The House of Pomegranate Trees

Originally published in Korean as Seokryunamujip Eyagi in 1992.

Copyright Š 1992 Hahn Moo-Sook Translation Copyright Š 2002 Jin-Young Choi & Suzanne Newton Edited by Olivia Hanks All rights reserved. All texts thus made available are for personal use only and may not be reproduced commercially without permission from both the original copyright holder and Literature Translation Institute of Korea.

Digitally published by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea in 2016.

LTI Korea, 112 Gil-32, Yeongdong-daero(Samseong-dong), Gangnam-gu, Seoul, 06083, Korea www.ltikorea.org eISBN 9791187947325 Cover design by David Drummond

A note on Korean houses

A traditional Korean house, or hanok, has a number of features that are different from a typical western house. In traditional Korean architecture, it is important for the hanok to be in harmony with the surrounding environment. This, combined with the extremes of the Korean climate, means that the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces is quite different from in the west.

Hanok are generally divided into two sections, separated by a low outside wall: the sarangchae,or outer quarters, traditionally the men’s part of the house; and the anchae, or inner quarters, occupied by the women. Traditionally, the ornate low wall, known as a kkotdam or ‘flower wall’, was made of earth and topped with roof tiles, and decorated with Chinese characters signifying good fortune. A gate allowed movement from one part of the house to the other, while there were two gates for access to the property from outside. The large main gate was used only on special occasions, with day-to-day access being through a smaller side gate.

The windows and doors of a hanok are lined with hanji, a traditional Korean paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree. This paper keeps rooms warm while letting in sunlight, and has air holes for ventilation. Long eaves provide shade and keep heat in.

Another important feature of a hanok is the numaru, translated in this text as ‘balcony’. This raised area is open on three sides, with a low railing around it, and is designed to offer a good view of the garden and surrounding landscape. The toenmaru, a kind of veranda running along the sides of the house, provides another intermediary space between outside and inside.

After the devastation of the Korean War, which ended in 1953, hundreds of high-rise apartment blocks replaced traditional architecture in the cities. By the 1960s, when The House of Pomegranate Trees is set, it would have been very rare to find a large, traditional hanok in Seoul like the one in this book.

THE HOUSE OF POMEGRANATE TREES

Chapter I

The house the elderly realtor wanted Young-Ho to see stood at the end of a narrow alley, a long way from the streetcar tracks. There was barely room for a single car to pass through, forcing any passers-by to press close to the walls under the low-hanging eaves. On one side of the alley was the white rear wall of a medical clinic. On the other side, shabby little hovels lay in a huddle, surrounded by barbed wire fences; an incongruous sight, since it didn’t seem those poor huts could hold anything worth stealing. A sad, dusty little store stood amid the squalor.

Tired and disappointed, Young-Ho Song told his chauffeur to back out. From deep in the soft leather back seat, he reflected that the alley was a dead loss. There couldn’t possibly be a decent house in the neighborhood. He was gloomy and secretly ashamed, not particularly because of the shabbiness of the houses in the alley, but because barbed wire was usually found only around prisons. If only the fences hadn’t been there, he could have felt something like compassion for these people who, however hard they might try, were unable to climb out of poverty. To some, such poverty might have seemed a poignant accumulation of time and hardship, but to Young-Ho it was merely depressing.

At the realtor’s insistence that they see just one more house, Young-Ho closed his eyes and didn’t even bother to answer. It wasn’t going to be his day for house hunting. The day before, it had rained heavily and washed away the soil, exposing jagged stones in the street. The car rattled over them as it dodged between small boys playing in their shorts and T-shirts. The car entered the alley, not directed by the realtor, but because another vehicle was heading for Young-Ho’s in the street with no room for the two cars to pass each other. One of the two had to back up, so Young-Ho had the chauffeur drive into the alley. It turned out to be a blind alley blocked by a white door. The paint was chipped, there was no nameplate, and one of the long fluorescent lights above the door was broken.

The realtor got out of the car without asking Young-Ho and began to pound on the door with both fists. He seemed determined.

“Open the door! Open the door, please!” His rice-liquor-sodden throat made a hoarse squawk.

“Sir, please stop,” Young-Ho said. “I’m afraid I don’t have time. I have to go.” He had little interest in the house.

But the old man carried on battering at the door. “Please, give me a minute. Since you’re here, there’s no harm in looking over it, is there?” He looked desperate. “Hey, won’t someone open the door? Do I have to live a hundred years before I can step into this house?”

Young-Ho, not wanting to hear any more of these complaints, which seemed on the point of turning colorful, was about to tell the driver to go. Just then someone spoke from the other side of the door.

“Who is it?” The voice was strong and metallic but definitely that of an old man.

“I’m from the corner realtor’s office. What took you so long? How many times do I have to knock before you open the door?”

The man on the other side took his time.

Young-Ho opened the car door to step out, but the realtor gestured wildly. “Please stay inside. The car can drive right into the courtyard, it’s wider than the street.”

Young Ho gave him a thin, reluctant smile, but he rolled down his window all the same, surprised and curious to see more. The door swung back. As the realtor had said, the courtyard was spacious, and the house elegant and beautiful. On the far side of the yard stood a low wall with a small door in the middle. Young-Ho assumed that the inner quarters were on the other side of the wall; the house he saw must be the outer quarters, traditionally reserved for the men of the household. Having grown up abroad, Young-Ho knew little about the layout of a traditional Korean house. Yet he suddenly felt serene in the atmosphere of this one.

The inner quarters, though not large, looked graceful, with the roof tiles neatly lined, the curved eaves soaring lightly toward the sky, the patterned door, and the winding balustrade around the house. The marble step was bare; not so much as a pair of shoes marred the scene. The house

made Young-Ho think of classical music.

He could scarcely believe that a place like this with such a huge yard existed in the city. Just under the balcony was a pond with a fountain in the middle, but no water rose from it. The foliage of the fir tree hanging low over it gleamed in brilliant green. Trees had been planted among mossy rocks piled at the bottom of the wall. On the side opposite Young-Ho’s car, rocks stood in neat lines, and blooming roses arched in a huge, flowering bow. In the center of it all spread a wide, well-kept lawn.

Irresistibly drawn to the magic of the house, Young-Ho got out of the car and moved toward the garden. Beyond the stepping stones, rows of carefully selected flowers bloomed in various colors. A slight breeze rippled the pond and the reflection of the house trembled. It was clear this place was cared for by meticulous hands.

Strangely moved, Young-Ho was keenly aware of a musicality about the house. Even its image shimmering in the pond seemed to dance rhythmically.

“Would you like to go in? You’ll see the garden is truly out of this world. Oh, the door we came through was quite old, but that’s only a back gate. The front gate is way over there.” The realtor pointed in the direction of the stepping stones, and Young-Ho noticed another white door beyond a weeping willow. The elderly realtor babbled on, occasionally eyeing Young-Ho as though to interpret his expression. “The front gate is quite impressive. Cars just use the back gate because the garage is near it.”

As he talked, he led Young-Ho through the gate. “The lot is 600 pyong, the building is 99 kan. It’s a traditional house, but with ultramodern facilities. All the bathrooms are in Western style, and the house is heated by steam. And just look at this garden! When the master of the house was alive, there were garden parties. A house like this is truly rare. You won’t see another quite like it in the entire city of Seoul.” He recited the litany like someone who had visited the house countless times.

Young-Ho stood there without saying a word. His parents lived in Hawaii and he himself was still unmarried, living in a single hotel room—an arrangement which made him feel like a tourist visiting a foreign city. He needed somewhere permanent, a house, in order to feel that he was a part

of his homeland. Also, if he were going to launch a new business venture…

At this moment, however, his motives weren’t rational. He didn’t want to lose the chance to own this house, even if it turned out to be too small or too large for his purposes and ended up being left empty. He wanted the house.

“I’d like to meet the owner,” he said quietly.

“The deal is negotiated by me,” the realtor said, rubbing his hands together. “If there’s a problem, I’ll try to make an arrangement.”

“That might be all right. By the way, what does the owner do?”

“The owner…er…he…er…passed away last fall.”

“I mean the present owner.”

“His…er…wife passed away, too, soon after the April 19 student revolt. The people living in the house are his elderly mother, an unmarried daughter, his old friend the daughter calls uncle, and a cousin—she’s also elderly. The man who opened the door for us is the caretaker.”

Meanwhile, the caretaker paid no attention to Young-Ho and the realtor, but busied himself pulling up weeds in the yard.

The realtor commented: “The caretaker works like crazy—he’s a real perfectionist. Just look at the garden! It’s perfectly kept, isn’t it?”

“In that case, who is going to see me?” Young-Ho asked.

The realtor seemed doubtful. “The owner’s mother is too old. The daughter is only in college. I suppose the old cousin does such things.”

“Didn’t you say his old friend lives here?”

The realtor hedged. “He, I understand, has been in poor health for a long time.”

Young-Ho looked at the house again, with growing admiration. The more he looked, the more alluring it became. Complete silence reigned. Indeed, silence suited the house. As with classical music, its secret song could not be heard if there were noise of any kind.

Uninterested in the people who used to live in the house or who were living there now, he walked slowly to his car and got in, seized by a tiredness that was pleasant, almost post-coital.

* * * * *

In the main living-room, Sun-Young—the only remaining descendant after her father’s death —leafed through an album of Goya’s paintings. The sliding door opened quietly, and her aunt stepped in. Speaking in a low whisper, she began, “Look, Sun-Young—“ “Yes, Aunt?” Sun-Young didn’t look up from the album.

“The realtor came by again.”

“Yes?” “He was almost threatening. He said the new customer he brought today came from abroad and didn’t know any better. If he knew the house’s reputation, he wouldn’t be interested.” The aunt sighed. “The realtor was so intimidating.”

When Sun-Young said nothing, the aunt went on. “I’m not telling you this just because of people saying the house is haunted. You know as well as I do, it’s too big for us.

The old saying is that people should be masters of their house, not the other way around.

This house was too big even when your father was alive.” She sighed deeply again. “If your brother were alive, things wouldn’t be so bad, but the three of us are as cut off from the world as three nuts in a shell.”

