The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  The old-timers say that there is a turning point between the third and fourth year into your sentence. After the fifth year, things get easier, and the next crisis comes around the tenth year. But with time, the gap between each crisis gets wider, until the prison becomes home. Like the slogan on the corridor said, “You are reborn as someone else.”

  Only once before had I been allowed to go outside. I had a terrible ear infection that the infirmary couldn’t handle and I had to go to a big hospital in the city to see an ear, nose, and throat specialist. I had been having a cold wash in my cell, pouring water on my head, and some of it got in my ear; whenever I tapped my head, it sounded like there was a wooden gong inside. I should have known better and let the water come out on its own, but it was still there after an hour so I poked around in my ear with a stick, which made everything worse. The next morning, I had a fever, my cheek was swollen, and it was very painful. At first it was bearable, but soon I was begging to be taken to the infirmary, where they applied some antiseptic and gave me a few antibiotic pills. After two nightmarish nights, they finally sent me to the hospital.

  Before we left for the hospital, I was strip-searched and given a gray uniform, denoting that I was a prisoner being transported, and a pair of open-backed rubber shoes. My wrists were handcuffed and my arms bound with rope so I couldn’t move them. One of my two guards, now dressed in civilian clothes, held the end of the rope that trailed behind me like a tail. I was given lunch before we left. I would not be allowed to eat outside. Without their caps and badges, the guards looked like my old neighbors.

  A jeep was already waiting for us at the front gate with its engine running. I got in the back with the lower-ranked guard holding the rope. The senior guard took the passenger seat next to the driver. The gate had been opened and we drove out. The guard next to me took out two sticks of chewing gum, unwrapped one and put it in his mouth. He unwrapped the second and put it in front of my mouth, which I opened so he could put it inside. I was getting a taste of freedom, and it was spearmint.

  We crossed a bridge. It was in the middle of summer, the rainy season, and the muddy river had risen close to the top of the levee. It was a cloudy day, but no longer raining. I studied the new car models and their occupants; I regarded them intently on purpose so that they might turn around and look back. No one did. They talked to each other and laughed, or they stared straight ahead. The only person to meet my eyes was an old man waiting for the light to change at a pedestrian crossing. Our jeep had stopped. When our eyes met, he quickly turned his head, but he could not resist too long, and turned toward me again. His gaze was intense. The light changed, and the jeep moved on. The old man hadn’t moved.

  “Stop here,” the higher-ranking guard ordered the driver. “There’s no parking space in front of the hospital. It’ll be harder to park there.”

  “Isn’t it far from here?” the other guard asked.

  “Not really. About a hundred yards, tops.” the higher-ranking one answered, opening the car door.

  The guard next to me wound the rope a few times around his hand and pushed me in the back. “Get out.”

  Since I could not use my arms, it was a struggle not to fall, and the other guard stood by the door to help me. Once out, one guard stood right next to me while the other followed from behind, tightly holding the rope. I looked around at the shops and restaurants as we walked down, and I soon noticed the large glass entrance to the hospital. A young woman pulling a child by his wrist came out of a jewelry store. He was crying. Abruptly we were facing each other squarely on the sidewalk. The child stopped crying immediately when he saw me. His mother watched me, too. I heard my backless rubber shoes slapping the ground. I had to walk with slow, tiny steps so that they would not slip off. The child shook his mother’s arm.

  “Mommy, what is he?” I heard him say.

  The woman did not answer her child, just grabbed his hand and walked fast to pass us. I could not resist turning back. They were standing there, next to each other, watching me. I smiled at them, the woman grabbed the child’s wrist again and hurried in the opposite direction.

