The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  “Let’s come here every market day!” you said.

  “What about my school?”

  “Ah, that’s too bad.”

  “You can come without me, enjoy it for me.”

  “What fun would it be to do it by myself? Anyway, I love country markets.”

  We walked into a noodle house that looked like a tavern from a fairy tale. There were wooden tables and stools, and the owner, without asking, drained a fistful of noodles in a bamboo basket and added them to hot broth for us. It was a typical country noodle soup, the broth made by boiling radishes cut into rectangles and dried anchovies as long as fingers, and garnished with seasoned zucchinis and scallions and red pepper. The type of food farmers eat as a midday snack. I gave you some of mine; you did not leave a drop of broth in your bowl.

  “When I was a kid, I sometimes shoplifted when I followed mom to the market.”

  You said that, but I didn’t understand what you meant.

  “When passing by a dried fish stall or a fruit stall, I would take a few dried anchovies or a few pieces of dried squid, or a few grapes or strawberries. It was so much fun!”

  “I did that, too.”

  With all our bags, we did not want to ride the crowded bus full of people going home after a day’s outing, and we did not want to be too conspicuous. Inevitably, we took a cab. Ah, through the open window, the fragrance of newly sprouting young grasses blew in with the wind. Where humans live, the pleasant activity of the life and the wind danced together. At that moment, we thought everything would be fine.

  After we came back home, we organized our new house. You brought water from the main house while I washed the dishes and bowls. There was no water carrier, so you brought two buckets and came back staggering with a bucket full of water in each hand. I told you to slow down and take a break if you needed, but you were in such a hurry, the water ended up spilling everywhere and your pants got all wet. You were so funny—of all the delicious things you could have asked me to cook, your favorite was stir-fried fish cakes, something our mothers would have packed for us in a lunchbox. I was going to ask another teacher who lived near the town for some pickles and side dishes, but you said not to.

  “I’m not a permanent resident, I’m still a wanderer. All I want is something that can be packed in a lunchbox.”

  I remember our humble but warm dinner. We brought in cables from the main house, and instead of a fluorescent light we put a sixty-watt light bulb into the socket. You said our house was illuminated like Edison’s lab.

  “I still like candlelight better when it’s time to go to bed.”

  “We need to take turns making sure that the candle is out. Otherwise, we’ll burn the house down.”

  I was against it, but in the end I lit the candle myself. With the candlelight, we were isolated from the world and transported to a place far away from it all. That night, we made love together for the first time. Do you remember what I said after we lay down at first, awkwardly, at each end of the room?

  “Do you want to come closer? I can’t sleep.”

  You didn’t even hesitate for a moment! You just slipped under my comforter and held me tight. And with no talking. It wasn’t rough. Your lips were a bit chapped. And I could smell cigarettes. Until the sun came up the next day, we had so many things to talk about. From time to time I was worried. You would open the door and lay down on your belly with your chin on the pillow and stare blankly out into the darkness. Your thoughts were somewhere else. Were you thinking of your comrades in danger, or of your duty, I wonder?

  I had a boyfriend when I was in college. He was a couple of years ahead of me, majoring in sculpture at the same school. I think I once mentioned him to you, too. I began to notice him one winter.

  It was around the time the doctors had given up on my father. He had left the hospital to come home, and he spent his days in bed while Jung Hee and I nursed him. I spent many nights curled up next to him. After a night like that, I usually woke up too early in the morning. And the pathetic sight that greeted me in those early mornings! As the window onto the street became light, I would see bottles of painkillers and syringes scattered around the top of his bed. The patient was so thin I could see the bones beneath his skin. His eyes were hollow and his cheekbones protruding. As if he had lost all his energy, my father slept with his mouth half open and without sound. I would get up, frightened that he had already passed away. I would sit up straight and debate whether I should touch him or not, and then finally gather up enough courage to gently shake his arm. He would sigh weakly or flinch or give me some other sign. Anyway, it was another morning like that. Suffocated, I could not stand it any longer; I just wanted to scream and run outside. With nowhere to go so early in the morning, I went to school.

  There was no one at school. The trees were bare, the windows of the school buildings black, and the streetlights still dimly lit. My footsteps echoed throughout the stairwells and hallways. I walked into the art studio. There was a gas stove and packets of coffee and green tea supplied by students. As I walked into the studio and turned the light on, there were folded easels standing guard and unfinished canvases waiting for their creators’ touch. Behind them, I thought I saw the studio floor rising up, but it turned out it was just two desks joined together. And something was moving, something that looked like a dark beast. I was scared out of my mind. I just stood there with my mouth open, unable to say anything, and watched. With a sound of zip!, a human head emerged from what appeared to be a sack.

  “Oh my God!”

  As I screamed, the person was also taken by surprise and screamed almost simultaneously.

  “What? What . . . ?”

  I was finally able to see that it was a man in a sleeping bag. I knew who he was. Of course, I had never talked to him before. He was two years ahead of me, and except during the summer when he wore dirty shirts, he always wore a military coat dyed black. Naturally, his shoes were a pair of black combat boots, their toes worn white.

