The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  On rainy days, I sometimes went outside to burn little branches in the fuel hole, and I would hear you humming inside. By the time the rain’s fog was pushed down the hill, the moist air was mixed with the scent of burning pine tree branches. It would make me feel cozy and warm. It felt like I was returning from the long gone past. I could hear the rain drops pattering on fluttering pumpkin and bamboo leaves, knowing soon my ears would be filled with the constant sound of rain, and I became sleepy. Sometimes we would be hiking when the rain began. We would return home wet through, and the first thing we did was wash our rubber shoes caked in mud by pouring water on them. Then we’d rub our wet hair with dry towels, take off our clinging shirts, pants, and skirt, and change into new, dry underwear. Then we’d wrap ourselves together in one blanket and lay flat on our stomachs, our chins supported by our hands, and look outside where it was still raining. Shivering once in a while, we listened to the rainwater collecting in the gutter and flowing down. When the rain stopped, the sunlight would drape itself across everything like a gauzy cloth and then disappear. The wet blades of grass would shine, and the birds shaking under the tree would begin to hop from one tree to the other, chirping. In Japanese, an oriole cries “ho-oh-hoke-kyo.” Listen carefully, it really sounds similar to that. Like a miracle, a golden handkerchief hovers and darts around in the forest after the rain stops. First, it says “ho-oh” and extends the vowel as if it is hesitating a bit, and raises its voice to a higher octave for the “ke.”

  I remember you once said that the nicknames of all the birds crying at night from late spring to early summer have something to do with eating. Around this time of the season, food in storage is almost gone, yet it is too early to harvest barley. Waking up in the middle of the night because his stomach is empty, the farmer cannot fall asleep again, thinking about how to survive, how to feed his hungry family, and fearing for the future. I always thought sotjoksae, the scops-owl, would be small and pretty, based on its melancholic, delicate cry. But I once saw a picture of it in an illustrated guide and it looked just like any other owl, except it had a pair of horns. They say a scops-owl’s cry sounds like someone complaining how small his rice pot is, sotjok, sotjok, sojokda. The great tit is called the farmhand’s bird in the southeast regions, because its short cries, tst, tst, tst, sound just like the sound a farmhand makes as he clucks his tongue when driving a cow. When he hears the farmhand’s bird at night he must think of himself earlier that day, plowing the field under the blazing sun with an empty stomach. And how does a short-eared owl cry? Here’s a rice cake, hoot-hoot! Here’s a bowl of rice, hoot-hoot! And in the northern regions they call a woodpecker a zokbaksae, a tiny bowl bird. It is said to be the reincarnation of a daughter-in-law who starved to death. She cried to reproach her mother-in-law for giving her the tiniest bowl of rice. So when the zokbaksae cries, it is the daughter-in-law asking the mother-in-law to exchange her little zokbak for a bigger one, zok, zok, zok, zok.

  Do you remember the day we went to the little stream to wash our clothes? It was a gloriously sunny day after another downpour, when the sky seemed so high and masses of thick clouds hung here and there. I didn’t go to work, so it must have been a Sunday or a Saturday afternoon.

  We gathered the quilt covers and sheets and pillowcases and our underwear into a huge wooden bowl. On top of that we put a wooden laundry stick, a washboard, and a couple of laundry soap bars, which at first appeared to be too soft and dark in color, but cleaned clothes beautifully. I carried the vessel on my head while you packed our lunchbox, a portable stove, and charcoals in your backpack. You followed me holding in one hand a big tin tub to boil clothes, which we had to borrow from the main house, and in the other you held your fishing bag, packed with a fishing pole, a case of bait, and a net.

  We took the path away from the orchard up the hill toward the upper stream of the creek, which widened by the time it reached the next village. Here, however, both shores of the river were covered with sand and pebbles, and there were a few little bays where the stream curved and the speed of the water slowed down. It was quite a distance from the main street and the residential area, so there weren’t loud kids splashing about or farmers busily irrigating. They have built a cement dam and turned it into a swimming pool in recent years. Anyway, it was you who found this tranquil place with clean water during one of your many walks around the neighborhood while I was at work.

