Sad Peninsula (23 page)

“You're right, Rob. I can't understand it.” I rub the back of my neck. “Look man, you seem like you want some advice. So here it is. I think Korea is very bad for you. It brings out the worst in who you are; it smothers your better self, the little bit that does exist under all that shagging and self-deception. I think you should leave. You do have a teaching degree, right? You taught at a middle school in Ontario for a while, didn't you? You should start thinking about moving home and doing something like that again.”

He hangs his chin over his shoulder, blows smoke. “I can't ever teach in Canada again,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because … because I did something really stupid at the middle school where I taught.”

“Rob?”

“The kind of stupid thing where they don't let you teach again. Ever.”

“Rob, what are you telling me?” I try to catch his eyes. “What, did you fucking …”

He looks at me hard. “What I'm telling you, Michael, is that you think
you
know what a ruined life is. Why? Because you fucking fabricated a bunch of stories in a newspaper? Well I say bullshit to that. Small potatoes, man. You have no clue.” He shrugs at me. “Why would I ever leave this place? A country where schools can't be bothered to do background checks, and on weekends I get all the hot- and cold-running sex I want.”

He flings his cigarette butt over the rail. I can't say anything to him. My tongue is dead at the bottom of my mouth.

He turns back to me. “But I'm happy for you, dude. It sounds like you got a plan. And if Jin follows you back to Canada next year, then all the better. And I'm happy for Justin, too. I genuinely am. I'm glad to hear he's leaving. He deserves better than this place. But me?
Fack
. I'm not exactly oblivious to the oblivion that awaits me.”

He gets up and collects our empty coffee mugs.

“I'm gonna go,” I tell him.

“Yeah, I should get my day started. I'm gonna go jerk off — whatshername left me in the lurch. And then —”he nods over the rail at that big, mad megalopolis “— find a way to make me some money today …”

I
confront my future by marking milestones in the rice-paper calendar that hangs on my bedroom wall. You need to do this sort of thing when you're planning to re-enter academia. By X date, I will need to have acquired my old transcripts; by Y date, have sent off my applications. And by Z date — sometime early next spring — I will know where I've been accepted, if anywhere. I mark the dates because if I don't I might miss them, distracted as I am by all that Seoul has to offer. And if I miss them, I'll lose another year of my life to this place.

And yet — there is more going on with me than these shallow plans to seize a new career. My research continues unabated. Jin's great-aunt stands like a hunched, angry pillar in the middle of my mind. Eun-young's story has seeped into my DNA. My research leaves me baffled and I long to question Jin about its accuracy. Thirty-five times a day? Really? Soldiers line up outside cubicles, erections already tenting their loincloths? Really? Did that happen? Could that
really
have happened?

This is not my story, but I'm going to tell it. I'm going to try.

The apartment won't be the same after Justin leaves. The school will assign me another roommate in no time; probably a twenty-two-year-old naïf fresh out of a B.A. Justin and I joke about that as we sit in his bedroom among the boxed-up books and open suitcases of clothes. It's strange to see his headboard wiped clean of the photos of Cody; it looks brand new. Justin's just three days away from flying out to Halifax.

“Probably be a punk,” he says of this hypothetical new roommate.

“Ill-read,” I reply.

“He'll probably go to Itaewon and get laid his first weekend here.”

“Another Rob Cruise in the making.”

We laugh.

“So how are you feeling about everything?”

He shrugs. “It is what it is. I
am
anxious to get back to a proper school. Back to where I belong.”

“You're lucky to be escaping now,” I tell him. “Rob Cruise is on a bloody warpath.”

Justin just snorts. “A news site for waegookins? That guy has no clue.”

“You know, I once asked him if he knew why you had come to Korea, and he told me to fuck off. But I'll ask you — do you know why
he
came to Korea?”

“Yeah. Because he was teaching at a school in Ontario and got fired.”

“But do you know why he got fired?”