“Aunt, please—stop it!” Sun-Young quickly turned the pages.

Ignoring her plea, the aunt kept talking. “I’m haunted by the feeling that we’re constantly being deceived. I didn’t know your father had such huge debts. I still can’t believe it. Maybe people are trying to pull the wool over our eyes because we’re so naïve.”

“Please, Aunt. Don’t say any more.”

“Sun-Young, this isn’t something you can just ignore, or sidestep. Look what came today.”

The aunt brought out an envelope from under her blouse, but her niece refused to look up. “You’re still too young, but you need to know this envelope has an auction notice in it.”

The girl would not open the envelope. For a moment longer she sat staring at the album, then she closed it and began to draw meaningless patterns on the floor with her forefinger.

“We can’t just let the house go,” the aunt prodded, “but since there’s someone interested, why don’t we sell it to him? With the things people say about it, we might never find another buyer.”

She stopped when she saw Sun-Young’s shoulders quivering. But in an instant Sun-Young collected herself and began turning the pages again. Teardrops glistened on her long eyelashes.

Subtle shadows flickered on the old aunt’s face. “The man who wants to buy the house is apparently a bachelor without any family. I think he wants it as a property investment. He’ll probably entertain company occasionally.”

The aunt knew very well that her niece was paying her no attention, but felt she had to do her duty. “He said we could stay on in the inner quarters for the time being. Actually, just the outer quarters would be big enough for him, even if he hires servants.”

“No, Aunt! No! I don’t mind living in a shack, but I will never live here with the new owner.” Tears streamed down Sun-Young’s cheeks. The aunt dabbed her eyes with the ribbon of her jacket.

“I understand how you feel, my baby, but what are we going to do with your senile grandmother and your invalid uncle?”

“For their sake I don’t want to live under the same roof. Please start looking for a house today. I don’t mind renting one.”

Feeling helpless in the face of Sun-Young’s unreasonable behavior, the aunt said, “Let’s just think this over tonight. We have to brace ourselves for what’s coming.”

After the aunt departed, Sun-Young came out to the balcony to look at the view. It really was an exquisite house, with a garden like something out of paradise. On the far side was the wall with its neat little door and purple peonies in full bloom. Crimson blossoms graced the branches of the pomegranate trees, which the caretaker nursed indoors in winter and outdoors in spring and summer. All this was more precious to her than ever now that she had to leave it behind.

The house’s beauty hid a tragic and sinister history, however. Rumor had swirled around it almost from the beginning. The first owner, its builder, had been an enormously wealthy man. Less than six months after the house was finished, his wife committed suicide, poisoning herself with caustic lye because she was furious at her husband for taking a concubine. The man began to drink

heavily and ended up an opium addict.

The next owner, the director of a textile company, went bankrupt three months after buying the house when his textile factory burned down, killing five men.

Sun-Young’s family had not escaped disaster either. After the only male heir, Sun-Young’s brother, fell to his death in a climbing accident, their mother never regained her health. She died soon after the student revolution of April 19, 1960. In spite of the double tragedy, the father’s business thrived. When he married a woman young enough to be his daughter, the family had a glimmer of hope that sooner or later they might have a son to take the lost one’s place as heir. But the father was a powerful figure in the corrupt Freedom Party, and a target of the students. He was arrested for a variety of illegal and immoral acts, and although he was later acquitted of many of the charges and released from prison, his blood pressure soared and a year or so later he died of a stroke, leaving neither a will nor any deathbed words.

Now, Sun-Young thought, the house sheltered a senile grandmother, an invalid dimwit of an uncle, and a rather distant aunt, all lingering and waiting for their final days. The house was evil, a horrible edifice that deserved to be burned down. Yet she couldn’t hate it, the beautiful, elegant place. Its strange magic pulled at the heart strings of people who saw it. She herself had spent her dreamy girlhood there and could not bring herself to blame it for all the disasters that had happened.

A friend of hers called it the house of pomegranate trees.

The trees stood close to the balcony, under the gracefully curved eaves that pointed toward the sky like birds in flight. The pomegranates’ baby buds were glossy purple in the spring, the blossoms a lovely crimson in summer, the fruit pinkish balls in autumn. When ripe, the reddish round fruit burst with white seeds. The caretaker would dig up the trees before the first frost each year, pot them, and keep them indoors until spring. Pomegranates were sensitive to cold and needed meticulous care, as did everyone in the family—the grandmother in her eighties, the mild-tempered invalid uncle, and even Sun-Young herself, who had had a pampered upbringing.

The May breeze brushed her cheeks, and scattered rose petals softly on the green grass.

Sun-Young sighed deeply and leaned against the balustrade. Suddenly, she heard a loud rapping and straightened to stare towards the hidden gate. The rapping grew to a violent pounding.

No one should open the door to such a rude person, no matter who it is, she thought, and the pounding stopped instantly. In the next moment, a sleek black sedan moved toward the garage.

When it stopped, some men got out. An older man in traditional baggy pants and shirt gesticulated, leading the others. They came into the yard and stood around the pond.

* * * * *

The young lady over there is the daughter, the old man whispered to Young-Ho, who seemed deaf to his remark. He was mesmerized by Sun-Young in her white mourning clothes, her long black hair falling over her shoulders. He saw hostility and suspicion in her expression. He had never seen such pride and arrogance on any human face. It seemed to tell him that if so much as one column of the house were taken out, the entire structure would collapse.

If she were not there on the balcony, he knew the house would be meaningless. So overwhelmed was Young-Ho by her beauty that he didn’t dare acknowledge it. Rather, he felt oddly oppressed as he moved a step toward the row of pomegranate trees.

Chapter II

It had been two weeks since he bought the house. Now, in the part that served as a temporary office, Young-Ho sat with Chun, one of the directors of his company, and Min, executive president of the Hunghan Metal Company.

“Well, why don’t you call it a day and rest?” said Chun. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

At his hint, Min stood up politely. “We need to leave before eight,” Chun continued. He turned to Min. “Would you like to come here, so we can all leave together?”

“That’s fine with me,” Min answered. “I’ll follow whatever orders you give me.”

Young-Ho remained seated. The word “orders” got on his nerves. Although his mother had diligently taught him Korean, he found some current Korean expressions hard to understand. But Min’s obsequious attitude as he pronounced the word convinced Young-Ho of its intended meaning.

He sighed, feeling an emptiness at the cultural gap he’d had to face ever since he arrived here in his mother’s homeland, the place she had always cherished in her heart. All her life she had dreamed of returning to it.

Young-Ho was saddened, however, by the people he had met so far, as if he were emotionally losing them one by one. He knew he ought to feel a strong affinity with them because he and they shared the same blood, but every time he met them, a strange resistance rose within him.

He knew it was partly due to his upbringing in a foreign country, but more than that, their excessive kindness and flattery alienated him and made him uncomfortable.

So far, everything felt unfamiliar to him, although he tried to assimilate and control his emotions. He was young and far too ambitious to let himself be totally absorbed into this alien culture. Every day, at every meeting with a new person, he felt uneasy, unsettled. He discovered in himself a new tendency to withdraw, not because of any wariness, but rather because of his growing cynicism.

Even now, as the two men prepared to leave, Young-Ho stood by without a word. Chun,

businesslike in all situations, spoke decisively. “Then I will assume that you will both be here tomorrow morning to leave with us. That will simplify everything.”

He let Min pass by him, while Min, behaving quite unlike a man who had been deferentially treated by Chun, stepped toward the gate in a humble stoop. Chun bowed respectfully to Young-Ho and followed Min a few steps behind.

Young-Ho did not move. He was thirty-two. The past thirty-one years had been a preparation for this new life, so why did he already feel weary? Was he too tense with people? He knew that human relationships should be managed and controlled, but this fatigue seemed to have sunk into the depths of his consciousness, where it was solidifying and becoming permanent. He felt as if he had already done everything and had nothing to look forward to.

“A dangerous feeling,” he mumbled, walking quickly toward his quarters. Nearing the pond, his attention was caught by the pomegranate flowers beside the moss-covered rocks. The flowers glistened, incandescent in the flaming sunset. On the water’s rippling surface they were reflected in darker colors, along with the image of the main house with its veranda and soaring eaves. He paused at the edge of the pond, looking deeply into it. Not even a goldfish appeared. Silence reigned all around. Young-Ho shook his head and walked on. At the top of the stone steps, about to reach the patterned door to his quarters, he stopped suddenly. The glass windows, glowing in the sunset’s reflected light, were a pure mirror in which he appeared darkly.

Shocked at this fleeting image, Young-Ho hurried down the steps and retreated to the whitepainted chair beside the rose bushes. As he drew his cigarette case out of his pocket, he smiled bitterly. This wasn’t the first time he’d experienced such a thing.

Only a week before, the owner of a mine company had come to see him and blurted, “I hear you bought a new place. So…when are you having your open house?”

Young Ho didn’t understand the Korean word for open house until the man explained it— and promptly invited himself to a party at Young-Ho’s new house the following Sunday.

Thinking he needed to have a gathering of some sort for the people he was going to work with, Young-Ho asked Chun to arrange the open house. Out of curiosity or expectation, many people—some of them uninvited—converged on his garden, filling the otherwise silent premises with

laughter and chatter.

Several tables laden with drinks were arranged on the lawn. Those who’d had enough cocktails were led to tables inside. Young-Ho, standing politely by the steps, guided his guests.

Amid the noisy conversation, he happened to glance at the glass doors of the main hall, and saw his guests reflected in their most unguarded moment, slightly distorted by the occasional rippling of the light. Most were drunk, unguarded in their speech and behavior. It seemed to him that their distorted images revealed their true selves. For a moment he felt oppressed. His head told him it was nonsense, but in his heart he had felt a kind of evil emanation from the old house.

From that point onwards, Young-Ho found himself becoming more cynical, while at the same time harboring a superstitious suspicion that his house might be a place where all false veils would eventually be lifted.

