[sample translations]bum shin park, the outdoor lamp eng by LTI Korea Library

Sample Translations

Bum-shin Park The Outdoor Lamp E ng l i s h

Book Information

The Outdoor Lamp (외등) Jaeum&Moeum Publishing Co./ 2011 / 33 p. / ISBN 9788957075463| For further information, please visit: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/772

This sample translation was produced with support from LTI Korea. Please contact the LTI Korea Library for further information. library@klti.or.kr

The Outdoor Lamp Written by Bum-shin Park

The Morning of the Dead

The call came early in the morning. “Are you acquainted with someone by the name Seo Yeong-woo?” asked the cracked, irritated voice on the other end of the line. It was from a police station somewhere outside Seoul. “Yes, what is this about?” “You’ll have to come out here and identify him.” “Is he… dead?” I asked after a long pause. The call had already been disconnected. Perhaps I’d seen it coming. I didn’t feel sad. I opened the curtains first. In the hours before daybreak, snowflakes floated down in the dark outside the frosted window. It’d been snowing since before I fell asleep. I put the kettle on. It would be cold out, and the road would be very slippery in the snow. My head ached and my mouth felt dry as if I’d been tossing and turning all night, and I wanted to get myself a cup of coffee first. No doubt it would snow a lot this year. I ripped a page off of the daily calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. It was December 2, 1996 already. Winter was just beginning, and this was already the second snowstorm. Waiting for the water to boil, I crossed my arms and looked out over the snow-covered city in the distance through the kitchen window. People, I suddenly heard his dry voice. ... always cut off my string.

This is what he’d said the last time I saw him. He was squatting by a frozen riverbank flying a kite that day. Just as I’d walked up behind him, the string snapped. The kite flinched once and then plummeted into the mist on the other side of the river. To hear his voice more clearly, I paused in the middle of pouring hot water in my coffee cup. I did not hear anything else, but instead saw the remnants of the white kite disappearing into the mist. The coffee was delicious. I slowly sipped my coffee, standing by the window and looking at the typewriter still turned on and crumpled pieces of paper on the desk. I felt the cells all over my body shake off the scales of sleep and wake up instantly. People always cut off my string, came the voice again, more clearly than before. It sounded so clear I almost believed I could open my window and find him standing outside. I subconsciously reached for the window latch, but then stopped myself. It was actually from a line in a poem by Rilke. At the blink of an eye, wrote Rilke years ago. At the blink of an eye, people always cut off my string. The sentence resonated much better when recited, rather than as a line in Rilke’s poem. How many kites had Yeong-woo made? Some kites were faulty and fell to the ground to rot, but many of his kites were still aloft in my memory. He’d been an expert kite maker since high school. He spent all of his free time soaking and drying hanji paper to toughen them up, and carving branches to make the bamboo spreaders. Spreaders were pasted on a piece of hanji with a circular hole cut out in the middle and then bridles and bow lines were tied, leaving just the last step: painting the tip. Painted blue, the kite was called Blue-tip Kite, painted red, Red-tip Kite, gold, Gold-tip Kite, and two colors, Double-tip Kite. The names also differed depending on the color of the apron below the circular hole, such as Black Apron Kite and Pink Apron Kite. At last, my eyes were wet, as if the steam from my coffee had clung to my eyelashes.

I put on my coat, scarf, and even a cotton mask, and left the one-room studio that doubled as my workspace. I glanced back inside as I closed the door and saw the empty coffee cup sitting alone on the windowsill.

In the police station that seemed deserted, the newscaster on the radio was chattering away to himself. He said it snowed over ten millimeters the previous night. A man in a padded jacket who’d fallen asleep at his desk woke up and rubbed his eyes. “You got here fast. The roads must have been a mess.” The man in the padded jacket drew up a chair close to the stove for me. “I would like to see him,” I said without sitting down. A kettle was boiling on the stove without a chimney. There was a pair of work gloves and a wet hat drying on the steel guard around the stove. I avoided eye contact with the man in the padded jacket and kept my eyes on the hat. “What is your relationship with the man?” “Where is he?” “Not here. He’s at the scene. Did you bring your car?” He put on his hat and beat his work gloves against the arm of the chair many times— whack, whack, whack. He knew I’d brought my car but asked anyway to stall. If I hadn’t hurried him along, he would have wasted over an hour on meaningless chatter. “Fine, let’s go.” He slowly got out of his seat. I had a good idea of where he was taking me. A little down the opposite direction from the city was a mountain path curving to the right that led to his country hut where he’d most recently lived. But the man in the padded jacket pointed his chin in the other direction. “Take the main road to S City.”

I suddenly remembered the hospital located on the outskirts of S. It was run by the cultural endowment of the conglomerate Daeseong Group. I know where he is. He’s got to be there. I was cross with myself that I couldn’t put two and two together and figure it out based on the fact that the police station was in N township, which surrounds S. In fact, there was nothing besides a small mountain between the hospital and his country hut. It only takes half an hour, I recalled him excitedly saying. Just thirty minutes of navigating through the woods without trails, and he could get to a hillside where he could look into the seventh floor of the hospital building without being seen. I’m telling you, all it takes is thirty minutes to see Hyeju! He had endured over ten years of wretched solitude to see this woman called Min Hyeju. The woman was locked up in a room on the seventh floor of the hospital. He got to the hillside every day at daybreak and left when the sun went down. It was a dramatic and sad reunion that went unnoticed for some time. Hyeju saw me today. Really! Excited, he’d shouted into the receiver. According to him, she had signaled at him by shaking the curtains of her hospital room window. The usual spot where he sat all day was under an oak tree by an unpaved road that wrapped around the hill. The slope suddenly became a cliff further down the hill, and beyond that was hospital property marked by a fence with layers of barbed wire. He could not see into the seventh floor if he got closer to the hospital building anyway. Hiding under the shade of the oak tree, it was only a few dozen meters’ direct distance between him and her room on the seventh floor. We even talk sometimes. Conversations, he confessed, his eyes wet with joy. There was no conversation in the world sadder than this. The distance was close enough that they could have heard each other by shouting, but that would have meant being caught in less than a day, especially since the woman’s caretaker and warden kept a close

