by Paul Yoon
Linn didn’t realize he was hurting her until he saw her wince and bite her lips. He let go, apologizing, and she held her arms and said, “She doesn’t speak.”
That night, as Mihna lay in her bed, Linn searched his bedroom. He opened the closet, her scent now faded, and pushed aside each article of clothing on the rack. He moved on to the dresser, sifting through sweaters, pants, a nightgown Nara used to wear when she was younger. He looked underneath the bed, at the boxes they had stored there, taking each one out and lifting their cardboard tops, removing the sandals and a bathing suit she wore to the sea. There were gardening gloves in another box, new and unused, for she bought several pairs when the store had sales. There were clothes she had saved for Mihna, when she grew older, jodhpurs, paddock boots, and T-shirts.
He searched for an hour. He did not find the dress. He tried to imagine where it could have gone. They had donated clothes several years ago. Perhaps, by mistake, she had packed it in there. Or it wasn’t a mistake at all. Perhaps it was a dress she no longer needed and she had asked him first and he had agreed. Or perhaps he was the one who had gotten rid of it. He could not recall. It all seemed possible.
He rested on the edge of the bed with his hands on his lap, staring at his reflection in the dresser mirror: his stooped posture, his thick gray hair. In this reflection her clothes lay scattered on the floor and the bed. He saw himself pick them up, one by one, and begin to refold them, feeling their years and their seasons, their colors faded, the fabrics worn.
Mihna, who could not sleep, rose from her bed and pressed her nose against the window. The snow had started again, large flakes of it falling lazily like autumn leaves. She did not know what time it was. The house lay quiet. She exhaled, her breath on the glass expanding. She leaned back and waited for the condensation to recede. When it did so, a silhouette appeared in the distance, under the wide arms of the camphor tree. She blinked. It was still there. It did not appear to move.
Barefoot and in her pajamas, she left her room and walked down the hall, toward her sleeping father. She paused there, the sudden urge to go to him returning, but she remembered his face this afternoon when he had grabbed her shoulders—his frustration, his weary eyes—and she was sorry. It was shame she had felt, but for what she could not articulate. She approached the front entrance of the house and twisted the knob slowly. The door creaked and the winds hurried past her. She listened for her father but he did not wake. She bent down and picked up her boots.
Outside, she let her eyes adjust to the light of the moon. Still warm from her bed, it was not as cold as she expected. The silhouette was still there, motionless. For a short distance, crossing the field, Mihna walked barefoot, enjoying the snow between her toes. When her feet grew cold she paused to put on her boots, all the time keeping her eyes focused on the dark object lest it vanish if she looked away.
It was her father who had told her of spirits and how she could detect them. They were carried by wind. When a car accident occurred, they had, just then, run across the street. When the ponies whinnied one had tickled their noses. In the autumn a leaf fell when they walked under a tree. In the winter they pestered pedestrians by causing them to slip on ice. In the spring they caused people to sneeze. In the summer they broke the electric fans, holding on to the blades. She had once sat in front of one, her hair blowing, waiting for the motor to stop. His stories were endless.
He had never said they were visible, just that they made themselves known by their action, by what they left in their wake.
She was a few meters from the tree when she saw that it wasn’t what she expected it to be. It was, rather, Comet, sniffing the snow. He had, as he sometimes did, gotten out of the stable.
Mihna raised her hand to pet the old animal and she watched his breath flame white out of his nostrils. “What are you doing, Comet?” she whispered, and the pony, without provocation, shook his mane and began to trot away. “Comet!” she called to him, as quietly as she could. She clicked her tongue. She whistled softly. He wouldn’t listen. She began to follow him, all the while saying his name. The pony trotted across the field. At the gate, he lowered his head and bit down on the latch and lifted. He then pushed the door open with his nose and vanished into the forest.