Now the sunset had faded into pale lavender. Deep in his reverie, Young-Ho didn’t even feel the cigarette ashes burning his fingertips. By now the house was lit up, as it was at dusk every night; the lights came on in every room as if by magic, but not by his orders. The phenomenon mystified him. Even after two weeks of living there, the house didn’t feel real to him. He had agreed that the former owners could stay on in the inner quarters, but he had yet to meet any of them. The girl he had caught sight of once he had not seen again. The house appeared empty, and yet gave off an eerie feeling that people did in fact live there.

A few days before, he had asked the middle-aged maid who came to wait on him why the lights were always turned on at dusk.

“The lady in the inner quarters requested it,” she answered.

A day or two after that, he came home from a dinner party where he’d had more to drink than he should have and ended up vomiting. The errand boy and the chauffeur cooled his head and rubbed his back. Then the maid brought in a bowl of herb tea on a tray.

“This ginseng tea is the best cure for stomach trouble from drinking,” she said.

Young-Ho drank it, more from impatience at her remark than because he believed what she said. Miraculously, he awoke fresh the next morning, free of the throbbing headache he had suffered the night before. “You saved my life,” he told her.

Although the maid was slow and acted dim-witted sometimes, she had one good quality— honesty. “Oh, it was sent by the lady in the inner quarters,” she told him.

“The lady in the inner quarters? You keep saying that, but who is she?”

“You mean you don’t know? She’s the niece of the Old Lady.”

Young-Ho had to smile at the maid’s distinct tone of “How could you be so dense?” She was dull, but seemed to think of him as on the same level as she was. “Then who is the Old Lady?”

“The Old Lady is the Old Lady. The mother of the master of this house who passed away.

Maybe I shouldn’t say this,” she said in a confidential tone, “but the Old Lady should’ve gone first, not the master.” Then she flopped down on the floor in front of Young-Ho—a contrast with the deferential manner everyone else adopted in front of him.

“My legs hurt,” she said, rubbing her fat calves.

“Arthritis?” he asked indifferently, not bothered just then by her lack of etiquette.

“No, sir. Not enough care after I had my babies. People made me get up and work in the kitchen. They said that was the best cure after the baby was born.”

Now she had overstepped the mark. Young-Ho didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. His expression hardened, but the obtuse woman kept right on talking. “You know, I was raised in this family. They were the richest people in Chung-Ju. The Old Lady found me a husband but…you know…my in-laws were—” “Please, that’s enough!” he interrupted, unable to stand her chattering any longer.

“Huh?” “I must go to bed.” He turned his back to her. The maid struggled to her feet and crept out.

The very next moment, Young-Ho rang the bell at the head of his bed and the maid reappeared.

“Did you call me, sir?”

“Who sent you to me in the first place?”

“The Old Lady sent for me. I was living with my daughter, but my son-in-law—” He stopped her with a wave of his hand, annoyed at her stupidity and at the presumptuousness of the Old Lady. “Fine. You can go now.”

He’d bought the house primarily for his mother who would one day come to live there. He

had asked the family of the former owner to stay on because the care of the house was beyond him.

Yet instead of being grateful to him, the family seemed arrogant.

Well, he could tolerate arrogance, but not interference in his life. He intended to meet these people and make his position clear.

“Right now!” he said aloud, lifting himself on to one elbow before dropping his head back on to the pillow.

The round trip to the Chung-Cheong Province took seven hours. He could have spent the night there, but Min insisted there was no suitable guest house where Young-Ho could stay. He suspected Min of having an ulterior motive, and that made the trip seem longer and more unpleasant.

It wasn’t the distance he hated, but the tedious hours killing time. When he finally arrived home at 8:30 and saw the smooth green lawn under the fluorescent light, he felt revived. All the lights were on and his fatigue seemed to melt away.

As soon as he stepped into his room, the maid appeared. “Sir, the bath water is ready.”

He took off his jacket without answering and threw it down carelessly, but she just stood there. “You must be tired. Take a bath,” she insisted.

He was irritated with her and angry at himself for not firing her on the spot, but the minute he stepped into the bathroom he was overwhelmed by an intriguing aroma. He immersed himself in the warm water, breathing the new fragrance. Herb Bath. He vaguely remembered the term from a long time ago. The next moment, he realized that the lady of the inner quarters must have ordered this for him. Suddenly, he urgently wanted to meet her.

He had never seen her in person. When he was in the process of buying the house, the old realtor had gone back and forth between her and Young-Ho, offering and counter-offering many times until an agreement was reached. Young-Ho had the distinct impression that she was extremely intelligent, not easily persuaded, but honest and fair. During the negotiations her position had been explained logically and judiciously.

While the scented water soothed away his fatigue, Young-Ho wondered about her. She had to be a core member of the family for the way she had carried off the real estate negotiations with

such authority and finesse. But something wasn’t clear. The maid and the old realtor always called the elderly mother of the former owner the Old Lady, the deceased owner the Old Master, the young daughter—the heiress—the Little Lady. But the woman who represented them was just called ajumoni, a term for any middle-aged married woman. Was she a blood relative or just a housekeeper? He chided himself for having paid so little attention to the people who lived in his house.

He came out of the bath feeling much better, mumbling to himself, “This must be why I didn’t fire the maid.” He was even in a jokey mood when she brought his dinner.

“Ajumoni, you made fantastic bath water,’ he said jovially.

“Oh, you mean the iris bath? Today is the fifth of May, so the Lady ordered it.”

“The iris bath?”

“Yes, she added iris stems and flowers to the water while she was warming it.”

He should have known she would mention the Lady of the Inner Quarters again. He considered himself lucky to have this wise woman living under his roof.

From then on he began to pay close attention to what went on in the house, but the inner quarters were as quiet as ever. Behind the flower-covered wall with its intricate patterns, he had no idea what the family was doing. The gate remained closed. The caretaker simply appeared and disappeared. Apparently the family didn’t use the door in the wall but another small door in the back of the house. Young-Ho was left to piece together a mental picture of the family from bits of the maid’s remarks.

There was the senile grandmother in her eighties, the beautiful granddaughter, the uncle who had been ill for years, and the woman called Bangol Ajumoni, who was in fact the dead owner’s first cousin. The old realtor had told Young-Ho that the dead man hadn’t left much, but the maid still thought of the family as the best and richest and seemed to regard Young-Ho as a freeloading hanger-on. Young-Ho guessed that it might have been the Lady who had given her that impression.

He asked the maid about the young girl he had once glimpsed. At first, she roundly scolded him. “How dare you ask about her! She is a princess brought up in the finest way.”

Later, however, she volunteered this: “The Little Lady wants to be a painter, I think. She

draws day and night.”

Bit by bit he gleaned information about the family, including the fact that the Little Lady’s name was Sun-Young. He had seen it on a piece of mail.

His desire to mingle with the family grew stronger. He could see why the maid might think of him as a freeloader eagerly looking for a chance to meet the master family. He did often feel as if he were living off their kindness, rather than being the owner himself. Yet he didn’t dare enter the inner quarters because, first of all, the family were puritanically aloof and second, having grown up abroad, he wasn’t sure of himself in matters of delicate etiquette. Gradually, he became used to his new life with the help of the maid, slow and crude though she was.

Time passed. Rose bushes shed their petals, the trees in the garden grew greener, and people’s clothing became lighter. Young-Ho’s newly formed company was progressing relatively well despite a few obstacles. He was so busy he barely had time to notice his neighbours in the inner quarters.

Then one Sunday he stayed at home to read his parents’ letters and look over the pictures they had sent. They still seemed to regard him as a child. His mother said her hair had turned grayer because she missed him so much. He had to smile at the expert handwriting that covered such childlike remarks.

He looked closely at a photograph of his mother, father and Bess, a girl he’d grown up with, all smiling in the garden of their house in Hawaii. Bess wore a hibiscus flower in her hair. Young-Ho felt a pang of homesickness, something he’d never experienced before. When he was in Hawaii, he had wanted only to come to Korea, his parents’ motherland. Now, in Korea, he missed Hawaii, the place where he was born and raised. Strangely, both emotions were real. He sighed deeply and glanced up.

In a moment he had leapt up in surprise. The door in the wall was open and three men stood in front of it. One, instantly recognizable, was the caretaker. The second, a tall young man, had his back to Young-Ho. His strong, wide shoulders suggested a sturdy character. He and the gardener were trying to stop a gray old man from coming out of the door. The old man obstinately refused to go back in. Perhaps because he was stronger than he looked or the other two dared not force him,

he shoved them out of the way and stepped into the garden.

“Where is my chair?” he bellowed.

The young man tried desperately to explain. “This house is no longer yours, sir. You are trespassing in someone else’s garden.”

“What? This is our house. We made this garden. Give me my chair.” The old man’s arms flailed.

Young-Ho took a few steps toward them. “Sir, if the gentleman wants to come in and rest, please let him do so.”

The caretaker, shocked by the offer, was visibly shaking. Desperate loyalty and honesty showed on his face. “No, sir,” he answered, his voice trembling. “This gentleman is not well and the doctor has ordered him not to go outside.”

Out of respect for their predicament, Young-Ho didn’t argue, but the sick old man reached out his hand and pleaded, “Sir, this garden has been my place of rest. Please—let me rest here.”

Despite his plea, the young man and the caretaker held him up and dragged him back through the door.

Too astonished to move, Young-Ho stood there for a while. Finally, he returned to his chair, pondering the incident. He felt that he had seen the old man before. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he whispered, “but I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere. But where?”

Chapter III

With no change in facial expression, Chun, the director, asked the applicant in front of him: “Why did you major in mining engineering?”

“Because I wanted to extract our natural resources and contribute to our country’s development.” It was exactly the same sort of answer Chun had gotten from all thirty applicants so far.

How predictable! Sitting beside Chun, Young-Ho couldn’t suppress a bored yawn. After hearing the same answer all day, he was beyond caring. Each applicant had almost the same background and attitude. Why couldn’t Chun just pick a few at random and leave it at that?

