by Min Jin Lee
Before Sunja crossed the threshold of the kitchen door to leave the house for the market or the beach, she would check her reflection on the polished metal pot lid, primping the tight braid she’d made that morning. Sunja had no idea how to make herself lovely or appealing to any man, and certainly not a man as important as Koh Hansu, so she endeavored to be clean and tidy at the least.
The more she saw him, the more vivid he grew in her mind. His stories filled her head with people and places she had never imagined before. He lived in Osaka—a large port city in Japan where he said you could get anything you wanted if you had money and where almost every house had electric lights and plug-in heaters to keep you warm in the winter. He said Tokyo was far busier than Seoul—with more people, shops, restaurants, and theaters. He had been to Manchuria and Pyongyang. He described each place to her and told her that one day she would go with him to these places, but she couldn’t understand how that would ever happen. She didn’t protest, because she liked the idea of traveling with him, the idea of being with him longer than the few minutes they had at the cove. From his travels, he brought her beautifully colored candies and sweet biscuits. He would unwrap the candies and put one in her mouth like a mother feeding a child. She had never tasted such lovely and delicious treats—pink hard candies imported from America, butter biscuits from England. Sunja was careful to throw away the wrappers outside the house, because she didn’t want her mother to know about them.
She was enraptured by his talk and his experiences, which were far more unique than the adventures of fishermen or workers who had come from far-flung places, but there was something even more new and powerful in her relationship with Hansu that she had never expected. Until she met him, Sunja had never had someone to tell about her life—the funny habits of the lodgers, her exchanges with the sisters who worked for her mother, memories of her father, and her private questions. She had someone to ask about how things worked outside of Yeongdo and Busan. Hansu was eager to hear about what went on in her day; he wanted to know what she dreamed about even. Occasionally, when she didn’t know how to handle something or someone, he told her what she could do; he had excellent ideas on how to solve problems. They never spoke of Sunja’s mother.
At the market, it was strange to see him doing business, for he was this other person when he was with her—he was her friend, her elder brother, the one who’d lift the bundle of laundry from her head when she came to him. “How gracefully you do that,” he would remark, admiring how straight and strong her neck was. Once, he touched the nape of her neck lightly with both his thick, square hands, and she sprang from his touch, shocked by the sensation she felt.
She wanted to see him all the time. Who else did he talk to or ask questions of? What did he do in the evening when she was at home serving the lodgers, polishing the low dining tables, or sleeping beside her mother? It felt impossible to ask him, so she kept those questions to herself.
For three months, they met in the same way, growing easier in each other’s company. When fall arrived, it was brisk and cold by the sea, but Sunja hardly felt the chilly air.
Early September, it rained for five days straight, and when it finally cleared, Yangjin asked Sunja to gather mushrooms at Taejongdae Forest the following morning. Sunja liked mushroom picking, and as she was about to meet Hansu at the beach, she felt giddy that she could tell him she was going to do something different from her regular chores. He traveled and saw new things often; this was the first time she was doing something out of her normal routine.
In her excitement, she blurted out her plans to pick mushrooms right after breakfast the next day, and Hansu said nothing for a few moments and stared at her pensively.
“Your Hansu-oppa is good at finding mushrooms and wild roots. I know a lot about the ones you can eat and the ones you can’t. When I was a boy, I spent hours searching for roots and mushrooms. In the spring, I’d look for fernbrake and dry them. I used to catch rabbits for our dinner with a slingshot. Once, I caught a pair of pheasants before dusk—it was the first time we had meat in a long time. My father was so delighted!” His face softened.
“We can go together. How much time do you have to get the mushrooms?” he asked.
“You want to go?”
It was one thing to talk to him twice a week for half an hour, but she couldn’t imagine spending a day with him. What would happen if someone saw them together? Sunja’s face felt hot. What was she supposed to do? She had told him, and she couldn’t keep him from going.
“I’ll meet you here. I better go back to the market.” Hansu smiled at her differently this time, like he was a boy, excitement beaming from his face. “We’ll find a huge bundle of mushrooms. I know it.”
They walked along the outer perimeter of the island, where no one would see them together. The coastline seemed more glorious than it had ever been. As they approached the forest located on the opposite side of the island, the enormous pines, maples, and firs seemed to greet them, decked in golds and reds as if they were wearing their holiday clothes. Hansu told her about living in Osaka. The Japanese were not to be vilified, he said. At this moment in time, they were beating the Koreans, and of course, no one liked losing. He believed that if the Koreans could stop quarreling with each other, they could probably take over Japan and do much worse things to the Japanese instead.
“People are rotten everywhere you go. They’re no good. You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”
Sunja nodded as he spoke, trying to remember his every word, to hold on to his every image, and to grasp whatever he was trying to tell her. She treasured his stories like the beach glass and rose-colored stones she used to collect as a girl—his words astonished her because he was taking her by the hand and showing her new, unforgettable things.
