Sad Peninsula

by Mark Sampson

  His disbelief fluttered away like a bird, and he raised his face to her. “What’s your name?”

  “Eun-young.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Eun-young,” he said. “What was your Japanese name?”

  “Meiko.”

  “Where did they take you?”

  “To Manchuguo. I was there from early ’43 until the end of the war.”

  He gestured to her face. “And that scar over your lip?”

  “A soldier cut me with his sword when I refused him.”

  Sokasu moistened his own lips. “Eun-young, would you like to meet some of the other grandmothers?”

  She looked at the floor, her voice tremulous again. “I don’t know.”

  He smiled calmly. “Well, come on. Let me take you on the tour, and maybe we’ll run into some of them.”

  She liked the art gallery best. Most of the paintings were quite crude, like children’s drawings, but some did show a surprising artfulness. Eun-young moved from picture to picture with Sokasu standing behind her, letting her soak them in. A number of the paintings depicted the same concept: a young girl, often naked, cowering on the ground while Japanese soldiers leered over her. There were scenes of men pulling girls away; scenes of reunification with family; scenes of violence, a woman blindfolded and tied to a tree; scenes of countryside, rural villages in Korea or the scorched landscapes of wartime China. After examining each sketch, Eun-young let her eyes fall to the title printed on the small placard underneath. “Where did my youth go?” “Deprived purity.” “Chosun Girl Dragged Away.”

  “We don’t tell the grandmothers what to paint,” Sokasu explained from behind her. “And obviously, we never judge what they do. This is all about their healing. We encourage them to express their feelings, their memories, in any way they like. And we exhibit their works here so guests can see those things in their rawest form.” He waited a bit for her to respond, and when she didn’t, asked: “What do you think, Eun-young?”

  “I am a little surprised.”

  “By what?”

  “I am surprised there isn’t more anger here.” She motioned in the general direction of the wall. “I mean, some of these are actually quite cheerful. I’m surprised that a few of the women found something nice to paint about.”

  “Can I ask: what would you paint about, if you attended one of our art therapy sessions?”

  Eun-young thought about it. “I would paint a picture of my own legs.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded and turned to him. “I am not going to show you, obviously, but I have scars on my legs that are far worse than the one on my face. The soldier who cut me here,” and she ran a crooked finger across her lip, “was an exception. Most of the men, if I refused them, took out their frustrations on my legs. They burned me with their cigarettes or the hot poker from the fire, or they cut me with their bayonets. I thought this was ironic, since the men all agreed that I had very attractive legs; the sight of them naked always drove the soldiers wild.” She turned away from him. “It struck me as such a Japanese thing to do: to vandalize that which they found beautiful.” Sokasu said nothing, so she went on. “Each scar on my legs is a symbol of my resistance. So I would choose to paint them.”

  Soon they found their way outside to explore the gardens that peppered the compound’s property. There were rows of cabbages and radish, bushes of carrots and bean sprout. As they walked among the leafy lines, Sokasu explained how gardening was one of the women’s favourite hobbies. As they came around a corner, they saw a grandmother come down the stairs from one of the dormitories carrying a jug of water. She was a bit hunched, but her face was full of mirth. She approached her row of cabbages and began splashing their leaves with the water. She was singing, happily, an old Korean folk tune.

  “Would you like to meet her?” Sokasu asked Eun-young.

  She hesitated but then said: “Okay.”

  They went over and the old woman looked up from her work. Her face bent into a grin when she saw Sokasu, her eyes vanishing into her wrinkles.

  “Good afternoon, Soon-neuh.”

  “Good afternoon, Sokasu,” she replied, then waved at her cabbages. “I thought I’d come out and give them one last drink before we uproot them for the winter. This crop isn’t nearly as good as last year’s.”

  “Soon-neuh, I would like you to meet someone. This is Eun-young.”

  The old woman bowed. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Eun-young replied. “I recognize your name. I saw one of your paintings in the art gallery, didn’t I?”

  “You did. It’s called ‘Waiting for Rescue.’ I’m a regular Picasso around here. That piece is Sokasu’s favourite. Isn’t it, boy? Don’t be shy — tell her how brilliant I am.”

  He blushed, but then motioned to their guest. “Soon-neuh, this is Eun-young’s first time to the House.” He hesitated. “She’s been wanting to visit us for years.”

  It was as if they spoke a code to one another. Soon-neuh looked Eun-young up and down, her old-woman eyes flooding with knowledge. “You’re one of us, aren’t you?”

  “I … I am, yes.”

  “I can tell. Even if you didn’t have this,” and she tapped at her own mouth with her finger, “I could tell. You have the look. You carry the spirit of our suffering on your shoulders.”

  “How long have you been a resident here, Soon-neuh?”

  “Six years,” she said cheerily. “Six years in March.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love my life here. It’s so tranquil and full of camaraderie. Believe me when I say, there is no better place in the world for women like us to be.” She set her water jug down. “Tell me, Eun-young, where did the Japanese take you?”