  Past the sandy shore and down by the pebbles was a flat rock that looked like a swimming turtle, its back big enough to hold three or four people. I always wondered who brought it there. I put the vessel down near the rock and positioned myself with my skirt hiked up. You placed the other things on top of the pebbles and changed into swimming trunks, then walked into the water holding your fishing bag. The water rose from your ankles to your knees, and then to your belly, and I could not resist yelling out to you, “Don’t go too far! Do you know how to swim?”

  But you pretended you could not hear me, and you kept on walking, the water rising to your chest.

  “Really, what is he thinking . . . ?” Nervous, I stood up, and you disappeared underwater, the plastic fishing bag left floating on the surface. I didn’t think this was really happening, but still I was scared. I didn’t know what to do, so I walked into the water until it reached my thighs and yelled one more time, “Don’t be so childish. Come out now!”

  But it took a while before your head reemerged. Your upper body followed and you stood up, and I saw that the water only came to your belly button.

  You took a place across from the laundry station and began to fish. I began to wash the clothes by taking each garment out, one by one, and soaking it in water. I started with little things, soaped and scrubbed them on the washboard. The big sheets were folded in half and swirled around in water. I soaped them in parts and beat them with the laundry stick. The rhythmic sound echoed across the valley.

  We placed the tub on the sandy area, then stacked and lighted the charcoal. We filled the tub with water and ashes, then neatly folded and stacked the little things together with the sheets in the tub and boiled them. I thought I had to be the last one from our generation to wash clothes like that. Doing laundry in a washing machine is really dull. As I rested, soaking my feet in the stream while the laundry was boiling, little rice-fishes gathered and tickled me, perhaps trying to eat salt from my feet and calves. Among the horse-tails and foxtails growing here and there I found little sprouts of bilberry trees. I pulled them up to find the white roots, which tasted sweet. I looked for Indian strawberries and sandburs.

  You had pierced a couple of worms on your hook and thrown them into the water, and now you were intensely watching the fishing line. When you pulled something shiny out of the water, I could tell even from far away that it was tiny, because you put it in the fishing net without saying anything. If you happened to catch something larger, like a stone moroko, you hooted and howled. Later I found out that even those were only about the size of my hand.

  “Wow, it’s a big one! And strong, too!”

  I ignored you no matter how excited you seemed. After boiling the laundry for a couple of hours, I took it out, rinsed it in water one more time, and put it away back in the wooden vessel.

  “Let’s eat!” I shouted.

  “Wait, they’ve just began to bite.”

  “I’m hungry. Fine, I’ll just eat by myself.”

  You reluctantly gathered your things and walked across the stream to me. You opened the fishing net and proudly showed me the catches of the day.

  “These are just minnows . . . you thread them on a stick, salt and grill them, they taste really light and delicious. A stone moroko, here . . . isn’t it big? This one is called a floating goby. An ugly looking fellow, isn’t he? And look, I got one slender bitterling. But I think we should let this one go.”

  “Why? It looks like the best tasting one.”

  “It’s rare these days to find one. It looks like a butterfish from the ocean, doesn’t it?”


  You fingered its flapping tail for a while as if you couldn’t decide what to do, but then you finally picked it up and threw it back into the stream.

  “So, shall we eat?”

  “Not yet. You have to help me first.”

  I picked up one end of the dripping bedsheet and you took the other without complaining. We wrung it out until there was not one drop of water left. We opened it flat and kept hold of the opposite sides, raised it high as if we were cheering someone, then lowered it, shaking it as the moisture evaporated into the air. We laid it out on the pebble beach. The sunshine filled the white sheet. In a line next to it, pillow cases lay next to each other like friends. We placed our underwear on top of a large, flat rock, already hot from the sun, which dried the clothes quickly. We surrendered the best spots to the laundry and ate our lunch by the sand. What seems so insignificant, the everyday tasks of a simple life, are in fact the most important part, aren’t they?