“Rob was always vague on the details. What I know is that he followed some girl to Guelph after he got his teaching degree. I know — hard to imagine him ensconced in monogamy. He said he was there for a while, living with this girl, but then
some shit went down
. You know how he talks. He got fired from the school and, for whatever reason, had to get out of Dodge in a hurry. I assumed his story was similar to mine.” He pauses. “Why? What did he tell you?”

“Not much more than that. Except — I don't think his story is anything like yours. Maybe I'm just projecting here, but —” I look at him. “Do you think he …
you know
.”

“I had my suspicions.”

“So then why were you friends with him?”

“Hey, what can I tell you? His generosity can be hypnotizing. When I arrived in Seoul I was flat broke, cleaned out by my divorce. And you know what the school's like — it takes two months before you see a full paycheque. So Rob swooped in and lined me up with all these great privates right off the bat. And he took me out with him, showed me around Itaewon and Hongdae, introduced me to pretty girls. He taught me the Korean I needed to get around. You know what he's like, Michael — you've felt this yourself. We've all gone through these phases with Rob. You, me, Jon …”

“Jin,” I frown.

“Yeah, Jin. But in the end, you
have
to stay clear of him. If you're going to be here for another whole year, Michael, you need to know that.”

“Yeah, I do know that. But still. There's a part of me that wants to help him. That feels like I
should
help him.”

“I don't think he wants help,” Justin shrugs. “I mean, Rob just isn't the type who would —”

The phone on the floor, our landline, rings.

“Hang on a sec.” Justin scoots off his bed and picks it up. “Hello? … No, this is Justin. Do you want to speak to him? … Hello? … Hello?” He hands me the phone. “It's for you, I guess.”

I take it from him. “Hello?”

“Michael.”

“Jin? Hey, what's going on?” There's dead silence on the line. “Hello? Hello?” I roll my eyes at Justin. “Fucking cellphones,” I say.

“Michael
.
”

“Jin, I'm here. What's going on?”

She bumbles through some Korean, either to me or someone standing there in the background with her.

“You know, you may want to try speaking to me in English,” I laugh.

“
Mi'chael.
” It's only when she says my name like it's two words that I realize she's crying. “Michael, my
umma
died.”

“
What
?” I'm sure I've misheard her, that she's mangled her English. “Your great aunt? Eun-young? Your
eemo halmoney
?” All the hope plunges out of me.

“
No
, Michael. My
mother
. Tae.” I hear her swallow a throatful of snot. “My mother died this morning.”

“Oh my God. Are you at home?”

A little sparrow's chirp: “Yes.”

“I'm on my way.”

I cover the phone and speak to Justin. “When you go to work, tell Ms. Kim I won't be in today. Jin's had a death in the family.” Then back on the line: “Jin? Jin, I'm on my way.”

Barely audible: “Okay.”

I hang up, hurry out of Justin's room. I strap on my sandals and grab my keys and wallet. “Shit,” I mutter. “Shit.
Shit
.”

“Who died?” he asks, leaning against his doorway.

“Her
mom
.”

“Shit.”

“Shit.
Shit
.” I open the apartment door and fly out onto the landing. Descend the stairs two at a time. Then outside to the street and off toward the subway.

Exactly One Thousand Days

J
in
's brother, Carl, is rushed home from Los Angeles for the funeral, which will occur over three days. As the eldest son, the only son, he is to act as the
sangju
, the master of ceremonies.

On the evening of the second day, I arrive at the funeral home encased in my only suit, appropriately dark. I'm awash in butterflies as I walk up the stone steps to the embossed double doors. I've been reading about Korean funeral rites on the Web and am worried about my etiquette. I called Jin earlier in the day: “Should I bring money? It says guests bring envelopes with cash in them.”

“No Michael,” she said. “As a friend of the daughter you don't need to bring money.”

A friend of the daughter?
I asked Jin, “How do I say ‘I'm a friend of the daughter' in Korean?”

