The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT SEVEN STORIES PRESS

  Copyright Page

  The little rose, oh how should it be listed?

  Suddenly dark red and young and near?

  Oh we never knew that it existed

  Then we came, and saw that it was there.

  Unexpected till we came and saw it

  Unbelievable as soon as seen

  Hit the mark, despite not aiming for it:

  Isn’t that how things have always been?

  —Bertolt Brecht

  1

  The sound of footsteps far off. Heels hammered on the concrete floor in a martial rhythm.

  It was the chief guard making his last rounds.

  “All clear,” the watchtower reported.

  To reach this section, he would have to pass through two iron gates. I emerged from the quilt tightly wrapped around my shoulders and sat up. In that position I felt the cold dawn air cut into my back. I took off the felt slippers I wore at night over thick wool socks, and then the cap I’d made out of another sock. I put on my prison uniform stenciled with the numbers of my building, my cell, my registration. Number 1444 had been my name for a long time. I’d almost forgotten my real one. When did they give it to me? At roll call, mail call, on work detail, when I had a visitor or was getting a penalty, it was always with that number, preceded or followed by an insult, that they conceded that I did exist.

  Standing on a low table, I pulled down the cardboard that, in violation of the rules, shaded the fluorescent bulb that shone day and night. The prisoner had to be observed 24/7. Daylight never ended, daylight with no sun. I’d torn apart a cardboard carton from ramen noodle packets, covered it with writing paper, then attached it to the light fixture with sticky tape. I attached a broken chopstick to this shade to raise and lower it. Of course, I took it down during every inspection. These little things made my life a little easier. Everything I had in the cell was made by me or my fellow inmates, bit by bit.

  I folded the quilt, stacked it with the blankets in one corner, and made a square with the dark green sponge mattress, which folded into three. This was my seat. I decided not to take a cold shower today. Yesterday, I had selected things I wanted to keep and packed them into two small toiletry bags. They were the remnants of my imprisoned life.

  I stood up. I stretched, then spread my arms wide as I often did and pushed the two walls on each side with my open palms. The cement walls were white with frost. On the ceiling where my breath reached while I slept there were little droplets of water, as always. In this cell, with the single mattress spread out across the width of the room, a little gap of about two feet was left. You could take one step and reach the door to the bathroom. There was a water bucket in front of the bathroom door, and on that side of the wall was a three-level plastic shelf where I stored my personal belongings and dishes.

  There was a thin layer of ice in the water bucket. Today I poured three scoops of water into the basin and scrubbed my hairless cheeks, chin, and neck. I had taken a bath yesterday, I even got a haircut and a shave. I asked the prison assistant for a bucket full of warm water and got permission to use the common sinks. I mixed the warm water with cold, and took a bath in lukewarm water.

  The middle-aged chief of the prisoner-run barbershop was said to be a hardened criminal already here fifteen years, but as they say in here, everyone becomes a gentle lamb after about ten years. Another barber once told me the chief barber had robbed a train, but in here it was forbidden to ask each other the cause of imprisonment, so I never heard the full story. After serving thirteen years, the chief barber was recently allowed a furlough. There was a mutual respect shared among us long-timers, and he was exclusively in charge of my haircuts. The chief barber’s technique was so good, he received a gold medal from the National Vocation Training Competition for Prisoners. He didn’t ask me how I wanted my hair done. Everyone at the barber shop knew that I was a political prisoner. A public security offender did not shave his head. This way, he was easily distinguished from other ordinary criminals.

  “I’ll trim just a little.”

  Expertly handling his scissors, he clipped the hair underneath my ears. After I sat down on the chair, I closed my eyes and did not speak. He lowered his head.

  “It’s tomorrow?” he asked softly.

  “So it seems.”

  After shaving my face, the chief barber slathered my cheeks and chin with scented aftershave he’d gotten who knows where. Then he gently wiped my neck and ears with a dry towel, like they do outside.

  “All done.”

  “Thank you.”

  As I was getting up, the chief barber quietly set his hands on my shoulders and whispered again.

  “Mr. Oh, mind if I say a little prayer?”

  I was perplexed for a moment. I was no Ca-Bud-Pro believer, I had never prayed before. Inside, a Ca-Bud-Pro believer was a disparaging term for those people who switched their religion regularly in order to attend every gathering thrown by Catholics, Buddhists, and Protestants—each religious group came here with armloads of food in the name of rehabilitating the criminal minds. But at that moment, I thought of our long, long solitude. The barber would leave here with me, because I would remember his prayer for a long time.

  “May I?” he asked. He pressed my hands in his.

