Beasts of a Little Land(63)

Jade was silent as he helped her onto the rickshaw and started heading automatically toward her home. She seemed to be lost in thoughts that had nothing to do with HanChol, and that secretly bothered him. On the rare nights when Jade sat silently with a sad and pensive air, he found himself wanting to know what was wrong and to make her feel better. In the past, Jade had often gossiped cheerfully with Lotus, knowing that the driver could hear them and yet not sparing any details of rich lovers who were paying them court. But since Lotus had moved to a different theater, Jade rode quietly and often in a more subdued state of mind, gazing at the jazz-soaked storefronts and the people walking under the cool white moonlight.

As they got on the boulevard, she broke the silence.

“Mr. HanChol, I’ve known you for a long time now, but you never talk about yourself.”

He had the impulse to stop pulling, resisted it, and kept trotting. The quickening of his beating heart didn’t have anything to do with running, however.

“I don’t know what about my life could interest you,” HanChol said in his deep bronze voice, without glancing back.

“Anything. Everything.” Jade’s eyes were full of smiles, he imagined. “For example, how old you are.”

HanChol told her that he was nineteen, and she sighed.

“Younger than me, then. I’m twenty already. And you’re still studying at the night school?”

“Yes, miss.”

“I am sure you’re brilliant. I can tell how smart a fellow is just by looking at his eyes.”

HanChol was trying to process both that she thought he was intelligent, and that she’d studied his eyes. When had she even looked straight at his face?

“I can follow the others. I try my best,” HanChol said modestly, though in fact, his teacher—a Christian who had studied in Hiroshima—had complimented him more than once on his uncanny brightness and exhaustive memory.

“You’re being humble. I’m sure if you could’ve gone to school full-time, you would have passed university entrance exams already,” she persisted.

HanChol had himself thought this hundreds of times. After paying for the living expenses of the household, he hardly had any tuition left even for the night school. It was impossible to tell when he’d be able to take the entrance exams, let alone how he’d be able to pay for university. Would he be able to matriculate by twenty-five or twenty-six? He had no way of knowing. Instead of talking about his abject circumstances, he turned the subject around.

“You’re intelligent as well,” he said. He didn’t know what he was saying until after the words were spoken, and realized he’d always thought that.

“Me?” Jade sounded full of surprise. “Why would you think that?”

“I can always tell when I look at someone’s eyes,” HanChol said jokingly, and feeling emboldened, turned his head over his right shoulder to steal a glance. She was staring at him with such wide eyes under her navy hat, her rosy lips in a half-moon smile.

“No one’s ever told me I’m intelligent before,” Jade muttered sheepishly as he turned back around to face the road.

“You just always say the right things. When you and Miss Lotus talk, for instance.”

“Oh, so you were eavesdropping on us?” She pretended to be scandalized. They continued talking in a careful, but excited manner until they reached her home. He helped her down as usual; but this time, instead of keeping his head lowered as he held her hand steady, he met her eyes and smiled. Neither could say which one was holding on to the other, but for an imperceptible second, they didn’t let go. It was unconscionably, irrationally sweet—that brief moment when they both knew how reluctant they were to separate. And when their hands finally parted, each one was already missing the touch of the other. Jade hid her confusion by busying herself over the fare.

“This will give you some change to buy books,” she said, pressing folded bills into his hand.

“I don’t want to take money from you.” He shook his head, still boldly looking at her. But she gazed out above his right ear, like someone suddenly confronted by the blinding white sun. From such a lovely girl, who usually acted as though she could get any man she wanted, this was an unexpected symptom of shyness. He found it irresistible.

“If you give this ride for free, I will never hire you again for fear you might never let me pay. So just take it.” Jade pressed the money into his palm more firmly, and this time he relented. He stood there watching her lithe form slip inside the gates, and on walking back, felt that everything—cars, bicycles, singing of drunkards, freshness of night air, liquid light spilling onto the dark road—was more vivid than ever before. As he neared his house, the singing died away and the stillness was only felt more purely by the innocent, rhythmic call of the sochuck owl. That spring bird call had never moved him so achingly. It seemed to say all that there is to life.

AFTER THE PERFORMANCE on the following night, Jade sat primly in the rickshaw without initiating a conversation. She seemed determined to pretend that nothing had happened between them. HanChol was disappointed, but not hurt. If anything, her reticence only confirmed to him that something significant had taken place. He was wondering how he could break the silence when the sound of a sochuck bird was heard in the distance.

“Did you hear that, miss?” he asked, slowing down to a walk.