The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  The local route was now neatly paved, and the bus made only infrequent stops. When the familiar village came into view, I was somewhat depressed and bewildered by the changed scenery. The tiny depot had become a full-fledged bus terminal located at the outskirts of what had become a small city. The main street was much wider and lined with four- and five-story buildings. At intervals there were higher buildings with almost twenty stories, jutting like uneven teeth. I got into a taxi waiting at the station.

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “To Kalmae, please.”

  The chauffeur seemed a little flabbergasted. He had not started the car yet.

  “Why . . . is there a problem?”

  The chauffeur clucked his tongue and started the car.

  “It’s not a problem, it’s just not far enough.”

  “But shouldn’t it take at least twenty minutes?”

  He glanced at me through the rearview mirror.

  “Maximum ten. I’ll have to double the fare.”

  “Fine.”

  I began to feel uneasy. Passing through the downtown area, I looked at the new buildings, so straight and rectangular, the high-rise apartment buildings hovering where rice paddies and vegetable fields used to be. Would Kalmae still look like what I remembered? I could not ask the chauffeur. The sleek cement road extended to the outskirts, the traffic line clearly marked in the center. Passenger cars and trucks busily passed by. Was there still a stream coming down the valley? There were pillars and railings painted to glow in the dark. There were rice paddies and fields, but up on the hill where an orchard used to be was a factory.

  The bridge was still there! But it looked different. The railing was now stone pillars, sleekly carved into flower buds. The taxi turned nimbly into a smooth and flat street, not a narrow passage in between mountains. As soon as we entered the hamlet, a pair of wooden pillars greeted us. The first thing I noticed was black words written on a plank announcing “Kalmae Garden,” a Korean barbeque restaurant. The orchards on the right side of the mountain were gone. Instead there was a new development with colorful rooftops and a few more billboards. There was a log house, a white house with a terrace and panel windows, even a thatched house, the color of its roof a strange, bright yellow. Cars were parked everywhere, and in front of the taxi I was riding a black passenger car moved slowly. Through the window I could see the heads of a man and a woman sitting side by side.

  On the left there were still orchards, but half the size they used to be. There was a billboard with “Todam, Traditional Tea Salon” written on it. The house of the vice principal, the old house with trifoliate orange trees, was hidden behind this new building. I got out of the car and slowly climbed the hill. Passing by the tea salon, I looked in and saw some guests at a few tables. The newly paved road went up to the new building, but beyond it the old dirt trail remained. There was a house still surrounded by trifoliate orange trees. My heart was beating fast. I approached the house little by little, savoring the suspense. A yellow dog tied to the pillar wagged his tail and barked at the same time. There was a spigot where a hand pump used to be, but the house was the same, a long rectangular, Southern-style house with a long side porch made of wooden panels. The courtyard was empty and there was no sign of people in the house. I stood by the entrance and looked around. “Who are you looking for?”

  The voice had come from behind me suddenly, and startled, I turned around quickly. There was a familiar face, but a changed one, like gradually chipped and worn household items I had seen. Suspicious, she narrowed her eyes and studied me slowly, from top to bottom. There she was, the wife of the vice principal, the Soonchun lady.4 I bowed.

  “How are you, ma’am?”

  “Who are you? I think I know you but I can’t quite place you.”

  “I’m . . . I’m the one who was preparing for the big exam.”

  I was sure she knew everything by now, but Yoon Hee had introduced her companion as her boyfriend who was studying for government exams. The Soonchun lady’s mouth was wide open, she clapped her hands lightly. Finally, a sound came out of her mouth.

  “My goodness, my goodness! Are you really . . . ? Mr. Oh? Mr. Oh Hyun Woo?”

  She grabbed my hands and stroked them with hers.

  “What you must have gone through. But when were you released? My God . . . and you never got to see Miss Han.”

