by Hwang Sunwon
The bone hadn’t been touched since the death of the mangy dog. The girl’s grandfather finally noticed it, covered it with soil, and tamped the dirt down with his foot.
Fragments of earthenware dislodged by his foot shone blue in the sunlight.
The girl brought yet another boy with a book bag strapped to his back. Extending her boil-ridden leg, she said, “Here, squeeze as hard as you can, huh?”
The boy was slow to respond, and before his hand could reach her, the girl nonchalantly lay back on the ground where the dog had died, and squealed as if she were being tickled.
PASSING RAIN
There it was again, the whistling. Sŏp’s hands continued with the task of knotting his tie. And now more whistling. He thought he would whistle back, but when he rounded his lips and blew, no sound came out. He realized instead that his tie was too tight.
Outside Sŏp found Yŏnhŭi relaxing her pursed lips, then pursing them again, this time in a pout.
“How can you make me wait like this?”
Finally Sŏp managed to whistle.
“Silly!”
Yŏnhŭi the canary, pouting, birdlike in her light-green jacket and in the way her long eyelashes flickered.
“I’m bored—it’s rude to make a woman wait like this.”
“Says who?”
Yŏnhŭi made the kind of face that a girl playing hide-and-seek makes at the one who’s “it.” This in fact was the game that Sŏp and Yŏnhŭi played, and almost always Sŏp was the one who was “it.” But every time Sŏp was about to find Yŏnhŭi, she made new rules for “it” and managed to avoid him. Sŏp wondered if she would do the same thing today.
“I wish I could fly!” Yŏnhŭi blurted.
“So what’s new?”
“I can’t help it—that’s what the river does to me. Even though we come here all the time. I really like it here.”
Yŏnhŭi, as if floating on air, went to sit where the river was calm as it skimmed by. And Sŏp, as he always did, pitched rocks at their two images in the water; the reflections broke up. The water grew calm again and the gorgeous outline of Yŏnhŭi’s mouth took shape. Today he could do it, he could draw her to him, he could embrace the Yŏnhŭi reflected in the water. And just like that, the game of hide-and-seek would be over. But before the reflection of Sŏp’s hand in the water could touch Yŏnhŭi’s shoulder, the cloud of cigarette smoke streaming from her mouth obscured her face. Sŏp turned toward the real Yŏnhŭi, who said,
“Your reflection looks so cheerful.”
Back to her mouth went the lipstick-smeared cigarette.
Uneasy about this new game of hide-and-seek, Sŏp returned to their images reflected on the water. More and more lipstick smearing Yŏnhŭi’s cigarette, more and more reflections broken by the rocks that Sŏp threw.
Yŏnhŭi tapped the cigarette with her thumb, knocking the ash off the end.
Sŏp thought of all the lipstick-smeared cigarettes that Yŏnhŭi would have given to all sorts of men. He thought of how she would put on new lipstick before the old had faded. And how she would take the cigarette right out of a man’s mouth and give it a new smearing of lipstick and how the man would take it right back.
Sŏp, however, did not take Yŏnhŭi’s lipstick-smeared cigarette. Instead he rose, produced his own pack of cigarettes, and mumbled to himself, “Don’t women get more spiritual the more they break down physically? Don’t they move on from a physical relationship to spiritual love?”
Yŏnhŭi heard this. She too rose.
“It’s possible,” she said, contriving a wide-eyed look, “but aren’t you asking too much?”
“Maybe so.”
“What about the all-for-love types? Kyŏl, for example?”
Kyŏl, who grew giddy just from passing beneath an acacia in full bloom. Whose acacia-leaf eyes shone like dew if she but laughed.
“You know, for Kyŏl the best thing would be to date by moonlight, or at least candlelight.” Yŏnhŭi batted her eyes as she said this. “Did you know that Mae is modeling again?”
“Even though she still works every day at the bar?”
“Oh yes. And there’s more: Kyŏl told her she thought that modeling was absolutely shameful. So Mae told her it’s no different from pouring people drinks at a bar. You should have seen how red in the face Kyŏl got.”