  “Well, good morning! Did you come to treat me to breakfast?”

  I was flabbergasted. What am I, a social worker? I almost said it out loud.

  “Did you sleep here?” I managed to say back, and he replied without shame.

  “Recently, this has been my bedroom.”

  “Are you on a deadline?” I said, thinking that he had been working all night, feigning indifference.

  “I have nowhere else to go. For a student, school is home.”

  He had probably run out of money to pay his rent. On his black fatigues were white chicken feathers from the army sleeping bag. They made him look worse than dirt.

  “Is this yours?”

  I picked up a sketchbook that had been tossed on the floor near his feet and leafed through the pages. It was a good thing he did not reply, because I was astounded by his drawings. We were still drawing from plaster casts or models hired by the school, but he was doing something completely unexpected. Now that I think about it, what he did was natural. He went out onto the streets. He drew a man carrying a load. Alive in his drawing was the man’s straining face, the lines on his face, his clenched hands holding onto a stick, and the bulging veins on his hands, his feet and his calves as he walked. Then there was a mother and a daughter, drawn perhaps near the central station, walking with bags and bundles. A man slept on a bench with a newspaper as a blanket, and the paper had slipped off to reveal half of his face, especially the angular cheekbones. Behind him a man was lighting a cigarette butt. His cheeks were gaunt from sucking on it, his eyes cast down to the tiny flame of the match, his hands cupped to shield the flame from the wind. Next was a young woman breastfeeding her baby while sitting on a bench in the train station. She was followed by two boys, perhaps vagabonds, wearing jackets that were so big on them that they look like long coats, their hair spiked and tangled like bird’s nests, happily chattering away and snacking on what looked like baked sweet potatoes. They were so refreshing that I was mesmerized.

  “
They’re really great,” I mumbled as I kept turning the pages of his sketchbook.

  “What is? How are they great?”

  “They’re alive.” He smiled listlessly. I didn’t know how but he seemed to be sneering and my cheeks burnt. “The reality . . . that’s the most important thing.”

  I was only in my second year in college, but I was already bored and tired of what was being taught there. I mean, what was the point of drawing, no, copying plaster casts of foreigners who looked nothing like us, people not from our own time, but from thousands of years ago? And we were graded on that? And the closest we got to something alive was a nude. A body away from real life is just another object. So you draw that a few times, and you apply some paint, and you are an artist. His eyes were bloodshot like those of someone suffering from chronic fatigue, but I thought they were intense.

  “I’ll buy you breakfast if you let me have one of your drawings.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I chose the drawing of the cheerful vagabonds. I liked the breastfeeding woman, too, but those boys were so animated and vivid. I took him to a tiny restaurant in the nearby market where they sold soup with stuffed pig intestines. He shuffled after me. I had been there only once before, when I followed the men in our class there after some sort of a gathering. That’s how I found out men like soju and soup with stuffed pig intestines. Hanging over the door was a banner made from pieces of cloth, like a shredded skirt, and written on it in irregular handwriting were things like pig intestines stuffed with tofu and vegetables, head meat, pork belly, and rice wine. Inside were a couple of dirty wooden tables with makeshift chairs made of plywood, and also tables made out of barrels with fires burning in the middle to cook pork belly at the table, with round stools. I ordered one bowl of soup.

  “Why are you just getting one?” he asked, sulking.

  “I already ate breakfast.”

  “That early?”

  “Of course, I got up even earlier.”

  “Well, this is no good, I’m not a dog you feed. I’ll eat on the condition that you drink a bottle of soju with me.”

  “I don’t drink soju.”

  “Then it’s written over there, a bowl of rice wine per person.”

  I glanced back to the wall with the menu.

  “Fine.”

  He slowly ate his soup. Then he picked up the rice wine that came in an astonishingly large bowl and drank the whole thing in one gulp. Beads of sweat appeared on his nose and forehead.

  “You know the saying that you haven’t drunk anything unless you’ve had three glasses, don’t you? What a tease . . .”

  “Fine,” I replied, fingering my purse. “On condition that you take me with you when you go out to draw.”

  So each of us drank three bowls of rice wine. Without hesitating, he burped really loudly. His face was a little flushed, but he seemed to be relaxed. And I was, after all, my father’s daughter, and after having what amounted to about a kettle full of rice wine I was perfectly fine, except for some throbbing around my eyes.

  “You can drink,” he commented curtly, then quickly left while I paid. I ran after him into the street, which was full of students walking to the campus. As I kept pace behind him, I thought, now everyone will talk. Do you know where he took me to? The top of the Yumchungyo bridge near the central market. Lined up on the street toward the South Gate were ironworks and hardware stores. To the north of the bridge was a market selling all sorts of things, and to the south was a tangle of railroad tracks where steam engines came and went, passing by dirty open sewers and shacks. There were many crows around the railroads. There were so many things to draw, I did not know where to begin. He was sitting on the bridge railing and sketching, already on his third page. I began sketching the steam engines and railroads under the bridge and the roofs of the shacks behind, and he came over to take a look.