  12

  It was the beginning of the rainy season, sometime in the second half of June. I had gotten into the habit of going fishing in our little pool behind the hill almost every day, either early in the morning or just before sunset. At first I would dig in the moist part of our backyard to find worms for bait, but one day Yoon Hee bought me a box of paste bait. I diluted it with water and sometimes mixed in ground shrimp shell, and some days I caught maggots and washed them in clean water. In time, I figured out a few places where the fish gathered, and I began to catch good-sized stone morokos. Once, I caught a foot-long catfish.

  One day, I went as soon as I finished breakfast, carrying the fishing rod on my shoulder. It was a cloudy day with no wind; the water’s surface was calm, and it was easy to watch the float. As soon as I sat down I caught a goby minnow. It was so impetuous, it stiffened and died as I pulled up the rod. I sat there until almost eleven o’clock, but I only managed to catch three or four minnows. I thought about moving to another spot, but I suspected it would rain soon so I packed up and left. As I headed home down the hill past the orchard, I noticed someone in front of me, walking in between trees while pulling a bicycle at his side. I sped up to follow him. He was wearing a dark yellow jacket and a pair of the camouflage pants of the reserve army, and his hair was shaved short. I thought maybe he was going to the main house, but he passed it by. I deliberately slowed down and watched him from a distance. As I suspected, he disappeared behind the fences surrounding our house, and I heard his voice clearly.

  “Hello? Anyone home?”

  I tried to slow down my racing heart and tried to think. There was no plan, no preparation for a situation like this. First of all, Yoon Hee and I had never discussed a cover story that we could present to others, and all we had told the family at the main house was a vague statement about me being Yoon Hee’s fiancé. The excuse for the fact that I did not have a job was that I had been preparing for the bar exam for the past couple of years. I decided to avoid this stranger. I quickly walked away from the fence and went into the orchard, squatting behind the trees. A minute later, I saw the man leaving our courtyard and mounting the bicycle. He held onto the brake and went slowly down the hill. He stopped at the entrance to the main house. Again, I heard every word that came out of his mouth.

  “Good morning, ma’am. How are you? Is the vice principal at school?”

  “Yes, he is. And what brings you here?”

  “Who lives in that house up there?”

  “Why? The art teacher at the high school is renting it.”

  “I heard there is a man living there, too.”

  “Oh yes, her fiancé. He came down to study for the bar exam, but I also heard he’s not well.”

  “So he’s here to recuperate, is that it?”

  “Sure, to rest and to study.”

  “I need to meet him. When do you think I can come back and find him?”

  “Why don’t you come around dinnertime?”

  The bicycle emerged again and went wobbling down the hill. I sat among the trees in the orchard listening to the bees buzzing until everything was quiet.

  I closed all the doors and windows except for one back window and waited, flipping through books, for Yoon Hee to come home. There was the familiar sound of her footsteps, followed by Yoon Hee, muttering to herself.

  “Are you home? Has he gone fishing again?”

  I stayed down on the floor with my chin on a pillow, and Yoon Hee absentmindedly opened the door, surprised to find me in there.

  “My goodness, you were in here! Were you sleeping?”

  “Just come in.”

  She saw my face and lowered her voice.

  “Did something happen?”

  When I told her about the man who came by the house before noon, the color of her face changed.

  “Did the Soonchun lady know him?”

  “I think so. He said he’d return in the evening, so he should be here soon.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I mean, think about it, if he knew who you were, would he have come like that, by himself on a bicycle? I’ll go to the main house and ask who came by earlier.”

  “What are you going to say when she asks you how you know someone came by?”

  “Well, I’ll say you were napping and heard something while you were sleeping.”

  Without changing her clothes, she went straight down to the main house. Maybe she thought I would be going crazy, because she came right back within five minutes.

  “No need to worry. Only the chief of a substation at the next village.”

  “Still, you never know. We should be prepared.”

  “Okay. We got engaged last year. You were studying for the bar exam, but you became ill, something with your lungs. The early stage of tuberculosis. Have you memorized your ID card? What’s the name on it?”

  “Jang Myung Goo. Age twenty-nine. The home address is in Inchon.”

