I'll Be Right There (14 page)

We made a game out of fixing things that had fallen over or were hanging crookedly. Signs knocked down or hanging askew, shoes dragged outside a door—whenever we spotted something, the three of us would run over together and right it. Miru became especially immersed in the game. Even when we weren’t playing, she was obsessed with correcting anything that was out of place. She returned trashcans that had been pulled out into the alley, and she even replanted flowers that had been planted for decoration. Once, while passing a fruit stand, she stopped to line up the apples in even rows. But when the owner came out, she hid her scarred hands in her pockets, and he thought she was stealing. We fixated on silly, pointless things sometimes to fight off our anxiety and loneliness. If Myungsuh saw two lovers walking hand in hand, he would try to step between them to force them to let go. Miru and I stopped him at first, but later we joined in the fun, trying to see how many couples we could separate within
a certain distance. After a while, we started looking forward to doing it. Once, we saw an especially affectionate-looking couple, so Miru and I stood back and watched to see if he could actually separate them. When he succeeded, he flashed us a victory sign with his fingers, and we all grinned at one another. But then he pointed back at the couple, and we turned to see that they were walking closer together than before and holding each other’s hands more tightly.

Our walks together colored my days even when I was alone. While at home, watching the stars twinkle down at me from an indigo sky, I would catch myself murmuring, “Look at that!” It was as if they were beside me. I would think,
Is that the Milky Way?
and Miru’s name would slip out of my mouth. I thought of Myungsuh whenever I watched the ruddy-faced man at the bun shop downstairs pull back the big cast-iron lid to take out a freshly steamed bun, because I knew that Myungsuh would have pointed him out.

On the streets of this city, we often laughed over nothing at all. We would laugh for a bit, and then the mood would turn strange, and our laughter would die out. I had never laughed so hard before. Was it okay to laugh like that? The question seeped into my thoughts now and then. All summer long and through most of the fall, Miru wore that flared skirt every day. I had never seen her wear anything else. Around the city, just as in school, that skirt stuck out like a sore thumb. Even when I was laughing my heart out, if my gaze came to rest on her skirt, I would feel anxious and my laughter would fade.

Sometimes we were joined by a fourth: the boy named Nak Sujang, whom Myungsuh had told me about the day I bumped
into him downtown after getting caught in the demonstration. The boy in the joke was a real person who went to the same school as us; he was an aspiring architect who preferred to be called Nak Sujang rather than by his real name, Chaesu. I didn’t find out until then that Naksujang, or “Fallingwater” as it was called in English, was the name of the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright house built over a waterfall. I also found out upon meeting him why he had chosen that as his nickname. The house—which he said was not just a house but a work of art—was built above a waterfall on Bear Run in the Pennsylvania mountains as a weekend home for a department store president. Chaesu’s face filled with longing as he talked about how surprised visitors were when Fallingwater was completed. It was built without removing a single tree. The Bear Run stream ran below the house, and the living room and four bedrooms floated unsupported above the water. You heard the water before you saw it. The terrace, which was larger than the interior of the house, was positioned to allow entrance into the house from a bridge over the falls. Chaesu added that the house was proof that even architecture has a soul. He preferred to be called Nak Sujang. He had never left the city, having been born and raised there. We tried telling Miru the joke about Nak Sujang and the girl, but she didn’t laugh. She looked sad instead. She sighed and leaned against a telephone pole.

“You’re supposed to laugh!” we said.

“Sounds like a sad story to me,” she said.

She continued to look glum. Feeling sheepish, I leaned against the pole with her. “I should take a picture,” Myungsuh said as he tried to lift the mood by making a frame with
his fingers and pretending to take a picture of the two of us. But then he, too, joined us in leaning against the pole. The three of us stood there for a long time and watched as people walked by.

Nak Sujang knew everything there was to know about the city. He took us to Bukchon, where old tiled-roofed houses stood with their eaves touching, and to Tongui-dong to see a six-hundred-year-old white lacebark pine tree.

“It’s almost as old as this city you’re so curious about,” he said to me.

I walked around the pine tree again, marveling at how long it had survived.

“They say it stopped growing during the Japanese occupation,” he added.

We sneered at him, but he laughed and said, “I don’t believe it, either, but I
want
to believe it!”

