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Park
Chan-soon Translated by
Brother Anthony of Taizé
Sinae came to a
stop at the road junction and hesitated.
Going up the hill, the road divided into three before
reaching the Opo Garden Cemetery,
their destination. It was only now that she realized
she had just driven past a
signboard. It had been hanging partly concealed by the
leaves of roadside trees
that seemed to be dripping with a brownish fluid. It
was entirely due to the
chatter of the person sitting beside her in the
passenger seat. She let down
the window to get some air, put out her head and
looked around, but no other
signs were visible. A cool breeze came sweeping in
through the car window. The breeze
helped relieve the oppressed feeling of being suddenly
trapped in a car with someone
whom she had known for a long time but who could not
be said to be a close friend.
That person had been busily rehearsing memories of
himself and Sinae’s husband ever
since he got into her car at the Express Bus Terminal.
Various anecdotes of
youthful days full of bravado that Sinae, for her
part, felt free to listen to
or not, it didn’t matter. Her reactions varied, either
nodding, or making
little critical exclamations: Oh, really? Wow, there
was no stopping them, was
there? or, How big-headed! She wondered if reeling off
endless stories of one’s
youthful days was a courteous exchange for getting a
free lift? Sinae reckoned he
was rather overdoing it, as she stared at his face. Suddenly, the
scene back in the parking lot of the
Express Bus Terminal came to her mind. The way she had
held herself as they
exchanged an awkward handshake, he having come close
to the car, while she
stayed sitting in the driver’s seat. “Get in quickly,”
she said, and she had
been too preoccupied with driving off because of a car
blowing its horn just behind
her to have time to observe his face. It so happened
that the sun setting in
the western sky was shining through the windshield on
his face as he sat in the
passenger seat. Seen from the side, bathed in
sunlight, Hyunwoo had felt
strangely unfamiliar. The large eyes, with their
double eyelids, and the high
nose were just as before, but this classmate of the
old days seemed to have
completely lost the countrified atmosphere he’d had
before leaving to work
abroad. Perhaps because of his long years in Europe,
his complexion had grown paler,
slightly flushed, and it looked rather unreal, bathed
in the light of the
setting sun. Even if he had returned as handsome as
Adonis in Greek mythology, Sinae
wanted to regard him as someone completely devoid of
interest to her. Yet her
heart fluttered. She was rather regretting that she
had not taken a closer look
as they shook hands. Sinae remembered
how she had rather grudgingly taken
his call some time previously, saying that he was
coming up from the farthest southern
region to visit his friend’s grave. Already five years
had passed and she said there
was no need for anything of that kind, but he had
insisted stubbornly. He’d said
that he couldn’t attend the funeral as he was working
overseas, so now that he
was back in Korea it was only proper that he should
pay formal respects to a friend
who had died early. As it happened, the day in
question was a Saturday, today. It
was one day after she had learned she would have to go
to pay a condolence call
for K., who had suddenly died of a heart attack. To
tell the truth, the funeral
she really wanted to run to attend ahead of anyone
else was his. … His face had
not left her mind from the moment she heard of his
death. Someone like a haven
in life, who would disarm and dissolve inner
resentment in a flash, no matter
how desperate or breathtaking the stress she might be
feeling. They had been in
different departments but had first met and grown
close in the student club
room. Things having somehow gone wrong it didn’t work
out in the end, but all
the time she was married to her husband, he was still
firmly fixed in her
consciousness as her first love. His words spoken one
day a few years later, when
both were married and they met by chance in the
street, still remained clear in
Sinae’s mind. “It’s weird how things turn out, isn’t
it?” He said with a hollow
laugh, while she nodded silently with a slight smile.
After that, while remaining
faithful to their marriages, they often used to meet.
The love between the two,
that did not hurt at all because it did not wear the
clothes of reality,
continued after that, always keeping a slight
distance. At 3:00 pm,
after a planning meeting with the
other team members about a new soup product, just as
she was preparing to leave
for Korea University Guro Hospital, where the funeral
home was, a call came
from Hyunwoo. I’ve just arrived at the express
terminal. He had said he was
going to come, but she had not expected him to come up
on just this day. Sinae
was torn in three directions. Her husband, who had
passed away five years ago—she
had never gone to visit his grave after the first
anniversary—and his friend
Hyunwoo, who said he would express belated
condolences, and her first love, who
had died yesterday, K., her heart was at a loss on
where to focus her attention. Sinae kept
feeling uncomfortable because it was
rare for things to be as complicated and unbearable as
today. The autumn season
was in full swing, with crowds leaving to enjoy the
colored foliage, and in
addition it was a long weekend, so that it took two
and a half hours to drive
from the terminal as far as the southern suburb of
Bundang. If the traffic
continued like this, she might end up visiting the
funeral home for K very late
at night. The problem was that nowadays many funeral
homes did not allow late-night
visits, so that the family of the deceased could get
some rest. In addition, at
midnight, there would be no other visitors, so that it
was bound to look odd to
anyone if she came rushing in and stood all alone in
front of K’s photo on the
altar. The funeral was at dawn the following day.
