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Freeman's

Page 23

by John Freeman


  The woman had bought the house on her own. I found out only two weeks ago, when the topic came up with my husband. I was lying on the futon when he told me, and propped myself up upon hearing the news. How long had it been since I looked into my husband’s eyes? His face had a dark hue, having aged ten or twenty years.

  “On her own? You mean, she lives there all by herself?” I asked in surprise.

  “It seems that way,” he answered.

  “What does she do?”

  “Apparently, she’s a lyricist.”

  “A lyricist? You mean, someone who writes song lyrics?”

  “Yes, that’s what I heard.”

  “Is she famous?” My heart was beating fast.

  “I don’t know the details, but it seems that way.” My husband replied in an uninterested manner with his head turned toward the TV screen.

  “Do lyricists make so much money?” I continued in disbelief.

  “It depends, I guess. You know that popular band, the Phantom Thief, is it? You’ve heard of them. I hear she writes for that band.”

  “So she must be very rich. And at her young age . . .”

  “Only thirty-one apparently. Well, I suppose age has nothing to do with talent or royalties for that matter.”

  Our conversation ended there.

  As I awoke from my reverie, the air was reverberating with the sound of the cicadas. Clenching a plastic bottle, I imagined the woman sitting at my desk inside the atelier. You could see a small forest off in the distance through the right-hand window, and at this time of year, the pale green of the trees would stretch vertically, coolly swaying in the wind. When evening came, I used to listen to the church bells. I would stop what I was doing and go downstairs to prepare dinner while listening to Mozart on low volume, played by the beautiful pianist Irina Mejoueva.

  I had no idea what kind of life a lyricist led. I never saw the woman once during the past two weeks. I noticed what looked like a red Alfa Romeo, rounded and toylike, where my husband’s white Mercedes-Benz used to be. The only person I saw from the bench approaching the house was the mailman driving up in a scooter to deliver the mail. On all three previous occasions, not a single person had come in or out.

  Did the woman spend all of her time inside? The house was far from the train station and the supermarket, so she would have to drive to go anywhere. There was no bicycle on the porch. Well, it was so hot these days, perhaps the woman ran all her errands in the morning and spent the rest of the day inside the house. Or perhaps her days and nights were reversed. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t be surprising if a writer slept during the day and worked at night.

  But the woman was a lyricist, not a writer. There was a big difference. A lyricist simply plugged words into songs, which were much shorter than books. It couldn’t possibly be a meaningful occupation. Writing lyrics was simple—unlike writing the songs themselves. You just repeated the same words over and over, and all those popular songs had the same lyrics anyway. They had nothing to do with a song’s success. All she had to do was string together cliché words like “dream” or “love” or “hope” to delight those teenage girls whose heads were stuffed with cotton candy. Who paid attention to lyrics anyway? If you exchanged one set for another, no one would notice, not even the singers themselves. You might miss them if they were gone altogether, but they held no value in themselves. The woman had surely manipulated her way into the industry. What a cheap, silly business. It wasn’t because she was accomplished or talented that she managed to buy my house. The only talent she had was to suck up to the producers or some powerful man in the industry. She was nothing but a selfish single woman concerned only with herself. I saw right through her the first time we met. And it was through her manipulative ways that she succeeded in acquiring my house.

  When I looked down, I saw fresh dirt on the ground where I had apparently dug my heels in. I took a sip from the water bottle. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was just turning four o’clock. The sun was still high in the sky with no sign of relief. I was surprised that only two hours had passed. I felt I had been sitting on the bench for many hours, if not days, looking at the house for a long, long time. My handkerchief was soaked from the sweat trickling down my forehead and neck. Even in the shade, it was insufferable—but where else could I go? I thought of the flimsy futon in the weekly rental. I thought of the low ceilings, the cheap magnets on the cabinets, that atrocious vinyl that covered the floor, the dirty windowsill, the stained bathtub, the wrinkled tablecloth. Everything lacked imagination. I thought of the empty toilet paper roll. That was no place for me. It had nothing to do with me whatsoever.

  I could see the Iceberg roses blooming so profusely that they covered the ground. They seemed so gallant, blooming just as they had last year, even though I was no longer there to take care of them. It’s okay, everything will be all right, they seemed to be saying to me. I felt my chest tighten. I wondered how the dayflowers and the jasmines were doing. That corner of the garden lacked steady sunlight, so you had to be particularly careful how you watered them. Were they still blooming? Did that woman take care of them? I was worried, since I saw no sign of her watering the garden during my three visits. She probably did so only when she felt like it, if at all—that’s the kind of person she was. I could tell just by looking. She had no idea you needed to give them plenty of water every morning and evening.

  My roses. My darling little flowers. It’s not easy to live with flowers. When you think about it, it’s far more work than keeping pets. My lovely flower garden. Are you in pain? Are you lonely? If you could speak, if you could walk, I know you would be by my side. You would have followed me. Who would want to stay with that woman? You had no choice. What could I do? Oh, my house. My flower garden. What could I do?

