by Mark Sampson
He chuckles. “In the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t seem so awful.”
“Yeah, I know. Still. I wish Jin were around tonight. I could really use her company.”
He nods again. “So you’ve signed up for another year at the hagwan?”
“I have,” I shrug. “Ms. Kim offered and I accepted. I was telling Rob, I like it. I sorta think I’m becoming a proper teacher.”
“So one more year of slinging English like hamburgers, eh? And then after that?”
“I dunno. I have to give it some thought.” I scratch my nose. “I suppose Jin and I have to give that some thought.”
Chapter 12
She fell from the anonymous role of a cleaning girl and into the anonymous role of a cook in a greasy Pusan diner. The proprietor took one look at the scar on Eun-young’s face and refused to let her serve customers — the ROKA and UN soldiers and the few Pusan civilians allowed to mingle with them. “You’ll scare them off with that wound,” the madam said. She sensed something unwholesome in this girl who came begging for a job, something that would need to been hidden away from Korean eyes. So she put Eun-young in the kitchen to work in perfect anonymity over the long row of cast-iron stoves, chopping vegetables, cooking rice, setting stews to boil. The only contact Eun-young had with the dining public was when she set completed dishes on the window counter for the madam to carry off to customers. Each time she did, Eun-young would steal a glance over the tables of soldiers, trying to spot a single face that had been in the diner before. There never seemed to be any. These soldiers ate and then moved northward to join the fray. It made her think of the men in the rape camps, enjoying a moment of peaceful pleasure before disappearing, and most likely dying, in the throes of battle.
When the South took back Seoul for the final time, Eun-young resumed her letter-writing to Ji-young. Even if the mail service between their two cities was working, she had no faith that her notes would get through. For the longest time no response came, and Eun-young feared the worst. But eventually a letter did arrive at the rooming house where she was living, the address written in Ji-young’s florid scrawl. The war had changed very little about her sister’s obsessions. She was eighteen now — and finally engaged. “His name is Chung Hee and he’s an army mechanic,” she wrote. “He’s got flat feet so he can’t be a soldier proper. But he’s a genius when it comes to the modern engine and he’s very good with his hands.” She underlined this part with a teenager’s glee. “He promises to marry me as soon as this war is over. I hope he survives!” Eun-young frowned at the note. All out civil war, death, and destruction, Seoul being blown to bits, and she’s still fixated on finding a husband.
In her next letter, Ji-young raised the inevitable question: “And what about you, dear sister? You are still a marriageable age. Please write and tell me you’ve found your own man to love and take care of you.” Eun-young tore this letter into little pieces. You know nothing, she wanted to write back. Haven’t you figured out yet what I was, Ji-young? You have no clue how lucky you are, to have been born five years after me and not have this disgrace written all over you.
Her anger carried itself over to her work in the diner. She often looked out from the kitchen to the bowed heads of soldiers eating, who never once looked up at her or smiled or asked her name. To them, she was but a mere shadow moving pots and pans around the kitchen. She looked out over them and thought: Eat your dinners, and then go meet your deaths already.
Evidence of the armistice came almost immediately. Within a couple weeks of the conflict’s end, Eun-young noticed that customers had started to become familiar faces, had begun returning to the diner on a regular basis. At first these men continued to wear their army fatigues, but before long they began showing up in civilian clothes — just regular customers happy about their return to Pusan and the passage into shaky peace with the North.
To celebrate the armistice, the madam bought the building next door and knocked out the wall between it and the diner in order to turn the new space into a singing room. Eun-young continued working for her, putting in even longer hours. (She didn’t even ask for time off when the letter came announcing Ji-young’s wedding date; Chung Hee was free of the army and kept his promise to marry her right away.) The restaurant got so busy that the madam even began allowing Eun-young to interact with customers, letting her clear dirty dishes from the tables. Eun-young was happy for these moments of freedom from the sweltering stoves in the back. She kept her head low as she cleaned up after patrons, her hair over her face. She even refused to look up when one of the regulars, a young man, a boy really, tossed a curious smile her way. What does he want? What’s he smiling at? She ignored him. Ignored how the boy’s eyes would follow her whenever she limped back to the kitchen with her heavy tray of dishes propped on her shoulder.