Sinae had wanted to perform her
own farewell ritual standing inconspicuously among
other alumni. However, with
the appearance of Hyunwoo, she was becoming
increasingly impatient at the
thought that it would be hard today. She swerved and
went blindly speeding
along the right-hand road where hills were visible. As
she drove toward the top
of the hill, the sun in the western sky was shining
brightly on the mountains to
the right. The garden cemetery must be somewhere among
those hills bathed in
the sunset. Hyunwoo sensed that Sinae was lost. “Take
your time. You only come occasionally, so you don’t
have it fixed in your mind,
right? I always get lost when I go to visit my
father’s grave in my hometown.” “In actual fact,
this is my first visit since
the first anniversary. Let’s keep driving then come
back if it’s not the right
road.” She spoke
frankly. There was no reason not to
be honest. She had no time to bother about his grave
in the mountains far away
while she was busy repaying various debts her husband
had left as well as raising
their children alone. In addition, today Sinae was
sharing a moment of unutterable
truth with Hyunwoo, who had suddenly turned up. Though
she didn’t know if he still
remembered. If it really was the truth, he could not
help remembering. What had
happened not long after she was married. She had
invited some friends to a
party to celebrate her husband’s birthday and their
move to a new house. After
dinner, men and women sat down together to play poker.
Hyunwoo said he would
skip a hand while he went out and smoked a cigarette,
then as he was coming
back from the veranda and returning to the poker game,
he came face-to-face
with Sinae who was on her way out after laying a dish
of grilled squid on the
table. He gazed at her in her embroidered apron with
an odd look in his eyes, then
raised an arm, blocking the doorway. It was still
early evening and surely he
was not already drunk. Her husband and the other
friends were busy laying bets,
each pretending to have a good hand, and had no time
to look outside. Obviously
he was a classmate of Sinae and her husband, but at
that moment, setting aside
any such relationship, he was simply a man. Feeling
that, she quickly avoided
his eyes and came out into the living room. Had he
seen her as a woman rather
than as a friend’s wife, she wondered. Or had she seen
him as a man rather than
her husband’s friend? She could not tell. In any case,
even though it only
lasted a moment, it was certainly true that there was
a feeling of awkwardness
and embarrassment hovering between them. After that,
Sinae had never met him alone. They
were always surrounded by friends and acted as if
nothing had happened. But she
had never forgotten that moment. She could not forget
it. Perhaps that was
because of the thought, whether it was a moment of
impulse or a stroke of
childishness, that it might be the call of a life
force they neither of them knew.
The call seemed to have gone drifting away and
vanished with time, but as soon
as she met him, it came alive again in her memory. Lost in all
these thoughts, Sinae couldn’t tell
how long she had been driving, but she realized she
was definitely on the wrong
road. There were no more signs for Opo Garden Cemetery
decorated with clouds
and cranes to be seen anywhere. She had been wrong to
set off without turning
on the GPS, convinced that once she had passed the
crest of Taeje hill the way
would be obvious. Now she turned on the navigation
system and immediately the
woman’s voice instructed her to make a U-turn. Even
with the help of the GPS
woman she went winding along mountain roads so that by
the time they arrived at
the cemetery, the sun was already about to sink behind
the western hills. Sinae
spread out the mat she had taken from the trunk and
took from the plastic bag the
soju and paper cups she had bought at the convenience
store in front of her office.
