Beasts of a Little Land(117)

I put on my goggle, took a deep breath, and sank down. The rocks looked promising with their corals, sea anemone, and starfish, but I could only hold my breath for so long. I dove several times before picking up a single sea urchin. Maybe an hour had passed but I was already out of breath and worried about the baby.

I sank down for just one more dive before heading back to the cove. That’s when I saw an abalone wedged on a rock, a few yards away from me. I resisted the urge to come up for air and kicked my feet toward the bottom. I slipped my knife under the abalone and sawed it off the rock.

My head broke the surface and I gasped for air, delirious at the sun shining incandescently above the cliff. By the time I came back to the cove, the other women had already left with their morning catches. The best divers caught about twenty abalones a day, and I had only just caught my first one. CholSoo whimpered in his cradle, and I picked him up and rocked him side to side.

After I fed CholSoo his gruel, I sat down on a rock and held up the abalone. Its shell was covered in a thin layer of green seaweed and didn’t look particularly appetizing. But I’d seen the seawomen snack on raw abalone many times. I flipped it to its naked underside. When I lifted it up out of its shell, my knife ran into something hard in the slimy flesh. Round, lambent. It was a pearl, glowing pink and gray like a morning moon in my palm.

I stared at it for a long time and I just knew that JungHo was still watching over me. Even from the other side. And I will be the same way, letting go and holding on continuously until only the sea parts of me remain.

Life is only bearable because time makes you forget everything. But life is worthwhile because love makes you remember everything.

I tucked the pearl away in my clothes bag and walked out to the water. I floated weightlessly in the cool azure waves, looking up at the cloudless blue sky. For the first time in my life I felt no wish or yearning for anything. I was finally one with the sea.





Acknowledgments


This book would not exist without Jody Kahn of Brandt & Hochman, whose integrity, intelligence, and literary stewardship have guided me from the very beginning. An agent extraordinaire and a class act, Jody is one of the great inyeons of my life.

After meeting the world’s best agent, I somehow lucked out equally in meeting Sara Birmingham as my editor. Her editing was an art in and of itself, and her courage in taking this on made me want to meet her brilliance at least halfway. My deepest thanks go to Sara, amazing editorial assistant TJ Calhoun, and the dream team at Ecco (especially Allison Saltzman for the mythic jacket, Shelly Perron for the awe-inspiring copyediting, and Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski for the tireless championing). They made this the best book that it could be.

I am grateful to editors of literary journals and magazines who have shown faith in me over the years, especially Luke Neima of Granta, who published my first short story, “Body Language,” and later, my first translation. I was proud to publish an excerpt of this book in Shenandoah, thanks to the warm support of the incredible Beth Staples. Thank you to everyone at Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, Regional Arts & Culture Commission, and the Virginia C. Piper Writing Center at Arizona State University, especially Ashley Wilkins for her patience and warmth. Olivia Chen, Hilary Leathem, and James Gruett read drafts and provided keen insights that turned the book from a mere cub to a full-grown beast. My Princeton women authors—especially Keija Parssinen, Alexis Schaitkin, Clare Beams, Eva Hagberg, Kate McQuade, and Amanda Dennis—I’ve received so much wisdom, joy, and camaraderie from our chats.

More inyeons who have touched my life and played a part in turning Beasts into a reality: Thank you, Edgard Beckand, for giving me everlasting confidence. Thank you, Max Staedtler, for giving me resolve—-I wouldn’t have become a writer without you. Thank you Arron Lloyd for giving me optimism. I didn’t know it then, but that day when we went running in Fort Tryon Park in a snowstorm was a turning point for the rest of my life. Mareza Larizadeh, your friendship and mentorship mean the world to me. Thank you, Elise Anderson, for the loyalty, bon mots, and memories—-the fact that you remember what I remember is one of the miracles of life. Renee Serell, my oldest friend: like the friends in this book, our lives were always meant to be shared.

My warmest gratitude and love go to Mary Hood Luttrell and the rest of my Peaceful Dumpling family. Mary read some of the earliest chapters of the book, and was always just a text away from answering any literary quandary. Support and love from Crystal Chin, Lindsay Frederick, Iga Kazmierczak, Lauren Sacerdote, Imola Toth, Nea Pantry, Kat Kennedy, Lana Stafford, Ema Melanaphy, and other Peaceful Dumpling editors and readers sustained me while writing this book.

I am grateful to Wildlife Conservation Society Russia and the Phoenix Fund for their decades of tirelessly protecting the endangered Siberian tigers and Amur leopards in the Russian Far East. Thank you for allowing me to contribute a portion of the proceeds from this book to your conservation efforts. I’d also like to acknowledge early twentieth--century writers and artists from different countries and ideologies; researching their works was essential to bringing this time and place to the present.

This book isn’t meant to declare the triumph of one ideology or country over another, but to reflect and uphold our shared humanity. Suffering knows no borders, and all people deserve and yearn for peace. One day while writing this book, I was passing by Columbus Circle when I saw Japanese activists holding up signs against nuclear weapons. They looked as though they were within a generation of the bombings, yet they were smiling gently. Thank you for the paper crane—the symbol of peace.