by Mark Sampson
“Eun-young … Eun-young, I need to ask you.”
“Po …”
“You’ve met someone else, haven’t you? Eun-young, I need to know. I deserve to know. You’ve met someone else.”
She seized up in anger. “Oh shut up, Po. Shut up. Maybe I’m just not in the mood for your hopeless groping.”
He came home from work one day to find the house sweltering. It hit him like a blanket the moment he walked in the door. He went to the kitchen to find Eun-young standing over the stove with the book laid open on the counter. Her face was runny with tears as she tore handfuls of pages out of the book’s long spine and stuffed them into the flames that shot and flickered out of the hole.
“Eun-young, what are you doing?” he said, rushing towards her. “You’re going to burn yourself.”
She jabbed a hand at him. “Stay right there, Po. Don’t come near me. Do you hear? I’m nearly finished. Don’t touch me.” He froze where he was and watched her rip the remaining pages out in generous handfuls and throw them into the ever-lengthening flames that leaped out of the stove. The heat spread through the kitchen like a disease. When she finished, Eun-young twisted the hard covers until they came free of the spine and then tried to stuff them in the hole. Of course they wouldn’t fit. He watched as she banged the covers with great fury over and over against the iron top, trying to squeeze them in. She wailed in desperation. The covers caught fire and flames licked at her wrists. She dropped the two pieces on the floor, backed away from the stove and buried her convulsing face in her hands.
Po rushed over, stomped on the covers, picked them up in one hand and put the lid back on the stove with the other, cutting off the flames’ violent reaching. “What, you’re burning books now, Eun-young?” he said. He looked at the front cover and was startled to see Japanese printed there. He looked at his wife, his eyes widening. Another secret she kept from him. “What does it say?” he asked after a long silence. “Eun-young, what does it say?”
She just shook all over, her anguish hunching her body into a question mark.
“Eun-young, we need to talk about this. We need to get you help …”
When she pulled her face from her hands, she looked at him with a hopelessness that had no bottom. “I will never share this with you,” she wept. “Do you hear me? I will never share this with you, Po. You’re not allowed in here.”
He flinched. Those were the words she said on the first day that he had ever spoken to her.
Eun-young plodded over and yanked the covers from her husband’s hands. She went to the window, pulled it open, and threw them into the alley behind their house.
In 1965, the governments of Japan and South Korea signed “The Agreement on the Settlement of Problems Concerning Property and Claims and on Economic Cooperation between Japan and the Republic of Korea.” The treaty aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries for political and economic reasons. The agreement included some $500 million that Japan would pay to South Korea as reparations for the colonial period. They called it the “Independence Congratulation Fund.” The treaty stressed that this recognition, strictly between governments, would be the last word — “completely and finally” — between the two nations regarding compensation for the colonial years. Most important, it would not recognize any individual claims for compensation outside the mandate of lost property or wages. Certain elements of Korea’s government fought this, but Japan was adamant.
The South Korean media took the treaty to task. There was widespread unrest across the country about the deal’s particulars. The money wasn’t enough, people said. And who could possibly produce the extensive documentation that Japan was demanding for individual claims? Editorialists wrote about the inherent racism of the deal, pointing out that Japan had acknowledged and paid compensation for personal injury to other countries, Western countries — Canada and Greece and Britain — but not to Koreans? Are we simply sweeping this all away, they wrote, the very recent history of them seeing us as an inferior race of people — in the interest of trade?
Eun-young followed the stories every day in the newspaper and on the radio. They hardened the walls of that cavity she carried inside her. Each new revelation caused another aspect of Pusan, her life there, to slip away like morning fog. It was as if whole buildings and streets and neighbourhoods were evaporating before her eyes, one after the other — everything that Po had helped to build. What purpose did her life serve now if everything was settled — “completely and finally”? Was she to keep on as Po’s wife, cooking and cleaning while he built and built and built? Is this what her life would amount to?
It was not settled. It would never be. If the Japanese wanted documentation, they could look at the cartography of scars all over her legs. They could hear about the nightmares, about the illnesses, about the ugliness that covered her, inside and out, the shame and bitterness that flowed through her like the Han River. They could hear how she could not love the man she loved.
No. They would never hear about these things. If she couldn’t share them with Po, how could she possibly share them with a Japanese bureaucrat?
It was true: Pusan was vanishing from her. She needed to be in Seoul. It was for Ji-young that she felt this. If her little sister would never piece together what really had happened to her, then Eun-young would do it for her, make her understand. Her, and her children. And then their children after that. She would tell them all. She would tell them everything, and bear the shame of doing so. Eun-young would not let them all move on without knowing.
And when the streets and buildings had all disappeared, when Pusan’s harbour had slipped into the sea and its mountains had floated off like clouds, Eun-young could do nothing except show the most exquisite kindness to the man she was about to betray. Gone were the evenings ruined by inexplicable anger and sadness; gone were the abrupt arguments over domestic trifles. When Po came home from construction sites, Eun-young would already have a hot bath waiting for him, would already have the kitchen teeming with a sumptuous meal she’d been preparing all afternoon. He was a little disarmed by this return to wifely devotion, and silently mistrusted it.