  “You learn how to react instantly only when you draw living things.”

  I studied his sketchbook full of freshly caught people, their animated postures, and I turned from the railing and crossed the street to walk into the central market. I found two men unloading fruit boxes from a hand-cart and drew them. They were moving so fast and their gestures kept changing moment to moment, but I tried to stick to my first composition and kept adding lines. Next, I turned to a woman selling sticky rice cakes, whose movements seemed to be repetitive. Her face did not move, but her hands moved quickly. It was difficult to capture, so I repeatedly drew her wrist. I continued until I had filled about twenty pages in my sketchbook. I left and walked down the large avenue, quickly sketching the street vendors and the passing people and the crowd. I did not know where he had gone, I could not find him. I waited for him at the bridge for at least half an hour, and he finally came back trudging in his old boots.

  “I need a break. I think I’ll go back to school.”

  “Go ahead. I need to go someplace nearby.”

  “What do you mean? You should at least escort me back to where we started.”

  I did that on purpose. The truth was, all classes would be done even if we went back to school, and it was time to go home to take care of my father until my mother came back from the market. But Jung Hee would be home, so I had until nine and could keep him company until then. But he obediently nodded and took the lead.

  “No problem, I’ll take you to the bus stop.”

  This time, I stopped walking and shook my head.

  “No, I don’t want to go. You are in charge of me until nine tonight. I’ll buy the dinner, though.”

  “Well, what can we do.”

  He did not seem annoyed, he was really thinking about it while scratching his head. Out of the blue, he said, “Show me all the money you have right now.”

  “For what?”

  “Let me see, let me see your bag.”

  How preposterous! He abruptly snatched my leather bag from my shoulder. Reflexively, I grabbed onto the handle and took a few steps back, shaking him off.

  “How much do you have?”

  That day, I happened to have a lot of money for a student. I was working as a private tutor for a high school student who was preparing for the art school entrance exam, and my monthly pay, received the week before, was still untouched in my bag.

  “I have enough, don’t worry.”

  He gestured to me to follow him and walked back into the market. From the butcher he bought a few pounds of pork belly. And he bought rice, tofu, scallions, red pepper flakes and other seasonings, and four 1.6-pint bottles of soju. Every time he bought something he simply pointed at me with his chin, as if he was ordering me to settle the bill. With grocery bags in both hands, he walked up the narrow, winding alleyways in the crowded slum of Manli-dong.

  We were headed to the second floor of a building that looked like a barrack with no courtyard and no kitchen. He climbed the rickety steps made of thin wooden boards that bent under his weight to the point of breaking, and he gestured again with his chin to tell me to do the same. So I took off my shoes, as he did, and climbed the narrow, steep stairway. It reminded me of a ship’s cabin or an attic.

  The room was unbelievably messy and musty. The door, made of plywood, was open, and there were shoes in a tiny space about one foot wide. But the first thing I saw was a blue porcelain chamber pot right next to the door. It was covered with a piece of newspaper, the lid gone somewhere else, and its foul smell filled the air. On the right was a window, and under it a cupboard, a portable gas stove, and a bucket half-filled with water. Further inside the room, a man with disheveled gray hair sat leaning against the wall on a dirty blanket. A young boy, about seven years old, was devouring cookies that he must have just received. The artist was kneeling as if he was in a church, his head down and his face grave. Confused, I did not know whether I should sit down or not, so I just stood there. He finally pulled at my clothes.

  “Sit here,” he said.

  Unnerved by his brazenness, I slowly descended to kneel.

  “Bo
w.”

  Again, I followed his order as if I was under a spell, and bowed down deeply from my head to the waist. Then I heard him say, “Father, this is my fiancée.”

  I hadn’t yet raised my head from the bowing position, and after hearing this incredible lie I could not. The gray-haired man straightened himself a little from his leaning position and mumbled in a hoarse voice, “I’m just so grateful that you’re in a university and met someone like this young woman . . .”

  My cheeks were flushed and I was losing my patience, but I could not say a word. Instead, I just pinched him as hard as I could. He did not scream, just coughed a little.

  “How’s your mother in the countryside?” the gray-haired man asked.

  “They’re all fine. How’s your back?”

  “Well, it’s been two months, but it’s not getting better.”

  “She hasn’t come back?”

  The gray-haired man did not answer, his eyes pointing at the young boy still eating cookies.

  “I have to get better before I can ask someone to take care of him.”

  Ah, how did I fall into this deep hole? I felt like I had walked into a cave about ten times darker than my own home. But the ordeal was far from over. Do you know what he said?

  “She did some grocery shopping to cook your dinner.”

  He sprang up and said to me, “I’ll go get water from the communal faucet. You start with the rice.”

  I did not run out the door. Without saying anything, I put some rice into a pot and poured some water in to rinse it. I looked for a place to throw out the water. His father said, still half-sitting and half-lying there, “My dear girl, you just throw the water out the window.”