The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  My sister, who had turned away, now pours out the information. “She had cancer of the vertebrae. Last winter, she fell down when she slipped on snow and could not get up after that. The doctors said there was nothing they could do and so she came home, but she only lived for another six months. We took care of her funeral.”

  I stare at them both blankly.

  “Did she say anything?”

  My sister is now smiling.

  “She made us promise that we’d marry you off. Well, we should get going now. Please, take care of yourself.”

  As they walk across the courtyard toward the front gate, the leader says, “We should get ready to leave, too.”

  In the afternoon, we board the bus heading south. It is windy, and the sky is an angry-looking gray. I can summon no emotion. The leader asks how I feel after the furlough, and I answer without hesitation, “The day before you go on a trip is always more exciting, isn’t it?”

  I do not think he understands what I am talking about, but I have always been like that, ever since I was a child. There is no special day, everything is unexciting and ordinary. Only right before it happens is there a little flutter in my heart. Whether it was a school field trip or New Year’s Day or my own birthday, nothing seems too special when it happens. After spending a summer Sunday at the riverside, having fun fishing and swimming, what I thought about at the end of the day was the next day, Monday, a rainy day that I would have had to spend at school. After a field trip there are exams at school, and after New Year’s Day or my birthday are many more colorless days that are all a little spoilt like leftover food. I know that this short trip will become a long-lasting wound. This memory will be an ache in my body and heart on rainy days.

  22

  That fall, in the middle of October to be precise, Jung Hee got married. Her husband-to-be was Dr. Park, of course, who had finished his military service as an army surgeon. The day she told me about the wedding, I met her at a café near the university hospital where she worked. Dr. Park had returned to the university to finish his medical degree, and he was working at the same hospital. I arrived on time, but she was already there waiting for me.

  “What is going on today? You’re not too busy?” I said.

  “He doesn’t have to perform surgery today, which is unusual. He told me to wait for him here.”

  Jung Hee looked very different. Before, there were always little lines of exhaustion around her eyes. She usually wore comfortable pants, and she didn’t think twice about leaving the hospital in wrinkled and stained scrubs. But these days Jung Hee was blooming. At twenty-six years old she was not a young girl anymore, but she could still pass for a first-year college student. Her face was rounder than mine and she appeared more feminine than me. I looked at her eyes and lips and guessed that she had applied a fresh layer of makeup before she came to meet me. My hair was in a messy ponytail and I was wearing a pair of jeans spotted with paint and a thin cardigan, but Jung Hee was wearing a black dress accessorized with a necklace and earrings.

  “Look at you! I think I’m going to just go home after our drink.”

  “What are you talking about? Dr. Park said he’s treating us to dinner.”

  “I don’t know, I feel like I’m intruding on you two.”

  “To be honest . . . we have something to tell you.”

  I was preparing for my solo exhibition. If I did not keep myself busy, I knew I was going to either blow up or collapse. Eun Gyul had grown up enough to say things that adults could actually understand.

  “We’re getting married,” Jung Hee blurted it out.

  “Of course you should,” I replied matter-of-factly. “He’s done with his military service and now he has a job. Did you tell Mom?”

  “Mom is the one who first suggested it. We met his parents last month and set the date.”

  “What? So all the decisions are made and now you tell me. I’m the last one to know? When is this happening?”

  “The sixteenth.”

  “That’s just two weeks away.”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry that I’m doing it first.”

  I had to snicker as I lit a cigarette.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. As I told you before, I’m used goods. Anyway, congratulations.”

  “Mom wanted me to tell you.”

  For whatever reason, people close to me were being cautious and uneasy, and it caught me off-guard. I thought I would be fine, but I was actually feeling a little hurt.

  “Mom can be quite old-fashioned sometimes,” I grumbled.

  Jung Hee picked up her teacup and drank the warm liquid, carefully puckering her lips so as not to leave a trace of her lipstick on the cup.

  “Yoon Hee, after the wedding I want you to move back in.”

  “Hmm, should I?”

  “You can’t leave Mom and Eun Gyul by themselves.”

  “She’ll be five next spring. We should send her to preschool.”

  “You can spend your days at school and in your studio, but you should at least have dinner with them at night.”

  I sincerely tried to picture such a scene in my mind.

  “It makes sense. I’ll talk to Mom.”

  Jung Hee continued, “I think I’ve spent more time with Eun Gyul than you have. You have no idea how much I care about her.”

  “That spoiled little brat!”

  It came out of my mouth without me realizing. Jung Hee seemed to be taken aback.

  “What, are you jealous?”

  “No . . . She is just as stubborn as her father. How should I say it, I think I’m a little frustrated.”

  I thought of what had happened when I went to see her the week before. I arrived there around dinnertime, and when I walked in the maid had already left, and my mother was watching television by herself in the living room. When she saw me, she put her index finger on her lips and said, Shhh. As I asked Why? without making a sound, I noticed that the volume of television was also lowered to that of a whisper.

  “Eun Gyul is asleep.”

  “Already? I told her on the phone that I was coming to see her.”

  “She went out with Jung Hee in the afternoon.”