Young-Ho glanced down at his desk where the list of applicants lay. Beside it the morning newspaper was open to the third page, which featured a large headline and the picture of a dignified elderly man sitting in a yoga position on a traditional mat. Part of the caption read: National treasure, but the rest of the article was in such small print he couldn’t make it out. He stared hard at the picture. It reminded him of the old man he had glimpsed at the door of his garden. With his gray hair dishevelled, the old man hadn’t looked normal, yet he had a certain indescribable dignity. Who was he? Young-Ho still felt certain he had seen the man somewhere before, but couldn’t imagine where or when. He felt a little embarrassed about fixating on such a person.

Since Young-Ho hadn’t lived in Korea for the first thirty years of his life, he was convinced he couldn’t have seen the old man there. Was he so struck by the man’s dignity and character that he had merely fantasized a previous meeting?

Long ago Young-Ho had read in a psychology book that people often had a mistaken feeling that they’d seen something before. They would even remember the circumstances. Many psychologists attributed the phenomenon to the collective memory of human experience submerged in an individual’s consciousness. At certain moments, images floated up from the subconscious, and people tended to mistake them for memories.

The author of Young-Ho’s book disputed those theories, stating instead that the phenomenon was caused by relaxation of an individual’s consciousness. Something seen might sink

into the subconscious, entirely missed by the conscious mind in its relaxed state. Later, a momentary wakening of consciousness recalled it.

Neither theory satisfied Young-Ho, concentrating as he was on the old man’s picture.

Suddenly, he heard a rich baritone voice.

“My name is Woo Jae-Min.” A tall, determined-looking young man stood in front of him, looking a cut above the other applicants. The whole room full of executives seemed to come alive with this breath of fresh air.

Chun asked the same question. “Why did you major in mining engineering?”

The young man hesitated, looking embarrassed. His awkward smile, revealing a slightly crooked eye-tooth, gave him an almost boyish look.

“Well, why?” Chun said again.

Young-Ho liked the young man. As far as he was concerned, there was no need for further questioning. He was about to stop Chun when the young man answered.

“In fact, mining engineering was my second choice. I wanted to get into chemical engineering but my test scores weren’t good enough.”

Young-Ho smiled, liking the man even more.

Chun scanned the young man’s transcript and application form. “Is that so? But your overall college records show an A average.”

The young man blushed. “Well, I must have managed somehow.”

“Your family. You have a younger brother. What about your parents?”

“They both died during the Korean War.” Chun looked up at him. “Oh—I’m sorry. Then you worked your way through college.”

“Oh, no,” the young man protested.

“Have I offended you?” Chun asked apologetically. “Since you have no parents, I assumed that’s what you did.”

“I did work my way through college, but I never thought I was doing anything special. I studied hard, too, but there’s nothing special about that either. I guess studying hard was the only way I could deal with my loneliness and sadness. For someone like me, overcoming distress was

another kind of discipline. I don’t know whether I should say this, but I enjoyed working my way through college. It gave me a sense of fulfilment.”

At first, no one said a word, then Chun spoke. “You deserve credit. Even though you had no parents, you have achieved a lot on your own. Yes, determination and hard work.”

The young man looked down. “Even if my parents had been alive, I’d have done the same.

Our family has been very poor for generations. It’s just that people wouldn’t have made a big deal of it.”

Young-Ho could hear the loneliness and suffering in the man’s low voice. Again, silence followed his words.

“Well, that’s all for today,” Chun said briskly. “You’ll hear from us by mail.”

The young man straightened, turned on his heel, and walked out, army style.

“He must have just finished his military service,” one executive said.

“Yes, he was discharged about a month ago,” Chun replied, examining the papers again. He turned to Young-Ho. “Don’t you think he’s a bit too forward?”

“I like him,” Young-Ho answered, stubbing out his cigarette.

Something about the young man reminded him of the one he’d seen in his garden. How strange, he thought, shaking his head.

The next applicant, a short timid man, entered and bowed deeply. * * * *

As soon as Jae-Min turned into the alley, street children crowded around him. “Ajossi, Kong-Shik said you’re moving away. It’s not true, is it?” A dirty, snotty-nosed, pleading little face looked up at him.

“Why did he say that?”

“He said you were moving to a better neighborhood.”

“There’s no better place than here.”

“Then you’re not moving?”

“Of course not.”

“See?” The boy looked around triumphantly.

“Kong-Shik is just a liar!” the other children chimed in.

Another hung onto his arm. “Ajossi, please show us the rock again.”

“Okay, but later.”

“Now, please.”

“I’m busy today.”

“Oh, all right.” The children were momentarily disappointed, but when someone shouted, “Whose turn is it?” their ears pricked up and they ran off.

Jae-Min walked away, feeling dejected as if he had made a shameful mistake. He was naturally cheerful and wasn’t often afflicted by this kind of self-reproach. But he felt it now as he recalled the afternoon’s interview where, in front of a man who was the embodiment of worldly experience, he’d revealed the sad history of his own family! Jae-Min kicked hard at a pebble in the street.

A woman’s bright voice called, “Hello, Mr. Woo! What’s the matter?”

Ae-Ja stood in front of the house at the end of the alley where she lived with her mother.

Ae-Ja was a high-spirited girl, an art student at E College. She often visited the woman who owned the house next door, where Jae-Min was renting a room. The woman’s daughter had died some time before, and Ae-Ja would go round to console her. She also voluntarily helped with Jae-Min’s housework, since he and his brother were inept housekeepers. He had no particular interest in her, with her flat nose, large mouth, and ordinary face. Her eyes, however, were unusually dark and bright, exceptionally beautiful. They reminded him of another pair of eyes.

Jae-Min almost shouted aloud. They were like the eyes of Sun-Young, the granddaughter of the big house where his great-uncle was the caretaker.

Sun-Young: a name he had been trained from early childhood not to speak casually.

Nobody dared do so, but as the son of her family’s tenant farmer, Jae-Min had grown up with her image. He was no better than a servant, but being a servant gave him opportunities to be admitted to the inner quarters. Because he saw her often, he nursed mixed feelings of familiarity, resentment, and love.

Not that he had ever been mistreated or abused. Worse, he was a nonentity, completely ignored. As long as he stayed at the big house, he didn’t have to worry about food, clothes or rent.

Leaving there meant immediate hardship. But one day he realized unequivocally that he could no longer bear to live under the same roof as Sun-Young. That was when he moved out with his brother.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Ae-Ja said, opening her bright eyes wide.

Without even bothering to answer, Jae-Min slowly walked away.

Chapter IV

On the slip of paper in Jae-Min’s hand, there was only a brief address. Number 44. He looked again. Number 44/42 should be found there. It was a neighborhood he knew. Smiling bitterly, he crumpled the paper and went out.

He boarded a bus and sat looking out of a window on the opposite side, a rare experience in Seoul, where bus seats were never empty and windows were always blocked by standing passengers. Jae-Min was so tall that when he had to stand while riding, the bus windows only came to about the level of his waist.

It was a sunny day. Under the budding trees, crowds of people in light spring clothes were milling about in the street. Few seemed to have any definite purpose. Jae-Min thought of them as jobless drifters, aimless wanderers, all disconnected from one another. He felt sad for them, having often felt acute loneliness in such a crowd. In a packed bus or in a busy street, he would imagine he was standing in a deserted wasteland or floating in the air like a stringless kite. Perhaps it was a reverse, uneasy kind of freedom.

The bus stopped and let a couple of passengers off while several more got on. Since the windows weren’t blocked yet, Jae-Min kept looking out. Now the endless stream of people in the street no longer seemed lonely and sad. They appeared to be marching together in harmony toward a destination. Could his mood bring about such a change?

I’m such an idiot, he thought. His long legs made sitting in the narrow seat uncomfortable, but perhaps being uncomfortable was a sign that he was living a real life. To himself he vowed, Today, I’ll take life and everything in it positively.

As the bus drove down a sloping street, an early summer breeze tickled the back of his neck, making him pleasantly drowsy. Then the voice of the tired bus-girl intoned the name of his stop. “Please remember to take your belongings with you.”

Jae-Min roused himself and was about to stand up when he caught sight of a young couple in the street, walking in the opposite direction from the one the bus was taking. The woman was Sun-Young. He recognized her cool, graceful profile, but her eyes were downcast. He interpreted

her expression as anxiety, but then wondered if he was over-reading the situation.

He got off the bus and started up the hill toward his destination. His mind turned inward.

Everything in his field of vision seemed to crouch under their shadows. He stopped to stand in his own shadow.

He had never seen Sun-Young in such a state. Even when her parents died, she had seemed more angry than sad. She was always cool, aloof, indifferent. Behind her apathetic exterior was an unwavering pride.

Today she had looked drooping and downcast. Yet she had never looked more feminine to him. His heart ached for her. The man she was with had been walking stiffly, with the hand closest to Sun-Young in his pocket, as if he were intentionally denying her any support she might have needed.

Unbelievably arrogant, he had looked straight ahead as he strode along, ignoring her presence.

Involuntarily, Jae-Min clenched both fists; not from jealousy, but from anger.

Suddenly a bicycle bell sounded behind him. Just as he was moving out of the way, a woman’s voice greeted him. “My goodness! You’re the student. You don’t visit us any more. Are you coming to our house?”

It was the maid who had come to work for the new owner of Sun-Young’s house. She was carrying a basket of groceries. Jae-Min had seen her only a couple of times, and at first he couldn’t place her.

“You know, the old caretaker is getting weaker and his work seems to be too much for him,” she chattered on. “Come see him more often.”

“I’m afraid I can’t today.”

“Why on earth not? You’re right near the house.”

“I’m sorry.”

The maid tut-tutted all the way to the house. After she was gone, Jae-Min took the crumpled note out of his pocket. Number 44. The door just in front of him was 44/45. He followed the numbers house by house in the small winding alley until he reached Number 44/42. It was SunYoung’s house! Since the death of the Old Master, Jae-Min had always used the small back door, so he had never seen this front gate. As he was about to turn away, his eye was caught by the name

plate on the gate. Etched on it was Song Young-Ho, the name of his new employer.

Jae-Min was surprised. The maid had told him about the stranger in the outer quarters of the house. She’d told him that the man was in his thirties, enormously rich, and still unmarried. She added that he was so reserved, she couldn’t tell whether he was a good man or a bad man with dark secrets. Even middle-aged gentlemen called him “President” and were extremely respectful in his presence.