  In the waiting room at the hospital, a row of chairs and a large sofa in the shape of a square with one side missing faced the receptionist’s window. I was directed to sit in the innermost part of the sofa, as the senior guard went to find the assigned doctor. The occupants of each of the chairs pretended not to notice us; likewise those sharing the sofa. Our section had plenty of seating, but no one joined us, preferring to stand, facing straight ahead, faces devoid of expression. Two teenage girls came into the hospital loudly talking to each other and, oblivious, walked toward the sofa. About four of five steps away they stopped talking and exchanged looks of “What’s this?” “Come on, let’s go sit somewhere else.”

  I told myself I was not a criminal. All I did was oppose the dictatorship. I refused to cooperate. But there are no markings on the gray uniform. I could have been anyone. Even Number One-Four-Four-Four sounds like a stranger to me. I am not here. No one sees me. I have been erased.

  Now I am going outside again. For what? To reassure myself of my absence? They are verifying the way back for me, they want me to practice.

  “Let’s change your clothes before we go, shall we?” said the higher-ranking guard. The lower-ranking guard handed me a folded pile.

  “I just got these from the laundry department, but I don’t know if they fit. Number One-Four—I mean, Mr. Oh Hyun Woo, I think the medium is too small, so, large?”

  The dark gray top and pants had lots of pockets. It was called a Saemaul uniform, an outfit that became popular during the New Community Movement of the 1970s, led by President Park Jung Hee. Many bureaucrats wore it as a kind of uniform, like the Chinese wore the Mao suits.

  “Here’s a hat for you.”

  On top of a desk was a cap in a similar shade of gray with the word “Saemaul”—the New Community—embroidered on it. There was a belt, a pair of sneakers, and cash, too.

  “It’s 30,000 won from your deposit,” the senior guard said. “You keep it. Now, shall we go?”

  Like the time I went to the hospital, there was a jeep waiting for us. This time, there were three guards to escort me, all of them in plainclothes—two in suits and one in a windbreaker. The jeep took us across the bridge to the new bus station that Mr. Yi had told us about. When the leader of my escort spoke to me, his voice was different from the one he used inside the prison.

  “Mr. Oh, it’s been a while since you last took the bus, isn’t it?”

  “Are we taking the bus all the way to Seoul?”

  “That’s the most convenient for us, it’s nonstop.”

  One of the lower-ranking guards, the one in the windbreaker, took out the bus tickets from the inner pocket and checked the time. “We have about ten minutes left.”

  We hadn’t drawn any attention at the bus station and I sat down near a television; the guards sat a little bit away from me. The television was showing a professional baseball game. I didn’t watch the players, but instead the people filling up the stadium, wondering if, by any chance, I might recognize one of them. The fans were cheering; the ball flew, they got up from their seats, and they cheered some more.

  “You wanna taste this?”

  The leader held out an ice cream cone. I had eaten ice cream before, of course, but somehow it looked so unfamiliar that I just held it for a while, looking at it trying to think what I should do with it. That’s right, I need to take off the wrapping first. As I tore off the wrapping paper in a spiral pattern, the ice cream cone studded with cookie crumbs appeared. Sometimes, the taste of food can be so sharp. It touched a part of my brain that made me remember the first time I tasted ice cream. Like Mr. Yi’s noodles with black bean sauce. My mom bought one for me on a sports day at school. The ice cream man strolled around carrying a container filled with ice that had a smaller spinning container in it, and he kept yelling “Sweet, cool ice cream cones!” After sucking out every drop o
f ice cream, kids would sneak up to other unsuspecting kids and stick wet pieces of the cone onto their backs.

  Maybe it was because I ate something cold, or maybe because I was nervous about traveling, I needed to pee.

  “Can I go to the restroom?”

  “Number one or number two?” The leader didn’t wait for a reply. “Escort him to the restroom, both of you.”

  The two guards got up, frowning, looking nervous.

  “Walk,” the windbreaker said.

  I slowly walked toward the restroom, avoiding the crowd in the waiting area. Uneasy, the windbreaker walked right behind me.

  “Watch out, Mr. Oh Hyun Woo, I am armed,” he said, walking quickly.