Hyunwoo poured soju into a paper cup and stood facing
his friend’s photo in the
third row of the columbarium. It had looked okay on
the first anniversary, but now
the coated photo had turned yellow and it looked like
someone who had passed
away fifty years before, rather than just five. “Hey Seunghee,
it’s me, Hyunwoo. Now have a
drink. I’m sorry I couldn’t attend your funeral as I
was working in the Paris
office. Seunghee, have you really left us? I can’t
believe it. Of course, it’s
embarrassing to tell you now you’ve gone on ahead, but
I reckon that with life
being as hard as it is, there’s no great difference
between you who’ve gone on
ahead and me who still have to struggle here below. I
don’t seem to be living
at all. Come on, down the hatch! Now, would you like
one of those cigarettes
you were so fond of?” He sprinkled the
soju from the paper cup onto
the grass between the columbarium walls, lit a
cigarette, and addressed the
photo on his friend’s niche. “Right, draw on
this. Inhale deeply, then let
out the smoke. It was quite a sight, you with a
cigarette. You were the most
gallant one among us. You were like a film star,
holding a cigarette clutched
between your index and middle finger, drawing in the
smoke, inhaling deeply, then
puffing it out through your nose.” For a good while
he held out the cigarette his
invisible friend was smoking, until the ash grew long,
then he put it into his own
mouth. There was no telling if that was one of the
ways of mourning he wanted. Sinae
was sitting on a square marble chair set there for the
mourners. After driving
for several hours on a drowsy afternoon, she was
overcome with fatigue and
closed her eyes for a moment. She wanted to let
Hyunwoo perform alone his
farewell ceremony while she rested. Suddenly, she
heard ringing in her head
some music she had been listening to during the day.
After lunch, she sat down on
a couch in the staff lounge and closed her eyes. While
music flowed from the FM
radio, she seemed half-asleep. Perhaps because she was
planning to go to K’s wake
in the afternoon, or triggered by the music or
something else, Sinae woke up
feeling a piercing sense of longing in her heart. And
she was staggered to feel
strongly that what was so piercing was a raw feeling
of eagerly wanting to touch
someone’s skin. For her it was truly a new discovery
about herself, something unforgettable,
that she must inscribe deep in her heart. Soon she
heard the voice of the presenter
saying that the piece had been Brahms’ cello sonata
No. 1, Opus 38. The
performers were the cellist Jacqueline du Pre and the
New London Symphony
Orchestra. It was not the first time she had heard it.
Only it had sounded
different today. The presenter added that it was a
romantic work in which the
passion of the composer, who seemed to have been
struggling, was clearly expressed
through the restrained yet gentle cello of the
soloist. Had it felt more poignant
because it was a performance by a genius, a cellist
who died while still young?
In any case, Sinae knew full well that, as far as
Brahms was concerned, he was
a composer who had only been able to burn inwardly,
having fallen in love with
his teacher’s wife Clara, but being unable to say a
word. For Sinae, the suppressed
impulses and emotions in his work seemed to be
evidenced in her own body
listening to this music today. If so, this special
feeling about K’s death,
which she felt so sorry about, might perhaps have been
similar to what happened
in her body as she was listening to the music during
the day. It was something
she herself could not be sure of. Hyunwoo stubbed
out the cigarette, pulled a
harmonica from his pocket and started to play. At
first, she didn’t know what
song it was. She followed the melody for a while and
finally recalled the
lyrics. ‘My love, stay by my side / you are the only
one in this world / if you
should leave on this hard day / in whose arms will I
find rest as I stagger on?’
She recalled the opening words thanks to the phrase,
“in whose arms will I find
rest as I stagger on?” He was a bit out of tune but
Sinae reflected that she
could not deny the weight of this hillside
performance. The low harmonica sound
rang out deep and far, like a song dedicated to all
those sleeping there. The surroundings
grew quiet at the sound of the music and seemed to her
to grow warm as they
received comfort. She had never once hummed a song for
her husband, even when
he was alive, let alone after he died. While she
greeted the visitors at the
funeral home, and even when the body was being
shrouded, she had only been
preoccupied about living with the children, and her
own sorrow. After
completing the performance, Hyunwoo took out his
handkerchief, wiped the
instrument and put it in his pocket before addressing
his silent friend. “Seunghee, I
don’t know if my performance reached
you okay. You’re the one who should be singing. When
you used to sing Kim Hyun-sik’s
“I Loved You” while you accompanied yourself on the
guitar, all the others felt
so intimidated that they didn’t dare sing anymore.” Sinae tilted her
head to one side. He used to sing
well? Songs by Kim Hyun-sik, who she was so fond of,
even accompanying himself
on the guitar? Come to think of it, after their
marriage, she reckoned that she
had never once heard her husband sing. It was the
first time she had heard talk
of it. Theirs had never been the kind of marriage
where songs would
spontaneously come flowing out. Hyunwoo kept pouring
out words. “Hey, man, you
should have waited a bit longer,
until I got back. Once I was back, I was planning to
have a great booze-up. I
owed you big. I was so taken up with the band that I
missed the English poetry exam
and was in deep shit. But without me even knowing, you
took several friends and
knelt in front of the professor’s house for several
days, begging, until I was
allowed to submit a report instead. That professor,
who was rumored to be so
strict, gave up when he saw your friendship. And that
allowed me to avoid being
expelled from the ROTC, which in turn helped me get a
job later. Hey, man, that’s
the kind of guy you were. So why on earth were you in
such a hurry to go?” He was talking
about things that couldn’t even
be imagined by a selfish individualist like Sinae, who
never saw anything that
was not directly in front of her nose. It seemed there
had been that kind of
side to the worthless gang who lived in the billiards
salons, hanging out in a
crowd while skipping class. But what was the use of
coming here now to lament
like this? Sulking, Sinae turned her head away. He
continued to confess something
to his friend, but Sinae had stopped listening. To be
honest, she didn’t want
to hear all that whining. Rather she wanted to be
absorbed in her own thoughts.