  “Let me see. Hmm, it’s not even Kim Jun Woo! Whose is this?”

  “Don’t know. A friend got it for me.”

  Right on cue, we heard a bicycle bell ring behind the fence. Yoon Hee quickly threw the ID card back at me, whispering, “He’s here!”

  “Excuse me . . .”

  Yoon Hee deliberately pushed the door wide open and walked out. Beyond her legs I saw the dark yellow jacket out in the courtyard. Taking a commanding position on the porch, she called out to him.

  “Who are you? And what is this about?”

  “Ah, yes, I’m from the substation. There’s something to be cleared up. What is the number of family members in this house?”

  “Two.”

  “So . . .”

  The chief of the substation searched beyond her and hesitantly looked toward me. I went out to the narrow porch where Yoon Hee was standing and sat down with my legs hanging.

  “So you teach at the girl’s high school, and this is . . .”

  “My fiancé,” Yoon Hee replied sharply, without giving him a chance to continue.

  “I would like to see your ID cards, please.”

  “Both of us?”

  The chief nodded meekly, as if he was somewhat flustered at having to do this. Yoon Hee turned to me and I handed her my ID card. She stacked it on top of her Teacher’s Identification card and fanned herself with them.

  “Wait a minute, what is this for? What needs to be cleared up?”

  “Please, there’s no need to get upset. We just to need to know who the new residents are in our neighborhood. That is the basic duty of our substation.”

  He carefully studied the two ID cards that Yoon Hee handed to him.

  “You’re from Inchon? And what do you do?”

  “I was studying, but I’ve not been feeling too well.”

  “Do you plan to stay here for a long time?”

  “He’ll be here for the summer vacation,” Yoon Hee replied quickly, “and he’ll return home as soon as it’s over.”

  He gave us back the ID cards and awkwardly raised his right
hand to his forehead to salute to us, even though he was not wearing a hat.

  “Beg your pardon, sorry to have inconvenienced you. We’re in a state of emergency, you know.”

  He climbed onto his bicycle, and Yoon Hee walked to the opening in the fence to watch the bicycle leave.

  “It is a state of emergency, you know,” Yoon Hee imitated the chief’s manner of speech as she walked back in. I guess I was quite nervous, since this was the first inspection I had to go through in Kalmae. From then on, a sense of uncertainty surrounded me like a fog. I was not worried about getting caught, but I feared that the peace of this little house would cease to exist. There were no more lunchboxes and hiking, no more tranquility at our laundry spot, staring absentmindedly at the smooth water’s surface while fishing, no more long afternoon naps and the sound of night birds and rain. Yoon Hee went all the way to the city and bought a suitcase full of law books from a used bookstore. She stacked them neatly on the low desk, which was the first thing you saw when you opened the door. When Yoon Hee was at work, after lunch and before a nap, I made an effort to actually read them. Reading about different laws, the world seemed to be filled with things you should not do. It was as if the sky and the earth and the mountains and the village were covered with an invisible net. Feeling helpless, I would fall asleep.

  I went into the next village one day while Yoon Hee was working. I avoided it during the weekend when it was full of people running errands. I was craving a bowl of noodles with black bean paste, and I needed to contact Preacher Choi, who was now in charge of my security. There was no point eating lunch while I was nervous or worried, so I decided to head to the Chinese restaurant first. It was full, even though it was not market day. A woman with three children was sitting at a table covered with bowls of noodles in spicy broth and noodles with black bean paste, busily cajoling her kids to eat. The delivery bicycles came and went, and from the kitchen came the sound of someone kneading dough. I liked the chaotic liveliness at the Chinese restaurant. Of course, I ordered a double portion of noodles with black bean paste, the same thing I always got. Sitting at an empty table, I stared absently at the man at the next table until something in the newspaper he was reading caught my eyes. The headline “A Network of Spies Captured” was printed in big white letters against a black rectangle. There was a list of names, including Choi Dong Woo, Kim Kun, and other familiar names, but the rest of it was covered by the man’s hand. The customer’s food was brought out, and he threw down the newspaper and began eating. I could not wait, I reached for it.