watch. In the brief moments when the caretaker was gone and the woman was by herself, the two stood facing one another with a window between them and soundlessly called out to each other. She said not to worry about her, Hyeju did. He was probably making it up or hearing things. She also asked if I wasn’t cold, he added, elated. It wouldn’t have been possible to see the shape of her lips from that far. He must have interpreted it based on her moving lips. The desperate words he must have interpreted on his own based on the subtle movement of her lips. “Let’s try this mountain path here,” said the man as he lit his cigarette. To the left, I had a clear view of downtown S city below the hill and the hospital in question. I didn’t have to take directions from the man to know where I was going. Snow fell relentlessly. It was impossible to drive up an unpaved hill in this snow. Before long, the car began to slide backward until it finally stopped, and the engine stopped as well. - Why don’t you get yourself some snow chains? The man clicked his tongue at him. The snow came up to my shins except where the tires had padded them down. Unlike the man who treaded carefully along the tire marks, I stuck to the snow banks. The hospital was now in plain view. “The ambulance isn’t here yet, I guess.” “No! Not that hospital!” I cried in spite of myself. “You will never take him to that hospital. Call another hospital.” “Well… only his next of kin can request…” “I’m his next of kin. He’s my… older brother.” A larch branch at the mouth of the path broke off that very moment under the weight of the snow. The fluttering snow landed on my face, and I wiped my wet face with the palm of my hands.

“I’m his only sibling,” I said again, as if to drive the point home. I called him “older brother,” but I never felt he was a brother to me. “We’re here. Hey, Officer Park!” The man shouted up the road. Around the corner, a young officer in uniform and a volunteer sheriff were warming themselves by the fire they built. They got up and saluted the man. A few meters off the path, I saw something covered in opaque plastic tarp in the oak forest. “Watch your step.” The moment he spoke, one foot reaching for lower ground slipped. I slid down the hill on my back. “We left the body the way we found it.” The young police officer lifted the cover. He was hunched over with his back against a rather large oak. It seemed as if someone dusted the snow off his face and shoulders, as the rest of his body was still buried under the snow. The first thing that caught my eye was the white hat I knitted for him years ago for Christmas. His eyes were closed, and the hat was pulled down over his eyebrows. “Is this your brother?” “…Yes.” As was his habit when he was alive, his head was tilted slightly to the right with both hands stuff in his coat pockets. If it wasn’t for his frozen, blue complexion, I would have thought he’d fallen asleep while stopping to tie his shoes after a long hike over many nights and days. “Look up there,” said the man as he pointed up at the branches. There was a flashlight with a long handle hanging upside-down from a branch. The battery must have almost completely died out, as the filament was glowing faintly in the morning light. If it had been completely dark, the flashlight would have lit him from directly above his head, as

though he were sitting under a lamp. “That’s how we found him,” said the elderly volunteer sheriff. A hunter driving by in his jeep before dawn had thought it strange and stopped to check it out. “I think he didn’t see the dead man sitting under the light because the snow came all the way over his head,” the elderly volunteer sheriff added. “If it hadn’t been for the hunter, no one would have found him by these rugged roads at that time of night.” “He said he looked like a snowman sitting down.” I turned away. The imposing sight of the Daeseong Hospital building came into view. Heavy curtains were draped over every window on the seventh floor he must have gazed at with longing by himself until the moment his ties to this world were severed. I had a clear vision in my head of him sitting in the snow, legs crossed in meditative pose, with the light shining straight down on him. Like a small white magnolia tree lit under the lamp. I wondered: Did anyone open the curtains for him last night as he sat under the flashlight, the halo like a crown of flowers on his head? “It looked like he had a limp. Was there any reason why he would have wanted to commit suicide?” asked the man in the padded jacket. “I don’t think this was suicide. Looks like he froze to death,” the young police officer answered instead as the man in the padded jacket struck a match to light another cigarette. Please, take your hands out of your pockets, I pleaded soundlessly to the dead Yeong-woo. He’d long since had a habit of keeping his hands in his pockets even in the unbearable summer heat. The limping came later. I feel unsafe when my hands are exposed… the dead Yeong-woo answered. The young police officer was scraping snow off the rest of Yeong-woo. “Look,” he said. Yeong-woo was sitting on top of a rather thick foam mat. “He was sitting on a sitting mat.” “So?”

“I don’t think a man who wanted to kill himself would have brought along a sitting mat. Judging by the color of his face, he probably did not take poison. Sleeping pills would have made his face swell, but it’s not swollen.” “What about the flashlight?” “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted someone to see him.” The two men looked at me for answers. When I was working at a magazine, I’d seen a few corpses, usually suicides or murders. Unless the person had died of natural causes, the bodies were generally in a horrific state. I had once seen the body of someone who’d hung himself and one who’d died of a drug overdose. Rigor mortis and petechial hemorrhages made the corpses difficult to look at, not to mention the contents of their bowels and bladders that had spilled out. “I don’t know why he hung the flashlight there,” said the young police officer when I offered no explanation. “Anyway, I’m fairly certain he only froze to death.” It was a relief that his dead face did not bear signs of pain. Like the coffee cup I’d left on my windowsill, his face was white and clean. “When are they coming down from the district office?” “I don’t know. District office and the hospital are all the same slowpokes. They both gotta get a move on.” I turned around and started heading up the slope back to the road. “By the way, that woman is adamant about not taking the body to Daeseong Hospital…” The man’s voice was hushed and barely audible. Wind swept down from the top of the hill and the snow that was knocked off the oak branches made plopping sounds as it hit the ground. I walked toward the car. The body would go through an autopsy. Imagining him

being pulled apart like a boiled crab, a man who was scared to even receive a shot, I felt a lump in my throat. “What was he, anyway?” “He was a painter,” I only answered the last question he asked. “He was a painter who wasn’t even fifty yet,” I said to myself. My vision clouded, and I could no longer see the forest.