Is this how I’m parting from K? I’ve been trusting
that no matter where I end
up, so long as he’s in the world I’ll find the
strength to keep on living. Absorbed as she
was in thoughts of K in her own
mind, she only turned her eyes back toward Hyunwoo
when he started to clap in
applause. Then he began to talk about a quite
extraordinary incident. “Do you know why
I clapped? I applauded you for
admitting your skill at billiards that no one knew
about. Had you lived a bit
longer and kept playing billiards, you could have
discovered some amazing pocket
ball geometry. When you were drawing charts in the
billiards room in front of
the school, setting aside study for the final exams,
engrossed in the
five-and-a-half system, I used to think you were a guy
who was really fully
alive. Nowadays it’s increasingly rare to see our
teen-aged kids playing with
their friends on playgrounds or sports fields. Very
rarely, I see kids playing
soccer, baseball or basketball with their peers, and
that’s when I feel they’re
really alive, with no other purpose, no pretending.
That’s what you did at the
billiard room. That’s when you were alive, I mean.” Sinae had
nothing but negative thoughts. This
is a kind of sophistry. It’s a beautification of a
craze for billiards that meant
he squandered his tuition fee in the billiard room.
Moreover, both she and
Hyunwoo were more than middle-aged, both approaching
fifty. She slowly began to
have unpleasant thoughts. Hyunwoo was using words such
as ‘Take the ball,’ ‘Angle
Line’ and ‘Three Cushions’ as if to encourage his dead
friend to take up his
cue again. “You used to say
you’d make a billiards
dictionary, changing all the Japanese terms into
Korean. At that time, we mocked
you for wasting your time, but it wasn’t so. Now
billiards is in the limelight as
one of the ‘cue sports.’ The sight as you lowered
yourself to the height of the
ball, held the cue firm and gazed at the ball
suggested that you were on the
verge of becoming a god of billiards.” His farewell
ritual, going all the way back to
talk about billiards, showed no sign of ending. Sinae
felt that her patience
had reached its limit. But she suppressed her
annoyance and spoke in euphemisms. “After such a
long time, you must have a lot to
say. But instead of expressing everything all at once,
suppose you came back and
continued then? He’d probably prefer that more. It’s
going to take us quite a
while to get back to the terminal. Did you say your
bus left at 10 o’clock?” He didn’t give a
damn that it was gradually growing
dark. He went on chattering resolutely, as if it would
be a grave discourtesy
to his dead friend not to do so. “We were dead
souls from the moment we prepared
to get a job, started carrying books on TOEIC,
marketing principles and
accounting. Do you remember? Once you began studying
for job tests, you quit
billiards, and your face began to turn dark. I reckon
the urn with your ashes
ought to be in the billiards hall you used to
frequent.” Sinae couldn’t
take any more. The intensity of the
anger welling up inside her was growing ever stronger
at the thought that
because of Hyunwoo, with his nonsensical chattering,
she might not be able to get
to the funeral hall she absolutely had to visit
tonight. She wanted to shout aloud,
‘That’s enough!’ She felt that people were right when
they said that even after
a man is an adult, he’s still just a kid. It was
because John Lennon knew that
so well that he had written: “Woman, I know you
understand the little child
inside the man; please remember my life is in your
hands.” Sinae was obliged to
spend the time all alone, thinking that whether he
said farewell to his friend
or not, it did not matter. This clueless man without
any such ideas now turned
toward her, and suddenly the previous eloquence turned
into a stutter. “Shi- . . . Sinae, I . . .
