The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  “Well, it is my great honor to welcome you to the fall lecture series. Our speaker today, Reverend Kang, began his work in the purifying operation for Communists during the postwar period, and he has served with distinction for many years. He has turned many, many National Security Law offenders toward humanism. He has taught so many bloodless, cruel Communists to repent and to regret, and shaped them into good citizens. He is a true patriot, and . . .”

  The preacher interrupted him. “Listen, listen, that’s enough. They must be hungry, so why don’t we let them eat first? This is not a lecture, I think a discussion with open minds would be much better, don’t you think?”

  “Of course, of course. Well, I should leave you to it. I hope everything goes well.”

  Then the Professor turned to the two students and threatened them, “Don’t you dare be disrespectful. Listen to the reverend, do you understand?”

  As soon as the Professor left, the tall one quickly picked up a piece of rice cake, threw it into his mouth and chewed. The president of the student union punched the tall one’s arm, but the reverend did not seem to mind too much.

  “Don’t worry, that’s fine. But why don’t we say a little prayer before we begin? Now, let us pray.”

  He gathered his hands and bowed his head down. The two students stayed seated, but did not otherwise acknowledge his praying. I did not want to appear too insolent, so I put my head down but kept my eyes open. The reverend seemed to be quite experienced with such situations, and he chose not to notice.

  “Dear God, the Almighty Father, we’re gathered here today, with the food you’ve blessed us with, to ascertain the value of the family that you’ve given us. These men in their youthful ardor once fell under the spell of Satan, but they have realized their mistakes and they are ready to repent. It was not their fault; they were misled by Satan, so please guide them back to the righteous path. As they eat this food today, please let them realize how much their families miss them, that the still empty spaces at their dinner tables are daily reminders to their families of their absence. Let them each realize the grace of their country and family, and realize also that they will be born again as your faithful children.”

  He added a few words and said “Amen” by himself. Only then did he open his eyes and look around at us. We remained silent, and the reverend raised both his hands and offered, “Please, help yourselves. We’re not a rich church, so I know this may not be enough, but we did prepare it with our hearts.”

  Before the reverend stopped talking, the two students were on the chicken. I joined them and picked up a chicken leg. I could not remember the last time I had eaten chicken, and my stomach was so eager that the meat slid down my throat before I could chew. The chicken had been fried, glazed with a spicy garlic sauce, and roasted. The two students were already reaching for their second piece, and I glanced at the reverend who was looking down at an open Bible with a pair of thick reading glasses perched on his nose. In minutes, the chicken was gone and only a few bones were left on the plate. As we began to attack the mound of rice cake, the reverend began to speak.

  “Why don’t we talk as we enjoy our food? Mr. Oh, you’ve been sentenced to life. What do you think of religion?”

  I thought about it for a bit and then mumbled, a little self-mockingly, my mouth filled with sticky rice cake, “Now? I am grateful.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You brought all this wonderful food.”

  “You were born in the South, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how and where did you learn about Communism?”

  I smiled as I replied, “I know nothing about that.”

  The president of the student union, who was also chewing on a mouthful of sticky rice cake, added in a cheerful voice, “Don’t you know, minister? It’s all fabricated!”

  “Then isn’t it even easier? All you need to say is that you changed your mind; they’ll let you go home right away.”

  “Let us go?” The student was incredulous. “That’s a lie. It’s like they are hitting someone first and then asking him to admit to the reason why he was hit.”

  “You also broke the National Security Law, correct? No matter what, it is not right to divide public opinion when the puppet state in the North is watching for every opportunity to start the war again.”

  The tall student joined in. “The bloody dictatorship, by killing innocent civilians, divided public opinion. They should be in here, not us.”

  The table was empty of food. The reverend began to tell the familiar story of hardship and oppression in the North, but the president of the student union interrupted him.

  “Stop talking about what’s going on in someone else’s house. I told you, we don’t know anything about them. We would willingly curse them, too, but we know nothing about them. We should find out more about them before we do.”

  I could see where this was going and interrupted: “Reverend, maybe there will be a chance for me to go to your church and pray as one of the believers. Thank you so much for this wonderful food. I think we should all go back to our cells now and read the Bible. Why don’t you say a closing prayer now?”

  This kind of visitation happened a couple of times a month. The young ones who stubbornly talked back at the first meetings eventually resigned themselves to the routine and learned to pretend to listen to the lecture while stuffing their faces nonstop.

  Furlough was a big deal. None of the real Communists ever stood a chance of seeing outside the prison, but those with family outside or deemed as possible converts were sent outside, one by one. Escorted by prison guards in plainclothes, they took a train or bus and visited cities far away, where they ate the food their family had prepared and had a chance to talk to them in private. They’d spend the night in a jailhouse nearby and come back. It took two, maybe three days, but it took a long time to forget the warm homemade meals and the equally warm laughter of their families. When someone returned from furlough, we all hung onto the viewing window and asked questions as quietly as possible, always aware of the footsteps of the guard on duty down the corridor.