  I had not seen her in a while, but Eun Gyul was sleeping peacefully, as if that did not matter to her. I went into her bedroom to see her sleeping face, and I found her curled up on her side with the blanket kicked away. I kissed her cheek and was walking out when I tripped on something on the floor. It made a rattling sound. It was a little ball made out of a soft material. It had come with a baby dress Jung Hee bought when Eun Gyul was about three months old. I think it was imported from Japan. There was a little bell inside, so it made a noise when shaken. Ever since, Eun Gyul had to have the ball all the time. She fingered it while she took her bottle, she needed it when she was falling asleep. She was almost five, but she still played with it even though it was really worn out and had been mended several times. The cotton filling poked out here and there, and I thought, How hideous, I should get her a new one. Without thinking too much, I picked it up and threw it into the trash can. I slept at my mother’s that night and was woken up by an uproar in the living room the next morning. Eun Gyul was screaming and crying. I walked out, still in my pajamas.

  “Eun Gyul, look! Mommy’s here.”

  She did not even look at me, she just kept kicking and screaming on the floor, “No! I don’t want Mommy! I want my friend!”

  My mother was trying to calm her down.

  “I saw it when she went to bed last night, so where is it?” she muttered.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Ugh, I don’t know what else I can do. She just can’t live without that ball!”

  I quickly ran to the trash can by the foyer and found the ball.

  “I once threw it away, too, and I had to pay for it. I guess she’s really attached to it,” my mother said.

  Eun Gyul put the ball next to her cheek and rubbed her face on it.

  “I hate Mommy,”
she shot at me.

  My eyes filled with tears.

  “We’re here.” Jung Hee waved, and Dr. Park strode across the café to get to our table. He was a tall, charming looking guy. Before he sat down, he bowed to me with great courtesy.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while. Hope all is well?”

  “Well, not everything’s well, I have to say,” I replied curtly, and he seemed confused.

  “I just told her,” Jung Hee said.

  “About . . . what?”

  “That we set the date.”

  He pretended that he was shocked. “What do you mean? You haven’t told her until now?”

  “Oh, please, I know you two are in this together.”

  I looked at them out of the corner of my eye, as if I was really angry.

  “Let’s see how you treat me tonight, and then I’ll decide to either forgive you or to ruin everything.”

  “Gee, I guess we’re in big trouble.”

  That night, I ate and drank my fill with the couple and went back to my studio, alone, and I thought of Eun Gyul again. Well, it’s all my fault, isn’t it? I was her mother in name only. Have I ever remembered her birthday? Have I ever bought her something she liked? And when was the last time I slept next to her? I cannot remember. I did feel guilty, but that was it. I was scared to see my own daughter because it was so heart-breaking and frustrating. I was always by myself.

  Two days before Jung Hee’s wedding, I finally got my suit from the dry cleaners and went to my mother’s house, still wearing paint-covered jeans and a sweater. The house was wrapped in joyous commotion. Various aunts and cousins and children were there, all overexcited and running about. I looked for Eun Gyul, but she was busy running from one room to the next. I smiled and said hello to some relatives, none of it heartfelt, and I escaped to Eun Gyul’s room, locked the door, and smoked a cigarette. A new dress was hanging from the head of her bed. I picked it up to study it, front and back. It was a beautiful white dress embroidered with white roses and trimmed with lace around the neck, at the cuffs of the sleeves, and on the hem of the skirt. The skirt would almost reach the ground when she wore it. And there also was a small bouquet of silk flowers, the right size to fit perfectly into a small child’s hands.

  It’s like she’s the one getting married! I was uncomfortable and cranky, but I had to stop when two things came to my mind. The first thing was the wedding of a friend of mine who had been living with her boyfriend and their children for a long time, who finally decided to hold a wedding ceremony just because she did not want to regret not having one later. Both children were girls, three and five at the time. The bride in her mid-thirties still looked beautiful in her wedding dress and professionally applied makeup. It was quite unconventional at the time to see the couple enter together, hand in hand, led by their two little girls. The second thought that came to mind was a scene from the wedding of Eun Gyul, all grown up. In a flash, I gathered myself. I remembered once again giving birth to her in Kalmae with the help of the Soonchun lady. No one had predicted it, no one had desperately wanted it, but I could not erase it either. Eun Gyul’s birth was an unexpected surprise. In life, there are so many unexpected surprises.

  I remember Jung Hee’s wedding with a few photos. I did not frame the family picture. I just put it up in the studio by the desk with a push pin on the wall. Jung Hee’s head is slightly bent toward her groom, as if she is about to lean on him. I guess the photographer told her to pose like that. Maybe the photographer also touched up just the bride and groom in the darkroom, because other than the couple of the day, everyone else looks a little dull and unattractive. Only Eun Gyul, looking so alert standing in front of the couple and holding the bouquet, appears to be as brilliant as the bride and groom. In the background, in the farthest corner, is me, looking like a teller in a small country bank, tilting my head and looking over at something. I can’t remember what I was looking at.