The funeral parlour is not much different than ones back home — sombre and austere, the floor thickly carpeted, pillars and arches everywhere, walls sporting anodyne landscape paintings. I wait in a short lineup that leads into the main chamber. Everyone here is in black — the men in dark suits, the women in either Western-style dresses or full
hanbok
. The air is brushstrokes of whispers and weeping as I move into the main room. Here, I see that the women stand together on the left side, the men on the right. I look over to the far side to see a dark curtain pulled across the front to hide the casket. A table is set up to the side of the partition and has a framed photo of Tae on it. Even from this distance I can see the severity of her features. Next to the table is a small wooden box where family members and close friends can discreetly drop their envelopes of cash. At the front of the room stands an exhausted but stoic-looking Carl. He would have come straight here after his flight landed from L.A. He is wearing the customary accoutrements of a
sangju
: a tall hemp hat on his head and a hemp armband — thick and white with two dark stripes. Carl is three years younger than Jin and looks boyish. Yet I can sense the deep commitment he has made to suppressing his grief until he has completed this most traditional of tasks. I will have to wait until the end of tomorrow's graveside service to be introduced to him: As the ceremony's
sangju
, he is not to speak at this point in the proceedings.

I feel a hand touch mine.

“Hi.”

“Oh, hey.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“You kidding? I wouldn't have missed it.” I jostle her grip. “How are you holding up?”

“'Mokay.” Jin's eyes are all puffy, as if she's been in a minor fight, but that's not what I'm looking at. I find myself staring at her hair: she has tied dark, elaborate ribbons all through it. They look so alien there.

She leads me up to the front, where I catch the sharp, ancient odour of incense. As we approach the table, I see why: little sticks of it are burning on sandalwood trays all around the framed photo of Tae. Jin's hand parts from mine and she passes me one of the sticks, then motions to a lit candle on the table. “Go ahead and light the incense,” she says. “It's tradition.” I do what I'm told, hovering it over the candle's flame. The tip glows orange and a silvery snake of smoke joins the others in the air.

“Now bow,” Jin says. “Bow to my mother's photo.”

I look at her. Realize now why the ribbons seem so out of place in her hair. It's not just because I've never seen Jin wear them, or
anything
distinctly Korean. It's because they clash somewhat with the slinky black dress, Western-style, that she has also chosen to wear.

I turn to the photo, to Tae's cold stare, and I bow. She just stares back. She just stares through me.

T
his is how it happened: It started with what she assumed was simply bad heartburn after dinner. It was severe enough to complain about it, severe enough for Minsu and Jin to offer to fetch her an anti-dyspeptic from the
yakguk
across the street. Tae said not to bother, that she would just go lie down. Minsu and Jin went about their business for the rest of the evening — he watching a Korean singing show on TV, she repairing to her room to read. Hours later, in the middle of the night, Tae shook Minsu awake. The heartburn had turned to a constricting force: She couldn't catch her breath and her fingers had begun tingling in frightening ways. Minsu got up and helped her put on some clothes so he could load her into the car. He woke Jin and told her he was taking Tae to the emergency room.
For what, indigestion?
Jin first thought, but then got dressed to join them. Their wait in the ER lounge was over an hour. Tae sat hunched in her chair, clutching herself inwardly as if freezing to death. She eventually got in to see someone, and Minsu and Jin waited. An hour passed, then two, then three. The late August dawn began creeping up on the emergency room windows. And then the doctor came out, his face ashen. He took them aside, to a little room. They had lost her, he told them. She had passed away on the examination table.

T
he chamber is packed now with mourners — women on the left, men on the right, and Carl standing silently before us. As quiet, sombre conversatons swirl around me, my mind and eyes begin to wander. The dark partition that separates Tae's casket from the mourners strikes me as odd. It's not acceptable to see the coffin during this portion of the ceremony; her framed photo on its table is meant to stand in for it. The burning incense swirls and churns around the picture in thin, diaphanous plumes. The whole presentation creates a mystic sense of Tae's spirit rising and saying goodbye. I look at Tae's family and friends all around me. Some faces are stoic; some are leaking tears.

