Sad Peninsula

by Mark Sampson

  “C’mon, Jin.”

  But before I can pull her away, she manages to snarl one sentence at them. The only word I catch that I know for sure is Hangukin. Meaning: a Korean person. As opposed to Hangul: the Korean language. So she said something like: I am a Korean. Or: I am still a Korean, you know.

  Out on the chilly February sidewalk, Jin and I stand staring at each other. Eventually, I glance at my watch. “I should get to the school,” I say.

  “Yeah, I need to go, too.” She sees the worry that has suddenly slumped my shoulders. She touches my fingers with her own, gives them a jiggle, in reassurance. “Michael, I’ll look into a plane ticket for July. We can fly to Canada separately. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the best I can offer.”

  “Jin, I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “Yes, you will. Either way, Michael, you will.”

  Either way? What the hell does that mean?

  I move in to kiss her goodbye, but she pulls away from me — exactly like she did on our first date.

  Her eyes flicker to the women in the window. I turn. They are staring at us.

  “Jin, we’ve been dating for two years.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Jin —”

  “No. I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

  And she leaves me there on the sidewalk.

  The traffic of Seoul is no longer alien to me. This pulse, this pound, this rush of streets and buildings, these buses and subways, these soju tents and street markets, the road-side bins of rotten kimchi, the iron gates, the palaces, the pagodas, the bland government buildings, the litter, the convenience stores, the lugubrious Han River holding its ancient secrets to its breast — I know it all. How far I have come in these two short years. There are 11 million people here, spread out in this breathtaking megalopolis, and yet I feel in complete command of its geography. There is no neighbourhood I couldn’t find. No moment when I feel that expat’s fear of being lost and in free fall. I sense that gravitational pull that ensnares so many of my fellow teachers — to stay, to stay indefinitely no matter what your plans were when you came, no matter the status of your student loans or who is waiting for you on the other side of the world. To stay. To live this life of zero expectation, zero pressure to do anything more, to be anything more. I wonder if other expats feel this way in the last couple of months before they leave. This sense of a great interregnum. This time in between, the accomplishment of living in Seoul and knowing you could thrive there, but knowing also that you’ll leave it behind. I feel a sense of privilege knowing that I get to leave.

  And in these last couple of months, I want to soak up as much as I can. I head off one night to Myeung-dong to meet up with Jon Hung at an upscale cocktail bar. He has given up his corporate gig at the KOSPI and returned to teaching — this time at one of the universities. Like Rob Cruise before him, he finds it doesn’t pay enough, and so he’s constantly on the hustle for privates on the side, commuting around the city like a madman to sling English at Korean housewives. He looks worn down by this grind, unable to see much beyond the tip of his nose. He also moved in with a new girl a couple months ago — trying this “monogamy thing,” as he calls it — but is considering breaking it off, hates the way she “bosses him.” He asks less about my plans for the spring and more about my life right now. He is baffled, but oddly envious that I have stayed at ABC English Planet this entire time, and that I’m still with Jin. He wants to know what it’s like, that constancy. I tell him how it’s helped me find my focus, locate my place back in the world, and my way out of Korea. He doesn’t quite believe me. “I can’t ever see leaving. I think I’m going to be here forever.” He says this in a neutral way, like it’s neither good nor bad. “And you’ll be back,” he sniffs. “If you’re staying with Jin, you’ll be back.”

  I shrug. “Of course, to visit.”

  And here he grumbles about there being nothing for guys like us back in North America. Nothing this good, nothing this easy. “I think you’ll come back here to work. I’ve seen it a thousand times. Guys like us say we’ll leave Korea, but we always come back. After a while, you realize there’s nothing left for you anywhere else.”

  I smile at how wrong he is. And I feel sorry for him. He asks about Justin. I tell him he’s back in Halifax, and that Jin and I will be staying with him for the summer.

  “What’s he doing?” Jon asks.

  “He’s teaching,” I reply.

  “You mean teaching teaching?”

  “Yeah, teaching teaching.” Again, Jon is perplexed. He can’t fathom how one lets go of Seoul and all its stimuli, and moves back, settles back to a small city on the periphery of Canada. It breaks his brain to think of it.