One day, we were walking along Cheonggyecheon Stream toward Dongdaemun Market. I often walked that way to visit the used-book stores on that street. But the road Nak Sujang took us to had much more than just bookstores. It was after dark when he guided us to a market street. There, people who slept by day and worked at night were rushing about. The market stalls stood shoulder to shoulder, divided by building and block, and I could not tell one place from another. The market was so dense with stalls that I could never have memorized all of their names. Dongdaemun Market, Gwangjang Market to the north, a wholesale market that sold only shoes, Dongdaemun Jonghap Market … The market stalls, all with “Dongdaemun” in their names, looked like a maze, but Nak
Sujang guided us forth easily like an explorer. We made our pilgrimage through Pyeonghwa Market, Shin Pyeonghwa Market, Dong Pyeonghwa Market, and Cheong Pyeonghwa Market, and then followed the stream until we emerged on either the north or south end and continued on to the Dongil mall, the Tongil mall, Donghwa Market, Heungin Market, Nam Pyeonghwa Market, the Susanmul fish market … Nak Sujang was like a walking map of the city. I understood why Myungsuh included him in our travels. He told us that Baeogae Road was named after Baeogae Market, which was what Dongdaemun Market was called during the Joseon Dynasty. He also told us Gwangjang Market was the very first market to be built in the modern era. He said it was created at the urging of the people of Joseon after the Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty. After the signing of that treaty, which paved the way for Japan to colonize Korea, Japanese capital was used to take over Namdaemun Market. When he told us all of this, he sounded like a professor of modern Korean history. As I watched him speak, I found it hard to believe that he was the same person who had flubbed a joke so badly because of a cute girl. He seemed to know what I was thinking because he added, “And that was in the year 1905!” and grinned at me.

On the days that we walked with Nak Sujang, I left my maps at home. Later, our excursions turned into a club. No one formally proposed that we start a club, like the people who had proposed Gwangjang Market in 1905, but gradually, more and more of our friends began to surreptitiously follow us until, one day, I found myself walking near my own
neighborhood of Dongsung-dong with Nak Sujang and nine other people. He told us that Marronnier Park was once a college campus, that there were streetcars and music halls and a coffeehouse where students used to go to drink tea, listen to music, and discuss literature and politics. I looked where he was pointing, and there was the sign for the Hakrim Dabang coffeehouse. I had walked past it all the time without realizing how old the coffeehouse was. To me, Marronnier Park had never been anything more than what it was at that moment.

Someone suggested to Nak Sujang that we invite Professor Yoon on a tour of the old fortress wall in the mountains overlooking the city.

“You can’t see it all in one day. You have to choose a section,” Nak Sujang said.

“Even if you packed a lunch and spent the whole day at it? What about a three-day, two-night tour?”

Everyone laughed at the suggestion.

“It’s not that easy. The Seoul Fortress Wall is really beautiful. It doesn’t look that long when it’s right in front of you, but it’s broken up into different sections. You have to hike down and back up again to reach the next section, and the path is long and winding. Not even three days and two nights will be enough to see all of it. Besides, we have to make sure we have time to hang out and have fun while we’re there.”

“Nak Sujang! Whence came your knowledge?” someone joked.

“ ’Tis a dream of mine to be an architect!” Nak Sujang followed suit.

“But what does all this have to do with architecture?”

“Architects have to know everything there is to know about a space. You have to know its past and its present. That way you can build its future.”

“Then you should be majoring in architecture!”

“I already told you I didn’t get into the architecture program. Anyway, I’ll be an architect someday. Just you wait and see! I was born in this city. I want to spend the rest of my life here, designing new spaces and preserving old ones. If you want to see the wall, we can get to it from here. Shall we? We just have to get to the top of Naksan Mountain.”

We followed Nak Sujang out of Marronnier Park and headed for the mountain, which I had seen only from my window. With all the walking we were doing, I was turned around and confused about exactly where we were. Someone exclaimed, “I can’t believe there’s a place like this in the city!” Others doubted whether those narrow alleyways were really leading to the fortress wall. Nak Sujang told us about the mountain, that it was solid granite and shaped like a camel’s back. Meanwhile, I looked down and caught sight of the roof of my building. I pictured myself down there as if I was watching someone else: there I was, watering the table palm, tying my shoelaces before leaving for school, coming out to the rooftop late at night and drawing hopscotch lines, tossing a pebble and hopping on one foot, grabbing the pebble and hopping back to the first square, just as I used to do in the courtyard of my childhood home.

