. When it came to the
suffering, humiliation and
surveillance the family of a so-called commie had to
endure, I had experienced
it until I was sick of it. It just went to show that
there are no gifts from
the gods anywhere. My face fell with bitter
disappointment. He said nothing in
reply but started cautiously to gnaw at the sinew-like meat
on the skewer, slowly, like an old man. His jaw
movements were thorough and
concentrated, as though he was determined not to miss
anything of the faint
flavor of the meat hidden within. Yet without the
least sign of greed. Once he
had completely chewed and swallowed everything, he
addressed the owner: “Hey,
fellow, the sinew I
ate last time at least smelt like a boiled Yankee army
boot; not this, though.
Would it be too much to ask you to give us one of your
old shoes from under the
floor with a bit of a stench to it?”
“Here, that’s enough of that. Who knows, I probably stole my mother’s
rubber
slippers and served them boiled?” The two men
sniggered. Their laughs harmonized well together. I
grew tense as I listened to
them exchanging banter. Unexpectedly, they began to
discuss a book they were
currently reading. They seemed to be close enough to
lend each other books. I
found myself thinking foolishly that they were
conscious of my presence and
making fun of me. He thrust some money toward the
owner and stood up. When he
tried to give him his change he waved his hands and
told him to buy his mother
some rubber slippers.
“Valiant disabled veteran, Sir! I
know it is my duty as a citizen to serve strong
beef-bone broth but funds are
way down below floor level! I’m very, very sorry.” The
owner saw us off, scratching his head without the
least indication of being sorry
in his face. The moment we were outside, I questioned
him:
“Why, he called you a disabled
soldier. What does that mean? Your four limbs all look
intact. Have you been
lying to that simple fellow? Who are you, really? Come
on, speak up, quickly!”
He
replied in a low voice. We walked from Samseon Bridge
along the Angam Stream,
past the bathhouse, up the alley and by the time we
reached my house he had
finished, as though it had been made to match that
distance. It was not far. So
his tale was terse and condensed.
When the North Korean army entered
Seoul in the summer, for some reason his older brother
had not been purged and
had continued in his regular job. But since a person
only really has his own
two legs, it is obvious
that he cannot count
on anything more than them, so when the Communist army
retreated at the end of
three months, he went North with them. At first he had
gone alone, leaving
wife, children and elderly parents behind. But the
world was turned upside down again that winter, and
when the Communists occupied Seoul a second time, his
brother had turned up,
intent on taking his family with him. His wife and
children were ready to
follow him without a word but for his parents it was
different. The reason was
that, after the Communists retreated and Seoul was
liberated, their younger son
had been drafted into the South Korean army. And
because their son was in the
southern army, the family had so far been spared much
of the hardship inflicted
on the families of those who had gone North. So the
parents were confronted
with an insoluble dilemma. Finally the elderly parents
decided to separate. The
father would go North with the elder son and his
family while the mother
decided to stay behind and wait for her younger son,
the soldier. For that reason,
on returning home after he had been wounded in the
thigh and received an
honorable discharge he found that his elderly mother
was left alone in that
large house. In the meantime she had turned into an
old woman and far from
embracing her in tears, he heaped abuse on her, asking
what devotion she had
expected to receive, waiting for him like that? The
very thought of how free he
would be without her took his very breath away so that
even now, he said, he
was constantly abusing her. Such
things happened in the turmoil as the world turned
upside down, righted itself, then
in a flash turned upside down
again and again, and that was what had happened in his
family. When a whole
nation is writhing in agony, how many ordinary
citizens can hope to escape unscathed?
So we felt no sympathy for one another. The sufferings
we endured were our
daily bread, like kimchi and rice. If there
was a family that remained
intact, where nobody had died or been hurt, people would have found their
self-satisfaction so intolerable
that they might
even plot
to kidnap their only son. That
night I could not fall asleep. The carbide lamplight shimmered pale
over
his beautiful face, at once aloof and melancholy, his
strong body still
perceptible even through the thick parka; I sensed
that a dangerous breeze had
blown over me. We had not expressed mutual feelings or
anything like that, but
did we not sense a foreboding of similar
misfortunes? Like a young girl
walking down a street who
encounters a strong gust of wind that sends her skirt
billowing upward, I felt
at the same time a sudden surge of yearning and a
burst of shame making me want
to pull down my skirt quickly and squat on the ground.