  If Jon Hung represents the old guard in this interregnum, then Purposeful Paul represents the new. He may not have tried to indoctrinate me into his born-again beliefs, but he has succeeded in indoctrinating me into his other passion — international rugby. It’s the remaining holdout, the sole vestige from his previously un-Christian life. On weekends, we ride the subway into Itaewon to watch his beloved All Blacks on the big screen TV at Gecko’s. I wear the T-shirt that Paul gave me when we first became roommates. The atmosphere at Gecko’s is electric on these Saturday afternoons, powered by beer and global camaraderie. The place teems with Brits and Kiwis and Aussies and Koreans. Even the bombastic GIs pay deference to the manly ultra-violence radiating from the screen. On the first Saturday that Paul and I come here, he takes the time to explain the rules of rugby to me, and also the history of the All Blacks’ signature custom at the beginning of a game: the hauka, a traditional Maori war dance. He even demonstrates it for me, there in the crowded bar. Imagine: this a geeky, born-again New Zealand Christian with his face now contorted by intense guttural rumblings, his arms swinging and chopping, his hips and knees pumping stiffly. “Kam’atay! Kam’atay!” he barks and sways, while the drinkers around us watch on awkwardly. This is what I love about Paul: he is so completely unselfconscious, so happily ensconced in his true nerdy self here in the madness of Itaewon’s sleaze. He smiles at me when he finishes. “Now you try it, Michael.”

  I raise my stein to him. “I’m good. I think you nailed it, Paul.”

  I have to admit, I’m not here in Itaewon strictly for the rugby. I am also searching for rumours of Rob Cruise. I can’t help it. I have not seen nor heard from him since last summer. In this bar, on these streets, his presence floats through the wreckage of weekends. Here in Itaewon I run into people I know or know of: former teachers at ABC English Planet or other teachers who know or knew him. They all have stories to tell when I posit, “So has anyone heard from Rob?” There are tales of fistfights with U.S. marines, reports of a run-in with Korean police and threats of deportation. Someone says: Did you know he slept with my director’s sister? Or: He slept with my director’s wife. He slept with my roommate. He slept with my best friend. He slept with this chick I’m tutoring. Me, I want to say: He slept with my girlfriend, but that was before I met her. The consensus is clear: He’s a pig; he’s a charlatan; he’s larger than life; don’t trust him around your woman; but man, he’s so well-connected — if you need a job in Seoul, he’s the guy to talk to. Through it all, Rob’s whereabouts become apocryphal:

  I heard he got cancer.

  I heard he got married.

  He must have moved away by now. He still can’t be teaching here, can he?

  Purposeful Paul is aghast and mildly intrigued. “Who is this guy?” he asks me. And I think of degrees of separation. This expat community really is a queer family tree, a microcosm of generations. Teachers who knew teachers who knew teachers who …

  I give Paul’s shoulder a friendly shake. “You don’t want to know,” I tell him. Meaning: If you met Rob, you’d want to do what I wanted to do — try and save him.

  Somehow Jin and I make it through my last eight weeks in the country, this dance to the end. We survive the ambiguous airstreams surrounding ou
r noncommittal conversations, and the concomitant results: the listless, half-hearted lovemaking that now soils my bed. An unsatisfying union of bodies divorced from their preoccupied minds. Jin clings to me afterwards, there in the mess of sheets, but in a way that makes me feel unsafe, unsettled, like I’m fading uncontrollably into death and she’s just a loved one at my side, saying goodbye.

  We make it through these last eight weeks and I find myself at the comical end of my hagwon tenure. In the final few nights, the kids get wind that I won’t be back after Friday, that I’m going home to Canada. “Really?” groans John, groans Jenny, groans Sue. “F minus!” someone exclaims from the back row. I’m touched. I had no idea.