  The Soonchun lady pulled me to the porch and made me sit down. For no reason, I looked at a photo frame on the wall. In it were a number of old and yellowed pictures. Her eyes welled up, she gazed at me for a little while.

  “Miss Han’s sister came here once. I thought it was strange that she waited a year, but I just assumed she’d been abroad. And she closed her eyes without seeing this day . . .”

  I humbly bowed my head and waited for her grumbling to end. Finally I turned my head toward the house and blurted out, “This place has changed a lot, too.”

  “It’s a different place now. The power of money.”

  “And your husband . . .”

  “He had a stroke. He suffered for a while and passed away a while ago. My first and second sons went to the big city, and I live with my youngest now. He runs the tea salon over there. He’s trying to make a living.”

  Her husband had been the vice principal of the neighboring village’s elementary school. He was a man of few words, badly nearsighted, always wore a pair of thick glasses, and if he had one weakness it was that he loved to drink. I liked him, with his stubby nose and squinting eyes, and on several occasions we went fishing together in the levee over the mountain. He never asked me anything, but he had an idea I was not staying there to study. Once, when the local government was doing a survey, he covered for me by saying that I was a distant relative.

  “Let’s go inside. Did you eat lunch?”

  “Yes, I already did. I just want to go see the house in the back.”

  “Oh yes, it’s still there. Miss Han fixed it up nicely about three years ago. She bought the house and the yard a long time ago. Her sister looked in on it, but we don’t know what she plans to do with it.”

  The Soonchun lady took the lead and walked out the door. She turned onto a narrow path next to the trifoliate orange trees. Behind the bamboo forest I glimpsed the house surrounded by the familiar sight of persimmon trees, chestnut trees, and alders. Entering the courtyard, I saw a spigot connected to the water supply. It was standing on cement ground, the edges raised to form a barrier, complete with a low basin and a drain. It was unnecessary, but the Soonchun lady turned the water on to demonstrate that it worked. Water gushed out.

  “Look, this winter’s been so warm it didn’t freeze. I think it was done about ten years ago. The village collected money to dig a well and install a motorized pump and all that.”

  The courtyard was covered with tall weeds, dried yellow and trembling in the wind. There were remnants of my own renovation of the place so many years ago. The house was originally used as a fruit shed. When we moved in, we divided it into two and remodeled one side as living quarters and the other as Yoon Hee’s studio. After laying a foundation for the wall, I inlaid the leftover stones from the front porch around the house to the outdoor restroom to act as stepping stones and a gutter. Over time, they had settled into the ground nicely, surrounded by weeds. Originally the wall of cement blocks was bare, but now it was insulated with bricks and painted white. The front porch and the latticed entrance door were still there, even the glass panel between rice papers still remained. I opened the door. The window that looked out onto the mountain was now made of glass, instead of a board one pushed up. The linoleum floor was no longer there; it had been replaced with traditional paper treated with bean oil, which retained a subtle sheen. What did remain was a double shelf supported by a pair of triangular brackets on the eastern wall. It was something I made when I bought a piece of board and logs in town and smoothed them with a plane. On top of the shelf were old books and odds and ends wrapped in a cloth. I turne
d toward her studio. Instead of the old wooden door was a sliding door with glass panels, which allowed me to look inside. The studio previously had a hard, concrete floor, with a tiny door and a raised wooden floor so small it could only fit one person. Now the whole floor was covered with wood, and the old-fashioned hearth was replaced by a modern kitchen sink. I also saw in the studio a coal briquette stove, a sofa and chairs, an easel and canvases, pails and wooden boards covered in paint. I turned to the Soonchun lady who was following me around.

  “Would it be possible for me to stay here for a few days?”

  “Of course, as you wish. This is your house, too. We need to heat up the room, though.”

  “Is there a furnace?”

  “No, she wanted to keep that as it used to be. We got rid of the hearth in the kitchen, but put a new fuel hole in the back.”