“Too bad you didn’t get to see her cry. She’s more cute when she cries than when she’s embarrassed or laughing.”
“There you go again. You’re the only one I know who says things like that.” Yŏnhŭi’s cheeks puffed out in a smile and she brought her face close to his. “Are you going to take that teaching position at the girls school? You know, there’s probably a lot of students like Kyŏl, crying and laughing.”
“I decided not to.”
“Whatever for? What are you going to tell Teacher Song’am, after he went to the trouble of letting you know about it?”
“Well, I’m not a hundred percent decided.”
“But what’s the reason?”
“Well, if you need a reason, it’s my indigestion.”
“Is it that serious? You’re going to let a good opportunity pass you by, just like that?”
“I haven’t made a final decision.”
“So if you still want the job you have a chance.” Yŏnhŭi thought for a moment, reached into her handbag, and took out three dice. “How about if we roll for it? I win and you take the job. You win and you can do as you please. Agreed?”
She came to a stop. As did Sŏp.
Yŏnhŭi bent forward and rolled the three dice on the ground: 2, 6, and 4. Sŏp shook the dice, then rolled: 1 (which in this game equaled a 6), 5, and 6.
“Darn,” said Yŏnhŭi. She scooped up the dice and rolled again: 6, 3, and 5.
“You lose.”
“Not so fast. I’m saving my best roll for last. Watch.”
“Watch, botch.”
Yŏnhŭi rolled: 1, 5, and 2.
“Had enough?”
“All right. So you’re really not going to take it?”
“Didn’t you say I could do what I want if I won?”
Yŏnhŭi tried one last roll; up came 5, 3, and 4. She gathered the dice and put them back in her bag.
“They just aren’t rolling my way today. Yesterday with Taehyŏn they did a lot better.”
“What did he promise you if you won?”
“A pair of socks.”
“And what if you lost?”
“Take a guess.”
And that was that day’s game of hide-and-seek.
Sŏp remembered a drinking place with a barmaid who had said the very same thing: “Take a guess.”
“Twenty-six.”
“You’re no gentleman,” the barmaid said with a coquettish scowl.
“All right then, nineteen.”
“Seriously, make an honest guess.”
“All right. Show me your nipples and I’ll tell you exactly.”
“You must be drunk,” she said, giving him a cuff on the shoulder.
“I bet you have two kids.”
“Oh? Well if you can tell that, then I bet you have a sister in this line of work.”
“Aha, how did you guess? Actually my mother, not my sister. I was born out of wedlock, and it could have been right here.”
Wearily Yŏnhŭi transferred her bag to her other hand.
“You’ll never guess if you think too hard.”
“Okay, you were going to undo one snap of your dress for every roll you lost.”
“Listen to you!”
“Well, what, then?”
“Give up? He was going to kiss me on my arm.”
“That’s original—what fine tastes you have, my lady.”
Exchanges such as this scarcely drew a blush from Yŏnhŭi. Sŏp imagined Taehyŏn’s short, bushy eyebrows and perpetually bloodshot eyes. His bluish-black lips. His sticky saliva marking her arm. Which might explain why Yŏnhŭi always wore long gloves outside, even when the sun was b
eating down.
The light at the crosswalk turned yellow. Yŏnhŭi dashed across the street, her sleek legs showing. The light turned red. Sŏp, partway across, had to retreat. From the far side Yŏnhŭi waved, then turned down an alley that branched off the street at a gentle angle. Her tight-fitting skirt was visible even at a far distance, its gray color the same as that of the clouds that blanketed the sky, promising rain at any moment.
And rain it did that night.
Sŏp pulled the collar of his suit jacket close about his neck. The rain was fine as thread, but somehow it seemed to make the pavement come alive.
“Know what a child born out of wedlock means?” he mumbled to the streetlight as he trampled its streaming reflection.
Walking with his head down, he felt the weight of his rain-soaked jacket on his shoulders. Suddenly that weight grew heavier, throwing him off balance.