  “Dear God, this brother is about to return to the world after serving eighteen years of imprisonment. Please let him bury everything that has happened here in his heart, and please take care of him outside as you’ve done until now. Let his future be full of hope and joy. And please allow him a happy, humble life where he is grateful for even the smallest thing. And most of all, do not let him forget those of us still left behind in here, I pray in the name of my Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

  I took the thick Chinese dictionary from the desk and opened it. I took out my hidden private property, a palm-sized mirror. Because of the threat of suicide, a solitary prisoner was forbidden to own a piece of glass, any type of string, or a sharp piece of metal. I’d bartered for the mirror with a prison assistant. I cannot remember if I gave him ramen noodles or an egg cake. Hidden among the leaves of thick books were my treasures. In the bible, there was a small knife as long as my finger, made by sharpening an aluminum can lid on the cement wall of the bathroom. I used it to peel fruit or cut kimchi. A comb was hidden in an envelope at the bottom of a paper folder stuck to the wall.

  I raised my head to the fluorescent light and faced the mirror. A sad-looking fifty-something man appeared there. Hair graying from the bottom of the ears to the top of the head, deep lines etched around the mouth, and more around the eyes and forehead. There was darkness behind the face in the mirror. What was there? Was there really a world outside? I combed my hair, a tangle of fading threads. It shone even paler under the fluorescent light.

  The iron gate opened, and I heard the screeching sound of the steel bolt and steps approaching from the corridor downstairs. I quickly put my book
s, mirror, and comb into their places and sat down meekly on the mattress.

  Again, I heard the sound of the iron gate on the second floor of the maximum security area and the steel bolt clacking, followed by the iron gate crashing into the iron pillar. The guard on duty reported the number of inmates, and the sound of the chief guard’s steps were muffled now. He was probably walking on the long carpet in the corridor along the cell row. He arrived quietly in front of my cell and showed his face in the little window. It was about a foot long and covered with plastic. I could barely make out his face.

  “Number Fourteen Forty-Four, leaving today?”

  “Yes.”

  The visor tip of his cap tilted down, “It’s past four o’clock. Let’s go,” he said brusquely.

  The door opened with a clear clanging of steel, just like it did every morning before the exercise hour. The vastness of the corridor suddenly seemed to pour into the tiny cell.

  “Get your things.”

  “Beg your pardon?” I asked him, bewildered.

  “You’re going home.”

  “Home? Ah, yes . . .”

  I picked up the two little bundles placed where my head used to lie, and white rubber shoes from the shelf above the door. I placed them in the corridor and put them on. I took a step. I stood with two feet outside the cell. My cell was second from last, and every second cell held a political prisoner like me. I knew they were awake, waiting for this moment. I was about to walk along the row when the guard directed me from behind my back.

  “This way.”

  Before turning, without thinking, I shouted:

  “Oh Hyun Woo is leaving now. Take care of yourselves, everyone!”

  As I finished, the corridor was in commotion.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Oh!”

  “It was tough, Mr. Oh!”

  “Goodbye, Oh, keep in touch!”

  “Good luck!”

  Annoyed, the chief guard clucked his tongue and pushed my shoulder. I turned toward the staircase on the opposite side. The guard from our block shook my hand.

  “Take care, Mr. Oh. Don’t ever come back.”

  “Thanks for everything.”

  Like bygone history, I turned. The chief guard and I didn’t exchange a word as we stood in front of the iron gate. It closed behind us. There was another gate in the middle of the corridor leading to the main building. A young soldier, who was serving his mandatory military service as a guard at the prison, opened and closed the gate, shouting Loyalty! I had walked back and forth along this wing thousands of times, whenever I went to the clinic or the security office or the visitation room or the administration office. The wing disappeared behind my back, one section after the other.

  We finally passed the third iron gate leading to the main building. Beyond the iron gate was the bare ground where the guards assembled every morning. For no reason, I looked up at the sky. It was still dark, but something cold came down, soft and delicate. It was snowing. As I always did, I walked one step ahead of my escort. Like a well-trained animal, I knew where to go. I stepped up into the building and turned right.

  An unfamiliar heat enveloped me when I walked into the security office. On top of the blazing gas stove, a kettle was whistling as water boiled. The chief administrator on duty was dozing off, seated deeply in a swiveling chair. He took down his feet from the opposite chair and slowly stood up.

  “Fourteen Forty- . . . ah . . . Mr. Oh Hyun Woo, you’re being released today, right?” He glanced at his wristwatch then pointed toward the chair where he had placed his feet.

  “Please, take a seat.”

  I walked over to where he sat comfortably in front of the stove and bowed awkwardly.

  “Sit down, sit down. You met with the warden yesterday, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Actually, your official release began at midnight, but we’ve been waiting for your family and transportation, things like that.” Then he asked the chief guard standing behind me, “What about his personal effects, did you retrieve them?”

  “His nephew deposited clothes yesterday. Money and other things are over here.”

  “His nephew? He must have stayed overnight somewhere nearby, then.”

  “Yes, he phoned yesterday to say he’d be here at five o’clock.”