  It was then that I saw the front door open, without warning. I had been staring at the house with handkerchief in hand, and the house, silent until then, seemed to rouse itself. Involuntarily, I lowered my head as if to hide. The woman emerged in a navy dress and was carrying a red purse. She locked the door, made sure that it was locked, and started walking. I could feel my heart beating so loudly that my ears hurt. I couldn’t move. Without noticing me, the woman came out of the gate and walked down the street toward the train station. When she was out of sight, I stood up with some hesitation and walked briskly to the edge of the park and watched, obscured by a tree, from behind the low fence. She was just about to turn the corner and disappear from sight.

  I returned to my bench and took a breath, staying still for a while. I wiped the back of my neck with a handkerchief, then pressed it against my eyes. I exhaled deeply and looked straight at the house. It’s time. My heart started to pound, so strongly that when I put my hand to my chest, I could feel it moving.

  It’s time. Yes, but time for what? I didn’t know. All I knew was that the woman was no longer in the house. The woman was no longer in my house. That much I understood, but what was I to do? What could I do? No . . . what did I want to do? What I wanted was to get my house back. But what did that mean, to get it back? To live there again? How would I do that? I had no idea. But if someone asked me what I wanted, I would wish for things to go back to the way they were. The way they used to be when that house belonged to me.

  Just look at it—the garden I cultivated, the flowers I cherished, the house I designed. It wasn’t about money or property. That house was mine, period. Putting aside rigid ideas like ownership and legal rights, what I saw before me was simply . . . mine. It stood there, just as it used to. Think about it this way. If your child were taken from you, never to return again, the child would still be yours no matter what. Whatever changed on the surface, the core remained the same. The truth would withstand any change in circumstance. It didn’t matter what people thought—even if no one understood, that house was mine. I could say so proudly. Look. There it was, my house.

  I emerged from the park, slowly crossed the street, and stood in front of the house. I walked
up to the gate and turned the doorknob. The ground looked dry, as I had expected. The varieties of thyme, which normally grew abundantly this time of year, looked deflated. They felt limp to the touch, and the green waves were now shallow and murky. There was not enough water. I walked along the side of the house to the back. The bellflowers hung their little heads as if their energy was sucked out of them, and the larkspurs were all huddled together barely withstanding the heat. The only plants that managed to hang on were the wild strawberries and the ivies.

  Finding the hose abandoned in the corner, I connected it to the water spigot, turned the faucet, and let the water flow. It flowed and flowed. The ground instantaneously turned dark and began to emit that earthy smell. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. It was a smell I knew so well—the smell of summer, of vegetation, of flowers. I breathed in the humid air through my nostrils and into my lungs, savoring the smell and the flow. I took it all in, filling myself up, then releasing it slowly. With the hose in hand, I walked up and down the garden, giving water to everything in sight.

  The earth drank greedily. When I had watered enough, I picked the wilted flowers and the discolored grass and leaves inside the flowerpots, and placed them all in the compost by the shed. I took a bag of fertilizer and buried the pieces one by one in the soil. With slight hesitation, I returned to the shed and filled a large watering pot with diluted Hyponex plant food, and sprinkled it over the flowers and the leaves and the grass.

  When all that was done, the garden seemed to come back to life.

  I sat on the small terrace, and gazed contentedly at my flower garden that glistened in the summer light. Relishing the smell and the colors to my heart’s content, I put away the hose, washed my hands, and sat on the terrace once more to enjoy the garden. The terrace was perfectly calculated to take in the undulating green landscape. Caressing the soft wood with my fingertips, I released a sigh from the bottom of my heart. The water drops on the leaves and flowers shimmered in the sunlight, which seemed gentler now. I could have sat there forever. But the church bells will be ringing soon. I took off my sandals to go to the kitchen, reaching for the knob behind me. I stood up unhurriedly and turned around toward the sliding glass door. I saw the woman’s face.

  The woman was looking at me through the glass. Our faces were so close that our noses would have touched if it hadn’t been for the glass door separating us.

  It was as if we were looking in a mirror. How long had we stood looking at each other like that? I didn’t know what she was thinking or whether she was breathing. All I was aware of was the absolute silence as the woman stood immobile before me. She never took her eyes off mine. Then, the glass door slid open and we were now facing each other directly. Her eyes and nose and mouth were at the same level as mine. I had never looked at another person’s face so closely and extensively. I no longer knew what I was looking at. When I shifted my gaze to her mouth, I could see that the edges were slanted slightly upward, as if she were smiling.

  “Come in.”

  She said this in a low voice, her gaze still fixed on mine. Her voice was much deeper than I remembered, but it sounded like a voice I knew. Then it occurred to me. It was the voice that sounded in my head when I saw the woman for the first time. Yes, that was it. Breathing through my nose quietly, I walked into the living room as if drawn by some mysterious force.

  “How is everything? Living here, I mean . . .” I blurted out awkwardly, standing by the ornamental shelf and toying with my fingernails. The woman had a curious smile on her lips as she looked at me, and didn’t answer my question.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  Oh, I was in the area and happened to pass by. I rang the doorbell but there was no answer, so I went around to the back to see if you were there, and noticed that the garden looked a little dry. So I thought, why not go ahead and water it? I was about to say all this, but the woman continued before I could utter a word.