  I went around the house to the right. There was a small shed with beams attached to the house and topped with a slate roof. The fuel hole was covered with blackened aluminum. The shed was protected from the wind by a simple wall on the northern side and inside were stacks of logs and kindling.

  “We used the room from time to time, when our children came to visit or if we had a guest. It’s been empty for a few months, though. It needs to be cleaned.”

  “If I can borrow a broom and a mop, I’ll do it.”

  “No, no, no, you shouldn’t do that. Go for a walk or something, I’ll do it as quickly as I can.”

  “That’s okay, I can do it by myself.”

  Then I added, a bit forcefully, to forestall the Soonchun lady from prevailing, “I want to think about her while I clean.”

  As I expected, she gently gave in.

  “Of course . . . I understand.”

  I took off my shoes outside the studio, pushed the glass sliding door to the side, and entered. The chill of the floor traveled up my feet, and the subtle scent of pine resin lingered in the air. Wait, I remember. What was that smell? It starts with a T . . . turpentine. Yoon Hee used to pour it onto her palette whenever she tempered her colors from the tube, holding two or three brushes in one hand. She always smelled like turpentine, the scent clinging to her clothes and apron with its numerous colors. I picked up her palette. There still remained traces of her brush where it had smoothed out paint after she squeezed it onto the palette. I could see the traces of bristles. The hand holding the palette was trembling weakly, and I felt her touch. Her fingerprints were left on the squeezed paint tubes, their openings hardened with dried paint. I looked through the neatly stacked canvases in the corner, as if leafing through a book. At the bottom I found a small canvas and placed it on the empty easel. Two heads painted close to each other. The face on the left is mine. I am wearing a white short-sleeved shirt with a blue checked pattern. It was the last summer I spent outside. Everyone wore their hair long then, and the painted me has hair long enough to cover the collar of my shirt. There is a dark shadow around my eyes, and my hollowed cheek hints at the anguish of that time. The background is painted mainly in a dark red with dark cobalt blue stripes added lengthwise, emphasizing the melancholic tone. At first she painted a latticed door with rice paper next to my face, but Yoon Hee later painted over it with gray and put her own face in, as she wrote in a letter. After so long, I studied her face. Yoon Hee expressed herself with a rougher and thicker touch, layering paint, unlike how she painted me. There are gray patches on her head, and her eyes are only a few black lines, which made it hard to read their expression. Her cheekbones are emphasized, and slightly different hues of paint were applied to her cheeks, indicating both her disappearing youth and the richness of her soul. And there it is, that mysterious smile of hers that I always loved, perfectly captured in the lines of her lips and chin. She meets my eyes with a smile on her face. A young man of thirty-two years of age and a middle-aged woman are looking at me, each with a different colored background.

  I remained in front of the easel long after the Soonchun lady brought me cleaning supplies. Feeling cold, I remembered the Soonchun lady telling me I should get briquettes from her if I wanted to light the stove. I got up from the chair and walked down the dirt path. The Soonchun lady looked toward me from her kitchen and gestured.

  “These briquettes are already lit, take them.”

  She showed me a tin pail that would fit two briquettes and a pair of tongs.

  “Start with those two and put some wood in the hearth. It’ll be warm enough. I’ll tell my son to bring you more later.”

  “No, that’s okay. I can just bring a couple at a time.”

  “And you should have dinner with me.”