The construction of the singing room disrupted things for several weeks. The drilling, the hammering, the thin mist of dust hanging in the air annoyed the regulars constantly. The sudden blast of banging would break conversations in mid sentence, send the patrons into a sea of silence until it stopped. Every day the regulars threatened not to come back until the work was done and every day Eun-young mumbled that they should take their complaints up with the madam who owned the place.
One night, just before close, the madam was in the other room arguing about something with the builders, and Eun-young was left alone in the kitchen to wash up for the night. She stood at the metal sink scrubbing down the wide cast-iron woks before drying and hanging them on hooks on the wall. She moved to the cupboard to fetch a fresh drying towel, and discovered with a start that one of the regulars had wandered back into the kitchen. It was the boy she had noticed staring at her, the one who had attempted smiling. He stood in front of the curtain over the doorway, his cap in his hands. He had a podgy face, as if full of baby fat, but his hair was still carved into the crew cut of a brutal soldier.
“Excuse me,” she barked from behind her hair, “but you’re not allowed back here.”
“I have a question.”
“If you have a grievance, take it up with the madam.”
“I don’t have a grievance,” he said. “I have a question.”
Eun-young just kept her head bowed.
“Do you sing?” he asked.
Her surprise caught in her throat. She nearly looked up, but didn’t.
“When the room next door is finished,” he went on, “will you be singing in it?”
Her hand moved to rub absently at her neck. “No. I don’t sing.” A mumble so low she wondered if he heard it.
He lowered his head a little, trying to catch her eyes. “What’s your name?”
She said nothing. Felt her han swell and squeeze her. Felt that familiar flush of shame on her skin. He waited, but she wouldn’t answer.
“Mine is Po,” he said. “Don’t let the haircut fool you — I’m not a soldier anymore. I’m moving into construction work. I’m very fascinated by what they’re doing next door.” He shifted his cap in his hands. “What’s your name?” he asked again, and took a step closer.
The rush of han overtook her. Eun-young did raise her face then, threw back her hair so this Po fellow could get a good look at the scar that cleft her lip. “You’re not allowed — in here,” she spat, giving him a full view of her ugliness.
She waited, but his eyes wouldn’t fall to the scar, not for a second. And his smile wouldn’t slip away. “Okay,” he said pleasantly enough, and nodded at the curtain over the door. “Maybe I’ll talk to you out there, then.”
And talk to her he did. Po was in three or four evenings a week, usually with friends, and he would always break free of their banter to speak to Eun-young whenever she was out clearing tables. She in turn refused to acknowledge him. He learned her name only when the madam yelled at her after she accidentally dropped a stone pot on the tiled floor, drawing noisy attention to herself. One day, as Eun-young was wiping down a table near where Po was sitting, she thought she he
ard one of his young friends chuckle at him: “Why do you keep staring at her? What do you see in that old hag anyway?” She returned to the kitchen in a fume of humiliation, tossing her dish cloth into the corner. Old hag? I’m twenty-five. I’m not a hag. I’m … I’m … What was the phrase that Ji-young kept using in her letters? A marriageable age. I am still a marriageable age. She wanted to go back out and scream that at Po’s friends, yell it right in their faces.
That night, a letter from Ji-young arrived at the rooming house. Eun-young opened it to find a wedding photograph included inside. The black-and-white image showed Ji-young and Chung Hee dressed in traditional wedding garb — thick robes of silk and elaborate headgear — and sitting on a small, plush couch. They were barely touching and their faces held a stony Korean austerity. Yet Eun-young sensed a sweet mystery sweeping under her sister’s chastity. A riptide of triumph.
