I'll Be Right There (7 page)

“What happened to your hands?” Professor Yoon asked Miru.

I would never have guessed that Professor Yoon would be so blunt. Her hands were painful even to look at. She took them out of her pockets, lifted them up in front of her, spread her fingers, and looked down at the backs of them. I had not expected her to do that. She stared at them as if they belonged to someone else.

“I burned them,” she said.

That was the first time I heard her speak. Her voice was clear and distinct.

“Hot water?”

“No, gasoline.”

“That must have been very painful,” Professor Yoon whispered under his breath. He did not ask how it happened. Miru turned her hands over, looked at her palms, and said yes.

“But surely you don’t regard them as a symbol of who you are?”

My stomach sank when he said that, but Miru looked composed. Beside her, Myungsuh raised his eyebrows and sat up straighter on the couch. He seemed to want to stop their conversation before it went any further.

“Well, Professor, I guess we will take that as a yes,” Myungsuh said.

Professor Yoon raised his head but looked at Miru instead.

“Everywhere you go, you stand out.”

There was another awkward silence.

“I noticed you, even before I saw your hands. I’ve never met you before, but you stand out from the others.”

An odd tension filled the room.

“Free yourself from your hands.” Professor Yoon spoke calmly. “If you want to be free of your hands, then audit my class. If not, then don’t waste your time.”

Miru’s dark eyes seemed to scowl at Professor Yoon. I realized then that the strange energy she gave off was also anxiety. Her eyes flared with nervous energy, and she looked like she might attack Professor Yoon. But almost immediately, they wavered. Her eyes turned to rest on me. Full of questions and pleas, her eyes seemed to be asking for rescue. I reached my hand out to her. Her dark eyes locked on my fingers. Myungsuh stood and gently took her hand. Her wrinkled hand was caught in his big, strong one. Her burned hand disappeared into his, as if that were the most suitable place in the world for it.

“We’ll be going now,” he said.

Miru stood up. Myungsuh guided her before him to the door and was about to leave when he turned and looked back at me.

“Jung Yoon.” He enunciated my full name precisely. “It’s been a year.”

I didn’t think it was strange of him to say my full name that way. Since I had found out his name only during attendance, he had probably learned my name the same way. Nevertheless, when he spoke to me, I felt a sudden premonition that I would soon be walking around the city with the two of them.

“Thank you,” he said.

He stood there without leaving, as if waiting for me to respond. I didn’t know what he was thanking me for, but I nodded. Finally, he gave a slight bow to Professor Yoon. Miru
seemed to be looking at me as well, her scarred hand still enveloped by his large one.

After the two of them left, Professor Yoon and I were quiet for a moment. He had seemed so cold to Miru for some reason, but he let out a deep sigh and turned back into the same person who had told the story of Saint Christopher during class.

“Are you a fast typist?” he asked.

I grinned nervously instead of answering.

“Are you?”

I smiled again.

“You should answer clearly, not just smile, when a teacher asks you a question.”

I thought of how his voice sounded when he said
then tell us what you do know
to the girl in class. I had long been in the habit of smiling when I wasn’t sure how to answer someone. No one had ever pointed it out to me before.

“I’m sort of fast,” I said.

“How fast?”

“Fast enough that I can compose as I type.”

“I see. I envy people who can type with all ten fingers. I’ve tried to learn, but it’s too hard for me. I’m what you call a hunt and peck typist. Unlike you, my hands can’t keep up with my thoughts. When I try to type, my thoughts keep stopping and looking back as my hands try to catch up.”

The professor had a unique way of speaking that was unfamiliar to me, but I sort of understood what he meant.

Maybe what Professor Yoon felt when he was unable to get ahead of or catch up to the thoughts in his head when he
typed and instead watched his fingers slowly lagging behind the sentences that had already come into the world was similar to how I felt the night I walked to my mother’s grave with Dahn, when I realized I had to break through the lethargy I felt at my parents’ house and return to the city. That night, when I nearly asked Dahn if he loved me, after he had told me about the mess he was in after beating up a classmate, I knew I had to come back to the city. That was what stopped me from asking Dahn that question. You should only ask someone if they love you if you love them, regardless of what their answer might be. My decision that night, when I grabbed a handful of dirt from my mother’s grave, had brought me back to the city, but my heart had not yet returned and seemed to be roaming around out there somewhere.

I thought, too, about my cousin’s husband, who had once said something like Professor Yoon. Each time my cousin’s husband returned from a week of flying, the dinner table would be set with his favorite foods. Rice, seaweed soup, grilled dried corvina, steamed egg, toasted dried laver, seasoned spinach, mung bean sprouts, and radish—all of the things he liked. The three of us ate together sometimes. One night, he was too exhausted to eat. My cousin set the grilled corvina on the table and asked if he needed to see a doctor, but he told her not to worry. He said the plane was too fast, his body had arrived first. That he felt ill because his soul could not keep pace with the speed of the plane and was still on its way home, and he would feel better once it had caught up to the rest of him.

Professor Yoon handed me the sheaf of papers.

“It’s a collection of works by Korean writers, dating back to the 1950s. There are a lot of pages. Won’t it be too much for you?”

“I can handle it.”

“After you type them all up, I plan to print copies to use in class as our course reader. I’m sorry to put you up to this, but maybe it will help you study.”

Small scraps of paper were stuck between the pages of the manuscript. Some of the pages had Post-its covered with handwritten notes. Professor Yoon took a large envelope from the top of his desk and slid the manuscript inside. His slim fingers caught my eye.

“You can add the comments on the notes to the manuscript according to the directions I wrote down.”