I have something to confess.” The moment she
heard that, Sinae felt flustered.
She turned her head toward the hills in order to avoid
his gaze. She wondered
what unseemly words she was about to hear, here on
this hillside, just the two
of them, and moreover on the very spot where her dead
husband lay buried. She
really wanted to get away, if only she could escape.
She longed to stop her ears
so as not to hear whatever he was going to say.
However, remembering that he
was her guest anyway, she turned her head back toward
Hyunwoo, and this time it
was his turn to raise his head and look up at the sky.
He too seemed to be trying
not to make eye contact with her. “Do you remember
how, when we were freshmen, we
went to Daesung-ri for membership-training and someone
went into the girls’
tent at night and slipped a minnow into your hand as
you slept?” Sinae replied
vaguely, as she was not sure
whether she remembered or not. “Well, suppose
that did happen, so what?” “The culprit who
caught the minnow and slipped
it into your hand. . ..” Hyunwoo
got to that point and stopped. After a moment, he
lowered his
head and went on again. “That was me.
There’s no point in hiding it
after all this time. I’m really sorry.” To see him
struggling to talk about an incident
that had left no trace in her memory only made him
look yet more foolish. “But it happened
over 20 years ago. It was just
a silly childhood prank.” Yet it seemed to
matter to him a lot. Perhaps
because when she screamed the friends who were
sleeping beside her all screamed
loudly too. But she spoke as if it was no big deal. “I was just
taken by surprise for a moment,
that’s all. Why do you still remember it?” He looked as
though she had missed the point.
With his head still down, he drew something on the mat
with his right foot as
he went on: “No. The fact
that I didn’t confess on the spot
has been weighing on my mind all my life. I’m really
sorry. But I hope you just
understand this. At that moment, I just wanted to make
you feel the touch of
the wriggling minnow. Minnows live in clear sinae (brooks), don’t they?” It was only then
that Sinae realized that the reason
the fish had been thrust into her hand was because of
her name. She broke into
a smile. Yet she had absolutely no memory of the
incident. If he had not spoken
it would have remained a childish happening that she
had completely forgotten
about. But Hyunwoo was apologizing to Sinae as if he
had committed some great
sin. Then suddenly a thought struck her. If there was
a problem right now, it
was surely his strange behavior on the day of the
party. The way he had looked
at her with the eyes of another man, not her husband’s
friend. Had he really
forgotten that? Then he brings up the innocent fish
incident from their
freshman year, so much earlier, and apologizes? She
even wondered if he hadn’t
deliberately brought up and made a fuss about that
insignificant incident in
order to cover up something more serious. Or was she
alone in still keeping what
happened at the party folded up and stored between the
pages of her memory? If that
were so, she even wondered if the incident was not
telling some truth about herself.
While she was thinking about all this in her heart, he
started muttering to his
friend again. “Seunghee, if
you’re bored over there, remember
that autumn night, we were in second year, when we
went streaking in the middle
of the night from in front of the College of
Humanities as far as the front
gate, along the ginkgo-lined road. That was your idea.
It was really thrilling.
As if the whole world was ours.” She really
didn’t want to hear any more, but the
mention of streaking had Sinae hooked again. Streaking
on campus at midnight? Sinae
seemed to be increasingly unable to understand the
world of men. She also felt
rather disappointed that she had graduated without
doing anything of that kind.