  That autumn many prisoners’ sentences were reduced, and the dreamy experience of a furlough was too strong a temptation for all of us. Even the guards in charge of our cell block tolerated all the communication among prisoners, and they sometimes looked out for us by standing at the end of the corridor to make sure no one else was coming.

  “Mr. Yi, where did you go?”

  “We left here and took the express bus.”

  “Is the bus station far from here?”

  “No, just across the bridge, right outside of the town. It doesn’t take long at all, maybe five minutes.”

  We all paused for a moment. I could see it in my mind. If you take a car and go through the gate, and drive on the road lined with poplar trees and cross the bridge, there’s the bus station.

  “Were you still wearing your prison uniform and handcuffs and ropes?”

  Someone butted in from another cell, “What are you talking about? They give you normal clothes and a baseball cap for the furlough. You can’t tell something’s off unless you looked really close.”

  “They gave me a jacket, too!” said prisoner Yi.

  “I guess they’d feel a bit ashamed, too, if everyone knew . . .”

  “Anyway, the express bus is just like it used to be, right?”

  “It was my first time,” Yi said. “We didn’t have that in the fifties.”

  “Did you eat lunch at the rest stop?”

  “Yeah, beef soup and what is it, this fried hot dog thing on a stick.”

  “A corn dog! And then?”

  “We got off in Seoul first. My home is in Kwangwon province, actually.”

  “It’s still the same, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know. All I know in Seoul is the central station and the Great South Gate. Anyway, there were so many people, I thought something was happening. There were more than I’ve
seen in pictures. We were waiting for our train in this big area, and maybe all people do these days is take train trips, but there were just so many of them walking back and forth.”

  He tells us how he sits down by the window in a train. The river flows on the right, and there are high mountain tops and forests. Once in a while, the train passes through an unfamiliar village. The high-rise apartments are like empty castles in a daydream. The guard is sitting next to him dozing, and every time he leans over the tip of his gun brushes against Yi’s ribs. The other guard, who is sort of a team leader, keeps blabbering. “Look around, isn’t this a great place to live? It’s all up to you. Your wife is waiting for you. Your children are big enough to grow old with you. Didn’t you see in the picture? You have five grandchildren!”

  They get off in a rural area, and as they leave the station house he recognizes the landscape. The small village looks just like it used to, maybe a few buildings and roads have changed just a little. The point where three streets meet, where the mill used to be, looks the same, and so does the village’s civic office building, built during the Japanese occupation with plywood boards covered in cement. He sees people running toward him. An old woman wearing dark baggy pants with flower prints and a faded short-sleeved T-shirt gives him a bear hug.

  “My dear . . .” she says and begins to cry.

  Reflexively, he hugs his wife’s shoulder. Beneath his chin, he sees her white hair gently swaying in the wind. On one side of them is a farmer in his forties, his face tanned dark; he stinks of cigarettes. On the other side is a middle-aged woman.

  “Father!” they say.

  The guard in a suit takes them away, and the team leader grabs his arm and moves with him, too.

  “Let’s hurry and get you home before anyone else sees you,” says the one in the suit, while the team leader shows him the paperwork to reinforce the conditions of furlough. As he walks into the house, he notices the rotting floorboards and the ripped paper on the sliding doors. It was all much worse than the houses he saw from the train. High up on the living room wall is a frame filled with yellowed and faded photographs, including one of him wearing the uniform from the last years of the Japanese occupation. He is squinting in the sun. His young wife is wearing a white cotton top, her hair in a bun secured with a stick. Next to her is a boy wearing a school uniform, and on her lap is an infant. He realizes time has stopped only for him.

  Mr. Yi’s voice trembled as he told the story of his furlough. It had happened so recently that he could not quite figure out the sequence. Someone helped to stir up his memory.

  “You already told us about the lunch you had with your family at a Chinese restaurant before you left.”

  “Yes, that’s right. It is an old place called San Dong Ru, although the owner was different.”

  His mind slips back to the long-gone past. The story he tells now is about the first time he ate noodles with black bean sauce when he followed his father into the village on a market day. It is a story he has repeated many times during exercise hours. No matter how recent, everything a prisoner experiences is like a fluttering dream. Memories can be perfected only when he is free. The story is that he swallowed the whole bowl of noodles as if drinking a bowl of soup, in one breath, and sat there still wanting more, and his father put his own noodles onto the young boy’s bowl.

  When the story is over, each of us returns to the tiny window by the toilet in our cells and stands there. It is the spot where you feel to your bones that you are alone. There is a faint white moon in the early evening sky, a handful of stars. You hear something from the faraway corner of the sky where the red sunset still remains. A flock of birds takes flight, just like they did yesterday. You picture the tall trees on the river bank over which the birds will fly.

