Any Other Place

by Michael Croley

  “There is no honor in dying,” Seo-Yun said. She touched my arm, turning me to her. Her eyes were nothing but anger despite the tenderness with which she held me. She wasn’t a woman who cried. “You have to go,” she said. “I won’t argue about it anymore.”

  “And what I feel doesn’t matter then?” I said.

  She met me with silence.

  I walked to the beach and sat on the rocks jutting out in the water and let mist spray me. The ocean was so loud, and the foam lapped and lingered at my feet. I was filled with anger and guilt for leaving, but I couldn’t be in the house anymore. I had no energy to go through the pushing and pulling of my will with Seo-Yun. I knew I should do what she asked and leave. I had no gun. I had no training, but now that Sook-Cha was here with us, I also didn’t see how I could walk away from the two of them. None of that would make sense to Seo-Yun when all she was thinking about was survival, but I was thinking about independence, dreaming of the day when we would no longer be under colonial rule. I wanted to feel I had fought, in some way, for that freedom. Sook-Cha’s life colored these thoughts. The world—all of its joys and sorrows—seemed so much heavier now. Neither of us had ever loved someone or something so much, and the child bore the weight of our hopes and our worries.

  Last year, the Japanese had taken Seo-Yun’s brothers from her parents’ home and shoved them out into the street, pushing them to their knees and pissing on them. They forced them to say it tasted like sugar water before they pulled them back up and paraded them out of the village. Weeks later we learned both were dead. Since the beginning of the war, the Japanese had taken Koreans and dressed them in their uniforms and put them on the front lines of their Emperor’s army as human shields to absorb the gunfire and mortar shells of the Americans in Okinawa. My wife had suffered so much, but I still couldn’t make myself bend. I had my own principles and my own sense of what she and Sook-Cha needed.

  “And yet,” I said again.

  I came home much later than I intended and opened the door to see Sook-Cha, her little body aglow by the fire’s light. She slept peacefully on blankets Seo-Yun had arranged next to our sleeping pads on the floor. Seo-Yun was beside the child, sitting up.

  “You’ve been waiting for me?” I asked.

  “They won’t be in our country forever,” she said. “They’re going to lose this war. The Americans will come to help us.”

  “They’ve never helped us,” I said. “Why should we believe in them now?”

  The fire lit the three of us in flickers. Seo-Yun leveled her eyes to mine. “The Americans will win this war,” she said. “And then she can run free. I want you to be here to see it. Please,” she said.

  She had never pleaded with me like this before or spoken so softly to prove her point. It was my turn to reply with silence, but I wanted to say, I am tired of watching my brothers and fathers die. I couldn’t begin to think about a day when I would never see her or Sook-Cha again, but I couldn’t live another day in which the lives of everyone I knew seemed to disappear into the roar of the ocean. I turned my head from her because her eyes were so sharp and intense, and I listened for the ocean I’d walked away from, which was too distant to hear, my imagination filled with its crashing waves and tidal waters.

  “Hyo,” she said, “look at her again.”

  “Don’t say anything else. I’ve heard it all,” I said. “I can’t lose you, either. But I can’t lose myself.”

  My voice had risen and the baby let out a wail. We both froze and waited to see if she would wake in full. When she resettled, I whispered, “What will happen to you and her if I’m not here? Did you think about that?”

  “We will be fine,” she said.

  “Unless they take you.”

  “They won’t. They need men.”

  “They have taken women.”

  A silence filled up between us once more. Sook-Cha’s life, despite the joy of her existence, had somehow caused so much silence between us. It had only been five months since she was born, and I felt Seo-Yun slipping away from me, both of us moving into a current of constant worry for our daughter. I missed my wife’s hair on my face in the mornings when she woke me for breakfast. I missed the way we talked after I came home from the boat, my hands cut and scarred from nets and hooks, and I soaked my hands in a balm she made and waited while she brought out the rice and soup and kimchi for our dinner. Even as the world unfurled into madness and war changed our country once more, we had each other, we believed. Always that. I wondered how much this new war, newly dying Koreans, had affected my feelings and pushed us away from each other.