Yet, there is only one person here in the full paroxysm of grief. She is engaging in what Koreans call
kok
— a wail of unfathomable anguish for the departed, a howl not just of sadness, but of deep guilt for allowing a loved one to die. Her moaning nearly drowns people out. She stands across from me, here at the front of the room. At first I mistake her for Eun-young. How could I not? Her body is hooked over on itself, her elderly face pustular with mucus and fiery tears. She is inconsolable. But it isn't Eun-young. It's her sister, Ji-young. Of course it is. She stands there with her husband, Chung Hee, his face like trembling granite. They are here to bury their fifty-one-year-old daughter.

So then, where
is
Eun-young? Surely she would have come, too. I turn tactfully around to scan the crowd behind us. So many raven-haired heads bowed out of respect. But then I do spot her, far off in the corner. She is wearing a simple black frock buttoned to the neck, her thin grey hair pulled tight against her scalp.

I look closely. She is standing back there by herself. Utterly alone. Of course she is. I look again, and notice that her face is stone dry.

T
he next morning, I travel out by subway to the burial plot. The cemetery is a wide park of flowing hills adorned with short shrubby bushes and gingko trees. The headstones here are soft-edged stumps, stone cylinders jutting out of the ground. I find it remarkable how tightly packed the markers all are — barely enough room for a small child to move between them. The graveyard looks like a metropolis in miniature.

The casket has been moved onto the bands over the grave and Carl assumes his position at the head of it. Staying at Jin's side, I watch as one of the funeral attendants turns the crank and the casket completes its final ritual: it lowers and then raises three times, as if bowing to the audience, then sinks slowly into the ground. Once this happens, Carl is finally allowed to speak. He gives a short speech. There is a slight trembling at the corner of his mouth: He's held up so well in this sacred role of
sangju
, but as he nears the end of his responsibilities he's ready to have his own moment of grief. Finally he finishes. Bows deeply in his hemp hat to his mother's casket in its grave.

People mill around after the service is over. Jin asks whether I'll be okay by myself if she goes and talks to people for a while. I nod: of course. I watch as she slinks around the headstones and makes a beeline to Eun-young, who is once again standing alone. Jin takes the old woman's hands in her own, bows as she greets her. They talk for a bit, and Eun-young reaches up to caress the ribbons that Jin has tied in her hair. I wait to see if Jin will eventually go over to her grandmother, too. But she doesn't. She leaves Ji-young to the comforts of others.

“Hello there, chief.”

I turn to see Jin's father approaching me from behind with Carl. I reach out and take Minsu's hand, squeeze it and bow to him as deeply as I can.

Carl shakes my hand when I finish. “It's wonderful to finally meet you, Michael,” he says. I'm surprised: There is no whiff of a Korean accent to his English. Three years in Los Angeles have done him well.

“You have my deepest condolences, Carl,” I say to him. “You did a fantastic job today.”

“Did you understand any of it?”

“Not a bit. But I could tell you were being very brave for your mom.”

“Thank you.”

“Tell me, Carl: What is your Korean name?”

His lips pull away from his teeth as he smiles. “Don't laugh,” he laughs, “but my Korean name is Bum Suk.”

I press my own lips together. “It's very nice to meet you, Carl.”

Minsu smiles, too, but looks a bit left out of the conversation. His English isn't nearly as good as his children's. He turns to Carl suddenly, then seizes him by the arm in a manly way, jiggles it, and points at me. “This is the man who's going to
marry
Jin,” he bursts out, apropos of nothing.

Carl's eyebrows fly upwards. “Does
she
know this?” he smiles at me.

“I, I don't think she does, no.”

