The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (52 page)

“Do you mean it, that I can start studying?”

“I do.”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

He puts down his spoon and once again smiles, making an effort.

The girl’s name was Yu Ji-hwan. She was miraculously rescued thirteen days after the collapse of the department store. She moved her toes. The girl was being carried out on a gurney, rescued from the pitch-black darkness and the violent rubble of steel rods and cement. She gently lifted the yellow handkerchief placed on her eyes to prevent blindness from the attack of sudden sunlight. Then she gazed out at the world with fearful eyes. My eyes were fixed on the TV screen. A face I seemed to have seen before. A face I once loved. My heart sank with a thud.

. . . I want some iced coffee.

. . . I think I slept for about five days.

. . . I thought of what Mom used to tell me, that I should never lose hope no matter what.

That face, the face I once loved. It was she. The face that had come back to life from pitch-black darkness.

I was unable to tear myself away from the TV. The girl was pretty and lovely. I cut out her pictures from several different
papers. How pretty. Ever since the building collapsed, I had felt desolate, as if all thought had been abruptly cut off at once. This was not a war we were experiencing yet so many human lives could be lost in an instant. I had a deep sense of defeat about life, bringing down with it the meaning of it all, of the struggle to live.

What was it that we should try to uphold in life? The unexpected shock had stripped me of will, making me respond cynically, causing a blackout in my concentrated and continuous contemplations about man.

But then this girl?

The girl had fallen asleep while receiving IV fluids and as soon as she opened her eyes, her older brother asked her this question.

“Isn’t there anything you want to eat?”

The girl answered, beaming a smile at him.

“I want a bowl of clear beef soup, but I can’t have it right now, so you should go with your friends and have some for me.”

I was engrossed in my thoughts about the girl, as if I was determined not to overlook a single word, a single movement of hers. The deeper I thought about her, the more my shaken mind turned calm, and I felt a genuine intimacy, as if I had know her for a long, long time. Ji-hwan, thank you, thank you, for living.

Summer was here. Yet another summer, like summer of that year.

I don’t seem to remember. Whether I received my overdue wages or my severance pay, or not. How I wish I could write, I don’t seem to remember that summer, either, I don’t seem to remember.

I visit Mr. Choe Hong-i, the teacher who is no longer at the school with us. Upon hearing that I plan to study for college, he ponders the situation. He seems concerned, saying, “Starting this year, you have to submit your high school records as well. But your bookkeeping and abacus grades are a mess, aren’t they?

“Fortunately, only grades starting from your second year are reflected, so start focusing on school work now. Improve your grades. High school records are divided into fourteen levels—you want to be at least in the middle.”

Only then I open the bookkeeping textbook. Debit, credit, balance sheets. All I get is a splitting headache. I sit with a scowl and Cousin comes and asks, “What is the matter?”

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“I don’t, either.”

“But I have to now.”

“Make some time during the day and go to a bookkeeping class then.”

“I thought they closed down all the private academies.”

“Not the ones offering adult classes. I heard that a lot of students attend those now.”

Cousin hands me some money and I turn sullen.

“You’ll be able to catch up in a month. You just need to learn the basic principles—it’s only that you’ve never tried. Someone told me that these academies can teach you in one month what takes you three years to learn in school . . . They probably offer an accelerated class. Sign up for that. Once you take that, school tests will seem like nothing.”

Still, I stay sullen and Cousin grabs my hand, holding on to the money.

“Take this and sign up for the class.” My dear cousin picks up her schoolbag and speeds off before I can say anything. My dear cousin, who said she would never end up a nobody; my dear cousin, who brought her younger sister after she finished middle school in the country and enrolled her in a commerce school—So what it it’s not a regular school, I cannot bring myself to send my own sister to a factory . . . You should never end up a nobody, either.

. . . I remember. Summer of that year. My memories of that summer are not all those that would not detoxify. There were
moments that I loved. It was also that summer, the night that Chang and I walked and walked . . .

Little Brother hands me a note. I’m about to ask what it is, but he lifts his finger to his lips, stealing a glance toward the kitchen where Mom is working. The note is from Chang. He wrote asking me to meet him by the railroad. After dinner I wash my face. Also wash my hair. I take Mom’s toner and pat it onto my face. I pretend I’m getting some air out in the garden, then slip out the gate. Chang is standing at the railroad, whistling a tune. He stops as I approach. Stars twinkle in the sky. On the ground the day’s heat still remains. Chang and I walk side by side along the tracks of the southbound railroad. Since starting university Chang has turned reticent. Melancholy. Taciturn. His face now reminds me of Third Brother, who, at the urging of Oldest Brother, had to pack up his law books and leave for the farm. We walk on and on, circling the village.

“Have you heard about Gwangju Incident?” Chang is attending university in the city of Gwangju. “It was no incident but a revolution.”