To tell the truth, Jae-Min knew little of what had been going on in the house. None of the people who lived there would have told him anything—not the lady of the house called Bangol Ajumoni who rarely talked about anything; not the aloof Sun-Young, nor her invalid uncle, not the senile Old Lady nor the ever-silent elderly caretaker, his great-uncle.

For a moment Jae-Min hesitated, then, ready to face whatever awaited him, he rang the doorbell. The door was opened by the maid.

“Good heavens! It’s you again. You say you aren’t coming today, then you show up at the front gate!”

How she jabbered! Jae-Min nodded without a word and went straight to the garden. The old house was as graceful and beautiful as ever. Everything was in its place—the smooth lawn under the midday sun, the rose-covered arch, the wisteria vines laden with flowers. Even the butterflies hovering over the roses and the bees buzzing among the vines looked as though they had been put there and arranged by an artist.

An elderly man in white clothes sat serenely in a chair on the lawn, and a young man stood beside him. The two were as still as sculpted figures. Jae-Min knew them both.

The moment of perfect calm was rudely broken by the maid, who shouted “Mr. President!” over and over again in a high, nerve-jangling voice.

Young-Ho turned to Jae-Min and waved. He seemed glad to see him. “Thank you for the work you’re doing,” he said, grasping the hand of his newest employee.

Perplexed, Jae-Min put off the errand Chun had sent him to do for Young-Ho and turned instead to the old man who was staring vacantly at the pomegranate trees. “How are you, sir?”

The old man turned around, his face tinged with a vague suspicion. It seemed to Jae-Min

that he didn’t recognize him at all.

“Do you know this gentleman?” Young-Ho asked, surprised.

“Yes, I do.”

“How?” “He’s my former master. My great-uncle still lives here.”

“Ah! You mean the caretaker.”

“Yes.” Young-Ho smiled. “Now I see you’ve known each other a long time. That’s why I thought I had seen you somewhere when you came for the interview. I’m glad to know I didn’t imagine it.”

“Then, how did you come to be here, sir?” Jae-Min asked.

“I live here, but the garden belongs to this gentleman. For some reason, people won’t let him come in here. So I just helped him find his old seat in the garden.” Young-Ho placed his hands on the back of the old man’s chair. The gray eyebrows twitched slightly, as if the old man were trying to understand what was being said; or perhaps the sunlight hurt his eyes. It was hard to tell which.

Jae-Min guessed that the Old Man had raised quite a ruckus that morning. The maid had mentioned once that his great-uncle, the caretaker, was too old to restrain the old man when he set his mind to something. Jae-Min had learned from experience how difficult it could be to stop the single-minded obstinacy of an old man. He sighed deeply, then relayed Chun’s message to YoungHo. It was the errand he had been sent for.

“Lunch is almost ready. Why don’t you join us?” Young-Ho said.

Feeling awkward, Jae-Min was about to decline politely when the Old Man sprang up and screamed, “Yes! I should have gone the way Kyong-Bin told me!”

Young-Ho grabbed Jae-Min’s arm in astonishment.

“He always says that,” Jae-Min whispered. “His life must have been a hard one.”

“Do you know what he did?”

“They say he was an independence fighter against Japan.”

“Really? Then how long has he been like this?” asked Young-Ho. “I don’t know, but I’ve been told he was brutally tortured by the Japanese police.”

“Has he got amnesia?”

“Yes, that too. He recognizes me sometimes and then other times he doesn’t remember me at all. They say it’s dementia.”

“Can’t he remember anything?”

“There seem to be some exceptions.”

Jae-Min knew what these exceptions were, but hesitated to spell them out. They were his niece Sun-Young, a man—probably his old friend—named Kyong-Bin, and a woman whose name he called out from time to time, Hei-Ryon.

“I’m going to have lunch with this gentleman today,” Young-Ho repeated. “Please join us.”

Reluctantly, Jae-Min said, “Thank you, sir, I will.” He stood behind the old man.

Pleased, Young-Ho sat down. “Are you getting used to what is called the real world?” he asked.

“Well, I grew up in it, and I’ve had my share of struggles, so I feel I am in rather a quiet refuge in your company’s office.”

“What I mean is, are you getting used to the way our company works?”

“I haven’t done much of any work so far. I’m sorry.”

“That’s the way you start out.”

The conversation came to a halt. Heavy silence reigned in the oppressive sun. Young-Ho and Jae-Min simultaneously turned to the Old Man as if trying to find a subject of mutual interest.

The Old Man was absolutely impassive, with no clue to his feelings in the deep creases of his face.

His countenance was a pure blank, as if all human emotions had been drained away; and yet there was an aura of dignity. Young-Ho sighed, feeling as though he were in the presence of some profound mystery of human life.

In such deep silence, the buzzing of the bees grated on their nerves. Jae-Min regretted agreeing to stay for lunch, especially after seeing the sad, downcast face of Sun-Young earlier that day. Thinking of her and this senile old man inextricably bonded to each other, Jae-Min felt a constriction in his chest.

Suddenly, the Old Man sprang up, shouting, “Ah, Hei-Ryon! It’s dangerous! Run—I’ll stop

them!”

He collapsed into the chair, panting.

Young-Ho leaped up in surprise.

“This happens from time to time,” Jae-Min said quietly. “Not very often, though. Everybody is scared at first, but he doesn’t hurt anyone. After a burst of emotion like that, he usually gets very tired.”

The old man slumped back, listless.

But Young-Ho found it hard to collect himself. Hei-Ryon was his mother’s name. Even though it was a fairly common name, he still felt an unaccountable chill in his heart. He stared at the old face. Even with its closed eyes and the blank nothingness settling on it, he sensed profound wisdom there.

Just then the maid’s thick voice broke the silence. “Sir, lunch is ready.”

Chapter V

Chang-Gon Park said nothing until he and Sun-Young had almost reached the Kwang-Hwa Gate. His pace was neither fast nor slow, as if he were listening only to his own internal drummer, ignoring Sun-Young who had to hurry to keep up with him. Her normally pale face was flushed from the exertion.

Just before they reached the Gate, Chang-Gon turned into a narrow street, where vendors sold ripe strawberries and ice cream. Several children were busily licking ice cream cones, but SunYoung was indifferent to them as she tried to keep pace with Chang-Gon. They made another turn into an alley, where a weather-beaten, two-story house stood in front of them, with a dark, cave-like entrance and a wooden staircase leading to the second floor.

They climbed the stairs to a small tea room. The oiled floor slanted toward the window. The seats of the chairs were torn here and there and temporarily covered with pieces of vinyl. A dirty curtain drawn over the window made the room dingy and unpleasant. Nevertheless, several of the seats were taken.

As if he had a reserved seat, Chang-Gon strode toward the open window where three men were talking through a fog of cigarette smoke. Without a word of greeting, he sat in the vacant fourth chair.

“Hey, we’ve been waiting for you! We haven’t decided anything yet,” said one man, stubbing out his cigarette.

“Chang-Gon, you are certainly an authority figure. We all got here half an hour later than usual on purpose so we wouldn’t have to wait for you,” said another man, laughing loudly. “And we still had to wait!”

Sun-Young didn’t dare go near them. She wanted to turn around and leave, but she didn’t have the strength even to do that. Miserable and humiliated, she stood at a distance, blushing furiously. Chang-Gon lit a cigarette and sat back. He had none of the sheepish awkwardness of a man about to introduce a girl to his male friends. He simply ignored her altogether.

She had to endure an uncomfortable hour. The men weren’t discussing anything serious, just whiling away the time with meaningless chitchat. Yet Sun-Young didn’t resent Chang-Gon. Rather, she blamed herself . He hadn’t invited her to come along; he simply hadn’t said anything when she offered to accompany him. Now she regretted it, and felt guilty for unintentionally intruding on his affairs. It was a new feeling for her.

The June afternoon sunlight began to pour in through the west-facing window and the room became hot and stuffy.

“Wow, it’s hot! Summer’s here,” said one man, flapping his shirt front.

As if on cue, they all stood up and headed out.

“Bye, Sun-Young. I’ll drop by one of these days,” Chang-Gon said with a grin.

She knew he meant for her not to follow him and her eyes filled. As she walked home alone, she couldn’t help missing him. She couldn’t remember when she had begun to nurse this keen longing for him. She had never exchanged more than a few words with him because he was so much older. He’d been a friend of her dead brother and used to come to the house a lot. He was already a college student when she was still in elementary school. In those days he would say, “Is your brother home?”

“I haven’t seen you in a while. You’ve grown a lot.”

“You’ve gotten prettier.”

Later, in her teens, Sun-Young blossomed into a beauty, quiet and aloof, and Chang-Gon hardly saw her. It was only after Sun-Young’s brother’s death that the two of them became closer.

After the Korean War, Chang-Gon seemed different than before. Sun-Young wasn’t sure whether he had always been an unusual person, but he was certainly different from how she remembered him. He was the one who had shown the most genuine grief over his friend’s death. He had also been particularly considerate to the family, but his emotions and behaviour seemed troublingly unstable.

Once her family’s fortune began to decline, Sun-Young found herself becoming wary of people who were unusually sympathetic, and, at the same time, contemptuous and angry toward those who distanced themselves. Yet she had never suspected Chang-Gon’s motives. Because she

had known him since childhood, she thought she could be herself around him, unaware of how selfeffacing and submissive she became in his presence. She mistook Chang-Gon’s familiarity for an enfolding warmth toward her and her family.

In truth, she knew very little about him. When he first came to her home, he said he was a law student, but his interest lay in writing poetry. At the time, Sun-Young had been too young to know what law college was—or what poetry was, for that matter. Later he appeared in army uniform, but his posture was so unlike the usual straight-backed military bearing that Sun-Young found him strange.

During her senior year of high school, he showed up in civilian clothes and immediately began to romp around on the lawn with Sun-Young’s dogs, who seemed to recognize him even after such a long absence. In army fatigues he had looked rather slack, but now he appeared strong and agile as never before. The dogs ended up panting with their tongues hanging out. She remembered the scene and the smell of him when he came to sit beside her, the penetrating scent of male sweat. It reminded her of the smell of leather gloves accidentally left on a heater. It was a nauseating odor that seemed to seep into her skin and left her feeling strangely agitated, disgusted, unclean.

