“I was reading a book of poetry recently. This guard who bullies me every time he sees me said, ‘Who are you kidding?’ And he walked on by. Immediately, I thought, I’m gonna get that asshole next time I’m outside.”
He stared at us. Then he lowered his head.
“With my temper, I would have, too. But then I pictured your faces.”
He dropped his head further. The conversation seemed to be getting too heavy for him, because he pulled several letters out of his pocket instead of continuing.
“Sister, I’ve been writing letters to these kids lately.”
We spread open one letter and saw that it was from children living in Taebaek in Gangwon Province.
Yunsu had read a magazine article about children at a branch school in Taebaek who were struggling because they could not afford school supplies. He had been withdrawing some of the money we put in his commissary account and sending it to them every month. The children had sent him a thank-you letter. An inmate awaiting death had become a pen pal with lonely kids living in a distant mountain village. I didn’t have to read the letters to know how ardent they were. Both the children and Yunsu were probably as lonely as caged deer.
While Aunt Monica and I were looking at the letters, Yunsu sheepishly said, “Sister Monica, I have a favor to ask. I’m in trouble.”
We stopped perusing and looked up at him in surprise.
“I accidentally promised them something.”
Aunt Monica smoothed the front of her dress and said, “Watch what you’re saying. You gave me a start when you said you were in trouble.”
“I asked them what they want to do more than anything else in this world, and they said they want to see the ocean. Where they live, it’s nothing but mountains, mountains, and more mountains. The ocean is only an hour away by train. They said that’s their wish. So I told them I would make their wish come true. They don’t know who I am, and my return address is a PO box in the Gunpo post office. They must think I’m some rich CEO who lives in Gunpo City, because they wrote to me to say they came up with a plan and decided to go to Gangneung to watch the sun rise on January 1. Sister, what should I do?”
I could tell that Yunsu was thinking about his little brother, whom he sometimes mentioned. Since he had told me his brother was blind, I knew he was thinking about him when he decided to donate his corneas. I didn’t ask him anything about it until he brought it up himself, but I’d had a feeling that was why he did it. Since all I knew about his little brother was that he had died in the streets, I wanted to help Yunsu make those kids’ wish to see the ocean come true.
“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “I won’t get anything in return this time, which means I’ll be left empty-handed, but I’ll cover the expenses.”
He smiled brightly as if he knew I was going to say that.
“Since the balance is already tipped, I’ll add just one more favor,” he said. “Please take pictures so I can see it, too. The rising sun, the kids’ faces—please take big, clear pictures of all of it. I would love to go to the beach myself and see those happy kids. But if I can at least see the photos, I’ll be happy even if I can’t be there myself.”
I wrote the school’s address down in my notebook. While I was writing, it hit me that Yunsu would never go to the beach again. I wondered if he would still be alive when the children went to the beach, the sun rose on 1998, and the photos were printed.
“But I can make this fair,” Yunsu said.
He pulled something out from beneath the table and said, “Ta-da!” It was a cross. Two rough pieces of wood were criss-crossed, and hanging from them was a dark-gray, hand-molded Jesus. Aunt Monica and I looked at it in wonder, and Yunsu laughed.
“I’ll give you this in exchange. I saved a few grains of cooked rice each time I ate and used them to make this.”
We took a closer look. The gray color had come from the dirt that rubbed off of his hands onto the rice when he was molding it. To our surprise, the face looked like Yunsu’s—curly hair and a longish face.
“I’d like you to give this one to that lady.”
He meant the mother of the woman he had killed.
“She wrote me a letter recently. I don’t think she’s doing well. She said she slipped in the snow and hurt her back. I’m making another one. I’ll give that one to you, Sister Monica. And this is for you, Yujeong.”
Yunsu pulled a necklace out of his pocket. It was a blue plastic cross hanging from a thin red cord. I reached my hand out, and he placed it in my palm and paused there for the briefest moment. His hand was very warm. I pulled my hand away shyly.
“I made two. I’m wearing the other one.”
I put the necklace on as a way of saying thank you. He explained that he had whittled the pendant without a knife by grating it against the cement. He had ground the plastic with his hands cuffed together. He had probably whittled away at it all day long and again the next day, grating it against the cement and blowing away the plastic dust.
“Now you two have matching necklaces,” said Officer Yi. We laughed.
Aunt Monica clutched the cross he had made for her to her heart without saying anything. She looked like she was praying. Yunsu and I looked at each other. I realized for the first time that the cross was also an execution tool. Crucifixion—the diabolical punishment devised by the Romans to control the people they had colonized. Since nailing a person to a cross was not enough to kill them, the person was usually tortured for several days first. The torture would last all night long. Beating the person nearly to death was standard, and sometimes their eyes were gouged out as well. The moment they were nailed to the cross, they were all but on the verge of death.