Silence.

“I was shown numerous photos at the club I joined . . . Things we cannot even imagine happened in Gwangju. Is it thinkable that a soldier stabs a civilian with a bayonet? Not any civilian but a pregnant woman?”

Silence. I suddenly feel burdened by my silence. I feel I have to say something. How come everyone’s face changes like that when they go to university?

“I don’t work at the factory anymore.” I’m not sure how I got to saying this out of nowhere. We walk on and on and now we’ve arrived at the causeway on the far outskirts of the village.

“Let’s stop here for a while.” Chang lies on his back in the middle of the causeway. The fresh air of the summer night seeps into our bodies. Moonlight, leaves of grass, light from the distant village, the sound of water.

“There was a day, when I joined the protest on campus and I was chased by the riot police, all the day down a dead-end street where I hid behind the sauce jar terrace of a small inn. They came chasing and beat me up.”

“. . .”

“That night, I slept with a woman I’d never met before.”

“. . .”

“When I woke up I reached out my hand thinking I might as well feel her breasts, but ran off, got myself out of there.”

“. . .”

“Her breasts were shriveled, all dried up. I noticed only then that she was my mother’s age . . . When I returned to campus, I threw up terribly.”

“. . .”

“I’m sorry I’m telling you this.” Chang lets out a quiet chuckle as he fumbles inside his pocket and takes out something as if he’s just remembered. “Here, take this.”

Something small, the size of a thumb, glimmers on Chang’s open palm, like a star. It’s a tiny, tiny teddy bear charm. A fluorescent bear. Amidst the soft bristle of the night wind, Chang seems to be lifting himself to sit up. But it turns out he’s kneeling. Don’t do this.

A sadness surges up into my heart. I, nineteen years old, grasp onto the fluorescent bear. Nevertheless, the sadness does not stop. This realization that Chang and I will someday grow apart. It seems like a dream that we’re together like this. We could wake up any moment from this dream and I, nineteen years old, feel immense pity for Chang. So much so that a tear escapes from my eye. I search for Chang’s hand as he sits on his knees, his eyes gazing out somewhere.

“Do you want to feel them, just once?” I take Chang’s hand and place it on my breasts. When we’ve grown apart, when this dream inside my heart has been broken, where will I be? And where will you be? Where will we be, looking back at this moment?

No matter what other roundabout path I took, my writing remembered that summer. No matter how I pushed it deep inside of me, that year’s summer would surge up again and again. It would seep in, even into the moments that I shared with him, smiling together. Even in the most unexpected moments, like the night wind, the rising tide, the fog.

One day, upon returning late, Oldest Brother asks me, “Do you think you can manage living alone?” He’s been coming home even later since he was discharged from the military.

“Where will you be?”

“Looks like I’m going to be sent to a post in Chungmu.”

Chungmu?

“I tried everything to get a post in Seoul but it seems I’m going to have to go. It won’t be long. I’ll be able to come back in two months or so. Will you be okay on your own?”

My heart sinks. I’m going to be left alone here in this alley, in this lone room.

“There’s no other way.”

I know this. If there was any other way, Oldest Brother would not go off to Chungmu by himself, leaving me here alone. He cherished me like a precious stone.

“I’ll be okay. I can manage on my own.”

“Stay away from the woman downstairs.” Ever since the man moved in with Hui-jae, Oldest Brother is uncomfortable about her. He used to refer to her by name but now it’s the woman downstairs. It’s not that he’s said anything to her face, but Hui-jae also knows that he feels uncomfortable. When she stops by with a bowl of noodles she’s cooked and Oldest Brother is home, she places it on the counter and heads down the stairs, as if she’s being chased.

“Is there a library at school?”

“There is one.”

“Then do your studying there.”

I look at him quizzically.

“You need a good environment . . . but here all you see and hear is . . . Pack your breakfast and go to school to study in the morning.”

Oldest Brother has no idea that I’ve been attending Hallym Academy located behind Yeongdeungpo Station with the money from Cousin. Nor that my month-long course is not done yet but I am now the best student in my bookkeeping class. Nor that Hui-jae gets our groceries for us every night ever since I started studying for college. Oldest Brother says it is a cowardly person who gives up before trying. No doubt he does not approve of Hui-jae, who has dropped out of school. A man of upright character, he has reservations about a woman who comes home in the morning and lives with a man without marrying him. He is concerned that his younger sister is bonding with such a woman.

Oldest Brother brings home a wheeled suitcase and I put yellow melons in water to chill. He packs the suitcase with dress shirts, underwear, socks, handkerchiefs, and comfort wear. He also packs toothpaste and toothbrush and soap case and razor. On the last night before he leaves, I slice the yellow melons for dessert. When I scrape out the seeds with my knife, he says that’s the sweeter part of the fruit.

“You don’t know the right way to eat a melon.”