The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  It was October. Now that I think about it, it was just a few weeks before the wall came down. I had returned home to find several messages on my answering machine. I was listening to them halfheartedly as I filled the coffeemaker with water, put the filter in, measured the ground coffee, and pushed the button, when suddenly a very familiar voice caught my attention.

  “Miss Han, it’s me, Song Young Tae. I’ve been here in Germany since last summer. In Göttingen. I’ve been meaning to call you, but it took me a while to settle down, so I kept postponing it, and now hopefully it’s not too late. I’m planning to study here for a few years. Jung Hee said you’re doing well. I’ll call you again soon.”

  I went back to the answering machine to hear his voice one more time. At his first words of Miss Han, it’s me, my eyes welled up. And at that moment, I thought of you, something I had not done for the past couple of months, and I thought of the building with a billiard room from which Mi Kyung fell, and I thought of Seoul. It was like coming back home from a long trip to find your personal belongings still there, unchanged. I realized how long I had been gone. Lovers lose all sense of time and space, but it is just an illusion. It is like death. Everything was still there, except us.

  November 9, 1989. Berlin.

  I was there that day. The music was on, I turned up the volume, and I was eating dinner by myself. I cooked a sausage from the refrigerator, and I boiled a potato and ate it with salt. I was eating a piece of dark bread and cheese with a small bottle of beer when the phone rang. I thought it was Mr. Yi, who was on a business trip to Frankfurt with his friend Martin.

  “Hi, it’s me.”

  “Miss Han?”

  “Huh, who is this?”

  “Who did you think I was? It’s me, Song Young Tae.”

  “My goodness, that’s right, you called before once. So you’re in Göttingen? What on earth are you doing there, you little monster?”

  “I’m studying, of course, what else? I have to go to Berlin, can I stay with you?”

  “Of course, no problem. My place is decent enough. But what are you coming here for?”

  “You don’t know? Turn the television on.”

  “I don’t have such a thing. What, something’s happening?”

  “The whole of Germany is going crazy. The East German government declared the removal of the Berlin Wall and free travel between the two sides. It is the beginning of Germany’s reunification. The wall will be useless from now on!”

  “Is this true?”

  “Yes, it is! Go out and witness everything for me. I plan to be there tomorrow.”

  We ended the phone call after exchanging our addresses and phone numbers. Finally, I heard noise from outside. I tried to look out, but my studio faced the courtyard and I could not see the street from there. Then the doorbell rang. It was Mari.

  “Yuni! I was just watching TV and they said the wall is coming down! Everyone is going toward the East!”

  “I just heard. We should go to Brandenburg or Potsdam, Mari.”

  “I was just about to.”

  The phone rang again, this time it was Mr. Yi’s voice. “Yoon Hee, did you hear the news?”

  “Just now.”

  “What an enormous change it will be! I’m almost there. We should be able to get into the city in about an hour. Why don’t we meet at that café in front of the train station?”

  “Let’s do that. I was just about to leave.”

  As I hung up the phone and got ready to leave, Mari asked me, hesitating, “Look . . . do you have money?”

  “For what?”

  “Let’s get a bottle of champagne.”

  “Champagne?”

  “Yes. This will probably be the last party for me.”

  I put on a trench coat and walked out the door with Mari, who was wearing a thick winter coat and even a hat. At a convenience store we bought a bottle of champagne, and as we crossed the square we saw people honking their car horns and young people shouting and blaring party blowers. As we got closer to the city center, the crowd got bigger, so big that the large boulevard was packed with people singing, laughing, hugging, and screaming. It seemed like every Berliner was out on the street. They were all walking in one direction, toward East Berlin.

  I looked for a taxicab. I took them once in a while if I was coming back from the KaDeWe department store or when the weather was bad. Across the square was a public telephone booth, and right next to it was a taxi stand, where normally two or three cars were standing by until late at night. I squeezed Mari’s arm as we walked toward the taxi stand, saying, “Let’s get a taxi.”

  In Berlin, you cannot simply raise your hand and grab a taxi on the street. Each block has a stand, and you have to wait there until an empty one arrives. We were not waiting for too long, but I must have seemed anxious during that moment I could not find one. I could not stand still, I felt so restless.

  “It’ll be here soon, Yuni. Why are you in such a hurry?”

  “What if it is over before we get there?”

  Mari laughed.

  “Over? This is only the beginning. I can feel it. When we lost the war and the Americans and Russians were coming, it was very different from this. I was hiding underground behind a crumbling wall with my mother and sister.”

  “Did Berliners know this was going to happen?”

  “Last summer, many East Berliners asked for asylum in the West, and some went to West Germany via Hungary. This fall, there was a demonstration for free travel in Leipzig, and one million gathered in East Berlin—that was just last week. But a few million held an antinuclear rally in Bonn, and there are demonstrations all the time in West Berlin, but nothing happens, you know.”

  “Yes, I remember reading about that demonstration in East Berlin.”

  A taxicab arrived, and when we asked the driver to take us to the Berlin Wall, he replied, “It’s all jammed around Brandenburg. There are too many cars and people. I’ll take you if you can get off at the Philharmonic Hall.”