Minsu looks proud of himself, like he's pulled off a very good joke. A moment later Jin spots us standing together. She bows to Eun-young, raises a finger, as if to say she'll be right back, and then comes over, steering through the headstones. She puts an arm around her brother's waist, but addresses me. “What are the three of you talking about?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“Nothing,” Carl adds.

And Minsu just gives one of his cryptic thumbs-up.

Jin speaks to Carl in Korean, then says something to her father. He says something back, Jin interrupts him, but then Carl interrupts her. They laugh a little, together. I stand on the outskirts of their conversation waiting for either Jin or Carl to start translating. But they don't. I half expect this to end much like
my
mother's funeral ended. I anticipate Jin asking if she can follow me home — weary now of all this family sadness and needing the kind of solace that only I, as her boyfriend, can give. We've had no alone time in four days.

She looks over at me, stony-faced. “Michael, I've agreed to accompany Eun-young home on the subway. I trust you can find your own way back to Deachi from here.”

My eyes widen. “Yeah,” I stumble in a welter of disappointment. “Yeah, yeah, that's fine.”

She gives Carl one last squeeze and he kisses the top of her head. Then she hurries back over to Eun-young. I watch them. I watch them as they leave. I watch as something confusing, horrendously confusing, happens. They leave without saying to goodbye to anyone.

What? Did Eun-young not say a word of condolence to her own sister, Ji-young, for the entire funeral?

I
t takes the school less than two weeks to find me a new roommate. I'm disappointed; I was so looking forward to being by myself in this apartment for a while — or more accurately, being alone with Jin. But it wasn't meant to be. Any concerns I had about the new guy being another Rob Cruise are completely unfounded. His name is Paul. He is from New Zealand. And he is a born-again Christian. On the night he arrives, he moves uncomplainingly into the smaller bedroom and welcomes me in as he unpacks his suitcases. He even has gift for me: a T-shirt printed with the silver-fern logo of his nation's beloved All Blacks rugby team. “I hope it fits,” he says as I examine it through its crinkling cellophane package. I watch Paul pull a floppy, leather-bound Bible and books by Rick Warren out of his suitcase and set them up on the small plastic bookshelf I left in the room for him. I feel compelled to mention then that I have a girlfriend, a
Korean
girlfriend, and that she sometimes spends the night.

He shrugs. “Makes no difference to me.”

Paul has never been to Korea before, so over the next while I show him the ropes. I take him to get his immigration papers stamped, explaining how the subway works on the way. I show him where the post office is, where the pharmacy is, how to order his dinner from the front-counter staff at the school when we're on break. We find him an English-language church in the next neighbourhood over, Dogok, and we sign him up for Bible studies. He asks if I want to sign up, too. I mumble a no, and expect him to push me a little. Oddly, he doesn't.

And yet. I notice things about Paul during those first couple of weeks. He's often uninterested in chatting about mundane, everyday things — anything neutral that he can't filter through the prism of Christ. He is also mistrustful of the word “luck” and makes a point of correcting me whenever I use it: there is no such thing as
being lucky
, he says, only
being blessed
. And when I let him in on my plans for going back to school, he gets excited and uses his favourite word:
purpose.
“It's so awesome that you've been given a purpose for next year, Michael.” (I catch the passive verb, but don't need to ask,
given by whom?
) Paul is all about purpose. “What is the purpose of your life, Michael?” he asks me,
challenges
me in a variety of clandestine ways.

J
in and Carl invite me out to a bar. This
hof
is a gritty basement grotto off the main drag of Itaewon. There are U.S. soldiers here, boisterous in the corners, and the sound system plays an album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'm pleased that Jin picked this spot. She's come wearing a brainy French beret and tight blue jeans, so much more like her usual self than the ribbons she had worn at the funeral. Carl, meanwhile, is in a pink golf shirt. It would look ridiculous on me, but as a Korean male he somehow pulls it off. This is our first time hanging out, just the three of us. Our chance to bond.