But she was no longer prepared to listen to him, no
matter what other shocking
things might emerge. So she stopped paying attention,
started packing up and
preparing to leave. It also felt increasingly creepy
that the two of them were
alone up in the hills like this. Some dark shadow
seemed all the time to be lingering
nearby. Just then the antennae in her head detected
some kind of unexpected
movement. As he continued to intone some kind of
confession, things around
seemed to come strangely alive. The maple trees
standing between the
columbarium walls bathed in the twilight glow appeared
fresher and redder. A
mountain breeze charged with the buzzing energy of the
cemetery wove its way
round Sinae’s breast. At the same time, she seemed to
hear something totally
unexpected. It was as a poet once said, “The dead
murmur beneath the ground,”
and “the nails and hair of the dead grow silently.” It
was a phenomenon that would
never be experienced if you came out of a sense of
duty, offered wine, bowed, then
wiped the stone slab clean following the standard
procedures. For a moment, Sinae
felt as if the ashes were stirring, as if they were
trying to hold a festival
of their own. It was extremely
disconcerting. Hyunwoo, who had
seemed rather flippant when they were in university,
looked rather different,
though still talkative, here before her husband’s
grave, and was now leading Sinae
to some strange place. She closed her eyes. The
cemetery suddenly turned into the
billiards room in front of the school. Seunghee
emerged from his urn and began
to play billiards with Hyunwoo after sending out for
Chinese noodles. There
were three balls on the pool table: white, red and
yellow. Being left-handed,
he lowered himself to the level of the table, grasped
the tip of the cue with
his right hand, drew his left hand holding the grip of
the cue as far back as
possible and was staring at the balls with the eye of
a falcon. He struck the
white ball, which hit the red ball lying directly in
front of it, collided
against the left wall and rolled on energetically,
until it touched the yellow ball
lying in front of the opposite wall, then a moment
later the red ball that the
white had struck came rolling gently until it too
touched the yellow ball. Sinae’s
whole body thrilled to the smooth texture of the balls
as if she were touching
them with her hands. Hyunwoo raised his hands in
surrender, and Seunghee smiled
in satisfaction. At such a moment, Seunghee seemed to
be lucidly solving the
billiard balls’ invisible geometry in his head. People
said that solving such an
equation had been a long-standing dream for
physicists. Now Seunghee, having solved
it, looked more cheerful than ever. Sinae nearly
reached out her hand for a
high five. Suddenly she remembered the Père Lachaise
cemetery in France. A
friend who studied in Paris had told her that the
cemetery was a place of
communication between the dead and the living. She
said that when she had problems
with a report or when she felt lonely and homesick,
she would visit the Paris cemetery
and talk to the poets, novelists and musicians buried
there. She said it was a
place where everyone was only given a small space of
the same size, no matter
how wealthy or famous they might be, celebrities such
as Edith Piaf, Yves Montand,
Chopin, Proust. But with its beautiful centuries-old
trees and ever-flowering
gardens, it had become a popular destination for
citizens to relax in. Did that
mean that the ashes of dead people like Chopin, Yves
Montand, or Proust came
back to life and talked to the visitors? Perhaps the
bizarre energy of the ashes of the dead
coming alive for a party might be applied to Truman
Capote, author of Breakfast at
Tiffany’s. She had recently
heard in the news how a friend and his lifelong
partner had shared his ashes
between them, and then, thirty years later, after both
had died, the ashes had
fetched a high price in an auction. There had been
people who worried that selling
ashes at auction would be disrespectful or
over-commercial. But his
acquaintances said: ‘True would never have wanted the
urn with his ashes to lie
asleep on a shelf.’ The moment Sinae imagined people
making bids at an auction for
someone’s ashes, she felt like smiling. It was not an
auction, but a party
bringing the ashes back to life. As she listened to
the news report, Sinae had
seemed to see Capote kick his way out of his urn, put
on a mask and start to dance
in the auction house. In his lifetime he had lived to
the full, creating a
sensation wherever he went. While she was
imagining Capote growing warm
again, she recalled the tepid feel of the urn
containing her husband’s ashes,
when it had been handed to her at the Seongnam
Crematorium a few years before. That’s
right, tepid. It had probably been the temperature of
her breast. But even that
tepid feel seemed to have been quickly forgotten in
the stress of having to bring
the urn to where relatives and friends were waiting at
the burial place. After
placing the urn in the niche in the columbarium wall,
which was like a chest of
drawers, then closing the door, and bowing twice to
the sound of a monk’s chanting,
the funeral ended very simply. Sinae completed the
procedure slowly but without
any farewell gestures, such as caressing the urn
affectionately or gazing at it
profoundly. For Sinae, the urn had been nothing more
than a pot holding ashes,
the cemetery nothing more than a simple physical space
holding the remains of
dead people. But now that space was gradually being
turned into a festival of
ashes with the appearance of her husband’s rather
unwelcome friend. To be
honest, Sinae reckoned it was a ‘revenge of the
ashes’. And it wasn’t happening
on “Ash Wednesday,” but on an ordinary Saturday. Once he had
demonstrated his skill at
billiards, Seunghee’s ashes, which had grown scorching
hot like Capote’s,
seemed determined to show Sinae another kind of
festival. Suddenly, he stripped
off his clothes and stood naked, his middle leg
dangling, then started gently
warming up. He seemed about to reproduce the streaking
of the distant past. Determined
not to see that, Sinae opened her eyes that had been
closed. Hyunwoo was still
whispering something to his friend’s ashes. She took
the bottle from the altar
and put it in a plastic bag and rolled up the mat.