After that visit, Chang-Gon didn’t come for a long time. She found out later, however, that he had visited her family several times and she had been too busy preparing for college entrance examinations to notice. Although she had always thought of him as rather melancholy, her grandmother and aunt praised him for being outgoing, cheerful and funny. Sun-Young couldn’t take the two old ladies’ judgment seriously; after all, they had led a secluded life in the depths of the house. And yet, if Chang-Gon could lighten their lives and make them laugh with funny stories, he must have some good qualities. She, however, couldn’t shake off the impression that he was shifty and talked too much.

As it was, their paths had rarely crossed, and Sun-Young’s long-distance observation of him seemed skewed.

Sun-Young had no inkling that her family’s drastically diminished fortune had had a significant effect upon her; that her sadness and distress were due to the abrupt changes in their status.

Oblivious to the blazing sunshine, she slowed her pace as if she were carrying something precious

inside her that should not be shaken. She walked without knowing she was doing it.

People hurried by as if they all had a definite goal to reach, paying no attention to how fast they were walking. Only Sun-Young moved slowly, eyes downcast. The sunlight coming through the trees made mottled shadows on the sidewalk. Her memories of Chang-Gon loomed—Chang-Gon, the friend of her dead brother who had loved her so much.

She remembered a day when he had shown up at her house, coatless in the cold, lateautumn weather. He said he had started a publishing company, but he looked horribly gaunt, like someone who had been through a terrible experience. She saw him sitting in her brother’s room.

“What happened?” her brother had asked. Instead of answering, Chang-Gon took a book out of his pocket and put it on the desk. Her brother’s face lit up.

“Wow! It came out!”

Without speaking, Chang-Gon tried to light a cigarette but couldn’t. He pretended to be nonchalant, but his shaking hands betrayed him.

The book he brought that day was the first collection of his poems, entitled Overcoming. It still sat on Sun-Young’s bookshelf and in her heart as well.

One stanza read: As the flowers, discouraged In the shadow, waged a Desperate war to open up, I, too, felt elation And yearning.

Sun-Young, pondering the words, could empathize with his dark excitement.

Friendship with Chang-Gon couldn’t have been easy, however; Sun-Young found later that he had caused her brother a lot of trouble. His next visit came a year after the collection was published, also in late autumn and in the same manner—coatless, unshaven and gaunt. He sat in sulky silence in her brother’s room for a while before blurting, “Can you give me 20,000 hwan? I need to send her to a gynecologist.”

Sun-Young wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but knew enough to feel she shouldn’t be there. She hurried out. Her brother, clearly embarrassed that she’d even heard, never mentioned it.

Afterwards, she couldn’t shake off her suspicions about Chang-Gon. Someone brushed by her and she surfaced from her reverie to find herself standing at the foot of the gently sloping road, the very road on which her brother’s body had been taken away in an ambulance. She, her father, Chang-Gon and several others had gone in the ambulance as well. It had been obvious that Chang-Gon hadn’t washed himself for days. In his grimy face only his eyes were aflame, not with grief but with fury. Sun-Young herself felt more anger than sorrow.

Chang-Gon was ill for several days from the long search for his friend and from the injuries he himself had suffered falling from a cliff. In his feverish moaning, he called only his friend’s name, which made a strong impression on Sun-Young and etched his image permanently in her heart.

She didn’t know if he was still in the publishing business or if the gynecological matter had been resolved. People occasionally mentioned how profligate he was, but to her he had always been casually friendly and courteous. She wished for more. After all, wasn’t she a woman, albeit an aloof, cold and proud one?

For an instant Sun-Young was stunned, having inadvertently uncovered her own innermost feelings.

She looked up to see someone with a familiar face coming down the slope toward her, but couldn’t place him.

Jae-Min, on the other hand, had no trouble recognizing Sun-Young’s prim and distant face, her transparent complexion, deep dark eyes, straight, high nose and tightly pressed lips. Her face, to him, was perfection, a completed work of art. Yet, as they drew closer, he noticed a change in that face—an inner crumbling, a weakening of the wall of proud strength he’d always seen there.

They met halfway along the road.

“I was just at your house,” Jae-Min said.

“Ah, yes,” Sun-Young whispered and looked up as if awakening from a dream. She noticed that unlike in the old days, Jae-Min wore a neat suit.

“I haven’t visited your family in a while,” he said, speaking the traditional polite words.

“That’s all right.” As always, she was polite but distant.

“Well, goodbye,” he said quickly and walked on down the road with the uncomfortable feeling that her eyes were following him. Her eyes—they had looked different today.

Chapter VI

The hot afternoon sun turned the blades of grass on the smooth lawn into tiny white flames.

Young-Ho was resting in his lawn chair in an after-lunch languor. The old man lay nearby on a wicker bench, his eyes closed. His neat, regular features were so pale and cool he didn’t look alive.

His white calico shirt, too big for his frail body, reminded Young-Ho of a shroud. The old man emanated subdued pain and a kind of stasis. Whether life had deserted him or he had abandoned life, Young-Ho didn’t know, but he looked like the remains of a life lying there, with no regrets about the past, no worries about the day’s tasks, nor any hope for the coming days. The canopy of wisteria above them attracted butterflies and bees, their delicate wing movements accentuating the quiet that reigned in the garden. Under the scorching sun, the silence was almost palpable.

Young-Ho had already told Jae-Min he wanted to spend the whole day in the garden. The sun was as hot as in Hawaii, but the Hawaiian sun had strong, even violent hues, while the sun here was colorless. Suddenly he felt a crack in the thick, silent wall of his reverie. Looking up, he saw at the far end of the garden a young girl standing in front of the door. He couldn’t tell what she was wearing, but she looked small and pathetic. In an instant he was mesmerized. This distant girl in the afternoon haze reminded him of a spring flower that was yet to blossom and was all the more appealing for that—almost painfully so.

His dreamlike state dissipated when the girl strode toward him. In that moment he recognized her as the same girl he’d glimpsed standing on the balcony the day he had come to see the house. He stood up slowly as she approached, and mumbled something, but she ignored him and came to stand beside her uncle.

“Uncle, please wake up.” It was a decisive command, incongruous from such a fragile girl.

Beside the tragic figure of the uncle in his death-like stupor, she looked as light as a butterfly.

“Wake up, please.”

The old man opened his eyes. Recognizing her under the pale shadow of the wisteria, his face lit up with sudden joy.

“Ah, Hei-Ryon.”

“Wake up.”

He struggled to sit up. Focusing his eyes on her face, he lifted himself uncertainly.

“Now walk, please.”

He put a dangerously wobbly foot forward, but the girl didn’t help him. Young-Ho had always thought of her desperate struggle to preserve pride and dignity as commendable, though childish. Now, however, he felt he had to assume authority as the owner of the house.

“It seems he doesn’t want to go,” he ventured. “Why don’t you let him stay?”

Sun-Young raised her eyes and glared at him. He had the feeling she didn’t look up just because he was taller, but because she wanted to be on an equal footing. Her eyes blazed with hurt pride and resentment, but all Young-Ho saw was heart-tugging beauty and pathos. Saddened by the helplessness of her anger, he chose not to say anything more.

He watched them go, a beautiful girl and a lifeless figure of an old man forced to follow her.

It was like a scene from a Greek myth: not a tragedy, but a complete and perfect work of art.

Young-Ho sat down, sighing deeply. Tiny ripples made by unseen goldfish broke the surface of the pond in the windless afternoon. The reflections of the pomegranates, now grown as big as bitter oranges, danced in the ripples.

It was near sunset when Young-Ho went into his quarters.

“Dinner is getting cold,” the maid said, but instead of eating, Young-Ho fell asleep in his chair in the hall and began to dream.

There is a pond, a rose arch, and wisteria vines in a bright green lawn, just as at his house. Young-Ho is on the balcony, leaning against the balustrade. Suddenly he hears people talking.

Someone speaks in a low voice. “Let’s hurry.”

“He’ll come when the pomegranates ripen, whether you hurry or not.”

“That’s right!” Young-Ho shouts. “Who’s coming?”

There is no answer.

“Who’s coming?” he repeats.

“The master of this house.”

“I’m the master of this house,” he protests.

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. You’re disrespectful.”

“Ha ha ha…”

Young-Ho hears sneering laughter and stares in the direction from which it comes. To his consternation, all the pomegranates open up, revealing their white seeds. They laugh.

“The master is over yonder…” He turns to see for himself.

The next moment, he was awakened by the maid.

He woke without finding out who the master was. A chill ran through his body. To get away from it, he rushed into his room, but though well-lit, even that looked unusually dark.

The maid brought in the dinner table. “Why is the room so dark?” he asked her. Right away he realized his mistake. She immediately launched into one of her long, irritating theories.

“The room look dark because you are alone. I don’t know why you live alone like this.

They say even a bad wife is better than a dutiful child. You know, each person have only half the light, and that is why the room look dark when it is really bright. Even a warm room feel cold when you’re alone. You know, when I became a widow, I hated the dark, cold room.”

Young-Ho couldn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls. When he stood up, the maid clucked and said, “The Old Aunt is not home, and I’m such a terrible cook.”

Scarcely a day passed that the maid didn’t mention the Old Aunt, yet Young-Ho still hadn’t met her. Whoever she was, she had to be extremely intelligent, decisive and strong-willed, as he had gathered from the real-estate negotiations. Obviously, she was also a lady who possessed the cooking skills and proper etiquette of a grand matriarch of an aristocratic family. For some reason, Young-Ho didn’t feel a sense of mystique or reverence about her, but rather an ominous apprehension. Perhaps it was his foreign upbringing, but he couldn’t shake off the dark sense of foreboding, as if she might be some devious schemer. It reminded him of the dream, the insistence that there was a real master of the house other than himself.

The proud lady is always behind the scenes, he thought, never showing herself. Maybe that’s

why she has established herself in my subconscious as the master of the house.