Of course, there were many subjects and ideas she didn’t understand, and sometimes just trying to learn it all without experiencing it was difficult. Yet she crammed her mind the way she might have overfilled a pig intestine with blood sausage stuffing. She tried hard to figure things out because she didn’t want him to think she was ignorant. Sunja didn’t know her letters in either Korean or Japanese. Her father had taught her some addition and subtraction so she could count money, but that was all. Both she and her mother could not even write their names.
Hansu had brought a large kerchief so he could gather mushrooms as well. His obvious delight at their excursion made her feel better, but Sunja was still worried that someone would see them. No one knew they were friends. Men and women were not supposed to be that, and they were not sweethearts, either. He had never mentioned marriage, and if he wanted to marry her, he would have to speak to her mother, but he had not. In fact, after he asked her if she had a sweetheart three months before, he’d never raised the subject again. She tried not to think about what his life was like with women. It would not have been difficult for him to find a girl to be with, and his interest in her did not always make sense.
The long walk to the forest felt brief, and when they entered the woods, it felt even more isolated than the cove, but unlike the openness of the low rocks and the expanse of blue-green water, immense trees stood high above them, and it was like entering the dark, leafy house of a giant. She could hear birds, and she looked up and about to see what kind they were. She noticed Hansu’s face: There were tears in his eyes.
“Oppa, are you all right?”
He nodded. He had talked for the entire length of the walk about traveling and work, yet at the sight of the colored leaves and bumpy tree trunks, Hansu fell silent. He placed his right hand on her back and touched the end of her hair braid. He stroked her back, then removed his hand carefully.
Hansu had not been in a forest since he was a boy—that time before he became a tough teenager who could hustle and steal with the wisest street kids of Osaka. Before he moved to Japan, the wooded mountains of Jeju had been his
sanctuary; he had known every tree on the volcano Halla-san. He recalled the small deer with their slender legs and mincing, flirtatious steps. The heavy scent of orange blossoms came back to him, though there were no such things in the woods of Yeongdo.
“Let’s go,” he said, walking ahead, and Sunja followed him. Less than a dozen paces in, he stopped to pluck a mushroom gently from the ground. “That’s our first,” he said, no longer crying.
He had not lied to her. Hansu was an expert at finding mushrooms, and he found numerous edible weeds for her, even explaining how to cook them.
“When you’re hungry, you’ll learn what you can eat and what you cannot.” He laughed. “I don’t like being hungry. So, where’s your spot? Which way?”
“A few minutes from here—it’s where my mother used to pick them after a heavy rain when she was a girl. She’s from this side of the island.”
“Your basket is not large enough. You could have brought two and had plenty to dry for the winter! You might have to return tomorrow.”
Sunja smiled at him. “But, Oppa, you haven’t even seen the spot!”
When they reached her mother’s mushroom spot, it was carpeted with the brown mushrooms that her father had adored.
He laughed, as pleased as he could be. “Didn’t I tell you? We should have brought something to make supper with. Next time, let’s plan to have lunch here. This is too easy!” Immediately, he began to gather mushrooms by the handful and threw them into the basket on the ground between them. When it grew full, he put more into his handkerchief, and when that was heaping, she untied the apron around her waist and gathered more.
“I don’t know how I will carry them all,” she said. “I’m being greedy.”
“You are not greedy enough.”
Hansu moved toward her. She could smell his soap and the wintergreen of his hair wax. He was cleanly shaven and handsome. She loved how white his clothes were. Why did such a thing matter? The men at the boardinghouse could not help being filthy. Their work dirtied all their things, and no amount of scrubbing would get the fish smell off their shirts and pants. Her father had taught her not to judge people on such shallow points: What a man wore or owned had nothing to do with his heart and character. She inhaled deeply, his scent mingled with the cleansing air of the forest.
Hansu slid his hands beneath her short traditional blouse, and she did not stop him. He untied the long sash that held her blouse together and opened it. Sunja started to cry quietly, and he pulled her toward him and held her, making low, soothing sounds, and she allowed him to comfort her as he did what he wanted. He lowered her on the ground tenderly.
“Oppa is here. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
He had his hands firmly under her buttocks the entire time, and though he had tried to shield her from the twigs and leaves, bits of the forest had made red welts on the backs of her legs. When they separated, he used his handkerchief to clean the blood.
“Your body is pretty. Full of juice like a ripened fruit.”
Sunja couldn’t say anything. She had suckled him like an infant. While he was moving inside her, doing this thing that she had witnessed pigs and horses doing, she was stunned by how sharp and bright the pain was and was grateful that the ache subsided.