It was noon. I watched him was he burned. I will never forget this image for a long time. The temperature was below zero, but it was a very clear day. I discovered for the first time at the crematorium that it is possible to watch the body burn through a window in the furnace the size of a hand. “It’s better not to look,” said the painter Go Sang-min. Go Sang-min, a friend of Yeong-woo’s, Professor Kim Tae-hun, and a journalist named Im Su-bin who once worked at a magazine with me were present. At first, I had no desire to see him. I had my back turned to the cremation room and was looking outside. I saw a few ginkgo trees standing uncompromisingly straight in the snow. “Yes,” I thought. His body may turn to ashes, but his boundless affection and sorrow would never be reduced to ashes. I turned around. Go Sang-min was blocking the window with his broad shoulders. “Please move aside,” I said. “Please, I have to look.” “It’s all over now,” he replied. In the end, he stepped aside reluctantly. The embers had begun to fade. In the long furnace shaped like a casket, dying flames licked at one another, as transparent as sunlight. I saw his white thigh and pelvic bones, and his ribs lying in pieces. His skull had turned away. They lay scattered, each separate from one

another like the objet in the paintings he did when he was alive. Like shards of porcelain carelessly tossed in glorious flames. “Are you okay?” Im Subin hugged my shoulders. He led me outside to a bench where we sat down. A ginkgo tree stood by the bench. I embraced the tree trunk with one arm. “Please take care of yourself,” said Subin as he lit a cigarette for me. It had been four days since his death. I was against an autopsy. There wasn’t a single scratch on his body and none of the usual signs of substance abuse. The doctor agreed that she could confidently confirm that the cause of death was from freezing just by performing a simple examination. “Why do you think he went there?” One detective brought up the question, but once the cause of death was confirmed, no detective took an active interest in solving the puzzle. In the end, he was just written up as a dead hiker. I was the only one exhausted by the end of it. The detectives were buried under so many cases that by the time the few routine pieces of paperwork had gone through for his death certificate, he’d already been forgotten. They signed off on the burial permit during lunch hour, interrupting their meal of overcooked takeout Chinese noodles. “You haven’t really been eating. For four days now,” said Subin as he handed me a can of coffee. Sunlight inundated the streets. That’s not right, said Yeong-woo, now reduced to ashes sitting in a white box. Sunlight does not flow over. It just flows. He had explained that when he sat on the porch in the country hut in N village where he had spent the last few months of his life, he could feel the sunlight soaking his coarse hair and trickling down his neck. On the far end of his front yard stood a foxglove tree and an oak as though they were lined up in pairs, and beyond that was a brook, a mountain, a forest. The sunlight flowed with the wind in the forest and along the current in the brook.

“Take me to N village, Subin. The house where Yeong-woo lived,” I finally said. I thought it best to send him away in the sunlight and the wind, his only companions toward the end of his short life on earth. The car ran along the side of Bukhansan Mountain. Far in the distance, the three peaks of the Samgaksan Mountain were surrounded by light like a dream. I rested my forehead against the window facing south and closed my eyes. Subin, who had always been taciturn, quietly drove on. Tired as though I’d traveled far on foot, I felt drowsy. I fell asleep. I felt the car moving, but felt like a fetus in amniotic fluid during my sleep. A white porcelain teacup sitting on the window sill floated up in the air and flowed along the rays of sunlight. The sunlight caressed the skin of the cup. Mother, I said to myself. The teacup stretched in all directions in the air and turned into a kite. Mother, look at the ribbon you tied in my hair. I watched, half asleep, half awake, as he appeared before me: me at age ten, with ribbons in my hair. Your ribbons, they’re so pretty, he said. I was around ten so he must have been around sixteen. “The gentleman who will be your stepfather has two sons,” Mother explained as she held me to sleep for the last time. “The older son is very sick. And there’s a younger son, but he’s several years older than you. They’re your stepbrothers.” Mother hugged my shoulders so hard it hurt, and said the same thing over and over again. I had already met my stepfather so I wasn’t curious about him at all. “What’s my younger stepbrother called?” “Yeong-woo. Seo Yeong-woo.” I didn’t understand why Mother kept crying as she told me that we would be living in a bigger, nicer house with Stepfather from the next day on. Her warm tears kept falling on my cheek as she cradled me in her arms. “I got something in my eye.” I of course knew she was lying. Seo Yeong-woo, I said

to myself. “This is your little sister. Take good care of her, okay?” Stepfather said. It was early summer and a spindle tree, a maple, and a magnolia tree stood in the small yard. When my mother led into the yard of the hanok house in Gahoe-dong, I met a boy with his head shaved, the boy whose named I’d murmured to myself the night before. Mother followed Stepfather into the hall, leaving just the two of us in the yard. “Your ribbons, they’re so pretty,” he broke the silence with a shy grin, after staring at me for a long time. He was referring to the rose-colored ribbons Mother had tied in my hair. Calling him oppa—older brother—did not come easily. In spite of the age difference, the short boy with a shaved head made him seem to me like someone my age who would not be above skipping rope with me. “What’s your name?” “Jae-hee. Yi Jae-hee,” My voice was clearer than his. He seemed surprised by my voice and retreated under the shade of a magnolia tree that stood in a far corner of the yard. The tall magnolia tree cast a thick shade. I was not afraid of him at all. I followed him under the shade of the magnolia thinking, Some older brother. “You-you aren’t,” he stammered. “… Yi Jae-hee anymore. You’re Seo Jae-hee.” “No, I’m Yi Jae-hee.” “Your muh-mother muh-married my father. So you’re Seo Jae-hee from now on.” “No! I don’t want to be Seo Jae-hee!” I don’t know what was so sad about it, but my throat seized with sorrow and I started to wail. Stepfather came running out and slapped Yeong-woo once across the face. “I told you to take good care of her and you’ve made her cry the second I turn my back!” Stepfather’s voice was very hoarse as though there was wind howling in his throat. His illness had already taken hold of him at the time.