  We agreed. As we drove past Tiergarten, we had to slow down, and sometimes stop, as there were too many cars going in the same direction. Somehow we made it to the Philharmonic Hall, and we got out of the car and walked among the crowd. It was softly drizzling like on a spring evening. We were headed toward the Reichstag, but every street was completely filled with people. As we approached the wall itself, we saw that a part of it had already been penetrated, and cars and people from East Berlin were coming through while the West Berliners were greeting them, clapping and screaming. The young and impatient ones were hammering and chipping away at the wall, and some of them had climbed on top of it. There was a young couple who walked through the wall and hugged each other, and a man slowly driving through, his young family in the car waving their hands out the open windows. The border guards wearing uniforms and leather boots and armed with guns, and the officers in long coats, watched in silence. People were singing in chorus, here and there. Mari had managed to open the bottle of champagne and took a few sips directly from it, then offered it to me. I took it and drank from the bottle, too. People who came out of the wall and people who stood on the street hugged and greeted each other endlessly. Something violent was bursting inside of me, and I just started to cry. My hair was already wet from the drizzle and so was my face, but my tears felt hot.

  “Why are you crying?” Mari asked me.

  I turned around and saw her crying, too. “I was thinking of my country. Why are you crying?”

  “Can’t feel anything . . .”

  “What do you mean? Give me that bottle.”

  I took the bottle again, and this time I drank quite a lot from it. The tip of my tongue was fizzed, and there was a sweet aftertaste. Mari took the bottle back and took a big gulp. She wiped her mouth.

  “Those people don’t know that this party will be over in a little bit. But it is always wonderful to see a barrier falling away.”

  Other people were also drinking wine or champagne, pouring
it for others or splashing it on the wall, shouting and singing. Looking around, I realized that I was surrounded by white faces, that I was the only Asian. When everyone else is so happy, you cry because of your own sorrow. We stood there for about an hour, and people continued to come through the wall.

  “Look over there,” Mari said as she tugged at my sleeve. Across the street, young men with shaved heads and men in leather outfits were lined up, raising their hands at an angle, in that motion familiar from movies, as they greeted people. It was the Nazi salute, borrowed from the old Roman army, and they were singing something that sounded like a marching song. People jeered at them from one side but they kept singing louder and louder.

  “Let’s just get out of here, please.” Mari pulled my arm, as if she were begging me. We crossed the square, almost carried by the crowd. From different corners of the streets, firecrackers and fireworks, usually kept for New Year’s Eve, were going off.

  “The East was not an exemplary society, but it was still the mirror to the West. Now, no one has to be cautious anymore. They’ll do whatever they want to do.”

  “Did you like Socialism?”

  “The Stasi were bad, but there were some great works of art produced over there.”

  “Stasi?”

  “The secret police. But what does that matter to me, especially now.”

  This time, Mari took out her handkerchief to blow her nose and wipe her eyes.

  “It’s all people can do.”

  “Let’s go, I’m supposed to meet Mr. Yi.”

  We walked along Bismarckstraße for a long time before we could find a taxi, which we took to the Europa Center on Budapest Straße. Across the street from it was the café I had been to several times with Mr. Yi. I cannot remember the name of it, but it was right on the street, a good place to watch people on a nice day when the tables were out. But it was the middle of the night and raining, so everyone was crowded inside. I had never seen the café so full. Almost everyone was drinking beer or wine, talking loudly and cheering. I looked around and saw Mr. Yi Hee Soo and Martin already there, at a table near a window where it was less crowded. He raised his hand and asked as soon as we sat down, “Where are you coming from?”

  “We were near Brandenburg.”

  “We drove around Checkpoint Charlie and Brandenburg. So, what do you think?”

  I thought for a little while before speaking. “Well, I don’t know yet. It was just strange, and then I just wept.”

  “Utopia does not exist. See what will happen now. One side of the scale is gone, so it is off-balance. It’ll take some time, but things will have to change.”

  Mr. Yi turned to Martin. “Yuni says she cried. How about you?”

  “I was shocked. History seems like child’s play. Until yesterday, no one had any idea that the wall would come down like that, like a sand castle.”

  We drank draft beer until three o’clock in the morning. Mari ordered schnapps separately and sipped it quietly, without saying anything. We left Martin and went back to my studio, supporting Mari. After taking her to her house, just the two of us, we sat on the reclining chair, leaning onto each other.

  “If one valley is blooming with flowers, the other valley’s snow may start melting, too. ”

  “I don’t think that’ll happen,” I said adamantly. “I think things are going to get tougher. This is not the solution. At least they had the correct beginning, didn’t they?”

  “After how things ended here, it’ll take too much effort to just hold onto things as they are and there will be change. And Mr. Oh will be released, too.”

  “Ah, let’s not talk about him.”

  I must have been really irritated because my voice was rising. Even though I had drunk quite a bit I was sobering up, yet I wanted to act as if I was still drunk.

  “I’m not having a fling here, Mr. Yi Hee Soo. What is your plan for the future?”

