This Burns My Heart (6 page)

He was older than she was; certainly he must have fought in the war? He must have been fifteen or sixteen at the time; how had he survived, when men older and meaner had perished? Soo-Ja liked this, liked that he made her wonder about him; made her want to make up stories about him, and pick at his serene smile as if it were a lock in the wall. She had not felt this with Min—Min won her over with flattery, wearing her down with his insistence. Yul, on the other hand, made her want to flatter
him.

“I think we’re here,” said Yul, as the bus began to slow down. His face became very serious, and Soo-Ja was reminded of the reason for their bus trip. The missing twelve-year-old boy. “Wait till I’m halfway through the bus, then start making your way out. If you see me run, do not run after me. Instead, duck and take cover.” Yul rose, and Soo-Ja felt her body tense up. Seeing him stand, Soo-Ja noticed that Yul had the muscular build of a soldier, and an ex-soldier’s careful movements. Yul must have fought for sure, either volunteering or drafted against his will. The bus came to a full stop, and Yul began to make his way out. It felt like forever, waiting. As Yul reached the midpoint, the passage seemed clear, and he turned his head slightly and glanced over at Soo-Ja, signaling for her to follow him. She rose and began heading out. She noticed that the bus seemed a little quiet to her ears, almost too much, as if the other passengers could sense something was off. Soo-Ja watched as Yul continued to make his way out in front of her. But when he was almost by the door, a passenger in a row ahead of him suddenly rose, his back blocking Yul’s way. He wore a police officer’s uniform.

Soo-Ja gasped, then put her hand to her mouth, to hide her reaction. The seconds seemed to stretch into infinity, as the policeman stood in front of Yul, with his back to him, and Yul remained still. Yul did not hint at this as cause for panic, and did not make a sound, but Soo-Ja noticed that he’d discreetly placed his hand near his belt. She wondered if he had a gun; if he’d need to use it. It felt like a century, when only two, three seconds passed. Finally, the officer, who took a moment to gather his things from his seat, simply walked on, and left the bus, as if it were nothing more than just his own stop.

Soo-Ja let out a sigh of relief, and she could see Yul’s body release its tautness, too.

Yul started walking out. By the time he emerged, Soo-Ja had almost caught up with him, and the two of them found themselves out on the street at the same time. They did not speak, but when Soo-Ja glanced at the sign in front of the bus, she realized it had been heading not to Dalse
o
-gu but to Dalse
ong
-gu; he’d made them take the long way to their destination, and made her talk the entire time while he studied her eyes and her voice.
Why?
It didn’t matter, thought Soo-Ja. By now he trusted her, but more than that, she trusted him, too.

Soo-Ja and Yul walked along a long row of shacks, all with the same thatched roofs and walls made out of stones of uneven sizes stacked together. They were perched precariously atop a hill, on a narrow, winding path inaccessible to cars, and only wide enough for oxcarts. Soo-Ja noticed that Yul let her set the pace, and he would slow when she did. Near the top of the hill, a man with a broken wheelbarrow attempted to pass them, and Yul subtly placed his body between Soo-Ja and the stranger. Soo-Ja glanced at him, trying to acknowledge the gesture, but he looked straight ahead as if he’d done nothing.

When they finally reached the address they had, Soo-Ja and Yul found a woman squatting by the straw door, pounding on clothes with rods, the way Soo-Ja had seen her servants do a thousand times. She wore a gray rolled-up long-sleeved shirt and a charcoal knee-length skirt; her hands were deep in dirty water, which ran in an uneven line from the tin washboard to the gutter.

“Mrs. Yang, hello. I’m Soo-Ja Choi,” said Soo-Ja, bowing to the woman.

Chu-Sook’s mother bowed back gravely. Hers was a moon-shaped face with no edges. Her skin was darkly tanned, her short black hair thick and wiry.

Soo-Ja tried to smile at her, then pointed at Yul. “And this is Mr. Kim.”

Yul bowed to her.

Chu-Sook’s mother began to bow back, placing both hands behind her, and remaining with her head down for a few seconds. In Soo-Ja’s eyes, the gesture seemed excessively submissive. She herself never chose to bow very long, making it almost a nod, a quick acknowledgment. When Chu-Sook’s mother finished her bow, Soo-Ja noticed a change on the woman’s face. She had finally gotten a good look at Yul and seemed to recognize him. Soo-Ja watched as the expression in her eyes changed from interest to fear.