When they rose from the carpet of yellow and red leaves, he helped to straighten her undergarments, and he dressed her.
“You are my dear girl.”
This was what he told her when they did this again.
6
Hansu had gone to Japan for business. He promised there would be a surprise for her when he returned. Sunja thought it would only be a matter of time before he would speak to her of marriage. She belonged to him, and she wanted to be his wife. She didn’t want to leave her mother, but if she had to move to Osaka to be with him, she would go. Throughout the day, she wondered what he was doing at that moment. When she imagined his life away from her, she felt like she was part of something else, something outside of Yeongdo, outside of Busan, and now outside of Korea even. How was it possible that she had lived without knowing anything else beyond her father and mother? Yet that was all she had known. It was right for a girl to marry and bear children, and when she didn’t menstruate, Sunja was pleased that she would give him a child.
She counted the days until his return, and if there had been a clock in the house, she would have measured the hours and minutes. On the morning of his return, Sunja hurried to the market. She walked by the brokers’ offices until he spotted her, and in his discreet way, he set a meeting time at the cove for the following morning.
As soon as the lodgers left for work, Sunja gathered the laundry and ran to the beach, unable to wait any longer. When she saw her sweetheart waiting beside the rocks, wearing a handsome overcoat over his suit, she felt proud that a man like this had chosen her.
Unlike the other times, when she would approach him in careful, ladylike steps, today she rushed to him impatiently with the bundle of laundry clutched in her arms.
“Oppa! You’re back!”
“I told you—I always return.” He embraced her tightly.
“I’m so happy to see you.”
“How is my girl?”
She beamed in his presence.
“I hope you won’t go away again too soon.”
“Close your eyes,” he said, and she obeyed him.
He opened her right hand and placed a thick disc in her palm. The metal felt cool in her hand.
“It’s just like yours,” she said, opening her eyes. Hansu had a heavy gold pocket watch from England. Similarly sized, hers was made of silver with a gold wash, he said. A while back, he’d taught her the difference between the long hand and the short and how to tell time. His watch hung from a solid gold chain with a T-bar that went through his vest buttonhole.
“You press this.” Hansu pushed the crown and the pocket watch opened to reveal an elegant white face with curved numerals.
“This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Oppa, thank you. Thank you so much. Where did you get it?” She could not imagine a store where they’d sell such things.
“If you have money, there’s nothing you can’t have. I had it ordered for you from London. Now we can know exactly when we will meet.”
She couldn’t imagine being happier than she was at that moment.
Hansu stroked her face and pulled her toward him.
“I want to see you.”
She lowered her gaze and opened her blouse. The night before, she had bathed in hot water, scrubbing every pore of her body until her skin was red.
He took the watch from her hand and looped the thin sash of her slip through its hook.
“I’ll order a proper chain and pin the next time I am in Osaka.”
He pushed down her inner slip to expose her breasts and put his mouth over her. He opened her long skirt.
Her shock at the urgency of his needs had diminished somewhat since the first time they made love. They had been together many times, and by now, the pain was not as great as it had been for her initially. What Sunja liked about lovemaking was the gentle touching as well as the powerful desires of his body. She liked how his face changed from grave to innocent in those moments.
When it ended, she closed her blouse. In a few moments, he would have to return to work and she would wash the boardinghouse linens.
“I am carrying your child.”
He opened his eyes and paused.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well.” He smiled.
She smiled in return, feeling proud of what they had done together.
“Sunja—”
“Oppa?” She studied his serious face.
“I have a wife and three children. In Osaka.”
Sunja opened her mouth, then closed it. She could not imagine him being with someone else.
“I will take good care of you, but I cannot marry you. My marriage is already registered in Japan. There a
re work implications,” he said, frowning. “I will do whatever I can to make sure we are together. I had been planning on finding a good house for you.”
“A house?”
“Near your mother. Or if you want, it can be in Busan. It’ll be winter soon, and we can’t keep meeting outside.” He laughed. He rubbed her upper arms, and she flinched.
“Is that why you went to Osaka? To see your—”
“I have been married since I was a boy nearly. I have three daughters,” Hansu said. His girls were neither terribly clever nor interested in much of anything, but they were sweet and simple. One was pretty enough to marry, and the others were too skinny like their nervous mother, who looked fragile and perpetually bothered.
“Maybe it’s a son you’re carrying!” He couldn’t help but smile at the thought. “How do you feel? Is there anything you feel like eating?” He pulled out his wallet and withdrew a stack of yen bills. “You should buy whatever you want to eat. Also, you’ll need more fabric for clothing for yourself and for the child.”
She stared at the money but didn’t reach for it. Her hands hung by her side. He sounded increasingly excited.
“Do you feel different?” He put his hands on her stomach and laughed with delight.
