34
November 1999
At gijesa for Abuji, Umma gives me a gift of time.
It’s been a year since Abuji’s passing, and our family is gathered for the anniversary memorial service. Korea has recovered from what Koreans have taken to calling the IMF Crisis. The government paid off its $21 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund two years ahead of schedule. The banks have been recapitalized, with both state funds and foreign private capital, and industry is back on its feet. Ilsung Group is no more, though its consumer electronics products are still sold under the Electron name. Ilsung Motors was sold by the creditors to a Chinese automaker at a fire-sale price but on condition of job security for all employees. Wayne served his time, nine months in prison, the remaining four years commuted. The Prince now lives in exile. He’s in Silicon Valley, his new incarnation venture capital. I suggested the name Ozymandias Ventures.
Jee Yeon and I got married in a traditional ceremony in New Jersey. For my father’s sake, we skipped the engagement. Abuji attended the wedding in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank, in what would be his last outing in public. Umma looked beatific in her blue hanbok, a gift from her daughter-in-law. Minister Choi, now Uncle, presided as jurye. In a benediction sprinkled with recycled wisdom from the classics, he exhorted us to obey our parents and follow our hearts.
I left Phipps a little over a year ago. It was to spend Abuji’s last days with him. But I never went back. I haven’t been able to leave finance altogether, but at least I can count my days of autoasphyxiation by necktie behind me. Purpose doesn’t come in sharp rays of sunlight, but a ripe dusky light guides my work most days.
We live in Berlin, my wife and I. From a divided country to a once-divided city, riven no more. There are ghosts here, too. We were brought here by music, the Berlin Philharmonic, which had offered Jee Yeon a position. We stayed because we’ve found haunting beauty in the parks, the weeping trees of Tiergarten, the grim art galleries and the Weimar-era cafés. The unshaven, unbathed, dirty-jeaned Berliners have welcomed us with their large hearts. One stormy day, we walked along the Berlin Wall, and under the lightning the crumbled, graffiti-laced facade and the cracked tombstones of concrete seemed to sink into the ground. It’s a city of guilt and remorse, but with a soul redeemed by a reconciliation with its past.
The year Abuji passed away, my son Tae was born. A cosmic symmetry, a yin and yang of loss and gain, that was meant to give me solace somehow but seemed only cruel. Abuji barely had any strength left when I put tiny, bundled Tae in his arms. There were dark puddles of indeterminable depth in Abuji’s eyes, recognizing, then unrecognizing. Sonja, Umma told him. Your grandson. A life lived, a story already told, another beginning.
We buried Abuji’s body at Eunsan. We made the long climb up the family mountain, and I introduced Jee Yeon and Tae to Ajussi. He held baby Tae in his arms, and they smiled toothless smiles at each other. We put up a new marble marker at the ancestral burial site, bearing the hanja characters of Abuji’s name. I saw there was room for a few more tombs, and I took solace in knowing where my final destination will be. My final home.
Before we begin the jesa ceremony, Umma hands me a small silk bojagi. Inside, there is Abuji’s old Patek chronograph. I can’t breathe. I hold the watch in my hand, stare at it for a long time before I put it on. The familiar small gold-trimmed face, the brown leather strap, a bit frayed. I put it around my left wrist, the way he used to. I wind the dial—feed it rice, as Korean say—and the golden long hand moves.
“A reminder,” Umma says. She doesn’t say of what, and she doesn’t need to. The spectral piano music, the political discussions, the playing catch, the laughs, the walks, the things said and unsaid, the hurt, disappointment, understanding, and forgiveness, all of it, the moments and the entire timeline, is remembered. He wanted you to have it. Dongseng watches wordlessly, wiping away tears running down her cheek.
The jesa shrine is set with the byungpoong, our family screen passed down through generations, facing north. The food is laid out in prescribed order on a lacquer table. A bowl of rice and plates of beef galbi, three kinds of colored vegetables and white fruits, set back to front, on the side facing west; taro soup, goolbi, and red fruits, sliced open at the top, on the east. Dongseng has added a plate of Teuscher chocolate truffles, Abuji’s favorite, in the front row. Two white candles are placed at opposite ends of the table and a portrait of Abuji at the center in back. He presides over the proceedings with his beneficent, knowing eyes.