Even though she stirred up a
chill breeze as she roughly rolled up the mat, he kept
muttering something to
his friend. “I’ll be in the
car. Finish saying goodbye and
come out. “ After saying
that, Shine turned away somewhat
impatiently and went striding toward the parking lot.
There was still no sign
of Hyunwoo after thirty minutes. Sinae was obliged to
walk back to where he
was. As she entered the pine grove surrounding the
columbarium, she saw him
emerging with his hands deep in his pockets. Feeling
relieved, Sinae stood waiting
for him to come out. He obviously knew she was
standing there, but pretended
not to see her and passed by without a word of apology
for keeping her waiting
for so long, although it was certainly not dark enough
for him not to recognize
her. Just as Sinae had done to him when he stood in
her way back at the party
early in her marriage, swiftly and furtively, yet
decisively. Then Hyunwoo got
in and sat down in the passenger seat. Sinae felt
strange. Had Hyunwoo
misunderstood something? Is it because he assumes that
I have some different
interest in him? No way, it can’t be. Sinae persuaded
herself to endure for a
little longer. But then he started chattering again. “Do you
realize
how much Seunghee cared about you? He decided that he
would not be like his
father, who had been crazy about nothing but business
all his life. The family counted
for nothing. So he decided that he would put the
happiness of his family first
in his life. So he opened a small store, only it
didn’t work out, which meant
you had to suffer a lot. But he always felt sorry
toward you.” Sinae felt that
if he had been holding a mike to
his lips she would have torn it from him. Who wanted
to hear such talk after
all that time? Rain began to hit the car windows
noisily. It was already
getting too late for her to go to the funeral hall;
the whole situation was really
frustrating. There were so many cars on the expressway
entering Seoul from
Bundang that it took an hour just to reach the Yangjae
Interchange. From there,
the congestion was even worse. With the express bus
terminal just ahead, they
were immobilized for a full thirty minutes. Perhaps
realizing the seriousness
of the situation, he kept quiet for a while, then
remarked. “The traffic in
Seoul is really a pain.” For Sinae, there
was nothing he could say that
would bring any comfort. Rather, she felt like telling
Hyunwoo that he was the
epicenter of her pain today. After crawling along, she
finally dropped him off
at the Express Bus Terminal. Sinae felt as if she was
being relieved of a pain
in the neck. After turning on the GPS she tuned in to
the traffic broadcast. Because
the traffic on the Olympic Highway was too heavy, they
recommended taking the
Southern Ring Road or Hyeonchungro. Unable to decide
which way to go, Sinae was
once more confronted with a choice between three
roads. While she was
wondering which route would have
less traffic, she was thinking of Hyunwoo, whom she
had just dropped off at the
terminal. When he was sitting next to her, he had been
just so much useless luggage,
but it was as if he had thrown something at her as he
got out. In addition, he
was the one who had provoked the festival of ashes.
She was troubled by the way
he had deliberately ignored and avoided her as he
passed by her at the
cemetery. She longed to ignore it all. So what big
deal was it, anyway?
Nevertheless, in her head she continued to feel
anxious, as if something might
or might not come into her mind. Finally, she
concluded that there had always been
something awkward about her life. She didn’t know what
it was, but because of it,
she had always considered life suspiciously. It was
the same today. After groaning
a while, something came to her mind. Something she had
never done well and that
Hyunwoo had spent the whole day putting into practice,
the act of mourning. By
doing so, Hyunwoo had testified to the times when her
husband had lived, like a
young kid, maybe, but fully alive, living a real life.
That was the festival of
ashes Seunghee had celebrated today. Suddenly she
wondered. If that was the
case, had Seunghee been dead all the time they lived
together? In
fact, Sinae had known nothing about his humanity, his
habits, what
he really liked, that Hyunwoo had been talking about
today. She had never even imagined
stories about his smoking habits, his favorite karaoke
song, pocket ball
geometry, or streaking across the campus. Their
relationship had started as
classmates, but after they got married, they had
imprinted on each other nothing
but responsibilities and duties. She had done nothing
but scold him and grumble
about his weak showing as head of the family. Come to
think of it, his friend
Hyunwoo had probably known him better than she had,
though she was his wife: he
must have known how Seunghee should have lived in this
land where he had received
his life. Sinae began to regret that she had come away
instead of observing
Seunghee’s ash festival carefully to the end. Yet she
felt that it was
something she could never rid herself of, that could
forever be replayed at any
time in front of her eyes, remaining intact for life.