  “Manchuguo. And you?”

  “Thailand for a while, then Indonesia. I stayed there after the war, for decades. I didn’t move back to Korea until the early 1990s.”

  “When Kim Hak Soon came forward?”

  “Yes, exactly.” She motioned to Sokasu. “Of course if you want my story, you’re better off asking him. He has such a good memory for details. Some days, he tells my story better than I do.” She grabbed his chin and gave it a motherly shake. “He’s such a good boy.”

  “I still find it hard to believe,” Eun-young said, “that you trust a Japanese man with your stories.”

  “Well, we do. Unlike the grandmothers, Sokasu never gets tired of describing what happened to us. Tour after tour, visitor after visitor, he gladly recounts our ordeals from memory. And he never makes a mistake. Never. So we trust our experiences to him.” She paused. “And what about you, Eun-young? What are your experiences?”

  “I … I don’t know where to begin. I have so many memories. But they feel as stale as bread now — like I’ve kept them inside for so long that they’ve lost their flavour.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Soon-neuh said. “Just speak the first thing that comes to you. What do you remember most?”

  “I remember … I remember my unni. I had an unni for a while in the camps.”

  Sokasu furrowed his brow. “ Unni? You had a sister in the camps?”

  Soon-neuh laughed and seized him again by the chin. “Ah, so your Korean is not so perfect, after all. Of course I joke, Sokasu. You wouldn’t know this. Here, we mean unni as an older female friend. Like a sister who takes care of us.” She turned to Eun-young. “You were very lucky to have had an unni in the camps.”

  “I was. Natsuki helped keep me alive, and gave me hope.”

  “Whatever became of her?” Sokasu asked.

  “They tied her upside down in a tree and dismembered her. For speaking Korean. They made us all come out into the yard to watch.”

  Sokasu and Soon-neuh lowered their heads.

  Eun-young ran her tongue over her cleft lip. “That doesn’t seem so stale after all.”

  Soon-neuh touched her hand. “Eun-young, have you thought about moving out here with us?”

  “I don’
t know.”

  “Well think about it. Your memories are no use to anyone where they are now — languishing in your heart. If you wish to give your stories to the world, then rest assured that you can do it best here. You can trust the House with them. We all trust the House with them.” She shrugged. “Who knows. This time next year, you could be out here with me scowling over another pathetic crop.”

  Both Sokasu and Soon-neuh stared at her, waiting for her to speak, to smile. But she didn’t. She just glanced absently at the row of vegetables.

  “Think about it,” Soon-neuh said again. Then she turned to Sokasu. “And you,” she said, seizing his face once more. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten. We still need to find you a girlfriend, you know.”

  They moved back inside, Sokasu and Eun-young, standing just outside the Room of Proof. A tour bus had arrived while they were in the gardens, and the tourists were now moving around the walls of the room, looking pensively at the mounted photos there.

  “I don’t want to go back in,” Eun-young said. “I, I don’t want those people thinking I am a resident here. I’m not ready for that.”

  “It’s okay,” Sokasu said. “There is another place I want to show you, anyway, but I’m not sure if I should.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s in the basement. It’s called the Room of Experience.”

  “Ah yes.” She raised one of the brochures in her hand. “It’s listed here.”

  “It is. Do you wish to see it? You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

  “No, take me down there. Let’s go, before these tourists find it.”

  So they moved down the winding staircase and into the dark, moist basement. The floor beneath their feet was stone tile over cold earth. Sokasu went first down the lit hallway with Eun-young trailing behind him on her cane. By the time he reached the doorway with the curtain over it, she was a few yards back and had paused in the hall. He turned and looked back at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she called out.

  “It’s okay. Take your time.”

  Finally she walked forward and he pulled the curtain back for her as she arrived at the door. Eun-young paused, then stepped over the threshold and into the room. Her eyes moved from floor to wall to ceiling.

  Sokasu stood behind her. “We tried to replicate it as best we could, but it wasn’t easy. They weren’t all the same, of course. Some were just holes in the wall. Others were almost like proper bedrooms. But this a composite. A composite replica of what we know.”

  Eun-young looked around again. The room was stark, its walls a bare wood tacked against the House’s cement foundation. In the far left-hand corner lay a tatami mat. It was authentic but looked too smooth, too neat. Had clearly never been used for anything. At the foot of the mat was a small chest of drawers with a stack of tickets on top. The tickets were preposterously inaccurate — the kind of stubs one might receive at an amusement park in Seoul. In the other corner was a small pile of dishes. Again, relatively authentic, but looking unused.

  “What do you think, Eun-young?” Sokasu asked. “I mean, the rooms were never this large; we probably widened this to accommodate tourists. But I still think —”

  “There’s no detritus,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  She waved her hand vaguely at the floor. “It’s too clean. The stalls had debris everywhere. Broken bowls, used condoms, cigarette butts, mud that the soldiers had tracked in on their boots. That’s what I remember: the stalls were always so filthy. This, this place is far too clean.”