The alcohol was flowing on opening night of the singing room. There were to be four performers — Po included — and a master of ceremonies, a hulking former army sergeant, to introduce each of them. But the MC had been drinking baekseju since the early afternoon, one golden bottle after another, and by the time the crowd had filled the singing room in the evening, he was barely able to get up from the table in the diner. The audience, seated in wooden chairs in front of the stage in the next room, was growing impatient. Finally the MC rose from the table and wobbled his bulk through the adjoining door. He took the stage and began slurring into the microphone, welcoming everyone and blathering about how grateful he was that this city, this country, had achieved enough peace to allow a night like this to happen. Eun-young moved among the audience with her tray on her hip, passing out bottles of beer and soju and baekseju as the first singer took to the stage. He strapped on the guitar that was waiting for him and stood under the stage’s bright, colourful lights.
He was horrible. He introduced his three Korean folk songs with lengthy, disjointed preambles that lasted longer than the songs themselves. His voice was shrill and out of tune as he sang ancient tales of their ancestors fighting off foreign invaders. The second singer was just as bad. He clearly didn’t know his selection of tunes well enough and kept restarting them each time he flubbed on the guitar. The third performer opted to belt out an off-key medley of American jazz tunes, stuttering through the English.
By the time Po took the stage, the audience was agitated. Eun-young stopped serving and found a darkened corner of the room to stand and watch him, away from the madam’s vigilant gaze. Eun-young’s eyes followed Po as he jogged up to microphone. He strapped on the guitar, tuned it gently, nodded once, and then launched into a fitful but competent instrumental piece. It started with a slow, methodical tempo but then climbed in its pace. When he finished the tune, the audience members set down their various bottles and applauded loudly. Po played three more short tunes, singing out lyrics that echoed over the room. But then he set the guitar aside and began climbing back down from the stage without so much as a bow. The drunken MC dashed to his feet from his place in the front row, applauding until he could get a hold of Po’s arm and pull him back up. “Play another!” he sloshed. “Play another!” And so Po did, bashfully. And then tried to leave the stage again. The audience joined in the MC’s chorus. “Play another!” So Po played another, and then another, and then was finally allowed to sit.
It wasn’t that he had stolen the show. His playing had been merely competent, not extraordinary. But it was what Eun-young saw Po do afterwards as she resumed her serving, manoeuvering around chairs and tables, that caused her to pause. She watched as he mingled with the other singers and bowed to audience members who came up to greet them. When one of them became profuse in his praise, Po would not relish it or puff up his chest, even a little. Instead, he paid a magnanimous but unnecessary deference to the lesser singers. He was doing this, she saw, out of a sense of genuine civility, a deep well of kindness that nourished his every action. He is the rarest of men, she realized as she watched him. He is decent — more decent than even he realizes.
Whenever Eun-young passed by with her tray, Po would look up from where he was chatting and throw a tight, knowing smile her way. And when he did, Eun-young would look at the floor and grit her teeth, suffocating under the weight of a new sensation that she could not name. Oh my dear sister, she heard Ji-young’s voice ring in her head. What you’re feeling does have a name. It’s called desire.
And so just once, she did look up into Po’s plump face and return his smile, wondering: Is it possible for a soldier to be this gentle?
He asked her to go for a walk with him on her day off, and she agreed.
It was a Sunday morning and they strolled together through the busy fish markets of Pusan harbour. As they walked along the wooden wharfs and past the long metal fences that opened out to the sea, the two of them watched the morning’s chaos unfold around them. Fishermen just coming off their late-night boats lugged ship-to-shore boxes teeming with their catches; and the women working the markets stood ready to haggle with them in great animation. It was like a symphony of wheeling and dealing, a vibrancy that put Po at ease. They would have stayed and soaked it in all morning, except they were shooed away by a grouchy fishmonger when it became apparent they weren’t going to buy anything.
Po and Eun-young stopped at a small restaurant just beyond the market’s edge for a late breakfast of king crab and rice. They sat on the floor at a low table and manoeuvered their chopsticks around the food, Po stopping to break up the crab shells for Eun-young without asking. As he did, he said: “I never noticed before, Eun-young, but you have a Seoul accent.”