In order to economize on
firewood, our family all slept together in the main
bedroom. I could hear the
peaceful breathing of our surviving family, two widows
and two small children,
all sound asleep. Surely relief at having reached a
state where things could
get no worse could not coexist with peace. Still,
peace is so much more sacred
than the survivor’s feeling of sorrow. Thus, I
confronted the yearning for
danger that whirled within me.
Almost every day he was waiting for
me when I came off the base. The people working there
were a varied lot,
ranging from illiterate to university graduates, but
they were all people with
some kind
of guilty secret. Many were draft dodgers. It was not
officially approved but
they could wear a military uniform and received an
illegible identity card so
if they were determined they could shout and bluster
their way out avoiding
inspection. Those grubby, unsavory men wanted to know
everything about the
smartly uniformed, healthy and brash-looking young
man. I ought not to have
said he was a close relative, like a younger brother.
Nobody believed me. As a
disabled soldier with all his limbs intact, he was an
object of envy. Think
what you like; we enjoyed such things. They increased
our happiness. Just as
silk dresses and jewelry are meaningless unless people
feel jealous at the
sight of them, the same is true of a boyfriend who
does not inspire envy. He
was handsome, so the more I saw of him the more I
wanted to become pretty. I
could feel the sap rising inside my body. He said I
was like a bead. That was a compliment
better suited to a younger sister than a girlfriend.
It was not very sexy, but
I came to like the expression. Bead-like
eyes, bead-like
tears, bead-like
dew, bead-like
waves…
no matter where you added it, the word glistened. That
winter was the most bead-like winter
in my life. Apart from the banks of the Angam Stream, there were
not many
places where lovers could go. Once we entered
university and could get to know
the places that had been forbidden while we were in
high school, the war broke
out and Seoul lay in ruins. Fortunately there were
cinemas that survived.
Wartime cinemas had no heating. He would sit hunched
up beside me and slip his
fur-lined gloves, turned inside out,
beneath my feet. If you just turn up the palm of a
glove, the five fingers stay
crumpled up inside and if you fit them over the tips
of the toes even the
coldest of frozen toes will melt and start to grow
warm. I wonder how he came
by such a wonderful idea. It killed two birds with one
stone. Not only did my
frozen toes keep warm, it allowed me to feel content
at being that much
cherished. Since we mainly watched movies at the
Jungang Cinema, we could easily
walk to Myeong-dong.
The buildings along Jongno were
all in ruins and almost all the inhabitants had left
Seoul, so there were few
houses still occupied on the residential streets; it
was wartime and the
silvery lights of Myeong-dong
were unreal. We savored freedom in the light, like
moths. We found a wonderful
regular café,
discovered an expensive bakery, came to know the
delight of buying cute,
unnecessary accessories in boutiques. Apart from such
places, in Myeong-dong there were also
imposing, showy jewelry stores where the main
customers were high-class whores
keeping company with U.S. officers.
In their spacious recesses there were dim corners
decorated like parlors so
even from outside we could clearly see voluptuously
made-up customers elegantly
sitting cross-legged like Western
film stars, basking in the shop owner’s flattery.
Since
there was no sign of any customers merely standing
there looking around, we did
not dare to venture inside. Instead, all the jewels
that I laid eyes on,
standing outside glued to the window, became mine in
some later time. I liked
his wild promises better than the jewels themselves.
Even without any desire
beyond ogling expensive jewelry, dating cost a lot of
money. He was unemployed,
unable to earn a penny, and although I was earning, I
had my family of five to
support. Our dating practices did not go so far as to
despise the sanctity of
family support.
