The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (31 page)

Oppa
. When I think about writing, I think I am reminded of the penetrating eyes of a dog gazing at his master. The beauty of the fate in those eyes, the sadness that comes from submitting to love, the silence that comes from having seen what it should not have.

It is a Sunday in November. Hui-jae
eonni
is making glue. On the briquette fire, a pot of flour glue is boiling and bubbling.

“What is it for?”

“To put up new wallpaper.”

“Wallpaper?”

“Too many stains on my ceiling.”

Hui-jae asks if she can borrow our chair. She props up her pillow on Brother’s desk chair and puts up the wallpaper. Even with me assisting her, there are spots that neither of us can reach.

“Hold on a minute.”

I go up to our room and bring Oldest Brother. He climbs on the chair with a sheet of wallpaper that we have brushed with glue, puts it up on the ceiling, rubs his palm back and forth, then heads back up to the third floor. When he’s gone, Hui-jae tilts her head quizzically.

“That’s your brother?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But he’s not the brother you talked about that other time.”

“When was that?”

“That time, the other night.”

I suppress a giggle. When I told her last time, “That’s my oldest brother,” he was in his teaching attire, and she seems to think that
the person who just helped her out with the wallpaper is a guy from one of the rooms upstairs who commutes to military service. When I explain about the wig and the suit, Hui-jae spreads into a broad smile, the first I have seen.

“That’s funny!”

Hui-jae often breaks into giggles after this. When we’re coming home on the bus, each time she starts to giggle as we approach the market, I ask, “What is it?” and she says, “I was thinking about your brother,” and giggles again.

Another day in December, I pull out Chang’s card from the mailbox. I had stayed behind in the classroom by myself and snow was pouring down. I went over to the window and as I gazed out at the athletic field, I felt as if he would be walking toward me in the snow. I read, over and over, the words written on Chang’s card. When I think about Chang, my heart brightens up, making me think I want to give him something of mine that is good. The most precious thing to me, as a seventeen-year-old, is the notebook into which I’m copying
The Dwarf Launches His Tiny Ball
. I start thinking I should give the notebook to Chang. My hand moves faster as I transcribe the novel.

“I have a question.”

It was a student from the very far back. “What is it?”

“I once heard that the phenomenon of UFO or alien spotting is the result of self-defense in moments of social stress. How should we look at it in your case?”

“I ask you to believe that, when the western sky brightens up and flames soar up, I have left for another planet with an alien. There can be no
elaborate explanation. The only thing I am not sure of is what I will be faced with on the moment of my departure. What will it be? Silence, as in a cemetery? Or not? Is it only the dead that shout out loud? Time is up. Whether we live on earth, or another planet, our spirit is always free. I hope everyone will be accepted with good scores to the university of your choice. Let us spare one another other parting words.”

Attention!

The class monitor called out as he rose. Salute!

The teacher bowed in response, lowering his torso, and stepped down from the podium. He walked out of the classroom. His gate was strange as he walked out. It would be how an extraterrestrial walks, the students thought.

With the winter sun already setting, darkness was settling in the classroom.

I close the notebook and buy a card to send to Chang. “I’m giving you this notebook,” I write. “Please keep it for me, something to replace your father’s letter, which I lost way back when.” I gift-wrap the notebook with my copied-down pages of
The Dwarf Launches His Tiny Ball
and mail it to Chang.

The day I mail the notebook to Chang, I take out the
soju
bottle from the bottom shelf of the cupboard as if I just remembered, and pour what is left down the drain hole in the kitchen floor.

Christmas. Oldest Brother’s girlfriend, who, we heard, said she’d come by eleven o’clock, does not come. When afternoon arrives, Oldest Brother suggests to Cousin and me that we go to the movies. The movies? As we are leaving, I glance toward Hui-jae’s
room and find the lock on the door. Could she have gone to work on Christmas?

Oldest Brother takes us on the subway. The train is packed with people. Cousin searches for my arm amidst the tangle of the crowd and grabs it. We get off at City Hall, slip out of the underground walkway and walk the street. It’s our first time going to the movies in the city. Myeongdong. Korea Theater, next to Cosmos Department Store.
Jeux Interdits
. Oldest Brother checks the tickets and saying we have some time, takes us to a bakery on the basement floor of Cosmos Department Store. Cousin gets a long loaf and I get a cream-filled choux puff.