  I went into the restroom. One of them stood behind by the door to guard it while the windbreaker followed me and stood at the urinal right next to mine. He opened up his jacket and showed me what was around his waist.

  “See this?”

  The other inmates called it the chicken head, and the gun was hanging heavy in a leather case. We were two faces talking to each other in a mirror. “I don’t really want to do this, but I don’t want you to do anything stupid,” the face said.

  I smiled without saying anything. Afterward, I walked back through the crowd, concentrating on finding the place I had been sitting before, as if I was going back to my prison cell.

  When we finally boarded the bus, they pushed me to the very back.

  “What, we have to sit at the back of the bus, too?” the windbreaker complained.

  This is the best spot for us,” said the leader.

  “I get car sick. It’ll shake too much back here.”

  As soon as he said that I started to feel sick to my stomach, like I was car sick, too. The bright sun of the clear autumn day made me dizzy, but above all I was exhausted from being among so many people.

  The bus is moving. There is new road after new road, and finally we go onto the Seoul-Busan Expressway that I am familiar with. I see the red and blue roofs of farmhouses and the faraway hills that I missed, now appearing with a purple hue and hovering in the sky. The field has been harvested already, and cut rice plants are tied and lined up around the field like soldiers on parade. A forest dotted with orange-colored persimmons flies by the window like a picture fluttering in the wind. Even a magpie, something I see all the time in prison, seems freer here as I watch it fly away into the distance. Like a scene from a movie, I want to jump out of the bus and disappear into the purple shadow of the rolling distant hills. The three men are sleeping. Only the leader opens his eyes a little from time to time, whenever he feels the bus slowing down a little, looks around to figure out where we are and takes a quick look at me, then he closes his eyes again and falls back asleep. I cannot sleep. I am absorbing the landscape all at once. When I get back, I’m going to feast on these pictures compressed into my brain and my heart, nibble on these stored nutrients little by little.

  I am back in Seoul. I can feel it from a long way off. The open fields disappear, replaced by crowded little buildings that look like blemishes or wounds covering the roadside and rising up the hills. All the cars seem to be headed in one direction. It is not a cloudy day, but there is something hazy hanging in the air. I no longer see flying birds.

  Women are walking around on the streets. From her calf and the hem of her skirt to her hip, from her hair to the high heels on her feet, a young woman is freedom. Especially when you look at her from afar. I see a young man slowly pacing in front of a building; he has a cigarette in his mouth and is wearing a shirt without a jacket. A small crowd waits at a bus stop. This is the world from which I was kicked out. Without knowing if I will ever return. I can only participate from behind the glass window of a moving bus.

  I remembered Nam Soo’s grumbling about Seoul. It was at the very beginning of his underground days, and he did not know the city at all. I was one of the people assisting and guiding him until he got settled, and I had to keep an eye on him day and night. The first few days went by with us talking and exchanging news of other friends, but within a week we had run out of things to talk about. One day, I had to run errands without him, so I took him to a small movie theater close to the place where we were staying. I estimated it would take me about three hours to return.

  “Go in there and catch a couple of movies in a row,” I told Nam Soo, pointing at the theater. “By the time you’re done, I’ll be waiting for you out here.”

  Nam Soo, grinning as he usually did, scanned the posters and promotional pictures hanging next to the box office. “There’s a Chinese war movie and a romantic comedy. Today’s cultural event combines both the literary and the military!”

  Life in Seoul was always hectic. Once you turned around you forgot what had happened only ten minutes before, and thought only of the present right in front of your eyes. It took me more than four hours to finish my errands and, when I got out of the bus and walked toward where we were supposed to meet, it was already dark, and the street was crowded with people going home from work. The movie theater was still a distance away, but I stopped walking and glowered. There was Nam Soo, sitting alone on the steps leading up to a pair of large glass doors, staring into space. I felt sorry, but I was also annoyed at the pathetic figure he made, so I got mad at him as I approached.