  On my penultimate shift, one of my youngest students, Jennifer, makes a shy approach to my desk after class to give me a homemade card. Hands it over in the respectful Korean way — both thumbs clamping it as she extends her arms toward me and bows her head. But as soon as I’ve taken it she scurries off, embarrassed, out the door to join her friends before I can read it. I look down at its yellow construction paper. Taped to the front is a photo of us taken about a month ago by one of the front-counter staff on the day that Jennifer finished Basic 5 and moved up to Junior 1. I’m standing tall behind her, mentor-like as she beams proudly into the camera. The inside of the card is adorned with girlish stickers of stars and Asian cartoon characters. In green pencil crayon, she has written:

  Dear Mikal teacher,

  This is Jennifer. I will miss you. Thank you so much for teaching me Engrish. You are a very kind man, even though you are balding. Good luck in Canada.

  God, I will miss their backhanded compliments, their lopsided logic.

  On my last day, I go through Ms. Kim’s insistent ritual — the other teachers gathered around as she makes a big presentation of giving me a gift for my two-and-a-half years of service. I know not to open it in front of her, so instead I put it in my satchel and bow deeply to her. As I’m about to leave for the night, leave the hagwon forever, she comes over and touches my arm. I’ve never seen her touch anyone before. “You are a good teacher, Michael,” is all she says, then returns to her desk, to the piles of paperwork overflowing on it.

  Back at the apartment, amidst my packed-up luggage and bare walls, I open what Ms. Kim gave me. Fittingly, it’s a pen. A very good pen. One to write things with.

  Work backwards to a 5:10 flight and you’ll learn the absurdity of the modern condition. Two hours for the commute out to Incheon (just to be safe), two hours for security (just to be safe), and we’re left with barely enough time for a hasty goodbye lunch with Paul before we scuttle off with my bags in tow to the bus station near the COEX. Yes, I say we. Jin is joining me on the trek out to the airport, has eschewed another Saturday shift (risking a deeper foray into her boss’s “bad radar”) so she can see me off. Airport goodbye, kiss-kiss, hug-hug, that romantic-comedy classic. Seems appropriate and worth the risk to her career, considering what’s about to happen to me.

  The three of us go for lunch at a seafood joint near Seoulleung Station, a place with huge bubbling aquaria out front housing crabs the size of monsters. I stack my suitcases near the door, much to the chagrin of the wait staff, and then we park ourselves on the floor around a low ornate table. Jin orders our lunches with icy Korean efficiency, and then says nothing, or almost nothing, for the duration of the meal. Paul fills in the blanks, warms our chilly awkwardness with jokes and high praise for me as a roommate. A great guy to live with, wink-wink. The food takes forever to come. I’m glancing at my watch, cognizant of the hour, cognizant of the modern condition. I think: two hours’ commute to Incheon Airport, two hours’ grace for security. I think: 10.5 to Vancouver, 4.5 to Toronto, and two to Halifax. Plus layovers. What’s that? A late-night touchdown, Justin bleary-eyed at Arrivals but happy to see me. Twelve hours after that, he and I will be sitting at a patio bar in downtown Halifax, bottles of Alexander Keith’s stuffed in our fists.

  I look at Jin, next to me here on the floor. So distracted, so anxious to get going. I think: where’s our damn food?

  It comes, finally, and we eat and chat and toast to my good health. Paul’s a bit overboard by the end. Speaks of my kindness, my generous soul. When we finish eating, he pays the whole bill for us, won’t take a single won from me. Outside on the sidewalk, he’s fully aware now of his status as a third wheel. Maybe he knows what’s coming. He gives me a hug as I stand there with my bags and whispers in my ear, “May God keep you, Michael. May God keep you, no matter what.” He says goodbye to Jin; he’ll never lay eyes on her again. Then he’s off, down this neon-choked street back to the apartment I no longer live in to get ready for his day. He’s got a private at 2:30.

  We cab it to the bus station and then stand in the wicket line for tickets. I pay for us both, my wallet fat with both Korean and Canadian bills. Jin says nothing, won’t even look at me, as I hand over her printed slip.

  Naturally, I overestimated things: The commute to Incheon Airport does not take two hours. Jin knew that I had overestimated. Sitting there in our raised leather bus seats, staring out the tinted window, I find myself cursing this traffic-less highway that loops and churns past high-rise condo buildings and office towers, carting along the Han River and then up and up and out of the city. The mudflats of Incheon appear all around us in less than an hour. My stomach does a horrible roll. We’re going to have an embarrassment of time together at the airport. I touch Jin’s fingers, there on the armrest. They’re cold.