  We went to sleep without another word, though that night I slept between the front door and my family.

  AT SEA, MY eye wandered to the horizon. I tried to picture the war, the men, the landscape of another country. Mr. Gong’s little boat rocked in the waves, and I held firm to a bloodstained gunwale. It did not happen often, but I could still find myself sick if I did not keep my focus on our fishing and a fixed point on the shore. Mr. Gong chided me and smacked the back of my head. He had known my father when they were young men. He knew where my mind was. “Do what she asks,” he said.

  “She can’t tell me what to do,” I said.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. What do you think will happen if you stay? Do you think the Japanese will be afraid of you?”

  “I’m not a coward.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, shaking his head. “I know. Everyone knows that Paek Hyo is no coward. You’re tough and strong.”

  “You think I am young and foolish.”

  “I think you are fooled. Your wife loves you. She’s worried she’ll never see you again and she’ll have to raise Sook-Cha on her own.”

  “Didn’t you and my father want to fight them?”

  “Of course we did. But what could we do? You act as if we have choices in life.”

  He bent over his gunwale and reached down for the net. I did the same, and our hands ran through the water, seaweed brushing the backs of my fingers until we snagged the net. We pulled and heaved with our backs, carefully picking through the net to throw the crabs back and keeping seabass and cod. We worked quickly to contain their flailing bodies in the net and pack them in the bow on a bed of ice.

  Mr. Gong picked up his oar and began rowing toward our next buoy, and I did the same. I watched his back, still strong and defined, although on land he walked with a bend, as if his spine had been turned into a worn-out spring from a lifetime of sitting in the boat and then extending to grab the nets. We stopped at the buoy, and the boat swayed with the water. Mr. Gong put his oar down.

  “When those men come, go to the mountains,” he said over his shoulder.

  I put my eyes on the peak of Muhaksan. I tried to think of my friends already hiding there. I imagined them passing canteens and bowls of rice back and forth. The tree canopy was thick enough to hide the women who walked up the trails to deliver supplies to them.

  “Hyo,” Mr. Gong said. “I’m not your father, and I can’t tell you what to do.” He paused a moment and turned from me. He looked to the mountain as well. “You are my son,” he said. “Do you understand? Hide. Bravery can be doing something you don’t want to do.”

  I knew it had been hard for him to say this, and I did know what he meant. After my father was taken, I had become his charge. He showed me how to work the nets and to sell in the market and work with brokers. He gave me the home we lived in because he had no sons of his own.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” I said.

  “I was a boy when they came,” he said. “It bothers me more than it could ever bother you, because I remember our country before they arrived. I remember a Korea that is only alive in my dreams.”

  I tried to see the Korea he spoke of in the beach and mountains, but I could not see anything except my own life.

  That night I came home with a seabass wrapped in newsprint and gave it to Seo-Yun to filet. I took Sook-Cha in my arms and lifted her to the sky
. Her little legs stuck straight out, as straight as the oars in my boat, and I flew her around the room and watched her face come to life.

  “Be careful,” Seo-Yun said.

  “We’re playing,” I said. I pushed her higher into the air and felt her tender rib cage resting on my fingers. “Abeoji would never drop you,” I said to her.

  Seo-Yun allowed herself a smile, and I played with Sook-Cha until she became sleepy. Then I put her down for a nap. The house smelled of searing fish, and I went to Seo-Yun and kissed her on the back of her neck and brushed a strand of hair from her temple and tucked it behind her ear.

  “I will go,” I said. “I’ll hide.”

  Her shoulders stiffened. “You promise?” she said. She kept her eyes down.

  “I do.”

  She turned her face to me, and I saw she was trying not to cry. “What changed your mind?” she asked.

  “Mr. Gong.”

  “Of course,” she said. “You listen to him but not me.”

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “Isn’t that what you wanted? What’s the problem?”