Nevertheless, the victims would survive for several more days, and since removing the body was forbidden on principle, they were picked apart by birds and wild animals. Jesus was a death row convict, too. Even if it had been put to a direct vote, he still would have been executed. After all, it was recorded that the angry crowds shouted, “Crucify him!” But if Jesus had been hanged instead, then Christians would have spent the last two thousand years wearing nooses around their necks and hanging them from church roofs, and statues of Jesus would have dangled by their necks in every church. I suddenly felt thankful that Jesus was executed as a criminal. Otherwise, who would have dared try to comfort Yunsu?
That year, Yunsu was baptized during the Christmas Mass. It was a Thursday. I attended his baptism. His baptismal name was Augustine, after the young heathen who consorted with prostitutes and led a life of debauchery until, one day, he was drawn by the sound of a childlike voice to open up the Gospel and read, after which he converted and became one of Christianity’s greatest saints. Augustine was also the son of Saint Monica, from whom Aunt Monica had taken her Christian name. During the Mass, I was seated in the choir with other women who volunteered at the detention center. Yunsu was sitting far away from me; he was wearing a set of white clothes given to him by the female volunteers. They made him look strange and new. Swaddled in fabric like a baby, Yunsu looked as excited as a little boy on his first day at kindergarten.
Before Mass began, I stepped forward to sing the national anthem. Aunt Monica had asked me to. Some of the people there recognized me; I could hear them whispering. In the past, the idea of singing in front of these people, in front of people who would be ex-convicts upon leaving this place, in front of fake believers who were only there to get free Choco Pies, would have been unimaginable to me, but I told Aunt Monica I was happy to do it. I was doing it for Yunsu. And when I thought about it, I was a bigger fake and hypocrite than any of those people. I had even gone so far as to join the prison ministry. Yunsu told me he couldn’t sleep at night at the thought that he was so close to death and yet would be reborn through baptism. He said it was the first time in his life that he had been too happy to sleep. He said he could not believe that God would accept someone who was even lower than an animal. For Yunsu, I went to the front of the chapel and picked
up a microphone for the first time in ten years. While the prelude rang out, I caught Yunsu’s eye. He was sitting with other death row prisoners in the very front pew. I gave him a quick smile, but he looked stiff. He was probably thinking about his little brother. I began to sing. Until the East Sea runs dry and Mt. Baekdu wears away, God save us and keep our nation… When I finished and stepped down from the pulpit, Yunsu had his head down. I could tell he was crying.
The last time I saw him, he had told me, When the judge sentenced me—no, when I killed those people, I was already dead. But now I’ve come back to life because people helped me, because they held my hand and told me it was okay if I couldn’t run because I should start by walking. I wanted to cry with Yunsu. My heart was cracking open like the soil in a dry rice paddy. Yunsu looked over at the choir through his tears. He seemed to be looking for me. Our eyes met. His white teeth flashed as he tried hard to smile. I was struck by the sight of the handcuffs that bound his wrists even as his white teeth and curly black hair were being reborn.
Mass ended, and the banquet began. Yunsu smiled broadly as his fellow prisoners congratulated him. While passing out Choco Pies, I asked him how it was. “Yujeong,” he said, “trust me. You’ve got to try believing in Christ. I promise you. It’s really good.” I didn’t say anything.
“I heard an ex-convict was elected president,” he said while eating a Choco Pie with cuffed hands. “He said there would be no executions while he’s in office. The other guys think that means none of us will be executed, since he’s president now. That’s what he promised. Yujeong, I’ve been thinking. For the first time, I want to live. I didn’t used to. But for the first time, I thought, what if I could keep living here, writing letters to children even though my hands are cuffed, passing along the love that I’ve received from everyone even though my body is shackled, spending the rest of my life praying and atoning for the people I hurt? I could think of this place as a monastery. I know I don’t deserve it. It’s shameless of me to even think that way.”
That was the last time I saw Yunsu.
It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and–what will perhaps make you wonder more–it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.
– Seneca
BLUE NOTE 17
We split the money and ran our separate ways. In my typical fashion, I headed straight for a room salon where I blew my money on girls and had a good time. I didn’t find out until later, but the other guy went straight home. There, his wife convinced him to turn himself in. He went to the police and told them everything. But he switched the stories around so that what I did became what he did and what he did became what I did. Of course, what’s the point of explaining all of this now? I was put on the most-wanted list for raping and killing a teenager and killing two women. My photograph was shown all over the country, and I became a hunted man. I searched for the friend I had loaned money to in order to convince him to pay for my girlfriend’s surgery. He told me not to worry and said he would make sure she was okay after she got out of hospital. Then, that night, he and I went to another bar and drank and caroused with women to our hearts’ content. We fell asleep in a motel, and in the morning I awoke to the sound of someone banging on the door. My friend had reported me to the police and run away. Maybe he thought that was the only way he would get out of paying me back the money I’d loaned him.
I pried open the motel window, jumped out, and ran into the first house I saw. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and forced the woman and her child into a room. Then I called my girlfriend for the last time.
The woman I loved was with my friend. He had gone to her the night before. She said that he paid her hospital bill and had her discharged. She said she owed him now, and since he had asked her to marry him… She said he told her he had loved her from the moment he first saw her at the beauty salon. She asked me why I did it. Didn’t she tell me from the very beginning how much she hated bad guys? The police tried to break down the door and get inside. I held the knife to the throat of the woman whose house I had broken into and taken hostage. The woman’s child cried, “Mommy, Mommy!” It reminded me of Eunsu when he was little. A bullet hit me in the leg, and I was arrested.