  About ten days after the reverend’s visit, I got a chance to visit the outside. The weather was getting colder every day, and the old-timers had already received thick comforters from the laundry department. The filling was synthetic, which meant that it rolled into little balls over the years so there were lots of empty pockets, which did little to protect the sleeper from cold air. The experienced inmates asked for permission to use a larger cell when it was empty during the day as its occupant went to work. There they spread the comforters out on the floor, found the little balls inside the covers, and spread each one of them. Once every ball was rolled out, they could mend various parts of the comforter. Some sewed together two blankets to make a big sleeping bag. Some asked the concession worker to save cardboard boxes and lined the floor with them. The cardboard was often wet by morning from the damp concrete. Old woolen socks were used as sleeping hats. Uncovered ears and noses got so cold they would wake the sleeper. And if you tried to read for too long in your cell, your hands would go numb and couldn’t hold onto the book. Mittens were only good for exercise hour. So we’d stick two pairs of the cotton gloves issued to working inmates, one inside the other. The approach of winter was a busy time for the inmates.

  I was in the middle of my various preparations for the coming winter when I was summoned by the chief of the education department. The office was very warm; there was a gas stove in the middle of the room. The Professor was waiting for me. He offered me a cup of hot tea.

  “Mr. Oh, you were selected for a couple of days of furlough. I just want you to know that it was I who recommended you strongly.”

  “I guess I should say thank you.”

  “There is one condition. You need to sign an agreement before you go, and you have to write a report when you come back.”

  It seemed so bothersome, and I felt helpless, so I just mumbled back, “Well, then forget about it.”

  “Oh, come on, you may never have a chance to go out again! I already wrote out the agreement, all you need to do is write your name and stamp it with your fingertip.”

  He showed me a typed paper. I was supposed to pledge that I would abide by the rules both inside and out of prison and that I was aware of the punishment if I would break such rules; things like that. I took the pen the Professor handed to me and wrote down my number and my name, which looked unfamiliar once I put them down on the paper. Then I put red ink on the tip of my thumb and stamped the paper with my fingerprint. I felt like I had done something I should not have, so I kept rubbing my thumb even after I took off the red ink with a piece of tissue. The Professor gestured for me to follow him.

  The chief of the education department was a fat man in his fifties with drooping eyelids that made it look at if he was always sleepy. His voice was thin and sounded tired, but his gaze under those thick eyelids was still piercing. The Professor presented the agreement to the chief with both hands.

  “This is the inmate selected for the short furlough,” he said.

  The chief glanced at the piece of paper for one second, uninterested.

  “I must say, you’ve been a model prisoner, and . . . we still cherish the hope that you will develop a better, more proper ideology regarding our country, and I think you’ll realize what you need to do once you see how much our country has changed, how developed it is. Therefore, Number Fourteen Forty-Four, I look forward to reading a great report when you come back. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t know . . . This is so unexpected . . .” I was feeling truly overwhelmed.

  “So, is he the only one going out?” the chief asked the Professor.

  “Yes, the others did not meet the requirements.”

  The chief nodded. “For how long?”

  “He’ll leave tomorrow morning at nine and stay one night. In total, thirty-two hours.”

  “What? He gets to sleep outside?”

  “Well, a home visit lasts for three days. His is not getting a full one, but Number Fourteen Forty-Four is from Seoul, so the schedule had to be set that way.”

  “Wow, the warden has given you a special permission. Now I am really looking forward to a good result when you come back.”

  It still did not seem real as I walked out of
the office. Tomorrow, I would be in Seoul, near my home. My heart was beating fast, and I felt dizzy. As we walked back to my cell block I mouthed the slogans decorating the bare walls. You do not know what life is until you eat your bread with tears. Do not follow, take the lead. What did I do for my family today? Mother, your son will be born again.

  “Can I go visit my family?” I asked the Professor as he escorted me back.

  “It’s not a visit to your home,” he said. “Think of it as a field trip to society.”

  Then he did add, as if he felt quite generous, “But you never know, it all depends on your behavior. Maybe there will be a special visit or something like that.”

  As soon as I walked into my cell, I heard inmates all around me talking and asking questions.

  “Mr. Oh, I heard you’re going out! Congratulations!”

  “So you’re staying the night, too?”

  “Where are they taking you?”

  The guard in charge of the cell block must have known before I did and had told the other inmates after I left my cell, so the news was already out. Somehow I felt sorry for the others, and I was careful not to seem too enthusiastic.

  “I don’t know, I think it’s just for one day. I bet they’ll just circle around the neighborhood a few times and bring me back here.”

  “They didn’t tell you what the schedule is?”

  “Well, I do know that I’m leaving tomorrow morning, but apart from that . . .”

  Since I did not appear to be too excited, the others were soon deflated, and disappeared back into their cells, away from the viewing windows. I lay on my mattress, arms crossed. It was not some imaginary trip with a map, nor was it a memory trip to the past; it was real, my body and spirit together leaving this place. I did not know then that this was another form of torture.