  She concentrated on the fish, turning it in the pan and then pouring hot water over tea leaves. I was exasperated. “I’ll leave tonight,” I said. “After we’ve eaten.”

  “I’ll pack some squid jerky and sweet rice for you to take.”

  She still had not turned to me, though.

  “I thought you would be happy,” I said.

  “There’s nothing to be happy about. It’s dangerous either way.”

  We ate without talking, and Sook-Cha still napped. I thought of those tiny hands being the size of her heart and lungs, and I did not know how something human could be so small and full of life.

  Then we heard the rifle shots.

  I scrambled outside. A pair of soldiers headed toward us. They were entering the village with their rifles pointed skyward. The dusty road that wound through the village’s small homes was lifeless and empty. The dusk light seemed to vanish faster than it ever had, a curtain falling, and the rifles’ muzzles sparked like lighters with each shot. I could not be sure from so far off but the men appeared to wobble in their walk.

  I ducked back into the house. I scanned the two rooms for something to defend us with, but there was nothing except a hot poker for the fire and my fishing knife.

  “You have to hide,” Seo-Yun said.

  “Where?”

  “Under the house,” she said. “Behind the ondol.”

  Sook-Cha stirred and wailed. I tried to put my palm to her head, but Seo-Yun pushed me out the door. I jumped down to the ground. There was very little space between the stove and the house’s pillars, and a jagged edge of stone sliced my back as I pushed myself through the opening. The gunfire was louder, out in front of our house. I tried to keep my breathing even. Sook-Cha was screaming so loudly I wished I could reach through the floor and pull both my wife and daughter down there with me. I heard Seo-Yun walking her back and forth, trying to calm her, but the baby kept screaming so long and loud she lost her breath, and I thought she would choke to death on her tears.

  Heavier steps pounded on the floor. Seo-Yun shouted. The soldiers ordered her to quiet the baby, but Sook-Cha kept screaming. I placed my hands against the floor, as if I could push against the clay and calm the child and will those men to leave. There were more shouts from the soldiers.

  “Leave!” Seo-Yun screamed. “There is no one here. There are no men. Only a coward enters the home of a mother and child and fires his rifle into the air. You are nothing but drunks.”

  I did not hear the slap. I heard the bump against the floor and a piercing cry from our child, and I knew Seo-Yun had been hit so hard she dropped the girl. Then came the louder tumbling of Seo-Yun falling to her knees to scoop up the baby. She yelled at the men in a voice so loud and indecipherable I thought they would kill her just to shut her up. I gripped the warm brick of the ondol. I saw the dim light at the edge of our house, and I knew if I went forward and pulled myself out from under the house it might mean death for all of us. The vision of Sook-Cha’s face, wet with tears, kept me in place.

  I heard three hard stomps and knew they were from Seo-Yun, telling me to stay put. Then silence. I did not know what was happening. The worst of my imaginings sprung forth, and I had to close my eyes. I had never felt so scared and so strong in all my life, filled with anger and vengeance, and I understood what Mr. Gong and my father had known and what those men in the mountains might never know, which is that such anger is another kind of empowerment, driving you to the unspeakable with righteousness on your side.

  Another stomp came. Seo-Yun said, “It’s okay,” much too loudly to be telling the baby. “You’re safe. You’re safe.”

  She had given us away. The clear voice of a soldier called to her. “Where is he?” he asked.

  I moved in position to wrench myself up from under the house.

  “Who?” Seo-Yun said.

  He did a tsk-tsk sound. “The husband you stomp for,” he said. “It will be easier for you both if you tell us.”

  “He has gone to hide with the others,” she said. “He’s in the mountains. All the men are gone.”

  “What kind of man leaves his family behind?”

  “The kind that wants to live to see his daughter grow up.”

  The soldier let out a loud laugh. He asked the other soldier if he could believe this woman. His Korean was very good, though with the clipped accent from the north like people from Seoul. He was clearly educated. “Maybe we should look around?” he said.