Even now, she thought, she
maybe ought to put his urn in the billiards room as
Hyunwoo had said. After
all, it wasn’t only Capote’s urn that had to be
brought back to life by being
cherished and revered. Anyway, Sinae
had certainly never grieved over
anyone as Hyunwoo had done today. It had been the same
at her mother’s funeral.
She had known how her mother’s body had grown light
enough to be lifted up with
one hand after several months of hospital treatment
following a difficult operation.
However, she merely followed the customary funeral
procedure, crying and
bowing, never comprehending the meaning of the body
that had grown so light. How
after marrying the oldest of a family of eight her
mother had worn her knuckles
to the bone slaving until her back was completely
bent. She had not once embraced
that mother, who had grown as light as a ghost. With the word
“grieving” Sinae thought of K,
whose wake she was on her way to attend. His face was
reflected in the car window.
On such a dark night, his face appeared to Sinae
almost identical to when they
were students in their twenties. When she was with him
it seemed to Sinae that she
would never grow old. She couldn’t begin to imagine
what had taken him away so
fast. Their last meeting had been when they went to
hear the Berlin Philharmonic
and he had looked so healthy. After a delicious dinner
and the concert, they
shared happy smiles over tea as the evening drew on.
Meeting him had always made
her heart pound. She wondered why, and suddenly
something struck her. It was
the fact that they shared no bitter memories of
floundering bogged down together.
The fresh thrill and excitement that came from there
being no dark shades, no
wrinkles, were no bad thing. Enjoying together what
each enjoyed in pleasant surroundings
then each returning to their own place. There was only
one thing that troubled her.
Whenever they met in the lobby of a concert hall for a
performance, he always
approached from a little way off, with an arm ready
extended at full length to
shake her hand. There was no telling if it was an
ingrained social habit,
something he always did when he met people. But to her
eyes, it looked like a
gesture designed to let the people around them know
that they were not a couple
living in the same space every day. That had always
brought a trace of emptiness
to her heart. But what more could she hope for? It
seemed to be a condition
that Sinae had to accept in order to keep their
relationship intact. Even
running at maximum speed, the wipers failed to cope
with the rain pouring down the
windscreen. It was fortunate that the traffic was so
heavy. At that point a
question came into her mind. Hadn’t she been living
her life upside down? That overturn
came flooding before her like a river, suddenly
swollen by heavy rain. Every
moment of the apparently squalid daily life that she
had rejected seemed to be
taking its revenge. She was so concerned about the
lives of others that her
motto was to make instant food as delicious and fresh
as food freshly cooked at
home, yet in fact her own life was all a sham. Her married life
with her husband was passing
in front of her eyes. Apart from times when they were
dating, they had never sat
alone enjoying a cup of tea together—their days of
marriage had been cold and
unfeeling. His simple smiles and sighs and the
exclamations of “Why, how soft!”
when they gave their first child its bath together.
The sound of his breathing,
a music more precious than any other sound. Sinae was
now dimly feeling
something she had never realized before. That living
is not a space set aside
for something great apart from everyday life. The
failures and frustrations of
one person, the falls, watching all of them standing
beside that person, quiet moments
immersed in good music, moments when every cell of the
body seems to swell in
the warmth of the sun. Sinae had blown all those
moments away. She wanted to cry
out, appeal against the injustice, say she had had no
choice in order to earn a
living. She wanted to protest that if it were at all
possible, she too would
have loved to go to a billiards hall on a free day,
play billiards with her
husband, order Chinese noodles, wield the cue and the
chopsticks in turn,
whispering together. But no matter what excuse she
made it was useless. It was
all so many pomegranate seeds scattered in the air.
Sinae could not figure out
what to do about such a mess. Including Hyunwoo’s
actions, the world was really
full of unknowable things. The rain was still
splashing against the window.
Stopping in front of a tightly jammed, three-way
intersection, Sinae closed her
eyes. Naked, Seunghee had finished warming up and was
standing side by side
with his friends at the top of the ginkgo-lined road.
The festival of ashes was
about to begin once again. |