Tears welled up in my eyes. I was scattering his ashes at the lonely house at the foot of the mountain past the N village town hall up the deserted, tortuous path. Subin was silently burning all of Yeongwoo’s possessions in the yard, and I was scattering his ashes little by little in the woods in the mountain behind his house, under the oak in the front yard, and the brook that ran past the house. The magpies returned to the oak and cawed. Your ribbons, they’re so pretty. Your ribbons, they’re so pretty, the magpies seemed to say. When the last of his ashes had been scattered, I waved my arm a few times at the oak to shoo the birds away. “I saved one kite,” said Subin. The smell of Yeong-woo’s shirts in flames filled the yard. All that was left were a floor table, a small dresser, and a kite. “Burn this, too,” I pointed at the dresser. I could not see the flames in the sunlight. The sun was moving toward the western horizon, casting its light deep across the porch. I drew my legs together and rested my chin on my knees as I gazed blankly at the things that smoked as they burned. I made no sound but could not stop the tears from falling. He was still standing under that magnolia tree. I looked at Subin as though I was looking at Yeong-woo. Subin was a zealous stoker. He tossed the drawers one by one into the fire and then neatly took the frame apart and tossed that in the fire as well. Subin’s eyes were also wet with tears. “It’s the smoke,” said Subin shyly. I went into the hut. The ceiling and walls of the rooms were all papered with hanji. A floor table sat abandoned in the middle of the empty room. It had two little drawers built into

it after the Joseon Dynasty style. This was my mother’s, he’d once told me. The memories of his mother that stayed with him were her hair parted down the middle and combed neatly with camellia oil, the way she wore her hanbok with grace, her soft-spoken ways, and her warm, soundless smile-like reflections in the water. His mother had died when he was ten, and his love for her endured for the rest of his life. I opened one of the drawers. There was a notebook with a black cover. He was a man who could’ve been more successful as a writer than a painter. He had a notebook for his poems up until high school, but he burned it one day under the magnolia tree at the Gahoedong house. He said that there was nothing left to write poems about because the world was all screwed up. He would not write again until after he was reunited with Min Hye-ju. It was one autumn that I first came across the line, People always try to cut off my string, a line from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem when I snuck a peek at this notebook. I put the notebook in my bag. The writing desk, a kite, a notebook, and a few now-posthumous work gathering dust in his studio in Bangbae-dong were all that remained now. “What about that?” Subin pointed at the writing desk. “Leave it.” I wanted to tie up a few loose ends on the projects I was working on and then sequester myself here at least until the spring. Subin’s eyes grew wide, as though it wasn’t an answer he’d expected. “Do you mean you’re going to stay here?” “Yeah, I want to write.” It was three years ago that I quit the magazine where I’d worked for over ten years. People called me a freelance writer now. The commissions from magazines provided me with enough to make ends meet. If I were more ambitious, I could have even saved up a good amount. But the short pieces I wrote per order of the magazine editors did nothing to being

me solace. Lately, I’d been desperately longing to write things that would bring me peace. “Subin, I’m sorry.” After a long while, I rested my head on his shoulder. A rush of wind blew past the mountain bamboos that knocked against each other. I realized it had been seven—maybe ten?—years since I first met Subin. With every passing year we spent together, I grew undeniably more guilty when I thought of him. He was now an old bachelor, quite past his prime. He still dreamed of a life with a woman he would love, kissing her goodbye as he left for work in the morning, chatting with her over a simple dinner of bean paste soup she would prepare, and having a baby who would take after both of them to comfort, feed, bathe, and raise together. Let’s get married. When was the first time he’d brought that up? It seemed like five year ago or ten years ago. He was the closest observer of my unquenchable longing for a man I called my brother, but still could not give up the dream of my one day giving him a child who looked like him and raising it together. I was all too familiar with his pain and self-dissociation, even the jealousy he was trying to swallow now that I had expressed my wishes to come stay here. The magpies landed on the oak again. Subin silently put his hand on my head. He stroked my hair as if to say, It’s okay. Like Yeong-woo’s had been, Subin’s fingers were also exceptionally thin and long. Subin ran his fingers through my hair as he said, “Sometimes, I want to slap you silly.” His words triggered my tear ducts. Mist rising from the brook obscured the orange sunlight on the snow-capped mountain across the way. A hot lump in my throat rushed through my nose and reached my eyes. I threw myself into his arms. I want to slap you silly. I wanted to tell him to hit me, that I would feel much better after a good beating, but I could not say the words. I cried, letting go

of everything I’d been holding back.

Under the Magnolia Shade February of that year, film director Yi Man-hee was arrested for violation of the AntiCommunist Law of the National Security Act. The Anti-Communist Law was the supreme law of the land. It was already spring by the time the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and Korea was released; demonstrators who protested the “Degrading Korea-Japan Treaty” wound up taking over a police station in April; and a garrison decree was declared soon thereafter. But the fire of the anti-dictatorship movement continued to spread underground. May brought the Anti-Coup d’Etat Military Officer Conspiracy Incident, and rice prices skyrocketed in June, a dispatch of Korean troops to Vietnam was decided and the Han River overflowed in July; the demonstrations spread and the second garrison decree was declared in August. Nam Jeong-hyeon, author of Basin, was arrested for violation of AntiCommunist Law in early July that year. At a time when the indoctrination of the masses suddenly gained unprecedented priority, the first wave of bloodbaths under the guise of antiCommunism swept the country. From spring through summer when life grew bleaker with each day and the entire world seemed to be swallowed in flames at the same time, I lived in Gahoe-dong. The Gahoe-dong house, the magnolias.

The Gahoe-dong house was a hanok that could be described as an “open rectangular” structure. Inside the gate that opened up to a yard, there was a study to the left and a storage shed to the right. The L-shaped main chambers consisted of the master bedroom and a second bedroom connected to a second bedroom by the porch. The yard was lush with trees. It seemed natural rather than artificial, the way the