In those days, disabled veterans had no pension. His
easiest source of money
was his old mother. He had berated her, saying she
should have gone North with her elder son
and her husband, and not expect any devotion from him
for having waited, and he
kept tormenting her. He would have had a hard time
surviving had it not been for her
ingrained habit of always serving him rice with side dishes, yet he did
not realize
it was more than he deserved. He
kept pestering her for pocket money. I learned from my
mother that she used to
take clothes out to sell at the market, and even
walked around with a basket
perched on her head hawking vegetables. She was bent
over almost double, far
more than when they had moved into the house, and
Mother said it was amazing to see her balance a
heavy load on her head then spring to her feet and
start walking. Sometimes my
mother also used to take things to the market to
barter. Even though Seoul
seemed to be empty, if you went to the local markets
they were swarming with
people. In such places brimming with vitality, there
was no distinction between
those buying and those selling. Everyone kept
spreading out things, selling
them, then buying what they needed. Since the owners
of the market stores had
mostly fled south, there were only a few shops open.
Fierce life-or-death
bargaining contests took place everywhere, beneath the
eaves of the closed
stores or in the market alleys. After Mother had met that boy’s mother and helped her lift
a load
onto her head, her expression was
bitter and blank for a
time. She seemed to be able to feel pity for her now,
seeing her as a mother
whose pride had been wounded, instead of as the wife
of a rich man with a
successful son. However, my mother’s pity was only a
comfort to herself, it was
not meant for that elderly woman.
On several occasions, when her son was being cruel to
her, I saw that old woman
with her bent back, looking far older than she really
was, enjoying herself as
if she were watching her last-born doing cute antics.
As I watched her smile at
her son, wrinkles spreading like ripples from the
corners of her puckered lips,
even after he had taken all she had in her purse, I
realized that it was my mother who should be
pitied.
By simply coming back alive her son had completely
fulfilled his filial duty.
Perhaps for that reason, I did not tell him to stop
cruelly exploiting his old
mother, even though I disapproved of it. Still,
if he needed more than just pocket money, he would
make an expedition to Busan,
saying he was adapting to circumstances. Between him
and his elder brother
there were two sisters, one of whom was a doctor. She
had fled Seoul and
reached Busan, where she found work in a large
hospital and was able to earn a
regular income; she was his main source of cash. That
doctor-sister was useful
to him in many ways. If his mother would not give him
enough money, he would
threaten to go down to Busan and beg his sister, then
she would sell some
precious antique to raise money. His extremely refined
mother intensely
resented the way her son pestered her married
daughter. But her kind-hearted
daughter, wishing to help out with her mother’s living
expenses, would summon
her brother down to Busan. On days when he was in
Busan, I used to feel
lonesome and morose, so I would remain in bed, sobbing
quietly in secret. It
made no difference even if the people in the market
raised the roof with their
raucous noise, without him Seoul was just empty. It
was absolutely intolerable
that the last surviving couple should be separated.
Even though I told myself
to endure that fleeting meaninglessness, that feeling
of emptiness for just one
more day, I waited for him so desperately, so
passionately, that I used to
think death would be preferable. He never once came
back later than the day he
promised to return, but every time he came back he had
to take his punishment.
A greater consolation than usual, this meant enjoying
extravagance that was
beyond his means in some brightly-lit spot. So I
cannot say that I never
encouraged him to shamelessly exploit his mother and
sister. And my demands for
extravagant fun beyond his means were not limited to
material things. He not
only liked poetry, he had memorized a lot of poems.
Walking down unlit alleys,
mile after mile, or in the tent-bar by Samseon Bridge, on a spot illuminated by
the pallid blue carbide lamplight like stage lighting, he would
recite
poems by Jeong Ji-yong or Han Ha-un in a low, intense
voice. He had memorized
poems by a lot of other poets, but those two were the
only ones whose poems I
recognized upon hearing them. Since he only performed
when there were no other
customers, the bar owner used to listen in silence.
After hearing everything, I
would thank him, saying I felt I had been enjoying
some huge luxury. Such words
were to him higher praise than any applause. If poetry
was a luxury for us,
might not the material luxuries we enjoyed together
also be poetry? What
enabled us to endure those grim, poverty-stricken,
chaotic times was neither
austerity nor resentment nor ideology; it was luxury.
It was poetry.