“No, I cannot speak to him,” said Chu-Sook’s mother, shaking her head. “And for anyone who’s watching, you can see that I’m not speaking to him!”

“Mrs. Yang, it’s all right. He’s a friend,” said Soo-Ja, holding her arm.

But Chu-Sook’s mother could not stop waving her hands in front of her face, looking around for spies—real or imaginary.

Soo-Ja glanced at Yul, who seemed to stay calm. She wondered if he realized how much of a target he had become for the police. But Yul did not seem concerned about that. He came closer to Soo-Ja, and she drew her body in as well—theirs was an easy, unforced intimacy—closing the circle so they could confer quietly with each other.

“They must have shown her my picture,” Yul whispered. “Told her not to speak to me.” Soo-Ja nodded in agreement. She guessed that, if something had happened to the boy, the police and the government must have understood at once the importance of the situation. “If we can show they have the blood of a twelve-year-old on their hands, it’ll turn the tide of the demonstrations. It’ll prove the brutality of their regime.” Yul turned to Chu-Sook’s mother again, to try to make another plea. “I’m here to help you find your son. I want to help you. Don’t believe what the police told you. I’m not here to harm you.”

“I can’t, I can’t. Please go. I can’t speak to you. I can’t speak to anyone who participates in acts of rebellion against the lawful and righteous government!” said Chu-Sook’s mother, with her eyes closed, as if trying to remember the words she was supposed to recite. She started to wave more and more vehemently.

Soo-Ja began to fear that the woman would not speak to them at all.
She stood closer to her and held down both her arms. When Chu-Sook’s mother calmed down a little, Soo-Ja looked straight into her eyes and spoke.

“Mrs. Yang, you know
me.
I’m not a member of a student group. You can speak to
me.
” Soo-Ja reached for her hand and pointed toward the house. “Let’s go in, Mrs. Yang. Let’s go in and have a chat.”

“Why would I speak to you? You lied to me.”

Soo-Ja grabbed her hand a bit more forcefully than she’d intended to and directed her inside. “I want to help you, Mrs. Yang. Please, let’s go in. Let’s go in before your neighbors see us out here and tell on you to the police.”

Soo-Ja glanced at Yul for help, but he seemed distracted, looking intently in the direction of the woman’s shack. His eyes were squinting, as if he was trying to guess its contents. He had to know it had no windows, and probably no running water or electricity either, with the only light coming in through tiny slivers on the edges of the straw door, keeping the place dark and stuffy. Soo-Ja was about to follow Chu-Sook’s mother into her house when Yul stopped her, reaching for her arm.

“Wait,” he said. Yul’s nostrils widened, as if he were sniffing something foul. He blocked Soo-Ja’s way with his arm, in the firm manner of a traffic officer. He pulled her back, away from the woman’s house. “What’s that smell?”

Chu-Sook’s mother looked away, staring down at the ground. Her body seemed emptied out of tears, with no more blood left to run through her veins. When she spoke, she did so matter-of-factly: “That’s my son.”

They held the boy’s body up in the air, and from a distance, it looked as if it were floating, though it was propped by a dozen hands. They had first wrapped him in a blanket, tucked in from head to toe, like a newborn, but somewhere along the march the blanket fell—his cold, decomposing skin rejecting the human comfort. It felt heavy, almost unbearably so,
though in life the boy had been light, and not very tall. Chu-Sook would, in fact, have been surprised to see the effort it took to carry him; similar to the effort it took to find him, after a long search in the river. Were it not for the school uniform he wore, they would not have recognized him–with his face smashed out, bits of grenade still lodged in his skull.

They’d been marching from his mother’s shack toward Daegu city hall, starting with a group of about a hundred people, led by Yul in front, and Soo-Ja and Chu-Sook’s mother next to him. Yul had been expected in Seoul hours earlier, but he’d stayed behind to lead this extemporaneous protest. Night fell somewhere along the way, and the chants grew less angry and more mournful, turning the walk into a funeral procession.