trees were placed around the yard. There was a foxglove tree standing by the eastern wall with shingles on top, as well as lilacs, a maple, a spindle tree, and a white magnolia and purple magnolia pair. The white magnolia that stood in the middle of the yard was so old and big that my fingers hardly touched when I wrapped my arms around its trunk. “You have to sleep in this room from now on,” said Mother as she unpacked my things. I did not want to sleep apart from my mother, but I had no choice. The small windowless room off of the kitchen facing north was my room. I heard it was Yeong-woo’s room before I moved in. The second bedroom in the main chambers belonged to Yeong-hyeon, the first son. I did not know what had happened, but Yeong-hyeon could not use his legs, suffered from a mental disorder, and had tuberculosis. He’d hide out in his room for days on end and then suddenly kick his door in a fit. I sometimes got a glimpse of the basin that Yeong-woo took out from the room to empty, and it was filled with maroon blood. “Never go into your brothers’ room,” Mother warned. Even without her warning, I did not even have the tiniest desire to visit that room, which remained dark day and night. Yeong-hyeon had mussed-up hair and a face as pale as a sheet, and whenever our eyes met, he glared at me with eyes burning with such animosity that it sent a chill down my back. Besides, the stench that wafted out of the room through the open door was so overwhelming I had to turn my head away. “Keep this in your room,” Yeong-woo said one day, probably a week after I went to live with them, a week since that first day when he got slapped because of me. Things had been awkward between us and we hadn’t spoken at all since that day. “What’s that?” I asked, grateful he was talking to me. “It’s a kite. The kind you fly.” Since I’d taken over the little room that used to be his, Yeong-woo was sharing the room with Yeong-hyeon. Yeong-hyeon must not have left the finished kites alone.

“Yeong-hyeon keeps destroying them,” he added. “Did you make it yourself, Oppa?” That was the first time I called him oppa naturally. He had a knack for making things. He could make lots of other things besides kites. He’d once made me a flute by drilling holes into a length of bamboo, and whittled a statue of a praying girl out of wood. He’d once made me a doll as well. “Come with me,” he took me to the top of Samcheong Park. He couldn’t take me to the Han River, where he usually went to fly his kites on Saturdays, so he took me a mountain in Bugak instead. It wasn’t windy, but the kite floated up in the air anyway. It was a white kite. “Take the string.” “What if it slips out of my hand?” “It’s okay. When you’re holding onto the string, it’s like talking to the kite. Here, go ahead.” He put the string in my small hand. I felt the tremor and pull of the kite through the string. There was no wind down where we stood, but there certainly was wind up where the kite was aloft. “What do you think?” “I think there’s wind way up there.” “See, I told you it’s like talking to the kite.” I didn’t know then what it meant to talk to kites. The string soon got tangled up in some tall oak branches and snapped. The loose kite sunk a little as though it was heaving a sigh and then flew further and further away in the direction of our house until it disappeared into the forest. “Oh no! What do we do?” I cried, helpless. “It’s okay,” he patted me on the back. “We’ll make another one. I can make lots more.” He was the reason I was able to adjust quickly to life at the Gahoe-dong house. He

was introverted and kept to himself, but he had a strong pull that made people’s attention linger on him. Even Yeong-hyeon, during his last days when his illness grew deeper and he often had seizures, seemed peaceful when Yeong-woo sat by him. “It’s okay,” he whispered to Yeong-hyeon as well. The hand that patted me on the back also stroked Yeong-hyeon’s convulsing shoulder. Then the convulsions would calm. Yeong-woo quietly go by himself to the water pump in the yard and clean up after Yeonghyeon when he’d coughed up blood. When he happened to see me peeking at him cleaning up, he would nod as if to say, It’s okay.

When spring came, the magnolia was the first to bloom. The first day I followed my mother to the Gahoe-dong house, the magnolia tree was laden with flower buds. The purple magnolia was smaller and must have been planted later, while the white magnolia tree in the middle of the yard reached above the roof. It was a handsome, stately tree. “We should get those branches trimmed,” Stepfather said one day. Yeong-woo looked sad to hear that the magnolia branches would be cut off. I did not know then that many memories of his mother were associated with that tree. I also did not know that his mother came from a family of Confucian scholars and that his maternal grandfather had participated in drafting the Constitution of Korea. Descended from the yangban class, she had been raised to practice the grace and generosity of a disappearing breed of Joseon nobility. She was especially fond of white magnolias and liked to sit under the magnolia shade and pour her heart into her embroidery. “What’s embroidering?” “You know the screen in your room against the kitchen-side wall? My mother embroidered the crane and pine tree.”

“My mother never makes things like that.” “I know,” he nodded. “Embroidery is not for everyone.” He’d hurt my pride and so I didn’t say anything. I had once heard rumors that my mother belonged to a “dining establishment” somewhere in Samcheong-dong. I’d never seen my father. He died when I was pregnant with you, my mother explained once. Mother met Stepfather when she was running a small restaurant at the entrance leading to Jahamun Gate where she served classic Korean courses. It was a small place and she only served Korean course menus, but the food was well-balanced and delicious and became a haunt for some big name politicians in those days. I don’t know if Stepfather should be called a politician, but before the revolution, he was a reformist figure who ran for parliament twice and never won. “Did you ever embroider?” I asked her. She shook her head. She said that machine-embroidered things were more beautiful than hand-embroidered ones. “Still, you should embroider a screen,” I nagged her for several days, but she only smiled at me. Around that time, I saw Yeong-woo’s mother in a dream. The moon was bright that night, and so it was in my dream. A middle-aged woman sat under the shade of the white magnolia tree. Her hair was combed neatly with camellia oil in her hair, her face was as white as the inside of a gourd and her neck was long. She had the opposite air of my mother who had a perm, wore Western clothes, and had a short neck. She was holding an embroidery frame. As she pushed her needle into the wing of a crane about to land on an old pine, magnolia petals landed on her head and shoulders. “Your mother was really pretty,” I told him. When the white and purple magnolias bloomed, the yard seemed to gain another dimension. There were forsythia and flowering quince as well, but they could not boast of