I was trailing behind the group, still gazing down at my building, when Myungsuh walked up next to me. He came close and whispered in my ear.

“I’m in love with you, Jung Yoon.”

Startled at his confession, I could not take my eyes off of the building below. Without meaning to, I blurted out, “More than Miru?”

He looked down at my building with me and said, “So much that I think of you when I picture where I want to be in ten years.”

“But more than Miru?” I looked over at her. She was walking beside Hyuntae, who had earned the nickname Sunflower because he sat in the very front row of Professor Yoon’s poetry class and swiveled his head back and forth to follow Professor Yoon’s gaze. Miru’s skirt blocked the granite of Naksan Mountain for a moment before moving away again.

“When I was little,” Myungsuh began, “my older brothers and I went to our grandparents’ house. My brothers snuck out of the house after dark to hunt for sparrows with one of our older cousins. I went with them. That was how I found out that sparrows live inside the roofs of thatched cottages. There were so many of them. They shivered every time we shined the flashlight on them. My brothers started grabbing them with both hands. One grabbed five birds at once. The birds were helpless. We were soon short of hands. My brother pulled a baby bird out of the straw, put it in my hands, and told me to hold on to it. The baby bird was too frightened to flap its wings and just cowered in my hand. It was so warm and soft. I was afraid it would fly away, so I put it in my pocket. I couldn’t stop petting it. I think it was the first time I ever touched something that young. My small pocket was squirming with life. It felt like I held the entire world in it. I
don’t remember how old I was, but I remember the joy I felt. I love you as much as the joy I felt.”

As much as the joy I felt
—each word was like a drop of rain. I trailed my hand along the fortress wall and stared at Miru’s skirt moving ahead of us.

“More than Miru?” I asked again.

“My brothers were still catching sparrows when my cousin told me to give him the baby bird. I didn’t want to, but I took the squirming bird out of my pocket anyway. I wanted another look at it. It was so small. I don’t think it could fly yet. My cousin plucked the bird from my palm and went off with it. I should never have taken it out of my pocket. When he returned, the birds were all burnt to a crisp. Their bones were popping out of their skin. I couldn’t even tell which of the birds was mine. I looked at their burnt feathers and blackened skin and burst into tears. I cried for him to give me back my bird, but it was too late. My yelling must have irritated him, because he grabbed the smallest one and shoved it in my face, and said, ‘Here it is.’ When I took that charred baby bird from him, I felt the world crash down on me. It was the first time I had ever held something that had died. I love you as much as the sorrow I felt.”

As much as the sorrow I felt
—those drops of rain continued to fall. In order to avoid his eyes, I asked again: “More than Miru?”

Though I had meant it as a joke at first, my words sounded more serious, and I felt strange. I wasn’t sure what I was really asking him.

“After I moved to the city, I met up one night with some old high school friends. It was March, but it was snowing hard
that day. Seven or eight of us met up in front of the university, and we wandered around the city until late. When we got to Namdaemun Market, it was the middle of the night. Inside one of the covered food carts was a row of grilled sparrows. As we shivered in the cold, we pooled the last of our drinking money and were deciding on drinks and snacks when someone suggested grilled sparrow. Everyone got excited. I was the only one who hadn’t had it before. While I stared sourly at the birds, my friends argued over whether grilled sparrows were better when brushed with sesame oil or sprinkled with salt or grilled over a real charcoal fire, and whether you should catch them with a net or use a shotgun. One guy even said to soak uncooked grains of rice in liquor and sprinkle them around the birds’ nests, wait an hour for the birds to get drunk and fall asleep, and then collect them. It seemed like the whole world was divided into those who had eaten grilled sparrow and those who had not. Meanwhile, the sparrows were brushed with oil and roasted over the grill and then placed before us. The feathers were plucked and intestines removed, so the bodies were flat, but the heads were still attached. It was such an uncomfortable feeling. Everyone grabbed a bird and started eating. The bird in front of me had a crack running down its tiny skull. All I could do was stare at it, so the guys goaded me to eat it. They said, ‘You’re not getting philosophical on us, are you?’ They started berating me for not joining in. They all stared at me as they ate. They seemed to be saying,
We’ll see how long you can hold out
. There on that noisy market street with the snow falling around us, I picked up the sparrow with the cracked skull. I don’t know
what made me do it. I could have said no. I bit into the bird’s head. The sound of the skull crunching between my teeth echoed loudly in my ears … I love you as much as the despair I felt.”