  “You’ve been hanging around the house since last week. It’s creepy. What do you want?”

  I glanced down, at a loss for words. The woman’s toes were painted dark pink, but her little toe had barely any nail.

  “How can you stand being out in this heat for hours?”

  “There’s a wisteria . . .” My voice sounded strangely raspy. I coughed. I was going to say, “It provides a bit of shade,” but the woman cut me off by sighing loudly through her nostrils.

  “Look, I can imagine how you must be feeling,” she said.

  I continued to stare at her little toe with no nail.

  “You’re having trouble accepting reality. It’s normal. This used to be your house, but your husband went bankrupt and you were kicked out. Your house becomes your identity as a housewife, doesn’t it? I could tell at a glance that this house meant everything to you. You still can’t accept it, can you? You can’t accept what happened?”

  I nodded, as if to agree with everything she said.

  “You can’t let go of your former life, so you come back to the house. And you don’t even know why.”

  I nodded again, as if to agree with everything she said.

  “But did it never cross your mind that when you’re kept by someone, this sort of thing could happen at any time?”

  “Kept by someone?” I repeated.

  “Exactly,” she said. “You may not like the sound of it, but that’s how it is, isn’t it? You don’t have a job. When your husband told me so during the closing, I wondered what the difference was between a housewife and a domestic animal. If something happens to the owner, the pet shares his fate. That’s what’s happening now, isn’t it? I suppose a dog or a child can’t help being kept, but you’re a woman in your prime . . . well, you may be past your prime now, but you were at some point. What would you say if someone asked you, What have you done with your life?”

  I couldn’t answer right away as the word “kept” was still ringing in my ears. What have I done with my life? After a while, I came up with an answer. “I managed the house.”

  “You managed the house . . . yes, there’s something in that,” she nodded. “Listen, I understand how you must feel, but that doesn’t make it okay to barge into a house that belongs to someone else. That’s called trespassing. It’s a crime.”

  She threw a piercing glance at me. Tension built behind my ears, and I nodded several times in silence.

  “What about the keys?” The woman demanded, as if the thought suddenly occurred to her.

  “The keys?”

  “Yes, the keys. You must still have keys to the house. Did you make copies before handing over the set?”

  “Oh no, I didn’t,” I answered. The woman peered at me suspiciously, then sat down on the sofa and leaned against the cushions.

  “You love the house, don’t you?” She said in a tone that was half mockery and half pity, her arms folded across her chest. I wasn’t sure if my feelings toward the house could be summarized in the single word “love,” but nodded nonetheless.

  “Yes, well . . . I do have a strong attachment to the house. I designed and furnished it myself, so I feel deep inside that it belongs to me somehow . . . and as you said, I’ve lived here for a long time so it’s hard to let go of that feeling. Perhaps . . . I think you might understand better if you thought of the house as a child . . . the tie between a mother and child is inseparable, right? That’s how I feel about my house, like a mother and child . . .”

  I felt something warm surge in my chest as I voiced the words that I had repeated over and over in my mind while sitting on the park bench, or lying under the covers of the coarse futon in the dark of the night when I felt so alone despite my husband who lay next to me. It was all I could do to keep the tears from spilling out.

  “But even when you lived here, the house wasn’t yours, really. It belonged to your husband.” The woman looked confused. “Or was it purchased under your name?”

  “No, not technically . . .” I answered in a weak voice. “It was my husband who bo
ught the house, but we’re proper husband and wife . . . and I was the one who made the decisions, down to every detail. So in that sense . . . for me, it’s my own house. Of course, it’s my husband’s house too, but fundamentally, finances aside, I feel that it’s mine.”

  “Finances aside?” The woman looked surprised. “Proper husband and wife? Everything you have, someone bought for you. The house, the furniture, the dishes, the silverware, the bed, all the knickknacks that struck your fancy . . . the flower beds, the gate, every piece of clothing you own . . . your husband bought them all for you, didn’t he? How could you say so confidently, without a hint of hesitation, that those things are yours? Is there a switch that goes off when you’re married that makes it okay to think in that way?” The woman continued, as if she truly didn’t understand. “You said before, managed the house. Is it because of this that you gained a sense of entitlement? You never thought of getting a job?”

  I shook my head. I had never seriously given a thought to working since I got married, nor had I ever discussed it with my husband. I felt uneasy and my head was foggy. It was all I could do to keep up with what the woman was saying.

  “I’m not saying this to upset you,” she continued. “Believe me. It’s just that I’m intrigued. How could you put yourself in such a precarious situation? That’s the part I don’t understand. How can you trust someone so naively? How can you put your whole life into someone else’s hands? Weren’t you scared? Or anxious?”

  I couldn’t keep up with her deluge of questions, nor could I figure out how to convey my thoughts in words. All I knew, however vaguely, was that she was wrong. I wasn’t sure which part exactly, but I knew it instinctively and abstractly. That’s not what it meant to be husband and wife. I couldn’t express it well, but that’s not what marriage was either. All this woman was concerned about was money. She was missing what was truly important. I felt this in my gut, but how could I make her understand?

 

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