their colors next to the tall magnolia tree. When I went into the yard in the morning, the ground was covered with white petals that fell overnight. “The house is so dark because of the magnolia tree,” Mother said to Stepfather. He was planning on trimming the branches anyway. One morning, he came out into the yard with something wrapped in newspaper. It was a saw. “You climb the tree.” The order fell on Yeong-woo. Stepfather was not in good health and was stooped over because of his bad back. I found out years later that when he was being interrogated as a possible pro-communist during the Military Revolution, the interrogator kicked him to the ground and beat him with a stick. First, anti-communism is the supreme state policy, went the first line of the Military Revolution Pledge, which I knew by heart. First, anti-communism is the supreme state policy. We will reinstate and strengthen the anticommunist measures that have thus far been mere formalities and slogans… I once recited this without thinking much of it, and Stepfather trembled all over and slapped me like he was possessed. That was the first and last time he had ever hit me. When the so-called Military Revolution Committee accused 3,333 left-wing politicians of pro-communism for seven months up to the end of 1961 to gain the support of conservative powers in the US, Stepfather was one of its victims. Yeong-woo climbed the tree with the saw. Stepfather sat on the porch, Mother and I stood on the edge of the yard near the kitchen, and Yeong-hyeon sat in his room with the door open. The horrible stench from his room drifted out and mingled with the smell of magnolias. I pinched my nose and Mother pulled me out of sight, behind her. “Let’s start with that branch on the left,” Stepfather said, pointing at a branch. He hadn’t started sawing yet, but he was already sweating. “Here?” he asked, aiming the saw over his head. “No,” Stepfather shook his head. “The one just above where your foot is.” The

branch he was pointing at was more a trunk than a branch. The magnolia tree grew as tall as an adult and branched out into three great scaffold branches, and one of those extended over the porch. Stepfather was pointing at that very branch that was blocking the light right in the middle of the yard. Yeong-woo reluctantly aimed the saw blade lower. “No,” Stepfather said, irritated. “Lower. More, a little more.” Yeong-woo moved the saw down in very small increments, not wanting to cut the branch. By cutting that branch, the shade where his mother used to sit with her embroidery would disappear. “Good god, Son! The spot right by your foot!” Stepfather finally yelled. The sawing began. He sawed very slowly and laboriously. No one spoke. It was a very strange, unfamiliar silence. Stepfather was arrested in the early summer after the Revolution and then, perhaps fortunately, was not charged with the violation of the newly proclaimed Anti-Communist Law and was released the following year when the magnolias bloomed. Stepfather returned with his back hunched and dragging one leg behind him, and spent all day under the magnolia shade. Years later, Yeong-woo would always draw parallels between the story of his father and the day he sawed off the magnolia branch. He was released from prison but he wasn’t able to do anything else after that due to the so-called Political Activities Purification Law. Instead, his occupation was to sit under the magnolia shade every day like he mother did, except without the embroidery frame, until Park Chunghee became the president of the Third Republic in December 1963. “In other words,” Yeong-woo would say. “In other words, his back was sawn in half.” As Yeong-woo sawed through the branch that day, he must have felt he was sawing off the memories of his mother and the spine of his father sitting on the porch. He later said he wondered why his father had made a young boy like him cut the branch instead of asking a soldier in support of the Coup d’Etat to act out the metaphor.

“Step back,” mother whispered. I saw the magnolia branch tilt toward the ground top first. Almost all the flowers had gone, but a few remaining petals drifted down. Yeong-woo’s face was glistening with sweat or tears. “Ooh, ooooooooooh,” came a cry. It was Yeong-hyeon shouting. Unable to use his legs, he was screaming as he dragged himself out onto the porch with his arms. Like Yeongwoo’s, his face was also wet with sweat. It was at that moment that the branch suddenly snapped and fell to the ground and—in the blink of an eye—just as Yeong-hyeon simultaneously threw himself into the yard. No one could have stopped him or pulled him back. It was an accident. The far end of the branch struck a firm blow on Yeong-hyeon. Mother and I screamed. Yeong-hyeon never recovered from that day. The injury from the branch was not that great, but it seemed that the one in his heart was beyond repair. Yeong-woo came out of their room with the basin filled with blood more often than before, and his thick, wet coughs persisted through the night.

“This is your kite,” Yeong-woo said one day. Unlike his kites, this one was a Red-tip Kite with a navy apron. The sun was starting to dip in the west when he showed me the kite. “I want to fly it,” I said, but it was too late in the day to go down to the Han River. He nodded and suggested to we go Samcheong Park. There were too many trees at Samcheong Park, unsuitable for flying kites. It was easy to get the string snagged in a branch and lose the kite. “It’s okay. I’ll make you another one if the string snaps.” He patted me on the back as always. There were several paths that led to the park, but the easiest way was to go down toward Gyeongbokgung Palace and then take a sharp turn down to the main street. But for

some reason Yeong-woo always took the roundabout way through narrow alleys. “We’re going this way today,” I argued as I headed down the path to Gyeongbokgung Palace. We came to a small intersection toward the end of the hanok neighborhood. A seemingly new three-story building stood at the intersection. It was the largest building around and on the first floor was Migok Company. The building was built by Noh Sang-gyu’s grandfather, who worked for the Joseon Governor-General. Sometimes two large trucks full of rice and flour blocked the street to unload. People said they were the richest family in the area. They had a piano, a bike, and even a car. “They sell supplies to the military. The uncle at the house is a soldier,” he said. “What’s selling supplies?” I asked. “It’s using the uncle as a connection to sell their goods to the army. Rice and other dishes. You know the wigs that bald men wear? They say they have a wig factory somewhere in the country.” “I wish we were rich so we could get a bike.” “Don’t be silly.” He had barely gotten to the end of the sentences when someone came up behind us like the wind and snatched the kite out of my hand. A slick, new bike zipped ahead of us with a boy about Yeong-woo’s age riding it. “My kite! Give me back my kite!” I stamped my feet and shouted. The boy circled us with the kite swinging over his head. “Come and get it!” “Oppa, get him! Run after him!” I yelled, but Yeong-woo stood still. That was the first time I was markedly disappointed in him. The boy on the bike was the son of the Migok Company and he went to school with Yeong-woo. The reason he’d always taken the roundabout way to the park was because he didn’t want to go by Migok. It was the boy who gave in first. When Yeong-woo did not move a muscle, the boy