Eun-young assuaged her guilt by convincing herself that Po would claim another wife in no time at all. How could he not? He was such a gentle, devoted man. Had a kindness that moved inside him like tendons. He would not be alone for long. She was certain of that.
She thought at first about leaving during the day, while he was at work. Have him come home to find her clothes gone, her books gone. But that wouldn’t do. He could easily get in contact with Ji-young and Chung Hee, track Eun-young down, confront her for answers. She thought about writing him a long letter instead and leaving it on the kitchen table before she left. But what would the letter say? How could she put into print all the things she couldn’t say out loud to him? No. She would need to sit on the floor at their kitchen table, her head down in the pose of a submissive Korean wife, and wait until he came home. Wait, and then face him. Confront this one difficult moment before even more difficult moments, in both their lives, would begin.
He was late getting back. When he came in, she saw him before he saw her. As he closed the door behind him, Po’s eyes fell to the rubber mat in the entryway where they stacked their spare shoes, and noticed that hers were all gone. He turned then to face the sitting room and spotted the bookshelf he had nailed to the wall for her, empty now of the few texts she had splurged on and bought for herself. His face crumpled in confusion. And that’s when he looked down at the alcove by the door and saw two large canvas bags stacked one on top of the other.
Eun-young had stood without realizing it. Po looked up then. Drifted into the kitchen to stand before her, his face full of stupefaction.
“You going on a trip, Eun-young?” he asked.
Her hair fell in her face. “I’m going to Seoul, Po.”
“To see Ji-young?” He waited, but she didn’t answer. “When will you be back?”
She licked
lightly at the scar over her lip. “I won’t be back. Po, I’m leaving. I’m going to live in Seoul.”
His expression would not process what he was hearing. His mouth was open a little, his teeth gleaming between his lips.
“We both knew this day was coming,” she went on. “I think you’d agree. I’m sorry, Po. I’m so sorry.”
“What’s his name?” he asked gently.
“Ah, Po …”
“What’s his name?” he asked again, a bit more forcefully. “I have a right to know. What’s his name, Eun-young? What does he do for a living? Does he care for you? Is he faithful to you? Will he love you, in that way I can’t?”
She just trembled all over. “Po, there is nobody else. You don’t understand. You will never understand.”
Then she saw it, the body language that showed him trying so hard to get angry, to be genuinely angry. And failing at it.
“Eleven years ago, you made a vow to me,” he said.
“Po, I know —”
“Eleven years ago, you stood up in front of my family and friends, and your sister, and God Himself, and you proclaimed to us all — I choose him.”
“I know,” she said. “I should have never done that.”
His face was rushing downward, like a waterfall. He looked like he might collapse under its weight.
“I’m sorry, Po,” she wept again. “But I have to leave. I have to leave you. I have to live in Seoul. I have to live alone.”
“Eun-young …”
“I’m sorry, Po.”
“I’m a good man,” he muttered. “Eun-young, I’m a good man!”
“ Po — I know that!”
“Then why are you doing this?”
Tell him. Go ahead. Tell him the truth. Do you think it will make him love you less, to know what the Japanese did to your body? Do you think he can’t handle it? He murdered women and children. He was ordered to murder. So tell him. Swallow your shame and just tell him the truth.
She couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. So she told him something less than true, something that would remarkably, and in the long run, cause him less pain.
“I’m leaving,” she said, stepping up to him, “because I don’t love you.” She swallowed. “I don’t love you, Po. And I never did.”
And so he did collapse then. Just sort of floated down the kitchen wall, like one of the ashes from the book she had burned in the stove. Floated down and sat there on the floor.
She practically had to walk over him to get at her bags by the door.
Chapter 17
Summer winds down and I’ve been summoned to Rob Cruise’s apartment in Itaewon. The order came earlier this week in an email tinged with desperation. Get your asses over here, Saturday, 11 a.m. 11 a.m.? Does Rob even caress the lips of consciousness that early on a weekend morning? In half-mad paragraphs I learn that his summer camp, The Queen’s English, didn’t go, didn’t quite catch on. He’s a touch belligerent over what he sees as the pigheadedness of Seoul’s wealthy elite. Never occurred to him that rich families would want more than fancy brochures and a Westernized curriculum before releasing their children to his charge. They did, and he’s stung by their lack of naïveté. So he’s emailed me, Greg Carey, and Jon Hung with a brazen, near-panicked demand.
Rob didn’t include Justin on the email. That’s because Justin’s current contract with ABC English Planet is wrapping up and he’s moving back to Halifax. He has some supply teaching lined up at his old school, and come the new year he’ll resume his full-time job. I have mixed emotions about Justin’s departure. It’s always exciting to hear when somebody, anybody, re-establishes a life back home. When you’ve been teaching in Korea long enough, such a thing seems impossible, or at least unlikely. I’m happy for him. But I’m also concerned about not having him as my roommate anymore. Without his steadfast interest in my own plans, that near-parental probing, I worry that I’ll waver from my ambitions, slide back into a kind of expat apathy. I imagine emails from Justin arriving months from now, asking What, you’re still there? Still slinging English like hamburgers? Still tramping around Itaewon? Still coming whenever Rob Cruise beckons?
