The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (29 page)

On August 13, a funeral was held for Kim Gyeong-suk at the Seoul Municipal Gangnam Hospital’s funeral parlor, attended by three family members including Kim’s mother, YH Trading staff, and the police. The ceremony took three minutes and her remains were cremated.

In the vacant lot that the window of the lone room looked out on, lettuce leaves are sprouting. Who could have planted them? Whichever way the world turns, the lettuce grows. However, they simply grow bigger; their insides do not fill up. The green lettuce leaves are covered with black dust from the factories.

It was five fifteen in the morning. My doorbell suddenly rang for a long stretch. Who could it be, in the middle of the New Year holidays, at this hour? I jumped to my feet, pushed the door open in the room, and called out toward the front door in an exaggerated voice.

“Who is it?”

Nothing but quiet. My heart pounded with surging fear.

“Who is it?”

Nothing but quiet. My ears perked up and I struggled to listen for any signs of movement outside the door, but nothing was heard. It could be my aunt from the country. This aunt, widowed while young, lived alone those young years, in a house with a garden that faced the newly paved main road. It was through her that we could hear the stories about the generations of our family that came before Father. Your grandfather, he ran a traditional herbal medicine shop . . . And your grandmother . . . During the days of the Korean People’s Republic before the war . . . When we passed a ditch along the rice paddies, she would say, All this used to be your family’s land, from there to there . . . When we passed a house with piles of firewood, she would say, Back then, yours was the only family in the village that kept piles of firewood . . . Aunt used to help out Grandfather in his shop in her childhood, measuring the medicine on a scale and wrapping it in white pouches, and whenever someone complained of an ache, she would come up with names of this or that medicinal herb, offering an endless concoction of prescriptions . . . Boil it with this or that, but don’t drink it right away, expose it to morning dew.

My aunt the young widow. Whenever I was with her, I didn’t feel like it was just the two of us but that we were there with Grandfather and Great-grandfather, Grandmother and Great-grandmother, and all of Grandfather’s siblings, who I heard had died in a mass killing during the war. I liked this feeling and disliked it at the same time. When my aunt, the young widow, heard someone outside, no matter how late at night, she would fling open her door, shouting “Who is it,” and gaze out at the garden.

I could not bring myself to open the door. I knew that my aunt could not possibly be the one there. I wanted to open it to check who had made the sound, but I was too afraid, so much so that I felt a chill on my forehead. The best I could do was come
back to my room, pushing the door closed as hard as I could, so that the sound could be heard loud and clear. Even after returning to my room and sitting back at my desk, my ears were focused on the sounds outside the door. Had I heard wrong? It was clearly the doorbell, but at this hour, in the middle of the night? I was rubbing my chest when I felt someone’s presence behind me. I looked back, startled. My shawl, which I had left on the backrest of the chair, had slipped down to the floor. As I reached down to pick it up, a sigh of relief escaped from me.

It seemed that someone entered this room.

It seemed that someone, who, even if I were to ask, Who is it? was incapable of saying out loud, It’s me, was standing behind me, gazing down at the back of my neck.

That’s it. I turned out the light and got into my bed. This presence followed me and crouched down beside me.

Is it you, Hui-jae
eonni
?

Is it you?

You startled me.

How did you come all the way here?

I have a very good life, you’re thinking, right?

I’m sorry.

At first, wherever I was, I would break into tears. You would weigh down on me, making it impossible for me to sleep. I don’t remember the dreams I had. But I would wake from a dream and realize that you are dead, and then each time, I would break into tears.

You’d already know even if I don’t tell you, you probably saw everything. That for a long time, I cried and had dreams. For a long time, I kept track of the passing time with you. When spring came around, I told myself,
My first spring without you.
Then spring came around again, my second spring without you, then spring came around again, my third spring without you, then my fourth spring without you. Then little by little it faded.

What did you say?

Eonni
? What are you trying to tell me?

I can’t make it out. Speak a little louder, what?

What?

I can’t hear you—I can’t, what did you say?

No matter what you might say, I am going to write you. I’m not sure if I will be able to bring you back to life exactly the way you were before. I used to think, sometimes, that one day, when I can call them my friends, I would like to make a place for them, and for you—a dignified place of your own. A dignified place, socially or perhaps culturally. In order to do that, I would have to closely follow the truth, and my truth about you. It was not when I was gazing into my memories, or into the photographs that remain, that I was able to be truthful. Those things were empty. Only when I was writing down this and that, lying on my tummy, I was able to understand myself. I am trying to reach you through my writing.

What was that?

Speak a little louder. What are you saying?

Huh?

Stay outside of literature? Is that what you are telling me?

Where is outside of literature?

Where are you right now?