“It’s me,” said Mae, her arm around Sŏp’s shoulders.
“What are you doing out this time of night?”
She rested her chin on his shoulder, and his nose detected the scent of her face powder and the reek of Western liquor, which reminded him of burning fat.
“Would you walk me home, please?”
“Don’t tell me you just got out of work?”
“No, from work I went to another bar, and then another.” Her hand slipped from his shoulder and she mumbled, “He can get as hot and bothered as he wants, that fraud of a painter, and I won’t be tempted, no I won’t.”
Mae listed toward Sŏp, who supported her with his hand. Then she tilted her head back and opened her mouth. Every time she swallowed, a dark trail of liquid—rain or tears, it was impossible to tell—appeared beneath her moving chin.
“Isn’t this romantic. Let’s walk till dawn.”
Mae’s head drooped.
“We’d better dry off before too long.”
They followed every twist and turn, the alleys growing darker and Mae heavier.
Arriving with Mae at her boardinghouse, Sŏp felt unbearably heavy even when relieved of her added weight, and once inside he plopped himself down.
Mae dropped to all fours, then collapsed against the wall. Above her was an unframed painting of her in the nude, from when she had modeled. In the painting she reclined lazily, her head in profile and cocked at a forty-five-degree angle. If she lifted her head a bit more where she lay now, her posture would be about the same as in the painting. Instead she squirmed, then smoothed back her hair, lifting her head higher than in the painting. And then she picked up the fishbowl beside her and drank from it. Agitated, the three goldfish did their best to settle at the bottom of the bowl.
As he listened to the rain Sŏp began to tremble all over. He found the tongs and stirred the brazier, searching in vain for a live coal.
Mae stopped drinking from the fishbowl and shuddered once, then took a stack of pictures from her vanity and tossed them to Sŏp.
“Here, use these.”
The pictures were variously landscapes, nudes, and still-lifes. Sŏp tore them up and put them in the brazier. But his matches had gotten wet and the head of the match he struck crumbled without producing a spark.
Mae tossed a box of matches to him.
After Sŏp had started the pictures burning he said, “Could you talk to me about your mother?”
The face beneath the disheveled hair looked up.
“My mother?”
“Times like this, I feel like I can imagine my mother if I hear others talk about their mother.”
Mae shuddered all over.
“You mean you never knew your mother? Well, mine was as fat as could be. When she got mad at me she grabbed me by the hair and shook me. When she was happy she used to hug my head, laughing and crying, until her tears got rubbed into my hair. Till it got as wet as it is now. And let’s see . . . then she got to where she looked like she was wasting away. Listen to me, coming up on age forty, and here I am talking about my mother! Aren’t I ridiculous?”
And then, while pretending to shade her eyes from the smoke issuing from the brazier, she wiped away her tears.
Sŏp, pretending to cough because of the smoke, went back out on the rainy streets.
He felt as if it would rain at any moment, but instead sunlight began to filter through the clouds and stream into the small alleys. Still, it was only a matter of time until he got caught in the rain.
Yŏnhŭi wouldn’t be caught in the rain—she’d be in the beer hall by now, fixing her lipstick beneath an electric light. Taehyŏn would have been waiting; he would have arrived first. So even while she was with Sŏp her ultimate intent would have been to see Taehyŏn, and the sooner the better. The record would be playing that song about how sad it is to part at a rainy boat landing. No doubt Taehyŏn would be smoking one of Yŏnhŭi’s lipstick-smeared cigarettes. And Yŏnhŭi would be planning her latest version of hide-and-seek with Sŏp. The dice would roll from her hands and from Taehyŏn’s. The loser would be obligated to do something.
He turned down an alley and was back in the shadows.
Teacher Song’am’s smallish dwelling looked all the more gloomy among the large homes that flanked the way.
Teacher Song’am was out on his veranda painting an iris. Sŏp could tell that the ink had been freshly prepared from the ink stick.
“How are your legs, sir?”