“Aren’t you getting anything,
Oppa
?”

“I’m just going to get a glass of milk.”

A while later, Oldest Brother, Cousin, and I are inside the theater.

On the screen, a carriage and a car make their way along the river. It looks like there is a war going on. A little girl does not even know that her parents have been killed by an air raid, but when her dog dies, she starts weeping. Peasant boy Michel. The two children quickly become friends. Rather, Michel follows Paulette’s words and does anything Paulette wants.

Oldest Brother seems very quiet, so I turn around in the middle of the movie to take a look. Oldest Brother has fallen asleep.

After learning from Michel that when someone dies, a funeral is held and a grave is dug, Paulette becomes fascinated by a game of graves and crosses. When Michel says you cannot make a grave unless something dies, Paulette says then she could just make something die and continues the game by killing bugs and animals. When Paulette wants a real cross, Michel goes to the graveyard and steals a cross.

This time, Cousin seems very quiet, so I take a look at her. Cousin has fallen asleep as well.

By the time Michel’s parents start thinking it will be big trouble if they let Paulette stay in their home, relief workers come
and take Paulette away. Led by a nun and wearing her name on her chest, Paulette arrives at the train station where, amidst the bustle of the crowd, she hears a child call out, “
Maman
.” Paulette shrinks back and her lips quivering, calls out, “Michel.” She misses him. Michel . . . Michel. Before we know it, the name Paulette calls out is changing, from Michel to Maman.

Outside the theater, Oldest Brother says that way is Myeongdong Cathedral and suggests we stop there before heading back. Cathedral. Back in the country, Mom used to take Oldest Brother to a cathedral in town when he was a young boy, the Myeongdong Cathedral. We walk up the stairs and find a display reenacting the birth of Baby Jesus. The model of the stable, made with hay, looks cozy. The Virgin Mary holds the newborn Baby Jesus in her arms. The Baby Jesus is adorable and the Virgin Mary is beautiful.

“
Oppa
, who are those men on their knees?”

Standing next to me, Cousin smiles.

“Don’t you know? They’re the Magi.”

Magi? Oldest Brother has disappeared. I search the cathedral for him and come across a girl praying in front of the Virgin Mary, her hair covered by a chapel veil. Oldest Brother is standing next to her. My oldest brother. A young man brought his younger sister and kin to the movies instead of the woman who did not show up for their date on Christmas and he is now standing in front of the Virgin Mary with his head held low. What does he pray for? He looks so lonely in front of the Virgin Mary that my seventeen-year-old heart feels lonely as well. The way Oldest Brother looks at this moment, I shall never forget him in whatever future I am in. Cousin seems to disapprove of how clean the white veil looks on the girl’s head.

“Is it like we’re not allowed to pray without that thing?”

“I, I’m not sure.”

Cousin gets behind the girl and, standing there with her palms together, winks at me to do the same. I just stand there fidgeting, my eyes on Cousin’s back as she prays.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I went to the door, recalling the doorbell in the middle of the night. Only the newspaper outside.
Ill-fated Wrestler Song Seong-il Dies After Long Struggle.
Who is Song Seong-il? I pulled up the paper and read the article. Song had competed in the 100-kilogram division of men’s Greco-Roman wrestling at the Asian Games in Hiroshima last October, without knowledge of cancer cells gnawing at his body, and won the gold medal, overcoming immense stomach pain, emerging as a true symbol of fighting spirit. He was unable to defeat the demon of his illness, however, and at the young age of twenty-six, had departed on the road to eternal sleep, the article read. I stared into the ill-fated wrestler’s photo. Tomorrow would be Lunar New Year.

On the last day of December, Oldest Brother buys a small television set for our lone room. He turns it on for us and heads out to Yeongdeungpo Station to catch the night train to our home in the country. The factory is giving us only one day off on January 1, saying they will give us a longer break at Lunar New Year to make up for the missed holiday. Cousin, who has now befriended the high school intern, heats up water to wash her hair, applies a drop of her treasured perfume under her ears, puts on her boots instead of the school shoes and heads out.