She nodded. “Yes. I am from Seoul.” She explained about her job with the provisional regime and how it had meant fleeing south to Pusan like so many other Seoulites once the North rolled in.
Po seemed to think hard about this. “It’s so strange.”
“What is?”
“I always thought you were delivered to me from the sea, not over land. Like you should be from somewhere on the water — Jeju Island or somewhere even farther. I perceive a great … a great sense of the sea in you.”
Delivered to you? I have been delivered to you? She turned her face away a little, moved a piece of crab into her mouth with her chopsticks. On the opposite side of the restaurant, a noisy group of fishermen sat at a table in the corner over a huge feast. They were already drinking despite the early hour, the green bottles of soju lining up around their dishes. The alcohol was making them bombastic. A few of the fishermen looked over at the young couple. They eyed Eun-young with what she thought was disapproving curiosity — at the scar on her face, at her cracked teeth, at the awkward way she sat to keep her weight off her pelvis, which still ached on cold mornings such as this. She flashed an angry stare at the men: What are you looking at? And she read their gazes back: We’re looking at you — and wondering why your boyfriend can’t see what we see.
She turned back to Po but looked at the table. “No, I am from Seoul. I always lived in Seoul.”
He smiled at the way she wouldn’t look at him. “You’re very shy,” he said.
She just let her hair fall in her face and thought: Don’t stare through me, Po. See what’s there, not what you wish to see. Or else you’ll know nothing.
After their meal, they walked north from the waterfront and up the steep climb rising over Pusan’s lower districts to find a park in which to sit. Behind them, the jagged jaws of Pusan’s mountain range gaped out of the mist above them. Down the hill from the park, they could see the inchoate structures of newer neighbourhoods bursting into existence. All around them, seniors were out in the park, shuffling along the stone paths or performing tai chi on the grass in the late morning sun. Not far from where Po and Eun-young sat, a tall metal pole carried South Korea’s new flag, proud and defiant against the sea’s winds.
“I never thought I’d live to see all this,” Po said. “During the worst days of the war, I came to believe that I’d die before I cou
ld ever do anything as simple as this.”
He stopped like he was waiting for her to say something, to contribute the same thought. He turned and for the first time acknowledged the scar on her face. “ You know what I’m saying,” he said. “You understand, don’t you, the marks that war can leave on a person.”
She refused to follow along. “Po, tell me — what makes you think that I’ve been, as you said, delivered to you? I haven’t been delivered. You must know this. I’m not some gift that fell out of the sky just for you.”
“Not out of the sky,” he said, almost child-like, “and not over the sea, like I imagined. But over land. You were brought to me over land.”
“Po, please be serious.”
He fell silent for a moment, training his eyes over the city. “I don’t want to be part of the past anymore, Eun-young. Can you understand this?” He took a breath. “My father was a sea captain. He was killed on a run to Shimonoseki, ten years ago. I was twelve. For years I thought I could go on without his guidance and live a life of honour, no matter what happened to our country. But then the war broke out with the North, and I was proven wrong. I did not live with honour, Eun-young. You must know this. I was told to murder our own people. People who wanted nothing more than to enjoy the kind of simplicity we’re enjoying right now. And I did it — I murdered, over and over. You would never believe that someone like me could do such terrible things. But I did them because I was ordered to. I did them because I was a soldier and that’s what I thought honour meant.”
Eun-young wanted to weep, but couldn’t.
“So now, I want nothing more to do with the past. I am done with it. And you ask me why my eyes have fallen onto you? Because I knew, Eun-young, right from the moment I saw you, that you carry the same kind of wounds from the war. I don’t know what the North did to you before you managed to flee, but whatever it was you carry your wounds as deep in your heart as I carry mine.” His eyes rose to the neighbourhood that unfolded below the park. “Look at what’s happening here, Eun-young. Not six months after the armistice and we’re already rebuilding ourselves. Renewing ourselves. We will be a great country one day. And that’s what I want to be a part of. I want to renew this country. I want to help build it.”