October. Outside the window of our lone room, in the vacant lot by the bus stop at the end of the route for the number 118, the lettuce leaves finally grow green. October, when the lettuce, attended by no one and covered in dust from the factories, had grown to the size of a hand. Each time she looks out at the lettuce patch, Cousin whispers that whoever this person is, he must be very rich.

“He’ll get fined if he leaves the lot unoccupied, so he just scattered some lettuce seeds, to make it look like a vegetable plot.”

“Next year, houses will go up over here and there. No more view of the lot then.”

One day in October, we stand on the athletic field where dusk is falling, listening to the old principal’s teary speech. This is what he says. That the president has passed away. That the man who presented us with so much opportunity passed away from a gunshot. The old principal speaks in a choking voice, then starts weeping, standing there with his back to the setting sun. All those years of hardship, he devoted himself to national salvation . . . We stand at ease and gaze at the old principal’s grief. The old principal, taking out his handkerchief and wiping his tears. With the handkerchief in his hand, the old principal goes on about the dead president, then weeps, then goes on talking again, then wipes his tears. At first we gaze blankly at his tears, then someone starts sniffling. When one person starts sniffling, another sniffles. The sounds of sniffling here and there mingle together.

I, seventeen years old, am unable to sniffle and just stand there, looking down at my feet. I feel sorry that I cannot weep when everyone else does. A few years ago, when his wife was shot at the August 15 Liberation Ceremony, I cried and cried, but this time, no tears would come to me, only the sound of gunshots in my ears. I had heard the news of the president’s wife being shot amidst the midday heat. Someone said, Yuk Young-soo was shot dead. It was too unexpected and I couldn’t believe it at first, thought it was a joke.

How can someone so beautiful die? I had no particular feelings for the president, but his wife I liked. Her hair, always done up in an elegant chignon, her neck long like a crane’s, the stylish hem of her traditional blouse, her smile, which reminded me of hydrangeas . . . It seemed as if she would always be there, in that style, in that image. But now she’s been shot? The First Lady resembled a magnolia blossom but her favorite flower was the chrysanthemum, they said. Chrysanthemums began piling up as high as a mountain and the radio played Handel’s
Sarabande
for days on end. The
villagers neglected work and spoke in whispers. The First Lady is dead. She was shot by a North Korean spy. The miller who lived at the edge of the village had a TV, and a straw mat was laid out on his yard. The villagers sat around, row after row, gazing at the screen of the TV set in the main hall of the miller’s house.

The screen showed the president wiping his tears as he watched the First Lady’s hearse, decorated with a mound of chrysanthemums, leave Cheongwa-dae. It was heart-rending to watch the husband who had lost his wife to a bullet. The villagers wept. I, a child, wept along with them. After this I saw from time to time First Daughter Geun Hye taking her mother’s place next to the president. She had a beautiful and delicate profile. I felt a sting at the tip of my nose, to think such a beautiful person has lost her mother. First Daughter Geun Hye looked just like my beloved First Lady. Her smile like a magnolia blossom, her neck long like a crane’s. And now she has lost her father, she has now been orphaned. I gaze down at my feet and think about this person, who is now alone.

We have returned from the athletic field and are sitting in our classroom. Teacher Choe Hong-i seems dumbfounded at the students, their eyes red from weeping along with the old principal.

“What, may I ask, are you crying about?”

Silence falls on the class. Teacher Choe speaks in a low but firm voice.

“A regime that came into power through a coup d’état has now come to an end, in the hands of one of its subordinates. A corrupt dictatorship that has continued for eighteen years has collapsed. Now the Yusin regime will come to a close and a better world will arrive. A world where something like what happened to Kim Sam-ok will not occur again, where your rights will be respected. The dictatorship had continued too long. Eighteen years too long.”

Eighteen years. I, seventeen years old, repeat his words inside my head. Eighteen years. It turns out he was already president a
year before I was born. That is probably why even now, when I think of the president, it is President Park Chung-hee’s face that comes to mind. There was a time when getting a new president was unthinkable for me, for he was the only president I had known. They said that upon being shot by Kim Jae-gyu, the president, the subject of the old principal’s grief, had said, even as he bled in the arms of a songstress, “I’m all right.”

He had said the same thing on May 16, 1961, two years before I was born, as he crossed the Han River at the break of dawn. When the military police, on a mission to suppress the coup, launched fire on Park’s squad from the northern end of the First Han River Bridge as they crossed the bridge to head north, Park had said to his brigadier general, who was trying to stop him from moving forward, “I’m all right, I’m all right.”

Feeling scared after hearing the news of the president’s death, on our way home we skip our trip to the market to pick up groceries for cooking soup for next morning’s breakfast and head straight to our lone room. No one speaks. Complete silence. Will the program really close, now that the president who provided us with the opportunity to attend school, as the principal had said, is dead?