Yes. Once again, I come when Rob Cruise beckons. Don’t ask me why. Christ. I’d like to think that this time it’s not to listen to another of his crackpot schemes, but to help him, to show him what can happen — to any of us — if we just pull ourselves together a little. But who am I kidding? There’s something so seductive about the way Rob lures a person in. Guilts you into feeling that if you don’t join him in his insane adventurism, you’re somehow numb to the sensuality of the world, that you’re missing out, that you’re letting yourself down. No wonder so many women fall into his traps.
So I make the trip on the subway. Itaewon on a Saturday morning is like a lolling lion after a frenzied feast. The streets are quiet but pockmarked with cow patties of vomit; the nightclubs’ neon is off and dulled by the sunshine; empty beer bottles line up on ledges and curbs. I head south on foot, navigating through the foreign ghetto and counting streets along the hill until I find the one that leads to Rob’s building. He’s got a sweet deal: a proper one-bedroom apartment and access to a rooftop patio. I have on occasion sat up there with him among the kimchi drums and pigeon shit to watch the sun come up after a night at the bars. The apartment next door also has a rooftop patio and is occupied by a couple of Korean “juicy girls”: not prostitutes, but girls paid by bars to hit on Korean businessmen and keep them drinking. I’ve watched Rob stand on his roof and flirt with these impossibly gorgeous women across the alleyway on their days off.
I double-time up the iron stairway to his landing and find the apartment door already ajar. I push it open to discover Jon Hung and Greg Carey sitting at the table in Rob’s small kitchen, their faces full of mirth. “Hey, you actually beat me here —” I say as I begin peeling off my sandals, but they put hasty fingers over their lips — shh-shh! Another second and I can tell why. I turn to face Rob’s closed bedroom door. Oh, I see — that is, I hear. Last night’s fun has not quite wrapped up. Holy shit. The boys motion to an empty chair at the table and I come and sit, cringing a little. Oh my God. The muffled noise behind the door is an utter pornophony. The girl, whoever she is, sounds like she’s having the time of her life, panting, screaming, admonishing, and pleading into the cosmos as if something were profoundly unfair — ah-hh?, ah-hhh??, ah-hhhh???
I press the balls of my hands into my brow. “We shouldn’t be here,” I say, wincing.
“Hey, the door was unlocked,” Greg Carey whispers. “Those are her shoes over there.”
The racket subsides for a moment and we hear the shuffle of bodies changing position. There is a mutter we don’t catch, but then another one we do. “Robbie … Robbie, no … no, Robbie …” The boys and I look at each other quizzically, our mouths gaping. The pleasing groans resume but then once again cease. “Robbie, no! … Not there … Not there …” The boys have burst into silent hysterics. And me — I’m gripping the top of my head with both hands. The air is shattered then by an eardrum-piercing castigation. “Unnatural! Unnatuuurraaal!” The boys have practically fallen off their chairs. There is a bang and a thump, bedsprings relaxing, a quick whoosh of clothes being yanked back on, and then the bedroom door sails open. The girl staggers out. Her face, smeared in last night’s make-up, looks old and clownish. She sees us sitting at the table, enthralled. “Ack!” she exclaims. She rushes over to her little open-toed shoes, steps into them clumsily and then flies out the door like a startled crow.
A moment later Rob swaggers out, doing up the front of his cargo pants. His expression alters just slightly when he sees us — Oh, you’re here already. He drops himself into the last empty chair and pulls cigarettes from the pocket on his leg. “Some women are just so out of touch with their own pleasure,” he sighs, lighting up.
We’re frozen in our shock, but Rob just shrugs it off. Switches gears instantly, ready to talk business. He addresses me over his cigarette.
“So Michael, tell me something — what do you know about writing for the Web?”
“Uh, very little,” I stammer. “Why, why do you ask?”
His head is bobbing already. “Okay, okay, so here’s my idea.”
Jon and Greg groan. “Rob, dude, we’ve been here before,” Jon says.
“I know, but just hear me out.” He puffs his cigarette as if desperate to shorten his lifespan. “I want to start an online magazine for foreigners in Korea.”
“Really?” I ask. “Do you know anything about publishing?”
“No, but you do. I’m going to make you my editor-in-chief.”
“So you don’t know anything about publishing.”
“Look, I know what this town needs. Just listen to my idea. Does it make sense that expats have to go to one website to find jobs, another to get the news, another to find out which DJs are playing in which clubs? It doesn’t make sense. There should be one place where all that stuff gets, you know, coagulated.”
“You mean aggregated? Collated?”
“Congealed, perhaps,” Jon joins in.
“Look, whatever. Shut up. It’s a good idea!”
“Oh, it’s a great idea.” I smirk. “I can see the tagline now: Waegookin Daily: Your source for news, views, and malapropism.”
“Mala- what? Look, Michael, don’t mock me. This is a solid idea.”
Greg Carey scratches his unfortunate mustache. “I’m not giving you any more of my money, Rob.”
“I know. You won’t have to. I already owe you two-and-half mill for your investment in The Queen’s English.”
“You owe me three mill, Rob.”