  “Who knows? I am thinking about it. I don’t want to go back to the university, so maybe I should open my own school, a small one, somewhere remote. Live with my son and my mother. And with Miss Han, too.”

  “What makes you to think I’d do that? I may end up staying here.”

  “Go to bed. I’ll rest a bit and leave when the sun comes up.”

  I pulled on his shirt collar. “No, you have to tuck me in.”

  As I dragged him up the ladder, staggering, I missed a rung and almost fell down, but he caught me from behind and firmly pushed me up. He took off my shoes and coat and sweater, and lay down next to me.

  I slept with him many times. I remember his voice, his coarse chin where he had shaved, and his rough skin. His sensibility and stability were immensely comforting. And he was affectionate. I kept some memories of the feverish passion, but isn’t it pleasant to be in the shade of a tree on top of a hill on a sunny day?

  He was like a shadow that quietly took a step back when we said goodbye, never leaving me soaked with blood of grief and sorrow. I wanted to be a woman generously turned to look in the same direction, just like that woman in my dad’s story of the persimmons. It would have been better if we had not had to separate, if we could have lived together for a long time.

  Song Young Tae arrived the next afternoon, after Mr. Yi had left. He called from the Zoo station and asked me to meet him there. I used to tell visitors from other cities to meet me at a restaurant in the station, because it was easier that way.

  I took the wrought-iron stairway that led into the station, and I saw him facing the waiting area. All I saw was the back of his head in the distance, but I knew it was him right away.

  “Mr. Song,” I called to him in a small voice. It did not feel right to call him Young Tae. Maybe I felt removed from the close relationship we once had. He turned his head around slowly and looked up at me.

  “Oh, I didn’t know you’d be coming from that direction.”

  I sat down across from him. We sat there for a while and stared, as if verifying each other’s existence. Young Tae looked very different. Maybe he had bought it here in Germany, but he was wearing a long brown leather coat, and his glasses were not the big, horn-rimmed pair I was used to seeing, but small, round ones with gold frames. That’s right, he was the son of a wealthy man, wasn’t he? And now I supposed he had been released from the burdensome affiliation with his comrades. On a table he had placed a map of Berlin and a camera, but I did not see any luggage.

  “Did you take the train?”

  “No, I drove on the autobahn. I thought it would be the easiest way to find this place.”

  “So you bought a car?”

  “Yeah, I needed to get around, so I got a used one.”

  “Have you been admitted to a school?”

  “Not yet, I’m just learning the language now.”

  “Did you eat lunch?”

  “I ate something at a rest stop. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait, I need to catch my breath a bit.”

  His car was parked at a parking lot in front of the Zoo station, a nice deep hunter green-colored sedan.

  “Well, well, well, look at that, a BMW. What a special treat.”

  “It looks nice on the outside, but it had to be serviced twice already.”

  Song Young Tae and I sat next to each other in the front.

  “Still, it was flying on the autobahn,” he said, starting the engine. “It just keeps on going faster and faster. You know the way around here, don’t you?”

  “I usually get around underground, so I just know the main roads.”

  “What would be the nearest . . . Okay, let’s go to the Brandenburg Gate.”

  As we drove from the Zoo station to Ku’damm and Budapest Straße, we saw every street and square crowded with people from East Berlin, West Berlin residents, and onlookers from other cities.

  Whenever we see North Koreans on television or in a foreign city’s airport, we can tell where they are from simply by looking at the way they are dressed or the way they carry thems
elves, and it was the same with East Germans. They just seemed awkward and ungainly, like people from a remote village coming to the city for the first time. It had not been a day yet, and all they did was wander around the busier sections of the city. West Berliners welcomed them with a smile as they experienced the new atmosphere. Within a month, however, the West Berliners would regard them with disdain and consider them bothersome, while the East Berliners would turn their attention toward foreigners, whom they thought would be easier targets.

  The East Berlin guards were still standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate, but people were taking pictures in front of the wall and climbing it. East Berliners were relatively free to visit the West if they used one of the several checkpoints and U-Bahn stations, but those who wished to visit East Berlin still had to go through the clearance at Friedrichstraße, and those with cars had to register at Checkpoint Charlie, guarded by West German and American soldiers. All these walls would later be dismantled by citizens and the government.

  We went to a little park next to the Brandenburg Gate, a tourist attraction complete with observatory platforms. No one was standing there on the platforms. The coin-operated telescopes had already become useless. Near the platform was a barbed-wire fence hung with white crosses, names and dates written in the center of each.

  “What are those?” Song Young Tae asked.

  “People who were killed while trying to climb the wall.”

  “Propaganda? Like in those underground tunnels at the DMZ.”

  “I think . . . this is a little different.”

  “What is so different about it? I can hear the same yelling and screaming to condemn the enemies of freedom.”

  “Whether it’s a human being or an animal, if it is alive, it should have freedom to move to a place that is better suited for it.”

  “Freedom is not an abstraction! Once you have some needs, you are trapped. Where can you find freedom without money? Freedom should be something above that, shared by all the members of a society, but they have degraded it.”

  “This side was not a paradise, but neither was the other side. Now we will see that clearly with our own two eyes.”