stopped his bike. He was holding the kite high above his head where I couldn’t reach. I was still waiting for Yeong-woo to tackle him to the ground. But he continued to stand still. “Who’s the little girl?” the boy jeered. Beads of sweat clung to Yeong-woo’s face as he stood silently. He seemed terrified. The sweat told me that Yeong-woo would never be able to fight him. “I hear your old man got himself a new wife?” “Give me back the kite. It’s my little sister’s,” Yeong-woo finally managed to say. The boy’s face was full of obvious disdain for us. “I hate weak bastards like you,” he sniggered. “You’re gonna let me talk to you like that? Go ahead and hit me.” He stuck out his chin. If I’d been tall enough to reach, I would have punched him on the chin myself. But Yeong-woo disappointed me to the end. “I’d prefer not to,” he said. “Moron,” the boy spat. “Bring me seven kites by Saturday. If you do, you can have the kite back.” “I will.” “Moron,” he said once more and handed the kite to me. The second I got my kite back, I slapped the boy on the side with the kite. The boy was fine but the kite tore in half. Tears filled my eyes. “The little girl’s got more guts than you.” I tossed the torn kite and turned around to head home. The hanok roofs looked blurry through my tears. “Fucking commie,” I heard the boy say under his breath. Yeong-woo picked up the kite and followed a few steps behind me. I knew that he was crying as I was, but I was so angry at him I ignored it. I did not know what a commie was or why he’d called him that. I was glad that Yeong-woo didn’t say that it was okay and that he could always make another one like he usually did. If he’d have said that, I would have charged at him and scratched him on the mouth.

Did he make seven kites for him? He probably did, even if it meant staying up all night. But I didn’t ask. I didn’t know then that there was a group of boys at his school, sons of influential or rich families, who bullied other kids and called themselves The Seven Princes. That boy was a member of that group. Later, I sometimes pictured the seven boys who misbehaved under the protection of their family backgrounds tearing the seven kites for fun. That boy’s name was Noh Sang-gyu. Noh. Sang. Gyu. I sometimes spoke the name to myself. The name evoked painful scars of humiliation and degradation. This continued when I started middle school. When I entered middle school, Yeong-woo was in his second year in high school with that boy. I sometimes saw the boy on my way to and from school, but he wasn’t especially mean to me like he was the first time. He was usually driven to school in a shiny car, with him sitting in the back seat, and once, the car had stopped by me one winter day. “Get in, I’ll give you a ride home,” he’d said, rolling down the window. Noh. Sang. Gyu, I thought to myself and walked on with my eyes front. The memory of the torn kite was too fresh for me to forgive him. The boy never spoke to me again after that day, and I was very relieved that he didn’t. But I couldn’t understand Yeong-woo’s attitude toward him. One day, as I was passing Migok on my way home from school after dark because I was in charge of classroom cleanup that day, I saw Yeong-woo come out of the store. He didn’t look like he was there to pick up some rice. He was in his uniform, carrying his school bag. “Sang-gyu invited me,” he said and turned red, caught off guard. I was even angrier at him than when the boy took my kite. “He said he was sorry about before. Honest,” he added, seeing that I was upset. I didn’t want Yeong-woo to make excuses for him. I wanted him to hold onto the humiliating scar of having the kite taken away, and then having to stay up all

night making seven more kites for him. But he let me down so completely. “I’m taking on an arbeit.” “What’s an arbeit?” “It’s working from time to time to make money.” “Doing what?” “Some stuff. But it’s a secret.” He reminded me several times not to tell anyone. Our family was going through extreme financial struggles at the time. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I discovered Yeong-woo had tutored the boy for spending money until he moved away. The night I found out about this, I sat alone and cried.

That summer, the monsoon was relentless. The monsoon began in June and persisted through the end of July. Rainstorms at night and sweltering days with low-hanging clouds continued. The humidity was eating away at various corners of our rundown tile-roofed house. Mold appeared behind the chests, on the edges of the embroidered screen, and even inside the closets. Wild grass laid root here and there on the sunken tiled-roof. We were just relieved the roof wasn’t leaking. But what was even harder to tolerate than the humidity was the rats. Rats squeaked in every nook, staring out with their sinister eyes. “The damn rats!” Mother cried disgustedly. She put out rat poison and laid traps. Rice turned blue when the rat poison was mixed in. I once fainted at the sight of a dead rat, the size of a small puppy, by the water pump. Each morning, Mother would retrieve several dead rats on the muggy side porch, the bleak pantry, and by the water pump. “We’ll see who has the last laugh.” Mother continued to put out rice mixed with rat poison and set traps. It seemed all of her hopes in life were hanging on her battle against the rats. Mother had especially been on edge because Father started leaving the house more frequently around that time. It seemed Father sometimes stayed out all night. Sometimes,

police officers in uniform or a man in a jacket would come to see him. They would ask us this or that about Father and then leave. On days when these men came and left, Mother’s determination to eradicate the rats flared up as she mixed rat poison into what seemed like an entire bowl of rice. “Who were those people, Oppa?” “The police. Some were from the intelligence agency.” “Did Father do something wrong?” “You heard them. They said they were just here to call in,” he said, unsure. Father had to be a very important person for the police to come pay their respects, but he seemed hopeless in many ways. He couldn’t even catch a rat. Once, when a rat came into the master bedroom, Mother screamed and jumped about while Father just stood there like a statue. Mother asked him if he was just standing there because he was afraid, and made fun of a grown man being afraid of rats. Yes, I’m afraid. I can’t kill it. It’s grisly, he said lackadaisically. After an incident where a rat fell through the roof and on my face one night, I was so scared I couldn’t fall asleep at night. It didn’t help that it rained every single night and thunder roared outside. One night, I was so scared I barged into the master bedroom. “If you’re that scared, knock on my door,” said Yeong-woo.

On nights when I knocked on his bedroom door, he would sneak out of his room and come over to mine. Once upon a time, he said as he held my hand. He would tell me stories until I fell asleep. Told through Yeong-woo’s quiet voice, even stories I already knew became more interesting. He told me about the Fairy and the Woodman, the story of Prince Maui who went into Geumgangsan Mountains never to be seen again, and about Princess Nangnang and Prince Hodong. The Princess Nangnang and Prince Hodong story was my favorite, and it always brought tears to my eyes. I was sure he would make a great writer some day. He also