PART 17
With the end of the year approaching, there wasn’t much time left. I reserved hotel rooms in Gangneung, rented a bus for the kids, and had to make several phone calls to the principal of the branch school in Taebaek. All of the preparations were complete, but there was still the problem of the camera. I didn’t own one and couldn’t even remember the last time I had taken a photograph. I called my youngest sister-in-law. She was in the last month of her pregnancy. She agreed to waddle out to meet me to loan me her camera. While waiting for her in the lobby of a department store in Gangnam, I spotted her in the distance. Just as my brother Yusik had described, she had no makeup on and was dressed plainly. Since she was pregnant on top of that, who would have recognized her as the glamorous actress she once was? It was true that she looked haggard and wasn’t very pretty anymore. But instead her face radiated something like peace. She had the dignity and grace of a person who’s become perfectly centered in their body. I took the camera from her and handed her a shopping bag.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Clothes… for the baby. Just something pretty that caught my eye.”
She looked surprised. Despite all of the nieces and nephews that had been born, I had never once bought anything for them. If I ran into one of my brothers’ wives, I would say, Congratulations, I hear it’s a boy. But each time I did, it felt like asking someone who was clearly not in a good mood how he or she was doing. That day, I stared at my sister-in-law’s enormous belly and wondered for the first time what it would feel like to become a mother. I started to ask myself, What if? The idea of my being a mother was absurd; nevertheless, I thought I could hear something tapping inside of me, the desire beginning to sprout like a wildflower poking its way through the mortar of a brick wall and blooming there.
“Miss, I heard you’ve been doing some important volunteer work. It shows in your face—you’re glowing.”
She had an unaffected way of speaking. I used to doubt every word that came out of her mouth. I thought that behind her words were machinations and scheming. Or that she was a fool. But she was not the fool: I was. And the only machinations and scheming were the ones going on in my own mind. I was always scheming to see other people as bad, one way or another. And in the end, that was a foolish thing to do. It made me uncomfortable to be alone with her, as if I were a bad student who had suddenly been caught doing a good deed for the first time in a long while. I turned to leave but she stopped me.
“Miss, you should go see your mother. I think she’s waiting for you.”
Not that again, I thought and started to walk away, but she added, “Your mother’s lonely,” although it was possible that I misheard her. I dragged my tired body through a few more errands and then went home.
It made me happy to think about how delighted Yunsu would be when I showed him the photos of the sun rising on the first day of the year and the children’s faces like bright flowers. Aunt Monica had teased me about it. “Thanks to Yunsu, you’re finally doing something for others.” In the past, whenever I saw people who did things for others, I thought, Hypocrites, you’re all just doing it to make yourself feel better, aren’t you? But now I wanted to do things for Yunsu. If he was happy, I was happy. For the first time in my life, I realized that being a hypocrite could feel good, too.
I hummed as I took a quick shower. Then I made some tea and was grading my students’ work when a strange feeling came over me. I can’t explain exactly what it was, but it felt like a sudden restlessness. No matter what I did, the feeling would not go away, and my heart began to beat in a strange rhythm. The walls looked like they were bobbing up and down. I had never felt this way before. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine. I glanced out the kitchen window out of habit: the teenagers w
ere back in the park behind the apartment complex. This time as well, there was a swarm of them, and they were beating someone up again. I looked at the telephone and debated what to do but wound up taking the wine glass and returning to my chair.
The winter sun was already hanging low to the west. The phone rang. It was Aunt Monica. From the way she said my name, I could tell that she was shaking. Even before she said anything, I thought, No! Everything went white before my eyes.
“Aunt Monica—”
“Father Kim just called. He was told to go to the detention center early tomorrow morning. Yunsu…”
I could not bring myself to ask. How could I say those words out loud? But it wasn’t the words. My mind went blank, and the space before my eyes seemed to lose its shape and wobble like tofu.
“I’m going to the detention center at dawn tomorrow,” Aunt Monica said. “Yujeong, you need to pray. Pray.”
It was the first time she had ever told me to pray.
After we hung up, I picked up my wine then set it down again. The color really did look like blood, and I couldn’t drink it. I went back to the living room, sat down, and then stood up again. No, I thought. No, no, no. I wondered what Yunsu was doing at that moment. He would have no clue. In that place where I could not call and could not visit, he was probably spending his last night without any idea that it was his last. That seemed crueler than dying. I called Officer Yi.
When he answered his phone, his voice sounded very distressed, and I could tell that he didn’t feel like talking.
“I’m heading over now. Please let me see him. Just five minutes—no, one minute.”
“I can’t do that. It’s against the rules.”
“You can. I’ll take full responsibility. Even if I can’t stop him from dying, he at least deserves to know he’s going to die! He needs to be ready. We can’t just let him spend the rest of the night not knowing what’s going on!”
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