She began to run. The moonlight faded. She did not think of the dimming of her vision or the branches cutting her skin. She did not think of the woman she had twice seen. She did not think of her mother’s death or her own approaching departure as she ran deeper into the woods.
She thought of the pony, the beat of his hooves, his tail fluttering several meters ahead of her. It hung there, suspended, like a wing, and then it rose toward the trees and she chased it and blinked and then it was lost.
The child did not see the trail curve away, and her foot caught the air and she fell. She remained silent and did not cry and in the dark there was a sound like thunder, the snow following.
When Mihna was born, her mother used a blanket as a sling, tied across her body, the knot sticking up over her shoulder like a red flower. In this way she carried the infant in front of her chest. This proved to be useful during feeding, Nara simply lifting up her shirt, Linn looking away. She would tease him about this, his avoidance, what he thought of as courtesy and what she thought of as distance. “You’ve seen it before, Linn,” she teased him, as the warm gums of her daughter clung to her.
There were also the days when she turned the sling around so that the child hung across her back, the blanket used as a seat. Mihna would hold her mother at the base of her neck and she fell asleep with the lulling rhythm of Nara’s gait as they traversed the fields. This was spring. And Nara, her body no longer a host, woke every morning with an abundance of energy, her voice loud and confident, her eyes sharp. At night, in bed, she would run her hands along Linn’s stomach, as if a part of her had to be in motion always, even in sleep. She cooked furiously and started a garden behind the house, Mihna either on her back or in front of her chest.
And it was with her child in the sling that she sat under the camphor tree in the afternoons. She would reach up to break off a leaf and crush it with her fingers, its scent hovering about them as she followed the curve of the hills, the sky dropping behind the ridges. To Mihna she sang folksongs she remembered when she herself was young. “Look for me in the camphor tree,” she hummed, “wait for me under forsythia, be with me beside camellia.” And to this melody the child slept in the shadows of the broad leaves, her ear pressed against her mother’s breasts, listening to the song reverberate from within.
“Look for me in the camphor tree,” she used to say to Linn, heading outside for the day, carrying Mihna. “Look for us there.” It had been in jest. But after the lessons or cleaning the stable he looked each time, up into the tree, covering his eyes from the sun, wondering if the branch swaying was his wife’s leg or whether a certain leaf was in the shape of his daughter’s head.
They had been happy then, though thinking of it now, it was her happiness first and not his, one that she had offered to him and one that he received. It was her time, hers alone, always, with the child, and he, later on, the visitor.
He recalled all this when he woke, and for an instant he did not know where he was. Light played along the ceiling, the shadows of branches from the backyard like waving hands. He was convinced he was outdoors, that he had somehow slept out there, but his vision focused and he rose from the bed, the room returned. A thought occurred to him then: perhaps it had been in haste. Perhaps they could stay. The years would unfold of their own accord. But such thoughts were short-lived as he heard the telephone ring, then a message. It was the hotel owner, who spoke of bringing contractors to the grounds next week. Linn entered the hallway. At Mihna’s door he heard the silence of sleep.
After dressing and pouring hot coffee into a thermos, he crossed the fields, as he had done all his life, his father before that, and went to the stable. At its entrance he saw the door open and Comet’s stall empty. He shook his he
ad, in part due to amusement, in part due to annoyance. He set the thermos down against the wall and turned to look out across the fields.
The snow from yesterday had stopped, though whatever tracks they once showed were now filled. He saw his own footprints, nothing more. The sun shone with warmth and he shut his eyes as it washed his neck and he felt it slipping down his shirt and across his chest. He yawned, not yet having had the coffee, and set out toward the hills.
It did not take long for him to find Comet in the forest, lying down at the bottom of a small cliff, the pinto pattern brilliant against the trees. Linn whistled but was ignored, so he went to the animal, bending branches.