Word spread quickly of the discovery of the body, and the crowd seemed to grow with each block; first the students from the nearby high schools and universities, then everybody else, until almost all the denizens of the town seemed to have left their homes and joined the demonstration. Along the way, Soo-Ja had to help Chu-Sook’s mother remain steady a few times. Her spirit appeared to leave her body, becoming a mere bag of tissue and bones, unable to walk or remain upright. Soo-Ja had to hold her with her arms around her back, until her strength returned. The other protestors glanced occasionally at them. Word had spread about Chu-Sook’s mother, but no one knew who Soo-Ja was, which made her glad; she did not want the presence of a woman of her social class to serve as a distraction.

Once in a while, Soo-Ja would glance over at Yul and wonder how his lungs never got tired. He chanted with enormous conviction, and part of Soo-Ja felt self-conscious, watching him. It reminded her of being in church, in the middle of a group prayer, and opening her eyes before the others did. It seemed terribly intimate, to see the parishioners like that, with their lips still moving. Here was Yul, too, unaware of Soo-Ja’s gaze lingering over him.

Soo-Ja wondered if he sensed the same thing she did—that in spite of their momentary closeness, they would probably never see each other again after that night. There were boys being killed, and generals
authorizing massacres, but all she wanted was to grab Yul’s hand and have him turn around and look at her. Would the night, with all that still had to happen, stop for her?

By the time they reached city hall, there were more than a thousand people behind them. Up on the steps of the building, rows of policemen wearing helmets and body armor stood with their rifles pointed at the protestors. Behind them, soldiers stood guard with their own guns. With their outlines traced faintly by the light of the lampposts behind them, they looked like perfectly still marble statues—an impenetrable line surrounding the entire perimeter of the building.

“Join us,” said Yul, speaking to them as if they were all brothers. “Be on our side. We have room for you. This is a cause worth dying for, but it’s not worth killing for. Drop your guns. This march is for everyone, including you.”

The police officers pointed their guns at Yul, who started walking up the steps toward them.

He smiled, shaking his head, as if bewildered that they were at this standstill, when they could be playing hato cards together in a bar. Soo-Ja’s heart began to beat faster. She wanted him to turn around and come back. But instead she saw him emerge farther and farther into the light, his body drawn like a magnet to the steel and metal of the rifles.

“You are our friends. You want the same things we do. You want freedom and democracy. This boy—he could’ve been your brother. Your son.”

Most of the officers looked impervious to his words, though one or two of them—the youngest-looking ones, the ones in closest proximity to Yul—seemed to waver, and Soo-Ja could see how hard they were trying not to look at Yul, not let him inside their bodies. His words had already shaken some of their conviction.

But then, a sudden yell came from the crowd. Soo-Ja could not make out the words, until others joined in the chant, and it became clear they were screaming, “Killers! Killers, all of them!” Yul turned and tried to stop the shouting, but the crowd had suddenly taken on a life of its own. In a matter of seconds, the men and women grew bold and powerful, like the ravenous foxes of folk tales, unaware that
they were ravenous for the entrails of their own brothers and sisters. Soo-Ja had never seen such force descend upon a crowd before, and she began to fear it.

“You killed an innocent boy! You spilled the blood of our children!” they shouted.

Yul started shaking his head at them, waving his arms in front of him for them to stop.

The officers pointed their guns in the direction of the voices, and Soo-Ja saw what sounded like an order coming from the lips of one of the officers. Amid the chaos, she could not tell whose mouths the yelling was coming from, and she knew the officers could not, either. In a matter of seconds, Soo-Ja watched as the officers pointed into the night and looked about to pull their triggers. Yul signaled to her a fraction of a second before the officers started firing, and Soo-Ja fell to the ground at the same time he did, pulling Chu-Sook’s mother down with her. The three of them hit the ground as the rain of bullets flew around them.

Soo-Ja looked up in shock to see the bodies of the other protestors being shot. Seconds before, they had been alive, standing next to her, chanting in unison.

The police were firing indiscriminately at them, and they crumpled down, lifeless, arms and hands waving in the air one last time before coming to rest. Men, women, students—some of them with their backs turned away, trying to run—paralyzed by bullets, pools of blood gushing from their mouths. Soo-Ja remained on the ground, almost being trampled, as people around her tried to flee.

The sound of loud screaming pierced the air, and Soo-Ja tried to keep her head covered with her arms. Next to her, Chu-Sook’s mother wailed in horror, letting out all the sorrow that had been trapped in her lungs before.