Abuji’s love was the gentlest love I’ve known, and the love ended a year ago. Expectation, hope, and, yes, probably disappointment, but in the end, all was washed away, cleansed, by overwhelming love. The love born of acceptance. Grief for Abuji comes in waves, and the waves come still.
There is now only peace. As the Hindus have recited through the ages, and as T. S. Eliot distilled in one crystal moment, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. Peace in the world, peace with the divine, and, most exalted, peace within. Internal peace doesn’t come all at once, overwhelming you like a tsunami. Peace comes in drops. Like drops from an IV drip bag, slowly, one small drop at a time. And you learn to take it when it comes. You receive the drops of peace with both hands, accept them in gratitude and with humility. Before you know it, your hands are full and peace is yours. Shanti.
By custom, chohun, the initial offering, is performed by the jangnam. Koreans call the eldest son of the deceased a jwein, sinner. The sin is of having survived the parent. I kneel, light the incense, pour cheongju, rice wine, in a cup and circle the cup three times over the incense sticks. I do the ritual bow twice, touching my forehead to the floor, followed by the women, Umma, Dongseng, and Jee Yeon, bowing four times. Umma reminds us we honor not only Abuji, but five generations of ancestors before him. His spirit is but the latest in a conjoined line of Lee spirits.
We celebrated Tae’s dol, his first birthday, a month ago. We invited our relatives and friends, and we had the traditional feast and a photo session. Everyone said how nice the picture of Umma with Tae was; I saw only the empty space where Abuji would have been. At the end of the ceremony, we watched Tae choose among a spool of thread, a ten-thousand-won bill, and a pencil laid out on a table. Tae picked up the pencil in his tiny fist. The newest candidate to succeed a long line of scholars. They said how proud his grandfather would have been.
I serve the main offering, laying a spoon in the rice bowl and metal chopsticks on the goolbi. We open the back door so the spirits of Abuji and the ancestors may come to receive the offerings and partake in the meal. There’s a moment of silence for the spirits to eat in peace and quiet. We end the jesa by bowing twice, bid the spirits a good journey back home.
As we gather at the table to eat the jesa food, Umma lifts Tae in her arms and says, Jangson, eldest son of eldest son. Continuing after me the long lineage of Lee men. It will be his duty to carry on the sacred family tradition. Maybe he will become a wise sunbi scholar. Maybe he will outlive the curse.
I look in Tae’s eyes, and I see, as every parent before me has seen, the beginning and the end of all questions. This little bundle of gurgles and pains will grow to know anguish and suffering and joy. He will struggle even as he learns and creates. But he will one day feel love in his heart. His insistent yearning for happiness and redemption contains all the answers of the universe. In his will to live and grow lie the length and breadth and weight of all philosophy, Plato’s meaning of forms, Kierkegaard’s leap, Confucius’s secular as sacred. From our ancestors to Abuji to me to my adeul. Through the roar of destiny and the hiss of curse. The flow of life, in all its rage and anguish and mystery and ceaseless wonder.
Acknowledgments
As with most first-time novelists, I owe a debt of gratitude to many people. My wife, Kyung Ah, was with me every step of the way, from conception to thinking through plot and character points. She gave me advice when I sought it; and time and space when I needed that, even if it meant forgoing weekends and vacations. M
y sister, Mimi, provided valuable guidance on narrative matters as well as unwavering encouragement from beginning to end. She had more faith in this book than I ever did. Without their support, Offerings would not be what it is.
I feel blessed to have found an editor in Cal Barksdale who “got” my writing and put his brilliant red pen to work in his distinctively gentle way. Working with him was like dancing the tango with an old, familiar partner. His editorial suggestions made Offerings immeasurably better. I am grateful to the Arcade/Skyhorse publisher, Tony Lyons, for taking a chance on a debut novel. And thanks to my agents at Creative Arts Agency, David Larabell and Michael Gordon, who believed in me.
I also wish to thank several early readers of the book. Theresa Park, Lorin Stein, Jong Ha Yoon, and Eliot Bu all provided helpful comments. In researching the finance-related background of the book, I found corroboration of my notes in various articles in Euromoney and FinanceAsia. I also found welcome reminders of traditional Korean tales and scenes from my childhood in the books on Korea by Tuttle Publishing and Hollym.
Lastly, my umma, of course. For a lifetime of sharing stories, including the most powerful one, her own.
Offerings Page 19