The pony had stumbled upon a clearing and was whinnying softly. He lay with his belly against the snow and his front legs tucked underneath him. He was holding something against his shoulder, his neck wrapped around it and craned toward his belly. But it wasn’t until Linn stepped closer that he saw it was Mihna lying curled against him. She lay with one knee raised, dressed in her striped pajamas, torn at the knees, her feet covered in a pair of untied boots. Snow clung to her hair and her body as if it had grown out of her. On occasion the animal shifted his legs and licked her, melting the snow. She lay looking down at a photograph of Nara, wiping away the pony’s breath from it. A barrette lay beside her hip. Nearby there was an unfinished house made of snow, the child’s gloved fingers imprinted onto its walls. Whether she noticed Linn he could not tell.
He did not to go to her immediately. He stood there at the edge of the clearing, uncertain of whether to go any farther. This land he knew. He had lived here all his life. He had never left. Yet it seemed to him then that he had arrived in a foreign land, in some forgotten country where an entire people had already gone, what remained left for the seasons. He neither recognized the clearing nor the trees.
He had seen his father once, bathing outdoors in the summer, reaching down for the bucket, his back stooped to reveal the wound of a bullet Linn had never known existed. He was, perhaps, Mihna’s age, and he quickly hid behind the window, convinced in that moment that the bullet was still inside the man, tied by an invisible string that could pull his father back into a world Linn could not imagine in its vastness. It was not a time his father spoke of often, a time when he was away and his own wife waited. He had come out of the woods, Linn’s mother had said. When the war finished. He had come by horse.
When Linn eventually stepped into the clearing, the pony moved away and he lifted his daughter, who placed her arms around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder. She had winced and he asked her if she were hurt. He said her name. She did not respond, her eyes closed, her body going limp. She smelled of the woods. He smoothed her hair. The pony, who had begun to climb the trail, assuming they would follow, stopped to look back at them.
“We are going,” Linn kept repeating. “We are going now.” But the conviction of these words had already left him. So he stood there, in the middle of that clearing, rocking her, as his wife used to, and it was then his daughter opened her eyes, raised her head, and brushed his ear with her lips. And then she spoke. About nighttime and its noises. About castles and corridors. About foxes and maidens. About a woman in a pale blue dress. All the while he held her. Her warm breath against him, her faint voice in that cold light. Snow began to fall. He looked up. The evergreens swayed, slow moving in the air and wide as ships.
AND WE WILL BE HERE
EACH DAY SHE WOKE BEFORE DAWN and walked the grounds of the American hospital. She didn’t go far. She kept to the footpaths that encircled the main hall, past the evergreens and the timber cottages now used as additional wards for the wounded.
It had once been a Japanese vocational school for the arts and she remembered the painter who had asked her and Junpei to model. They had been walking past the school that afternoon and the young man had called to them. He led them under the gate and to a tree, where she sat with Junpei between her legs. She pretended to read to her companion, though it wasn’t a book she held. The painter had instead given her his hat and told her to imagine. It was made of wool and smelled of sweat and pine and the band inside had worn away so that strands of it fell onto her wrist. She had never been inside the school until then, though she passed it often and would later wonder behind which window the painter lived. The shadows of leaves moved across their arms. They kept still. Beside them was a stone garden. She never saw the young man again.
Her name was Miya and twenty-five years had passed since that day, though lately she found herself thinking about the painter as she took her walks around the hospital. Or not him exactly, but the painting, which she never saw finished. Perhaps it had hung someplace in the school’s corridors. Or in someone’s home or even at a museum, she thought, when she was feeling fanciful. Perhaps he had become famous and she was unaware of it. She wondered how many people had seen their image there, under that tree, and how many questioned who the children were, if they did at all.
She did not own any childhood photographs of herself and did not have anyone to tell her what she looked like then. She believed she was now thirty-four years old but wasn’t certain. There wasn’t anyone to tell her about that, either. She had been born in Japan, she knew, and had come to Korea at an early age, to this island south of the peninsula. But she had no memory of this journey or any time before that. Hers was a life adapted, she would have said, if someone asked.