  I put the two lit briquettes in the tin pail, picked up a new one with the tongs, and walked back. I returned to the kitchen, this time piling four briquettes into the tin pail. Little by little, I brought up a dozen briquettes to pile in the shed. I put two lit briquettes in the hearth and added a couple of unlit ones on top. The hearth still had plenty of space left, but I thought four would be enough. Soon, the house was warm. I searched through the kitchen cabinets to see what was in there. Maybe I wanted to find more remnants of Yoon Hee. I took out a kettle with a blackened bottom and filled it with water, to make use of the fact that the kitchen sink was now outfitted with running water. I put the kettle on the stove, then filled the sink with more water and wet a cloth. I bent down on the floor and pushed the wet cloth from one end of the room to the other, like I used to at school when I was a child. The cloth became black and dirty after only a few wipes. I gathered up canvasses and palettes and brushes and dried tubes of paint and put them in one corner. I gathered sketch pads piled on a table, then stopped. I wanted to see the traces she left with pencils or crayons. There were quick sketches and writings, compositions being worked out. People or similar-looking objects were depicted with lines like spider webs, from different angles and in different positions, overlapping. Like a strange comic strip, there was a peculiar figure with only eyes and stick legs. Many scenes stood among various tools and instruments, its story a riddle waiting to be solved. A book filled with graffiti went on for page after page. And sometimes gibberish was scribbled at the bottom of the page, like lines for a play.

  There they put you in a regular cage consisting of two layers of wire mesh; or rather, a small cage stands freely inside a larger one, and the prisoner only sees the visitor through this double trelliswork. It was just at the end of a six-day hunger strike, and I was so weak that the Commanding Officer of the fortress had almost to carry me into the visitors’ room. I had to hold on with both hands to the wires of the cage, and this must certainly have strengthened my resemblance to a wild beast in the zoo. The cage was standing in a rather dark corner of the room, and my brother pressed his face against the wires. “Where are you?” he kept on asking, continually wiping away the tears that clouded his glasses.5

  Ah, sometimes I wish he would visit me. So I clean the dusty glass pane, the one he so painstakingly fitted himself, and look through the trees and down the dirt path, to the road to the orchard. Wishing he was walking toward me.

  I wish I had lived with firmer convictions.

  Always on guard and covered with honorable wounds.

  I regret the days I’ve wasted because of fear.

  I was exiled only once.

  I wish I had lived more courageously!6

  Rosa once wrote in a letter that she wanted this poem to be her epitaph. But later she corrected this, as if she were mocking herself.

  Mathilde, you don’t think I’m a serious person, do you? Do not laugh at me. I don’t want a lie written on my tomb. All I need on my grave are two words: twit twit. A sound of a little bird chirping. That little bird is flying to me now, I am so used to that sound. It is always clear and pretty and shiny like fish scales. Think about it. One day, you’ll hear the little sound of twit twit. Do you know what that means? It is the sound of an early spring. When it’s snowing outside, when it’s covered in frost, when we’re lonely, the little bird and I believe that th
e spring will come. If I cannot wait until then, if I die before the spring comes, please do not forget to write just ‘twit twit’ on my tombstone.7

  Rosa Luxemburg fell down like a dog when the Freikorps officials struck her head with rifle butts. A lieutenant put a bullet into her head, although she was already unconscious. They put Rosa’s dead body in a truck and drove around, then threw it into the Landwehr canal near the Tiergarten. There is no twit twit, no song of a little bird on her epitaph. Only a few dying red carnations, a symbol of Rosa, left by someone. In Berlin, I used to have light snacks at the Tiergarten. I remember eating little bread rolls called Brötchen while sitting on a bench not far from her grave.

  I will always come back here. And I will prepare something delicious for the fledgling poet. If he comes back, and if I could last until I can sit next to his deathbed. But what was it, what does it mean now, the first step we took together? All the vivid dreams have disappeared like smoke, and there is not a scene I can recall clearly. Do I call this state of vagueness love? An old woman once told me, If I dream, I can’t remember anything when I wake up. I guess my brain is not working as well as it did when I was young. What is this, why am I dreaming about this? But then I can’t make heads or tails out of it. I think and think, but I can’t figure it out. I wish I could see the dead people. But you know what? When you see the dead in your dreams, it’s kind of boring. It’s like looking at a vegetable, so dull. Look at that dog over there, he wags his tail when he sees someone he knows, right? It’s not even close to that! You can’t communicate.