In the dream he hadn’t heard that the Old Aunt was the master, but he felt that if he had turned his eyes, it might have been her standing proudly there.

From the next day on, he threw himself into his ever-growing business, the Hunghan Mining Industry. Several smaller mining companies were trying to join. Among them were speculators.

Having majored in mining technology in college, Young-Ho knew where to draw the line, but he found himself becoming bored and annoyed by their grandstanding slogans, such as “Developing our national resources” or “Economic reconstruction through development of the mining industry.” Since the beginning of his venture in Korea, he had become more wary, less optimistic.

Summer came, but he had no time to go to the mountains or the beach. He ignored Chun’s advice to take a vacation. He planned to invite his parents over in the fall to take a grand tour of the country. Till then, he didn’t want to say a word. When the day’s work was done, he would come straight home and spend the evening quietly. His daily life was uneventful to the point of boredom, but his business, always in the storm of activity and aggressiveness, provided a kind of counterbalance to his personal life.

“It look like the Old Uncle is always waiting for someone,” the maid said. If Young-Ho had heard her, he would have given her credit for the keen observation, especially for a dull person like her. It was true the Old Uncle seemed to be waiting for someone, even though he himself didn’t know it. Since the incident in the garden, Young-Ho had seen neither Sun-Young nor the Old Uncle.

The ancient caretaker continued to tend the garden silently, as if he had lost his tongue.

One day during this lull, the maid brought in his dinner tray, her eyes red and swollen.

“Ajumoni, what happened to your eyes?” Young-Ho asked.

She burst into tears and stammered, “The Grand Old Lady have passed away.”

“When?”

“This afternoon.” Sobbing bitterly, the maid lamented, “The beautiful, gracious lady of the highest family died when no one was with her.”

Gradually, Young-Ho learned that Sun-Young had been at school, the Old Aunt had been at the market buying groceries, and the Old Lady’s second son, the Old Uncle, was sitting in the back

yard, oblivious. When the aunt returned from the market, she didn’t go into the Lady’s room, so no one knew when she had breathed her last.

The Old Aunt had ordered the maid not to tell Young-Ho, but now the maid continued to wail about the death of the lady who had taken care of her from early childhood.

Young-Ho could scarcely suppress his anger. There was no keening or wailing, only complete silence, an indication of the family’s antipathy toward him. He couldn’t fathom why they were so coldly antagonistic and condescending.

The relationship between him and the family was that of buyer and seller. They’d put up their house for sale and he had bought it. He hadn’t forced, coerced or cheated them. He hadn’t taken advantage of their dire need to sell by haggling or bringing down the price. Under ordinary circumstances, the relationship should have ended when the family moved out and he held his open house. He had let them stay on because the house was too big and he wasn’t sure whether he would settle permanently in Korea. Besides, he planned to bring his parents in the fall. Until then, he didn’t need so much space, but the idea of renting half the house hadn’t appealed to him.

At any rate, he’d had good intentions and thought he had done them a favour. What he had received in return was the cold shoulder. He hated the family’s superior attitude, obviously deeply inculcated in them by a now defunct, corrupt feudalism.

Angry, Young-Ho threw down his napkin and asked, “Where is the door to the inner quarters?”

The maid stopped sobbing at the abrupt question, which he repeated. She cringed. “The Old Aunt told me not to tell you.” But she led him to the door.

The inner quarters was about twice the size of his quarters. Unlike in his rooms where all the lights were on every evening, only a few lights were turned on. For a mourning house, it was eerily dark and quiet. A cold shiver ran through him and made him remember the dream he’d had that insisted he wasn’t the master of the house.

Nobody noticed when he entered. The inner quarters looked as if the funeral was long over instead of being prepared. In the big central hall, someone had placed a folding screen, an incense burner, and a straw mat, upon which the Old Uncle sat like a statue. The chandelier was lit, but its

myriad little lights didn’t brighten the hall. If the folding screen was meant to separate the dead from the living, in this hall there were two deaths, one on each side of the partition—the deceased lady and the breathing dead man. The latter sat stone still, impervious, while perhaps the dead lady might be weeping behind the screen.

Young-Ho’s anger dissolved into deep pity. He cleared his throat a couple of times to make his presence known. From the open door of the silent room, a woman emerged and looked doubtfully in his direction. Against the dim light behind her, her face was in deep shadow, but he sensed immediately that she was the Old Aunt. He moved toward her.

“I know I have not been invited, but I wanted to offer my condolences. I’m Song Young-Ho from the outer quarters. How…” He couldn’t think of the right traditional expression since his vocabulary was limited and he had almost no knowledge of proper conduct at a wake or funeral. To make up for his lack of etiquette, he bowed deeply.

The Old Aunt was not the overbearing matriarch he had imagined, but a kindly looking woman of medium height. “Thank you very much. We are so sorry to have this happen when we are staying here by your graciousness. That is why we wanted to keep it quiet and not bother you.”

“Please don’t worry. Even neighbors are considered cousins, they say, and since we live in the same house, we can be called family, can’t we?”

The Old Aunt didn’t answer, bowing her head slightly. Her actions were definitely those of a well-bred, noble family.

“May I burn incense, then?” Young-Ho asked.

“Our formal mourning has not yet begun, but I suppose you may,” she said, and led him to the incense burner on a low table in front of the screen.

Young-Ho, having no idea what the “before and after mourning” procedures were, felt privileged to be allowed to offer incense burning before the real mourning began.

The Old Uncle, Chung-Kwon Jeong, in his stony obliviousness, didn’t recognize Young-Ho. After he had burned incense and bowed deeply twice, Young-Ho lingered, not knowing what to do next.

Then several men came in, whispering among themselves.

“She passed away suddenly, I heard.”

“Perhaps a stroke.”

“I was told her blood pressure was not high.”

“Then, a heart attack?”

“I think it’s old age.”

The entered the hall and Young-Ho recognized one of the voices. “Woo Jae-Min!” he said aloud.

Jae-Min didn’t seem to hear him and went straight to the incense table. He knelt for a long time, weeping, but with restraint. Other men followed suit, and then stood up.

The Old Aunt approached one of them and said, “Mr. Chang-Gon Park, could you stay here today? Sun-Young is having…”

“Yes?” “She is being treated by a doctor. She fainted.”

Young-Ho listened intently to the conversation. He took out a cigarette to ease his tension, then put it away immediately, thinking it might be improper to smoke in a house of mourning.

The heavy curfew siren wailed like the cry of a wounded animal.

Chapter VII

Returning from a grueling trek to the mountains for the funeral, Young-Ho and Jae-Min stood stock-still the moment they entered the garden. Red and white magnolia blossoms bloomed among the soft green trees and pristine grass. The declining sun ignited a flickering light on every windowpane. There was no sign of human presence. The sublime beauty of the scene was a comfort to their tired eyes, and inspired awe tinged with unease in both their hearts. Each breathed a deep sigh of stunned admiration.

Tired as he was, Young-Ho knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep and asked Jae-Min to stay overnight. He felt sad after the five-day vigil and funeral, even though he had never met the woman who had died. Early that morning he had joined family and mourners in the desolate cemetery, the Jeong family’s ancestral burial ground in Chungchong Province. It was his first experience of the elaborate burial ritual.

Since Jae-Min was exhausted as well, he decided to stay. After all, Young-Ho was president of the company that had hired him.

The maid greeted them. “Would you like to take a bath, sir? It’ll do you good to relax in warm water. The Old Aunt ordered another herb bath. The water must be just right now.”

Without a word Young-Ho took off his clothes and stepped into the tub. Out on the veranda, Jae-Min leaned against the balustrade, eyes closed in meditation, mentally replaying the strange day he had just lived through. After several days of sleepless vigil, he had been up at seven to ride for hours in the family funeral bus, which jerked and shook over unpaved roads to the Jeong family’s ancestral burial ground.

Despite the family’s decline, it was still spacious, as befitted a noble lineage. No one cried or wailed. The traditional ritual was carried out silently and correctly. He had felt inconsolable sorrow.

Even though Sun-Young was the deceased lady’s sole direct descendant, the Old Aunt forbade her to join the mourners. Funeral tradition dictated that women should not attend burial site ceremonies. However, Sun-Young wouldn’t have been able to go anyway. She hadn’t recovered completely from her fainting fit the day her grandmother died. For the first time, as he pictured the

dry-eyed grief of Sun-Young in her snow-white mourning clothes, Jae-Min understood the long, unwavering devotion of his great-uncle.

Young-Ho, soaking in the aromatic herb water, also reflected on the eerie day as his fatigue began to seep away. Sending someone to the next world was a new experience for him. He kept thinking about Sun-Young’s heart-rending beauty. At first he had felt intimidated by her, then pitied the bravery she tried to muster in his presence. Now he felt a profound desire to protect her, an emotion he’d never felt toward Bess in Hawaii.

As soon as the two men had finished their baths, the maid served them ginseng tea, followed by a table full of tasty delicacies. It was as if the Old Aunt had stayed home just to cook for them.

After dinner, Young-Ho and Jae-Min moved two chairs out to the balcony. The moon had risen, showering silver light on the trees and grass, turning the entire garden a luminous, underwater green.

Neither spoke when the door to the inner quarters opened silently and a white figure emerged. Young-Ho and Jae-Min simultaneously recognized the Old Uncle and stood up.

The old man strode without hesitation toward the white bench, but instead of sitting on it, he opened his arms wide and looked up at the moon. In his usual loose, shroud-like garment, he looked more than ever like a specter. He remained in that pose, silent, like an actor in a Greek tragedy on a stage bathed in moonlight.

The two men watched, scarcely breathing, mesmerized by the spectacle. The Old Uncle stood with arms raised for a long time, then—as if the scene was over—he lowered his arms, walked slowly past his usual bench to the door, and disappeared.

Jae-Min and Young-Ho exhaled at the same time, coming back to themselves from the awe of the moment. Each lit a cigarette. Young-Ho spoke first.

“The old man seems to belong to another world, and yet I’m in awe of him. I don’t know why. Every time I see him, I feel as though I’m looking into the dark, unknown world of the human soul. I’m always profoundly moved.”