  “I told you he’s gone,” she said.

  “We will find him.”

  I came out from under the house, and the night air felt like my first breath, cold and filling. My body shook with fear, but I took one step, then another, and came up the porch and into my house.

  “I am here,” I said.

  “My dog sleeps under the house when he is scared,” the soldier said to me. The other soldier had his rifle pointed at Seo-Yun and Sook-Cha.

  “We don’t want trouble,” I said.

  “And we don’t want to be in this dog-infested country. But we have our orders.

  “You’re a fisherman?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I can smell it on you.”

  “Leave,” I said, more calmly than I thought I could.

  “This fisherman is brave.”

  “I just want my family to be safe. I’m not brave.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “A brave man wouldn’t have hid and left his wife and child alone.”

  Then there was a crashing into my temple, a burst of lightning in my vision, and I was on the ground. The other soldier stood over me. The butt end of his rifle hovered in the air. He brought it up with two hands, as if it were a fencepost he was readying to drive into the ground, but the first soldier, the one who had done all the talking, stopped him. I knew blood was on my face, but I refused to touch it. I let it run it run into my eyes. The cut was large enough that the air burned my split skin.

  “My friend doesn’t like all your talking,” one of them said.

  “I don’t like yours, either,” I said.

  “Yobo,” Seo-Yun hissed.

  “Listen to your wife, fisherman.”

  Blood trickled into my mouth. I tasted its salty metal, and then I spit it into my hand. I tried to stand but fell. The soldiers laughed. I stood up quickly, fighting to keep my balance.

  “Clean yourself up,” one of them said, and spit into my cut.

  I didn’t move. I turned to my family. I did what I had done every night since our daughter was born. I searched for her breathing in the rise and fall of her belly, and when I saw it, a sense of relief came over me about whatever would happen next. Seo-Yun’s fingers squeezed the child’s waist, and I allowed myself one glance to her eyes.

  Had there only been one man I would have lashed out, but with both of them there I thought there was only one thing to do, which was to surrender.

&
nbsp; “Take me,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  “No!” Seo-Yun cried.

  “Leave my family and I will go quietly,” I said. “Let my daughter live.”

  Sook-Cha was close to Seo-Yun, and she was remarkably quiet. My face had gone numb with pain. There was nothing but a throb in my head.

  “Why should any of you live?” the soldier asked.

  “She’s a child. Our only child,” I said. “Spare her and her mother.”

  There was a burst of light as before, then another. In between the bursts I saw Sook-Cha’s face, heard her begin to cry. I tried to remember her smile, that first smile when she started to become a child and not just a baby. Seo-Yun pleaded, but the bursts came faster until I no longer heard my wife or daughter or anything at all.

  I AWOKE TO Mr. Gong sitting beside me. My vision was milky. I rose quickly, pain shooting through my body and my ribs seeming to crack in two. “Where’s Seo-Yun? Sook-Cha?” I asked.

  “They’re fine. They’re here,” he said. “Resting. Asleep.”

  We were in his home. He told me the soldiers had left me to die. Seo-Yun ran to his house with Sook-Cha, and then he had come back for me, carrying me on his back. Seo-Yun had not wanted to stay in the house alone.

  “You’ve been asleep almost two full days,” he said.

  My mouth was dry. He put a wet cloth to my lips.

  “What did Seo-Yun say?” I asked.

  “She said you were lucky. That all of you were lucky.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I wasn’t there,” he said. “You need to rest. You’re talking too much.”

  “Tell me.”

  “A broken man is nearly as useless as a dead man,” he said. “I told you to go.”

  “I was going to. I wanted to have one more meal with Seo-Yun. They came more quickly than we thought.”

  “Babo,” he said. He rose. He paced. His voice was low and his words pointed. “You never listen to anyone. You only do what you want, when you want. You should have been gone days ago, when you first heard they were coming.”

  “That’s my family,” I said.

  “That nearly died because you couldn’t stay hidden.”