  When I heard that my nephew was here, my heart finally began to race. I saw him every few years or so, most recently a couple of years ago when he came for a visit with my sister, telling me he was about to start his military service. He was a five-year-old, a little boy, when I came in here. Watching that little boy grow into an adult, I kept track of time passing. Inside here, the changing seasons seemed indistinguishable, and I was never sure what year it was, but little incidents marked time in my memory like growth rings on a tree. I remembered one year by the winter when the black cat I fed day and night died, and another year by the long autumn night when Mr. Yang, an eighty-year-old man, wept all through the night, saying he did not want to be released, and another by the night when the man we called Toothless Mouth suffocated and died in the middle of the night, one week before the end of his prison term.

  “Please come over here.”

  The chief guard had piled up a suitcase and envelopes on another desk. I was stifling by the overheated gas stove, so I promptly moved over to his desk. When the chief guard opened the suitcase, the first thing that caught my eye was a pair of black leather shoes. The toes of the slip-on shoes were slender and shiny, reflecting the light. They looked too perfect to wear. Also in the suitcase were a wool shirt and a jacket, which looked so warm, and a leather belt, something I had not seen for years. There was new underwear and socks, price tags still attached.

  “Change your clothes.”

  I took off my prison uniform as if I were shedding my skin. First I took off the unshapely, quilted jacket, which we jokingly called the Chinese Army uniform. Then the pants with no belt, held together by short strings about the length of a little finger. When I had taken off the old knitted thermal underwear with baggy knees I stood there in only my underpants and T-shirt, yet I did not feel cold. Instead, my sweat finally began to dry.

  “No need to hurry, we have a plenty of time.”

  That’s what the chief guard said, but I moved quickly yet precisely, just like I had during the physical examinations. I folded the prison clothes neatly and stacked them in front of me, then began to dress in my new clothes in reverse order, starting with the new underwear. I put on the wool shirt and pants, put the leather belt around my waist, tightened and secured it, then took one deep breath. I looked down at the sharply creased line of my slacks. They were ironed like a bureaucrat’s. When I put my shoes on, my feet appeared so small it was as if they were drowning under my slacks. The last item I put on was the warm, loose jacket. The clothes I took off were piled under my feet like rags, the pair of white rubber shoes neatly placed on top, like relics of a dead person.

  “You look pretty good, Mr. Oh.”

  “Ha ha, you look like our warden.”

  The administrator and the guard each commented. Without saying anything, I put my two bags in the suitcase. The chief guard took money out of a large envelope.

  “Here, your money deposited before, and the receipt . . . and I think those are your personal properties.”

  I simply folded the bills and stuck them into an inner pocket of my new jacket.

  “Count them. I don’t want to hear later that you’re claiming anything missing.”

  “It’s fine.”

  My old belongings tumbled down into a small plastic basket. There was a gold ring decorated with leaf patterns. There were letters from my sister, a picture of my mother before she passed away, and a brown wallet, faded and wrinkled. I opened the wallet. One ID card, the photo on it discolored yellow. In that picture, the younger me had wavy long hair and glared. Seeing the address reminded me of the house surrounded by forsythias near Buk Han Mountain. Then I opened another part of the wallet fastened with a sna
p. I held my breath a moment to control my breathing, but my heart was beating hard. I knew very well what was in there: a talisman my mom had given me when I left home, of Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, and a small passport photograph. I unsnapped the small compartment. There was the talisman, wrapped in red silk, and the photograph. I pushed the snap down and closed it again. I didn’t want to remember anything in there. I put the wallet in the other pocket. As I put the gold ring on my ring finger, she appeared to me, finally, her fingers, her voice, her white calves wearing white rubber shoes with jutting toes. Look here! she said, her voice breaking slightly. A single moss rose has blossomed, the first one! And she touched her mouth with one raised finger and gestured toward me. Hush, can you see? Underneath the apple tree, there’s a hoopoe! The telephone rang.

  “Hello? The front entrance? Got it.”

  The chief guard put down the receiver and told the chief administrator on duty, “His relative is waiting at the front gate.”

  “Mr. Oh Hyun Woo, come over here please.”

  The chief administrator thrust a piece of paper toward me.

  “This is the official certificate of your release. You’re still considered a security risk and a subject of surveillance. When you get home, you’ll have to report to the local police within one week, is that understood?”

  The chief administrator stood up and formally shook my hand.

  “Congratulations on your release. It is my sincere wish for you to become a productive member of society.”

  He saluted and I bowed deeply. I left the main building with the chief guard. It was still snowing and windy. The chief guard looked up to the sky and mumbled, “You have a long way to go, I hope the road condition is okay.”

  We passed through a small opening in the corner of the front gate and walked toward the guard station near the prison’s outermost wall. Armed soldiers were guarding the station, and in front of it in an empty field was a lone passenger car with lights on. When we reached the guard station, the chief guard stopped walking and said, “From here on, it’s the real world. Best of luck.”