“Arthritic as ever,” said Teacher Song’am as he polished the thick lenses of his glasses with hands that resembled bamboo. “I guess it’s too much to ask for relief.” That’s what we get when we get old.”
“I went to your exhibition, sir.”
“You’re too kind.”
As Sŏp observed the collar of the traditional jacket worn by this man who was always at his ease, he felt again that his tie was too tight.
“And you, how’s your indigestion?”
“It keeps getting worse. By the way, I’ve decided not to take that teaching position.”
“Don’t tell me.” Squinting and blinking, Teacher Song’am methodically put his glasses back on.
“I don’t think someone like me should be teaching the next generation of women.”
“You’re too modest.”
“It’s true. I just don’t have the confidence. Well, I’ll visit again, sir, if it’s not an imposition.”
And with that Sŏp withdrew from the gaze of the thick lenses.
Squatting to the side of the teacher’s small yard, the girl who was his granddaughter, wearing a new school uniform, was transplanting four-o’clocks.
“Could I have one of those?”
The girl acknowledged Sŏp with a nod, then wrapped one of the flowers, dirt clods and all, in a sheet of newspaper and gave it to him.
“Thank you.”
Outside the gate to his teacher’s home Sŏp cupped the flower in his hands and brought it to his nose. It wasn’t an iris, but he felt just then as if the ink lines of his teacher’s iris were flowing into his eyes, and the odor of the ink stick wafting into his nose. He decided to leave the flower in the alley. He walked a short distance and looked back at the four-o’clock lying on the ground. Assuming someone picked it up, would that someone nurture it? From somewhere close by, the bugle call of a tofu peddler arced toward him before fading away. A student in her school uniform went past Sŏp, toward the four-o’clock. Would she take good care of it? Sŏp didn’t wait to see if the girl would actually pick it up. Instead he turned down another alley and without realizing it began to whistle. It was the same tune Yŏnhŭi had been whistling.
He came to a stop outside Mae’s boardinghouse room and whistled that tune. From inside the room came a short whistled response.
Mae, sporting a beret, was sitting next to her brazier, knife in hand, stabbing at the nude painting of herself that used to be on the wall. The part of the painting below the knees was already gone.
“How come you’re doing that? Did you get a new one? In place of a modeling fee?”
“I’m not modeli
ng anymore.”
Mae tore off the section of the painting between the knees and the waist and then the section between the waist and the chest, and added them to the unlit brazier.
“Can you believe—he’s been painting me all this time and then he comes out and says my chest doesn’t have any bounce to it and I should turn around so he can paint me from the back. That really irked me. I asked him what he expected from a woman who’s had two babies, and then I walked out.”
Sŏp kept his eyes on the fishbowl beside her.
“Actually only one baby. And the painter is the father. It was a baby boy. After its hundredth day I abandoned it. I thought about giving it to someone—a gift from Mae—but I ended up leaving it in the park. I knew that someday I’d have had to tell him he was born out of wedlock. Back then the only feeling I had for him was resentment. That painting never, ever made me long for the past. Instead I felt resentful whenever I looked at it. But now that I’m no longer modeling, I feel a mother’s love, I pray that my boy is doing well, wherever he is. Strange, isn’t it? And that’s why I decided to tear up the painting.”
The hands tearing up the remainder of the painting were trembling visibly.
A bolt of lightning lit up the window; no thunder followed.
Mae adjusted her beret and rose to her feet.
“Looks like we’re in for a shower.”
“Why don’t you put the fishbowl out in the rain?”
“No, the goldfish might die.”
Mae took down her umbrella from the shelf.
The evening sky was like the umbrella, draping the streets with dark clouds.
“Would you tell Yŏnhŭi I’m not going to take that teaching job?”
Mae turned to him.
“It’s not that I had other plans.”
“So?”
“So, I just didn’t feel like doing it.”
The ropes that held down the wrinkled hot-air balloon looked like they would hold.
It seemed like the streetlights would never come on.
“You ought to take took care of your indigestion problem before you do anything else,” said Mae. The lines on her face were distinct even in the twilight. “What’s on your mind, anyway?”