  Until the summer of 1986, I kept busy preparing for my solo exhibition and writing a qualifying paper for my MFA. If I wanted to find a job somewhere, even if it was an instructor position at a small college outside of Seoul, I had to work hard. After Jung Hee’s wedding, I moved back into my mother’s house. As Jung Hee predicted, the three of us were able to live peacefully together, each leading her own life. My mother now owned a good-sized building in a busy marketplace where she ran a textile manufacturing and distribution business, and her daily life was not as tiring as it used to be when she went to work at the break of dawn and came home around bedtime. Now she left the house in the early afternoon and came back before dinner. Eun Gyul was still only four, but she seemed to be precocious and smart, so we decided to send her to a preschool. She spent her mornings there, and we took turns picking her up around noon, my mother or our maid or me. In between, I went to school or locked myself in the studio.

  At school I observed from afar what was happening with the activists who were, as you might say, dealing with ideological conflicts. Like most educated and concerned citizens, I could not stomach their neatly itemized slogans. Whether the issue was antifascism and autonomy, or democratization and constitutional amendments, these were, after all, basic principles. So why couldn’t they be more flexible? Throughout the first half of 1986, not one day went by without demonstrations and protests. I particularly remember the large-scale demonstration in Inchon, flooded with slogans and flags.

  On a hot, humid day during the summer vacation, I was working in my studio. Eun Gyul had gone to the beach with Jung Hee and her husband, and my mother was visiting a Buddhist temple in the mountains with her friends. After a few days in the empty house with our maid, during which I did not talk much to her, I decided to return to my studio. At the time, I was becoming interested in wood prints, especially those in the style developed by the circle of people influenced by the Chinese writer Lu Xun, and I was sticking to simple lines and shapes. As I burrowed into the velvety surface of the woodblock, the studio was filled with gentle sounds and the fragrance of trees. Around the room I had hung finished blocks and prints on the wall. I had worked until late and was debating where to go for dinner when someone knocked on my door.

  “Who is it?”

  No reply came. Curious, I opened the door.

  “Oh my God, who is this?”

  “It’s me. Do you remember me?”

  I actually did not recognize her. I could guess who she was from the familiar voice.

  “Wait, are you really—Mi Kyung?”

  “You do remember.”

  “Come in, please, come in.”

  We sat face to face on the sofa by the entrance door. Slowly, I studied Chae Mi Kyung’s appearance. Her hair was bobbed right under her ears, just like a high school girl from the seventies, and her face was haggard. It seemed like she had not applied moisturizer, let alone makeup, in a long time. Her deep navy blue T-shirt looked too hot for such a humid day, and her cotton pants were baggy. She looked ordinary and inconspicuous, like she would disappear quickly if she walked outside and stood among the crowd. Mi Kyung did not look like a student anymore. I nodded.

  “Yes, I remember now,” I said. “So you’re still working at a factory?”

  “Uh-huh, I finally finished the apprenticeship. I’m a technician now.”

  “A what? Jesus, you make it sound like you’ve passed a bar exam or something like that.”

  Mi Kyung was as cheery as ever.

  “Well, it is a new life for me, isn’t it?”

  “What kind of factory is it?”

  “An electronics one. I was a trainee for six months, and I’ve been working for almost a year after that, so I’m a pretty seasoned professional, I must say.”

  A thought came into my mind. I wanted to ask her something, but I did not mention it.

  “So, what brings you here after all this time?”

  “Well, I live in Inchon now. I trained in Boochun before that, so I really didn’t have a reason to come back to Seoul. I just happened to have
something to do around here so I was in the neighborhood and then I thought of you! I always felt bad that I disappeared on you without saying a word.”

  I knew she was making it up.

  “Well, I was about to leave because I haven’t eaten yet,” I said.

  “I haven’t had dinner yet either.”

  “Good, let’s go get something to eat.”

  Chae Mi Kyung glanced at her watch nervously.

  “It’s only half past six. Do you have any other plans for tonight?”

  “Tonight . . . ? Why?”

  “I wanted to take you back to my place.”

  I looked at my watch, too. I had worked hard all day, and I knew I would not be able to sleep until late since it was still so hot. Why not, I thought.

  “It’ll take some time before we get to Inchon. What if we get even more hungry while getting there?”

  “Food tastes better when you’re starving.”

  We first took the bus to go to the subway station where we would take the Number 1 line. Outside, it felt like a steam room. Inside the subway train was worse, filled with body odor and heat. I was beginning to regret the whole thing. After we had been traveling for a while she spoke, still looking out the window.

  “I met Song Young Tae today when I went out,” she said.

  I knew it. That was why I had decided to follow her.

  “So he is alive? What is he doing now?”

  “He’s living in Inchon, too. He has lost a lot of weight.”

  “I’m sure he’s never had to work so much in his life.”

  Mi Kyung’s neighborhood was a slum filled with shacks, near where the refugee camps during the Korean War used to be. The sun had set, and it was finally getting dark. As we walked through the narrow alleyways, Mi Kyung finally confessed.

  “I’m sorry, Yoon Hee, please forgive me. We just wanted to see you. This was the only way to do it.”