I had learned to type while living with my cousin. The landlord’s daughter, who was the same age as me, attended a vocational high school and owned a typewriter. She must have owned a great many things, but all I ever thought about was that typewriter. I wanted it so badly that when I closed my eyes, I could easily picture the word
Clover
branded on the front. Whenever I had reason to go into her room, I would stand in front of the typewriter, stretch my fingers, and tap at the keys—
tak tak tak
. She did not like it at first when I touched her typewriter, but when she saw how fond I was of it, she taught me how to type. I learned the positions of all the keys and enjoyed the sound it made when I tapped them. Each time I moved my fingers—
tak tak tak
—the quiet keys leapt into action, and inky black letters appeared one by one on the white paper, like an answer to a question. Later on, the landlord’s
daughter started bringing it to our apartment so I could use it. Whenever that happened, I felt so excited and overjoyed that I clung to it like it was my mother. At first, I filled the paper with
ga
,
na
,
da
,
ra
, then
me
,
you
,
us
over and over, like someone first learning how to write. By the time I outpaced the landlord’s daughter at typing, I was copying the letters Van Gogh had sent to his younger brother Theo. I started typing them because I liked the sound of the words
Dear Theo
.

Careful study and the constant and repeated copying of Bargue’s Exercises au Fusain have given me a better insight into figure-drawing. I have learned to measure and to see and to look for the broad outlines, so that, thank God, what seemed utterly impossible to me before is gradually becoming possible now. I have drawn a man with a spade, that is
un bècheur
, five times over in a variety of poses, a sower twice, a girl with a broom twice. Then a woman in a white cap peeling potatoes and a shepherd leaning on his crook and finally an old, sick peasant sitting on a chair by the hearth with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. And it won’t be left at that, of course. Once a few sheep have crossed the bridge, the whole flock follows. Now I must draw diggers, sowers, men and women at the plough, without cease. Scrutinize and draw everything that is part of country life. Just as many others have done and are doing. I no longer stand helpless before nature as I used to.

I stopped in the middle of typing to stare at the part where he talked about copying Bargue’s plates. He must have meant
that he
no longer stood helpless before nature
because he had drawn those plates over and over. I folded up the typewritten paper and sent it to Dahn, hoping all the while that Dahn, who had vowed to never stop drawing, would become an artist like Van Gogh. Now I felt that all of that time I had spent learning how to type had led me to Professor Yoon.

My eyes drifted over to the shelf where the books sat facing in.

“Are you wondering why I shelved them that way?” the professor asked.

“Yes.”

“They belong to writers who died before the age of thirty-three. I used to collect them.”

Writers who died before the age of thirty-three
 … I savored the words in my head.

“You’re probably now wondering why thirty-three. That’s the age at which Jesus was crucified and Alexander the Great created his empire and died. After thirty-three, you can’t really say you’re young anymore. And don’t we say that someone has died young if they die before the age of thirty-three? For artists, an early death is sometimes an honor. Their works fill me with awe and sympathy. If you’re interested, you may borrow them.”

“Thank you.”

Professor Yoon walked around the wall of books. Suddenly he asked, “Are you friends with Miru?”

“I met her for the first time today,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment.

“I also wanted to thank you.”

He was echoing what Myungsuh had said right before leaving the office.

“Thank you for reaching out to her. I was only thinking about how to make her confront her issues, and it didn’t occur to me to do what you did. I felt ashamed of myself. She didn’t take your hand, but maybe she’ll be able to free herself on her own, thanks to you.”

Professor Yoon sat down at his desk with his back to me. He looked frail and tired. I watched him for a moment and then put the manuscript in my bag, left the office, and quietly closed the door. I looked at his name printed on the office door, turned the sign next to it to read
out of office
, and walked down the hallway. I made my way over to the big zelkova tree. I thought maybe Myungsuh and Miru would be there, but they were nowhere to be seen. A group of students walked quickly past. I sat on a bench beneath the tree and looked up. The distant sky was passing from summer to early autumn; white clouds like mounds of ice cream floated past. A breeze whispered through the branches. Had the school always been like this? The sting of tear gas in the air was the same as before, but the yew trees planted like a wall around the campus had never looked so green. Some distance away, the students I had just seen in the classroom were sitting on the grass together and talking. Their conversation carried all the way to where I sat beneath the zelkova. They were talking about the story of Saint Christopher.

“So, my young Christophers!” Someone was mimicking Professor Yoon. “Can someone answer the title of this book?”

He was holding up the textbook for Professor Yoon’s writing class. It was titled
What Is Art?

“Not demonstrating!” someone shouted in a self-mocking tone, and the cheerful mood instantly turned quiet. “Of what use is art to us? It can’t teach us how to make money or get a job. It can’t tell us how to succeed in romance. And it definitely can’t tell us whether or not we should demonstrate!” He was speaking in a high-pitched voice, as if to lift the mood, but it didn’t help. He fell back on the grass, looked up at the sky, and said, “Remember what Rimbaud said. The best thing in life is getting drunk on cheap liquor and sleeping on the beach.”

“So what are you supposed to do after you sober up? What can you do?”

“Find more cheap liquor and roam the streets.”

“Idiot!” the student who had mimicked Professor Yoon yelled. “You think you can live your whole life like some old bohemian?” He got up and ran off.

The boy lying on the grass sat up and looked over at the shouting student protesters. I rose from beneath the tree and walked around the old stone buildings on campus and the newer ones with elevators. I had never wandered around campus so intently before. Each time I saw a group of students, I scanned their faces. I didn’t know at first who I was looking for. Once I realized I was looking for Myungsuh and Miru, I trudged back to the zelkova tree and sat there for a long time. They were nowhere to be seen.