Human Acts(53)
On late autumn days after the rainy season has passed and the sky is startlingly clear, I put my purse in the inside pocket of my jacket and make my slow way down to the riverside, my hands on my knees. I inch along the path where the cosmos blooms in a riot of color, and gadflies swarm on the coils of dead worms.
When you were six or seven, when your brothers were both off at school and the house was quiet even at one o’clock in the afternoon, you were so bored you didn’t know what to do with yourself. So each day the two of us walked along the riverside, all the way to the shop to see your father. You disliked the shadowed places where the trees blocked out the sun. When I wanted to walk there to escape the heat, you tugged me by the wrist as hard as you could, back to where it was bright. Even though your fine hair sparkled with sweat, and you were panting so hard you sounded as if you were in pain. Let’s walk over there, Mum, where it’s sunny, we might as well, right? Pretending that you were too strong for me, I let you pull me along. It’s sunny over there, Mum, and there’s lots of flowers, too. Why are we walking in the dark, let’s go over there, where the flowers are blooming.
I was nine years old at the time of the Gwangju Uprising.
That year, we’d just moved up from Gwangju to Suyuri, on the outskirts of Seoul. There, I would hole myself up and pore over whichever book I could lay my hands on, spend entire afternoons playing omok with my brothers, or sigh my way through various small tasks such as peeling garlic or deheading anchovies—the kinds of chores I hated most, but which were the ones my mother reserved for me. It was during this time that I overheard snatches of the grown-ups’ conversation.
“Was he one of your kids?” my father’s sister asked him, one Sunday in early autumn while they were having dinner.
“I wasn’t his form teacher, but I took him for some other classes. He always did a good job of the creative writing, I remember that. When we sold the hanok and moved, I introduced myself to the new buyer as a teacher at D middle school; the man was really glad to meet me, told me his youngest was in the first year there, but he had to mention the name several times before it clicked. I only really knew him to look at, from when I’d taken the register for their class.”
Beyond that, I don’t remember exactly what was said. I remember only the expressions on their faces; the struggle to get through the story while having to skirt around the most gruesome parts; the awkward, drawn-out silences. However many times the subject was changed to something a little lighter, the conversation always seemed to circle back around to that initial, unspoken center, seemingly in spite of the speakers. I became oddly tense, straining to catch the words. I already knew that one of the students my father had taught had lived in the hanok after us; that was no great secret. So why were they lowering their voices? Why, just before that boy’s name was uttered, did an unaccountable silence wedge itself in?
—
It was a typical old-style hanok, with the rooms arranged around a central courtyard, sliding paper doors, and a tiled roof. In the center of the courtyard was a flower bed with a stumpy camellia plant. Every year when the hot weather set in, rose creepers swept their carpet of blossoms up the wall, the petals so dark red they were almost black. Later, when the roses withered, the white hollyhocks surged up the wall of the annex to the height of a grown adult. The iron bars of the main gate were painted a pale straw color; when you pushed it open to go out, you could see the top of the battery factory. I remember the morning we moved: my father and uncle padding the corners of the paulownia wardrobe with a quilt, their movements deft and skillful.
Seoul, January 1980—I wouldn’t have believed anywhere could be so cold. Before moving out to Suyuri we spent three months in a tenement building, where the walls might as well have been made of plywood for all the good they did retaining heat. It was barely any warmer inside than out, and our breath puffed out of us in white clouds. Even huddled in a coat and with a quilt pulled around you, your teeth chattered audibly.
All through that winter, my thoughts kept straying back to our old hanok. Not that there was anything bad about the new house. I simply didn’t feel that attached to it, probably as we’d only lived there for a relatively short time. The hanok, on the other hand, was where I’d spent the first nine years of my life. My grandfather had bought it for my mother, his only daughter. If you wanted to step across from the veranda into the kitchen, you had to pass through my tiny room. In summer I lay there to do my homework with my stomach pressed against the floor. On winter afternoons, I would slide the paper door open a fraction and peer out into the courtyard, where a clean wash of sunlight was puddled on the paving stones.
—
It was early summer when they came to the house in Suyuri.
At some point between 3 and 4 a.m., Mum shook me awake. Get up, I’m switching the light on. The light flicked on before I even had time to blink. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Two men were standing in the room, their broad shoulders outlined against the black rectangle of the open door. “These men have come from the estate agent’s,” Mum told me. She was still in her pajamas. “To look at the house.”
I was instantly wide awake. Clinging to Mum, I watched wide-eyed as the men rummaged through the wardrobe, searched under the desk, and climbed up into the loft, carrying flashlights. It didn’t make sense. Why would men from the estate agent’s need to look inside the wardrobe? And why would they come by in the middle of the night? After a while, one of the men came down from the loft and led Mum into the kitchen. When I hesitantly followed them, she turned and mouthed, you lot stay here. Her eyes gave nothing away. When I looked back over my shoulder, I saw that my two brothers had wandered into the room in their pajamas. The look on their faces was blank and uncomprehending. My father’s voice was low but resonant, coming from the main room. There was no door between the kitchen and my room, just a lace curtain, but whatever my mother was saying to the man, it was so quiet I couldn’t make out a single word.