The woman who raised her had passed away from sickness. Miya had brought her to the hospital and she remembered this as well, their kindness, Miss Hara among the soldiers. They had liked Miss Hara and a group of doctors once sang for her while she was dying. It was an American song. Barbershop, someone said, and she didn’t know what that meant. Miss Hara smiled at them and gripped the footboard with her toes. This was two years ago.
She didn’t know then that she would leave the orphanage and return to this place, assisting the nurses with the wounded. A volunteer, the doctor named Henry suggested, and she thought it a fine word. He was tall with freckled skin and a broad forehead. “Help is always needed,” he said, and escorted her inside. On that first day he gave her a hospital gown and she was puzzled. He shrugged, embarrassed. They were low on supplies. The gowns were comfortable, he said, and even provided her with a nurse’s cap so everyone could tell her apart from the others.
Every day she brought the soldiers water. She trimmed their hair if it tickled their ears. She scratched their backs. She made them fresh lemonade from the citrus grove. She spoke to them if conversation was what they desired. She wheeled them out of the wards for a bit of air. She worked until her body grew numb. A thousand beds and convalescents scattered throughout the buildings.
“What’s your name?” she always asked. “Where are you from?” Australia, someone said. Another: Greece. She had met men from France, New Zealand, Thailand, America, and the peninsula. With every new arrival she searched their faces, pushing the gurney or the wheelchair through the corridors. A man’s nose reminded her of someone she once knew. Someone else’s lips curved downward the way hers did. She found the eyes of Miss Hara. Junpei’s chin. The familiar touch of skin. A scar on the elbow.
I knew you once, she would think, moving through the wards as if she had done so all her life.
Her own room was on the second floor of the main hall, and when she wasn’t occupied with a patient or when Henry told her to rest, she retired there. It wasn’t much: a single bed, a desk beside a window. The walls were bare. She owned few possessions. She had a teacup, a comb, an extra set of clothes, and a sewing machine, all taken from the orphanage.
She sewed old gowns and soldiers’ uniforms if they could be saved. She sipped water from the teacup for she wasn’t sure if she could ask for tea. She kept the door closed. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling, casting a dome around her. Finished with her clothes, she would push the sewing machine aside and study the surface of the desk, where someone had painted what she assumed were landmasses, the texture of it thick
and rising in places. Who did it or how long it had been there she didn’t know. With her finger she traced the outlines of her imagined nations until sleep came to her and she lay on her bed and shut her eyes and felt the satisfaction of a day fulfilled.
These were her days. In their patterns she found comfort. Not once in two years had she left the hospital property. Instead, she kept watch over the grounds, pacing within its border and following the footpaths every morning before dawn.
On some days she climbed the tree beside the stone garden. From this distance she could see the campus in its intended symmetry. The main hall at the center, its roof of red tiles, weather-worn, and the eaves that shaded the stucco walls. The courtyard and the cottages. The citrus grove and the hills beyond which lay the orphanage. A horizon formed by coastal mountains, their peaks covered in the remnants of last month’s snow. The color of the land muted.
None of it had changed, she thought. Any moment now the students would appear from the main hall, as they used to, she herself standing on the other side of the fence. She imagined this, repeating it in her mind, and waited for the sun to rise, her arms hooked around a branch, her legs dangling, the world, it seemed, not yet awake. The war was far.
And it was here one morning, up in the tree, that she witnessed the cargo trucks coming down the main road. She had grown accustomed to them, of course, but with every visit she felt her heart quicken. Headlights crowned the hill. There was the low pitch of a radio. She heard a woman’s voice, singing, accompanied by a brass band that seemed to float across the fields, caught by the winds. The trucks grew closer, rumbling. In their approach they resembled elephants. Dust sprayed underneath their wheels. They turned into the driveway and parked in the courtyard, their engines idle, their headlights sweeping across the field.