told me a sad, cruel story about a poor rat that turned out to be made up. “The rats are afraid of you,” I said. “They get quiet when you’re here.” He laughed soundlessly. The rats must have had uncanny hearing, for they were very still whenever he was in my room. “Maybe the rats want to hear stories, too,” he said. “Don’t go. Even after I’ve fallen asleep,” I made him promise. More often than not, I fell asleep before the end of the story. In my sleep, I sometimes felt his hands on me. I used to talk to him about everything, but never about feeling his hands on me as I slept. I loved the way his fingers brushed my eyebrows. There is a light at the tip of your fingers, I would say to him in my imagination. In my sleep as deep as the ocean and sweet as honey, I always knew his soft hands were there. In my sleep, I saw the light glowing at his fingertips. His hands stroked my eyebrows, my cheeks, nose, chin, then neck, then moved up to my earlobes. I sometimes felt his fingers on my breasts, waist, and legs as well. It felt electrifying yet sweet. In the end, I found myself wishing the monsoon would go on and on, and that rats would make a racket in the roof every night. But when I opened my eyes in the morning, he was never by my side. I wondered when he went over to my room. I once willed myself to wake up before dawn, but he’d already returned to his room. So his visits at night turned into our secret, especially his fingers grazing my body. He had long, white fingers. I would secretly stare at his fingers and feel my heart stop. July came. The monsoon seemed it was about to retreat but clung to the sawed-off magnolia branch and stretched on. One day, when the sky that had been overcast for several days finally unloaded heavy showers, Father said something unexpected: “Yeong-hyeon should be sent to a home.” The door to Yeong-hyeon’s room was open and Father was sitting within earshot, so Yeong-hyeon heard everything. The idea of sending him to a home had

been brought up before, but this was the first time he had said it so conclusively. “Next Monday. People are coming to fetch him.” “Which one?” “It’s all settled. The facilities aren’t so bad,” Father said definitively. Yeong-hyeon’s tuberculosis had progressed beyond recovery and he had fits more frequently than he used to. But it didn’t seem he was being sent to a home to get better. “No, no,” Yeong-hyeon must have cried. I can’t remember if he did or not, but he did express strong objections to Father’s announcement. His face stricken with fear, he shook his head hard and trembled as though he was about to have a fit. Yeong-woo held Yeong-hyeon’s hand. “No, Father,” he said. “I will look after him. He’s good about taking his medicine these days, too.” That was the first time I saw Yeong-woo stand up to his father. “Leave him to me, Father,” he said. Father glared at him for a second. Yeong-woo looked back squarely in his eyes. I thought Yeong-woo would wilt under his father’s glare and look away, but it was Father who turned away first. “It’s settled.” Father’s voice was low and sad. Everyone present knew that Yeong-hyeon’s departure meant he would never be coming back. Rats squeaked under the porch. The rats grew bolder when it rained. “Damn those rats,” Mother muttered under her breath.

Mother brought home a new batch of rat poison that night. She wholeheartedly believed that the rats were the source of our plight. The glint in my mother eyes when she saw newborn rats that hadn’t even grown hair yet crawling out from under the porch. She shrieked and smacked the life out of them with a shoe. A chill ran down my back when I saw

the flattened rats with their stomachs burst and guts spilling out.

“You’re a person, not a rat,” Yeong-woo murmured as he cried. The day before Monday when people from the home were due to take Yeong-hyeon away, he was found dead from drinking rat poison. Yeong-hyeon was beyond help by the time we had all come out to the porch upon hearing a scream in the morning. I saw his blackened face and trembling body. “He… he took rat poison!” There was an empty bottle of rat poison rolling around by his door. The thunder and lightning was especially unceasing the night before, and so Yeongwoo had been in my room. I think he’d told me the story of the Little Match Girl. I felt his hand stroking my hair. He must have found Yeong-hyeon on his way back to his room. “If only I’d been there with him…” he regretted this for the rest of his life. Even if he had not been in my room, even if he had been asleep in Yeong-hyeon’s room, he would not have been able to have saved him. But he put the crushing burden of this guilt on himself, and in this guilt were his feelings about me. It seemed he thought he had abandoned Yeong-hyeon that night because he could not resist the urge to touch me. The monsoon finally retreated after Yeong-hyeon died, as if he was the offering it demanded to be appeased. The rats became less rowdy. Naturally, he stopped coming to my room at night. He never took me kite flying again, or patted me on the back, saying, It’s okay. His sudden change of attitude made me very lonely, and I felt guilty about Yeong-hyeon’s death as well.

Hye-ju moved into the room by the gate of the Gahoe-dong house when the hostile rays of the summer sun that year were starting to abate. Around that time TV when stations would often show footage of our soldiers being shipped off to faraway Vietnam, I saw two carts parked outside our gate on my way back from a stroll in Samcheong Park. Yeong-woo

popped out of the house. It seemed he was helping to move things into the house. He seemed happy for once. “Someone moved into the room by the gate. Can you take this in?” he asked as he unloaded an easel from the cart. There were a few more easels in the cart. Some were blank, and others had paintings on them. “Is the new tenant a painter?” “Yes, a really pretty painter,” he whispered hurriedly. He seemed very excited. At that moment, a girl appeared. She looked like she was a few years older than me. She had neat, shoulder-length hair and was wearing a straw hat like a man. “This… this here is my younger sister,” Yeong-woo said, blushing. “And this is the painter.” He stammered but his eyes were shining. The girl’s face was white, as though she’d covered her face with aspirin powder. She had a long neck and a defined nose-ridge. I looked back and forth between the shabby things she’d brought in carts, not even a truck, and her clean face. “I’m Hye-ju. Min Hye-ju,” she introduced herself with a clear voice. Her straight front teeth glinted in the sunlight. I’d never seen front teeth so clean and straight before. She lifted a bundle of bedding larger than herself, and Yeong-woo quickly took it from her. “Take that instead,” he said as he gestured at an easel. I suddenly felt cross. The girl and Yeong-woo argued over who would carry the heavier things. I dropped the easel on the ground and went into my room. He was hard at work moving things, completely oblivious to my feelings. The two carried some of the larger things together. I can paint as well as her if I practice, I thought to myself. Her things were simple and worn. The middle-aged woman who came with her sat under the magnolia shade and blew her nose hard. She had a cigarette in her mouth. That ignorant cow, I gave her a dirty look.

Mother often used “ignorant” when she saw someone behaving badly on the street. The black spots on her face were unsightly. That woman was Min Hye-ju’s mother—Seosandaek, or the woman from Seosan.