  He swallowed. “Well, it is for tourists.”

  Eun-young turned then and reached out behind Sokasu for the thick canvas curtain that hung over the door. She seized it in her wrinkled fist and gave it a quick, sturdy tug to open it. The sound filled the room. “Now that’s what I remember,” she said. “Do you hear that?” And she snapped the curtain again. “Do you hear it? That snap? That SNAP?” She snapped it again. “Now that is accurate. The noise of the curtain being SNAPPED open. Whenever I heard that sound, I knew I was about to be raped.”

  Sokasu nodded, but then took her wrist in his hand and led it away from the curtain so she wouldn’t do it again.

  They were back outside, on the grounds of the compound. The wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. Just beyond where they sat on a bench, a sculpture of an old woman, faded and green, rose out of the ground, cut off at the waist. She was naked, breasts sagging, and face marred by wrinkles. Her spindly arms were grabbing hold of the soil around her, as if she were pulling herself up from a drawn bath.

  “Eun-young, you know what I’m about to ask you,” Sokasu said.

  “So go on and ask.”

  “Would you consider moving down here, to join us in the House? We do have room. One of the grandmothers passed away about two months ago. There is a space in the dormitory for you, if you want it.”

  She gazed out past the sculpture to the edge of forest beyond the House’s property. It was a copse of gingko trees, their sturdy branches stretching to the sky.

  “I don’t know what kind of setup you have in Seoul,” he went on, “but down here you would be —”

  “I don’t have much of a setup,” she cut him off. “I’ve lived alone for the last forty years — in a damp basement apartment. I have family, but I’m not really a part of their lives. I live on the edge of their existence, with my memories and my shame.”

  “All the more reason you should be down here. There is no shame in this place, Eun-young. We renounce shame. And your memories would be put to good use by the House. Believe me. Your memories would not languish as they have.”

  “Better not to have memories at all.”

  “But you do have them,” he said. “So why keep them in a basement apartment, rotting and fading away until you die and leave the world ignorant of your story?”

  All I ever wanted was to die. I’ve been waiting to die ever since I was fifteen. I’ve been waiting for the spirit to come and carry me away from all this noise, to a place of perfect serenity.

  It was as if he had read her mind. “There is no place as tranquil as this one,” he said.

  She turned on the bench and looked at him.

  “Eun-young, you will find a peace here that you’ve never known. There is no place on Earth as peaceful as this one.”

  “On Earth,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “On Earth. No place on Earth.”

  He stammered. “That’s right. You … you shouldn’t have to wait until you die to find the peace you seek.”

  She turned back, stared hard into the copse of trees, their branches so much like old arthritic limbs. A swallow took flight from one of them and fluttered around in the sky before landing on another.

  “I’m going to leave now,” Eun-young said.

  “Okay. But promise me that you’ll think about it, and that you’ll be in touch with us.”

  But she didn’t answer him. She rose from the bench and planted her cane firmly into the grass.

  “Eun-young, shall I call you a taxi?”

  She said nothing.

  “Eun-young, do you want a taxi?”

  But she didn’t respond. Sokasu sat on the bench and watched her hobble off, past the sculpture and toward the trees — unaware of what she was doing, and what she wanted.

  Eun-young didn’t look back. She headed for the forest, to be there among the trees and their limbs, their birds taking flight. She went into the woods to feel the Earth stop beneath her feet.

  She went into the forest to be alone with the silence.

  Acknowledgements

  This novel owes a huge debt to a number of books on the subject of Korean comfort women that came before it. Nonfiction titles that helped with research and inspiration include: Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military, edited by Sangmie Choi Schellstede and contemporary photographs by Soon Mi Yu; Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women, by Dai Sil K
im-Gibson; Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the US Occupation, by Yuki Tanaka; and Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, by Yoshimi Yoshiaki. Works of fiction include: The Tent of Orange Mist, by Paul West; A Gesture Life, by Chang-rae Lee; Comfort Woman, by Nora Okja Keller; and A Gift of the Emperor, by Therese Park.

  Thanks to my first readers: Nathan Dueck, Peter Saunders, Art Moore (to whom this book is dedicated) and especially my wife Rebecca, whose insights into and edits on the manuscript proved invaluable.

  A special thanks to Jin Kyu (Justin) Kim, who helped me immeasurably with various aspects of Korean spelling, culture and tradition in the book.

  Thanks, as always, to my family for their support over what was an extremely difficult writing process.

  An excerpt of Sad Peninsula appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of the online literary journal The Quint. Thanks to editor and friend Yvonne Trainer for accepting it.

  And thanks to Shannon Whibbs and everyone at Dundurn for the opportunity.

  Copyright © Mark Sampson, 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Shannon Whibbs

  Design: Jennifer Gallinger

  Cover image: © neomistyle/iStock

  Author photo by Ken Phipps

  Cover design by Courtney Horner