  “Why are you sitting here? Do you know what time it is now?”

  “Well, I finished the movie with fighting and kicking, but I left the one with kissing and hugging and crying as soon as it started, so I guess I’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours.”

  “Look, the motel where we’re staying is close to here, and you know that I would have gone there if I hadn’t seen you here.”

  “I don’t know how to get there.”

  “Oh, come on, try a little. Look, that street right over there? That’s the street you walk up and down every day. You just go up the street, and then you’ll see the red neon sign for the motel.”

  I did not like that he was sitting right in front of the movie theater where everyone could see him, so I continued to gripe. “What if you were seen by those who are looking for you? You know it is not just about your own safety.”

  Nam Soo grumbled nervously as he followed me, walking quickly. “Seoul is too complicated, I’ll never figure it out. There is no east or west or north or south.”

  I remained unsympathetic and annoyed. “They say an activist should know the city. I’m not just talking about the geography. There’s something in that complicated mess.”

  Still behind me, Nam Soo mumbled as if he was talking to himself, “Fuck that . . . I don’t need to know it, we’ll just forget it later.”

  The bus arrives at my station, and other passengers grab their bags and carry-ons from the shelf above, but we remain motionless at the very back of the bus. When most of the passengers are off, the leader walks down the narrow aisle first. I follow him, with the two guards closely behind me. I am too anxious to even take one step without the escorting guards holding the rope. It has been a long time since I had to navigate such a large space with so many paths all by myself. At the bus station, in the crowded area inside the station building, I keep losing my sense of direction and have to pause.

  “What’s wrong?” the guard in a suit asks from behind.

  The windbreaker gently pushes me. “Do you see the chief over there? Do you see the back of his head? Just follow that, okay?”

  Among the waves of people coming and going I find the closely cropped head of the leader and run after it.

  “Just imagine that this is no different from the inside,” the suit says. “Then it’ll be much easier.”

  I do not reply, but I agree with him. It is true; I have returned to a larger prison. As we leave the bus station we find ourselves in the middle of a gigantic city. The leader is standing there waiting for us, and as we gather around him he checks his watch and says, “Let’s see . . . It’s time for lunch already. What should we do?”

  “What do you mean? We
should just follow the schedule.”

  “The schedule . . . Here, I have it.”

  The leader reads his pocketbook. “Today’s schedule is as follows: lunch, visit the old palace, go to a movie, and then a department store, and that’s all. What would you like to do first?”

  I can’t quite remember what places he just listed. On the bus from the detention center to the court house, every suspect fights to sit by the window, to look through the meshed windows and see if they recognize any street that passes by. But no matter how hard you look with your head sticking to the window, nothing sticks in your brain. What you are looking at is a place you have already left, a place where you cannot be anymore.

  “I don’t know, I can’t think of any place I’d like to go first.”

  My answer is indecisive, so the windbreaker says to the leader, “I don’t think we can visit all these places today. Let’s eat first, and then we’ll figure out what to do depending on how much time we have left.”

  The leader starts walking ahead of us, having made the decision. “Let’s take a cab.”

  We wait in line like any other good, ordinary citizens, and we get into a taxi cab when it is our turn. The leader takes the seat next to the driver.

  “The Dan Sung movie theater, please.”

  Then he turns his head back to tell us, “I checked the movie schedule already. After all, there’s nothing like a Hong Kong martial arts movie to pass time, don’t you think? We can eat after we get tickets.”

  The streets in Chongro are as jam-packed with people and cars as ever, but I am much more used to walking now than I was at the bus station. The suit gets the movie tickets and tells us that we have about an hour before it starts.

  “What do you say, how about some grilled beef for lunch?”

  The leader looks around the street, where the two big movie theaters face each other. “Let’s see if we can find a decent restaurant around here,” he says. “I think it’ll be easier to find one on the other side of the street.”