  “You’re so quiet today,” I tell her.

  Her chin is buried between her clavicles. “This is very hard,” she says, almost childlike.

  “I know.”

  Inside the massive terminal, one gets a whiff in the air that this is a place in between, a nexus, an embassy, a consulate. You stack your bags on one of those L-shaped carts and push the short end around, looking for direction, to be taken in, to be adopted, to become ensconced into the protocols of your chosen airline. Jin knows this airport like a second home and leads me exactly where I need to go. The Air Canada counter is only modestly busy, the line snaking through a couple of turns in that rat maze they make you walk through. I imagine us late instead of ridiculously early: We’d get me checked in and then rush off to the security gates; a quick, efficient goodbye, lacking in melodrama — have a safe flight, call me when you land, no problem, and Jin would you book that ticket for July already — and I wouldn’t have to stew in my anxieties for another hour or two. Jin stays with me in this line while I climb the ranks, my bags piled onto the cart in front of us, and before long I’m at the front and then waved over to check in. The woman at the counter is crisply official, her face painted in just the right amount of makeup. She is Korean, but addresses me in flawless, unaccented English. I half expect a minor interrogation: How long have you been in Korea? Why are you leaving? What are you going to do back in Canada? But nothing of the sort. Just takes my name and the name of my destination. Checks her computer. Asks to see my ticket. Asks to see my passport. Glances at the picture and then flips through the glossy pages, perhaps checking for a visa violation. Asks how many bags. Lift them up here, please. Weighs each one; they’re a bit on the heavy side; perhaps considers charging me extra; decides against it. Prints off the tags, those long strips of barcode-covered stickers. Peels them back and loops them around the handles of my bags, seals them shut. Presses a button and off my bags go, clomping onto the conveyor belt like a line of lazy horses. See you in Halifax, Michael. All that I’m left with is my carry-on bag weighed down by books and slung over my neck and shoulder. The woman prints my boarding pass, circles the gate, circles the time, then gestures in the general direction of security. Have a great flight. Next please.

  Funny how she didn’t need to ask whether Jin was coming with me.

  So here we are in this enormous edifice with nothing left to do but say goodbye. We wordlessly agree to drag out our suffering and wander off towards the brightly lit shops that surround the securi
ty gates. The stores here display all manner of overpriced mementos and touristy knick knacks. “My God,” I say as we meander, “this isn’t an airport; this is a mall where planes just happen to land.”

  “That’s funny,” Jin says without laughing.

  We hold hands as we browse around the displays and shelves. One shop sells little wooden boxes of ginseng wrapped in cellophane. Another sells porcelain dolls of Korean girls decked out in the pastel blooms of hanbok. I pick one up, run my finger over its braided hair and down the silky material of its dress. The face is so tight, so virginal. I can be yours for the right price, it says. I wave the doll at Jin, touch its nose to hers. “Hanbok,” I say, and she nods solemnly. “Should I buy one?” She just shakes her head.

  Out of the tense boredom of this wait, we decide to take the escalators up to the second floor in an exploratory wander. Up here, we discover an unwelcoming corporate utopia: expensive cocktail lounges and upscale restaurants with track lighting and angular mobiles dangling from the ceiling. We stroll past their heavy black doors and velvet ropes. “Are you hungry?” I ask Jin.

  “Not at all,” she replies.

  Still, I check the menus posted outside out of curiosity. “Good lord,” I whistle, “12,000 won for a bibimbap? This really is a place for people who know nothing of Korea.” I look at her. “Am I right?” She agrees, but then looks off vaguely down the hall. Jesus, Jin, I think. Jesus Christ. I’m trying here. Can you at least acknowledge that I’m trying?

  Back down to the main level, we decide to settle into the chairs on the opposite side from the security gates. It’s quiet over here, away from the line-ups and storefronts. Jin takes my hand after we sit, laces her fingers into mine, and rests her head on my shoulder. Stays like that for a long time. I think: this is so nice. She wants to feel my skin on hers, wants to rest her head in the groove of my neck. This is perfect. No plane trip and two months apart could sunder this moment of tenderness.