Ultimately, though, the luxury that
cost least of all was to be found in the men’s
quarters of his house. The
building, adjacent to the stone arch, was built in an
L shape; the main house
was likewise constructed in an L shape and if the two
had been built close
together the result would have been a square; but they
were not, they were
separated by a considerable space and were therefore
independent of one
another. Not only did the men’s quarters have its own
yard, it had the stone
arch so that it was possible to communicate with the
outside world without
using the main gate. Looking onto the yard, with a
wooden toenmaru along its entire length, the
main room had been a study
shared by his father and elder brother; on the side
toward the inner quarters was
a smaller room where he said his brother had pursued
his hobby alone, away from
wife and children. His hobby seemed to have been
listening to music. The room
contained a record player,
a rare household object in those days, and two walls
were lined to the ceiling
with vinyl records. My ears were not at all accustomed
to classical music. For
that reason I harbored a sense of inferiority with
him, while he, sensing that,
tried hard to be especially
kind. But when he played Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, to
see if it might appeal to me, I
exclaimed that it was too noisy, it would wake his
mother, and turned down the
volume, at which he looked incredulous. Even so he did
not give up. He began to
play songs that I had been accustomed to hearing
during music classes in
school, such as “Heidenröslein,”
“Largo,” and “Lindenbaum.” He treated the records with
extreme care, seeming to
caress them. While one record was playing he would
choose the next, exhale on
it and remove any dust with a small brush. That brush
was not originally
intended for cleaning records, it might have been used
for applying make-up. It
was a soft, delicate brush that reminded me of a
Western woman’s eyelashes. I
used to feel that if I touched that brush, seemingly
soft yet stiff, an
electric current might shock me. It was perhaps on
account of his skillful yet
sensitive fingers, making it impossible to decide if
he did it because he
wanted to stroke the records or to remove the dust. As
he listened, he would
quietly hum sensuously, as if caressing the rich voice
of some foreign tenor
whose name I had no need to know. I could never decide
if the brush was the humming
or if the humming was the brush. As sense of touch and
sense of hearing blended
together, the result was a moment of exquisite
intoxication. The record he used
to play most frequently was “Lindenbaum.” The lyrics
were a poem printed in the
textbook we had studied during German class in the
last year of high school. Am Brunnen vor
dem Tore, Da steht ein
Lindenbaum; Ich träumt' in seinem Schatten So
manchen süßen Traum ― as I listened to him
humming along with those words, I felt as though every
hair on my body was
standing on end. How far have we come from those days?
Did we really ever have
such days? Where am I now? It was a kind of crisis
consciousness. Once May
came, the garden erupted in blooming profusion. I had
not realized there were
so many kinds of flowering trees and plants. In
addition to the intensely
fragrant white lilac and the purple iris, flame-like
azaleas, sensuously
scented oleanders, pomegranates with flowers like the
lamps in the red-light
quarters, breathless gardenias, all flung their
blossoms wildly and
passionately, as if flirting with abandon. Since the
garden had only been
planted after they moved in, he said that for him too
it was the first time to
see such a fine display of flowers. The excess of
irrepressible energy that brought
all those flowers into full blossom seemed to shake
loose the foundation stones
and the gates until the ancient house seemed to be rolling like
a drifting boat. We sensed a premonition of crisis so
strong we longed to
embrace one another. Luxuries costing nothing are so
dangerous.
Once the war was over, my family
urged me to marry. I met men, scrutinized their
qualifications, met a suitable
man, got engaged, had wedding invitations printed. For
me that was a natural
order of things, like graduating from one school and
moving up into a higher
level. The first time I told him was when I gave him
his invitation. His face
expressed incredulity, disbelief, and he suddenly
began to sob uncontrollably.
He had been busy recently. The government had come
back to Seoul, his sisters
had returned too, if house prices were rising they
meant to sell, so the house
was put on the market, and so on; he seemed to think
all this happened while he
was so busy there had been no time to bother about a girlfriend.
Yet it had been in the cards from the start. I wept
with him. Because parting
is sad.
There was nothing false about my tears. But at
graduation ceremonies, no matter
how profusely children may cry, it’s never because
they want to stay in school. 5
The
moment I realized there could be no doubt about those
leafy trees in the outer
yard of his house being
Bodhi trees, I walked away
as if fleeing. But I
could not go far and kept walking around the
neighborhood that was centered on
the now underground Angam Stream.
It was some ten years ago that I heard he had died. We
never met again. Just as
he was for me an eternally beautiful youth, I might
have been for him an
eternally bead-like girl.
At the time we had been blind followers of Platonic
love. We had embraced it
simply out of fear of pregnancy. I smelt a coal
briquette burning somewhere.
After the war, coal briquettes
spread quickly and it is no exaggeration to say that
for me married life had
been a story of endless struggles with coal
briquettes. But the smell drifting
near was not that stale old odor, rather it was a
longed-for smell, mixed with
a whiff of carbide lamp. I relaxed my stride and went
floating along, guided by
the smell. In front of a store bearing a sign
“Briquette Galbi” a series of
briquette fire pots
were lined up under the eaves waiting
to be lit. Retro fashion has finally gotten as far as
coal briquette stoves,
apparently. The interior looked dark. I opened the
door, made of planks to
resemble the front gate of an old-style house, and
went inside. A man sweeping
the floor informed me that they did not open until
five. There was no sign of a
carbide lamp anywhere. I really just wanted to sit
down somewhere and rest, but
the man doing the sweeping looked so unenthusiastic
that I said nothing more
and went out again. The neighborhood’s ginkgo trees,
their color just as
beautiful as those in Sejongno,
were lightly shedding their leaves. I longed for
coziness. And for warmth. I pushed open the door of a
brightly lit coffee shop and sat down near the window.
Seen from inside, the
street with its falling leaves was like a storybook
scene from an animated
movie, perhaps because of the cheerful, carefree
movements of the young people
passing by. The distance separating me from them was
not just a matter of age, we
were two species as remote from one another as East
and West. Occasionally
I used to hear news about
him, not very happy news,
and I would feel ill at ease. Why had things turned
out as they did back then?
Thinking about it in retrospect, I
loathed myself, my temperament too quick to make
decisions, for falling out of
love with him as if it had been someone else’s affair.
Some time ago, watching a program on the National
Geographic TV channel, I felt as though I had found
the solution to
something I had long been wondering about. Perhaps I had been wanting to find an
answer
for so long, not that it really was the right answer.
The program showed how
birds go about finding a mate. Everyone knows how
usually the males try so hard
to woo females by song, gestures, display ― but the most
interesting was
a bird that wooed females by building a house. That
was the first time I had
heard of such a bird. The males would snap off strong
branches with bright
green leaves, build a sturdy, square home, fashion an
arched door to come and
go by, even adorn the interior with sprigs of red or
yellow flowers. Each
female would inspect the various houses and then
choose the one that pleased
her best, and mating would occur. Right,
and in those days I was bird-brained.
It was the right answer, and it
struck me like a thunderbolt. With no thought of
saying small would be fine, I
wanted to hatch cute chicks and live in a solid, safe
house. His house, like my
family’s house, leaked on all sides, was cracked and
would soon collapse. The
houses were wrecks, where chicks could never be
hatched; for the sake of my
still unborn chicks, I had no alternative but to
reject such a house.
I began to feel uncomfortable sitting
there. It was not a place for me. The tea room, that
also served snacks, was
full and some young folks, mostly couples, cast
longing glances at the empty
seats at my table before going out again. The owner
could not help looking
daggers at me. The Briquette Galbi place must be open
by now. Vivid before my
eyes I see an elderly person slowly walking past it,
nostalgic for the smell of
coal briquettes and carbide lamps. Who can it be? That
melancholy old person
with nothing but memories left to hold onto.
Reluctantly
I stood up. The young couples sitting close together
holding hands cared
nothing if one elderly person came in or went out, but
I felt embarrassed as I
left, as though they were somehow mocking my obscene
chastity in those days.
The whole world is a mat spread out for those young
folks to enjoy
themselves on; so
where should I go? Let them squander their youth,
then. Squandering when the
blood runs hot is no sin, it’s a virtue. Saving it up,
unable to squander it,
does not mean it will always be yours. I comforted my
sulking heart like that
before those young people.
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