Jae-Min didn’t respond right away, but went on smoking. After a while he said, “People say he’s a living corpse. I’m not sure I can express it, but let me ask you this, sir: if human life has any value, whatever the dead leave behind is also valuable, don’t you think? In the old man’s case,

everything that happened in his life is shrouded in such mystery that what he’s left with seems to be just a dead body.”

Young-Ho nodded wordlessly. Jae-Min continued.

“He awes people…because of his suffering, I think. Not necessarily in the past, but now.

Isn’t it the most terrible thing to be unable to die, to suffer dementia that snatches away his will to die? It’s like a huge empty hole in the soul. He’s a man imprisoned in his own ruined body. I suppose we are moved by the grimness, the ghastliness of his condition.”

Young-Ho couldn’t even remotely guess at the old man’s past, but his present appearance testified to the possibility that human life might be a story of suffering and torment. People might feel remorse, not only for what they had done, but for what they had not been able to accomplish. He wondered where, along that continuum, the old man stood. Suddenly he felt a strong urge to find out more.

“Can you tell me anything about his past?” he asked Jae-Min, instantly regretting the overt curiosity in his own voice.

“He is the younger brother of the late master of this house,” said Jae-Min. “My great-uncle says that when he was young, he was extremely bright, passionate, and warm-hearted.”

“So he hasn’t been like this all his life.”

“No. I heard he was known as a genius. I think his present condition is due to his state of being, not to any disease.”

“Then he must have suffered unspeakable things in his life.”

“Yes, many ups and downs, here and there, everywhere. Even as a college student in Tokyo, he organized a secret anti-Japanese independence movement and then joined the guerrilla activities in Manchuria. He was closely connected with the Korean government-in-exile in Shanghai.

“I see.”

“In Japan, as well as in China, his anti-Japanese activities were phenomenal. His older brother—a high-ranking officer in the Japanese colonial government in Korea—suffered because of him. Eventually, the old man was captured by the Japanese police and tortured so brutally that he became this ruined, deranged shell of his former self. He’s been like that ever since.”

“He is a great man,” Young-Ho said reverently.

“He certainly is. He seems to have forgotten words, but he often mentions a name—HeiRyon, I think it is.”

Young-Ho smiled. “I heard it too the other day. I was surprised because that is my mother’s name.”

“It’s a pretty name.”

“Yes—but even if my mother’s name were Puppy Dung, I’d have thought it pretty.”

“Your mother must be a beautiful woman.”

Young-Ho laughed sheepishly. “To me she is. My friends used to tease me about my Oedipus complex.”

Jae-Min smiled, too, but in a moment his thoughts turned somber. He couldn’t remember his own mother, who had died when he was barely five years old. For the first time, he envied YoungHo. “You are a happy man,” he said.

“Am I?” “Yes, because you have a mother.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t even remember her face.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”.

A dog barked somewhere in the neighborhood and Jae-Min rose to his feet as if from a dream. “I don’t think I’ll stay overnight after all,” he said. “You must be very tired. I hope you’ll get some rest.”

Young-Ho made no effort to detain him.

Jae-Min dozed in the taxi on the way home, aware that he had been away for five days helping with the funeral. His younger brother was fast asleep when he arrived, but when Jae-Min opened the door, Jae-Ung sat up abruptly, rubbing his eyes. That told the older brother how uneasy the boy had been during the days he’d been away. His heart ached for Jae-Ung, who had lost his mother at birth. After hearing how much Young-Ho loved his own mother, Jae-Min felt an even deeper pity for his brother.

“Hey, scaredy cat!” he said, faking merriment. He patted Jae-Ung’s shoulder and regretted not bringing so much as a piece of rice cake for him. “Were you scared?”

“No, of course not,” Jae-Ung said, grinning. “I’m not a child.” He was nineteen—not a child —but around Jae-Min, the only family he’d ever known, he acted childish.

Jae-Min could barely suppress the tears he felt rising and tried to swim out of his sentimentality by joking. “I think I’ll marry you off soon.”

Jae-Ung ignored the remark. He turned his acne-pitted face up and said, “Do you know Ae-Ja came by every day while you were gone? She brought me rice and cucumber kimchi, too.”

“Oh, she did?”

“She said she had something to talk about with you.”

“I wonder what. Did she say?”

“No. She just said she had to see you.” His tone became pleading. “Promise me you’ll see her tomorrow.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Promise! Don’t wait till she calls, please.”

“Okay.”

“You sound like you’re not going to,” said Jae-Ung. “All right, then,” he went on when JaeMin didn’t answer, “I’ll tell her you’ll meet her in a coffee shop.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Please.”

Any other day, Jae-Min would have scolded his brother for being stubborn, but today he hadn’t the heart. He began to undress.

“I’ll tell her on my way to school since you’re too busy,” Jae-Ung volunteered. “Which coffee shop shall I tell her?”

“I don’t know the names of coffee shops.”

Jae-Ung mulled this over, then brightened. “There’s a coffee shop right beside your office. I think it’s called…let me see…yes, it’s called ‘Karosu’. I’ll tell her to go there at lunch time.”

Jae-Min ignored him and flopped down on the floor to sleep.

In the morning he found that his brother had already left for school. Around noon, he received a call from a breathless Jae-Ung telling him that Ae-Ja would be at the coffee shop by 12:10. He must have sneaked out of his class to use a public phone. In his haste he hung up without waiting for Jae-Min’s answer.

Reluctantly, Jae-Min put his desk in order and sauntered over to the coffee shop. Ae-Ja stood at the entrance, prim and demure, not even perspiring, with no sign of having arrived there in a hurry. In fact, she looked as though she’d been there a while. Her waiting there for him instead of inside was quite unexpected and he grinned sheepishly, noticing her figure in her white dress.

She had obviously dressed for this meeting, although she held a sketchbook under one arm as if coming from school. The white dress suited her dark complexion well. He noted again her shining eyes.

“Have you been waiting long?” he asked.

She smiled. “No, I’ve just arrived.” In profile her face appeared concave, nose and chin slightly protruding, but her teeth were white and even.

“I hear you’ve done a lot for my brother.”

“Jae-Ung must have exaggerated.”

“You’re too modest,” he told her. Smiling, they entered the coffee shop.

Chapter VIII

Coming in from bright daylight, Jae-Min and Ae-Ja were temporarily blinded by the dimness of the coffee shop. It took a moment for them to see and claim two empty seats beside the aquarium in which a few tropical fish were swimming. For a while they sat in awkward silence. Ae-Ja wouldn’t say a word, only fingering the edges of the sketchbook she had brought. A waitress came and asked for their order.

“What would you like to drink?” Jae-Min asked Ae-Ja. “Tea, please,” she answered in a small voice, looking up for the first time. The fluorescent glow from the aquarium made her eyes unnaturally bright.

Jae-Min felt a little more sympathetic. Eyeing her sketchbook, he asked, “Were you on your way home from school?”

“No.” “So you always carry it around just in case? May I see it?”

“Oh, no!”

“Don’t be so modest.”

“I have no talent.”

He could see that she actually wanted to show it to him, but he didn’t press the issue.

Without Jae-Ung around, he found encounters with Ae-Ja tiresome and irritating. Today, however, he decided to be patient because she had waited for him in the hot sun.

Jae-Min was about to take out a cigarette to relieve the awkwardness when, to his relief, the waitress brought the tea. Although it wasn’t all that hot, he blew on it as though it were. Then, looking straight at Ae-Ja, he asked, “Did you say you needed to talk to me about something?”

She held her tea cup to her lips without drinking, then set it on the table. Still looking down, she fidgeted with the sketchbook.

Impatient, Jae-Min shuffled his foot against the table leg and said bluntly, “Is it something I need to hear?”

Ae-Ja looked up, embarrassed. The aqua blue from the aquarium was reflected in her large

eyes and Jae-Min regretted his brusque tone. In a softer voice he said, “Whatever it is, I’m not sure I can be of much help.”

She focused on his face. “I’m thinking about quitting school.”

He heard the desperation in her voice, but he had no interest in her personal affairs and so his response was indifferent. “Quitting school?”

Ae-Ja hung her head. Then, as if she had made the final decision to leap from a high cliff, she closed her eyes and began to speak in a rush of words.

“Our home situation is desperate. My mother is trying every day from early morning till night, but there’s no way out. Not just my mother, but countless people have gone bankrupt.”

Her story was a jumble of details which boiled down to the fact that her mother had invested heavily in stocks and lost everything. Since she had done it to raise and educate her only child, AeJa felt responsible for her mother’s predicament. Jae-Min had heard such stories of heartache, but strangely, in this case, he felt little sympathy. He remained quiet, wondering if the neighborhood gossip about Ae-Ja’s mother’s affluence had affected him. Ae-Ja’s mother was rumored to have been a gisaeng who had had an illicit affair with a rich married man. Ae-Ja was the result.

In fact, he knew very little about Ae-Ja’s family situation. A naturally taciturn man, he rarely conversed with his neighbors except for the children playing in the alley. Jae-Ung often told him trivial neighborhood news, like the tale of the boy who wet his bed at night and had been sent out with a winnow over his head, begging for salt. A woman had given him salt and mock-whipped him as tradition dictated in curing bed-wetting. Jae-Ung also passed on the joke that the hare-lipped old man in the corner store looked like a rabbit chewing grass when he sucked his long bamboo pipe.

But for some reason, Jae-Ung would not tell him any of the whispered rumors about AeJa’s mother except on one occasion when he had asked, “Big Brother, what is a superannuated gisaeng?”

“I’m not sure,” Jae-Min had answered absent-mindedly. “Must be a retired gisaeng. What a bizarre question!”

The day before, Jae-Ung had heard the landlady bad-mouthing Ae-Ja’s mother. Apparently Ae-Ja’s mother had turned down the landlady’s request for a loan.

“Ha! A superannuated gisaeng. So haughty!” the landlady said bitterly. “Who can tell what men see in a woman? The rich man’s wife was known as a great beauty, and yet he fell for that ugly face of hers. “ Too upset to hear more, Jae-Ung had gone to his room. The woman’s words, “Who can tell what men see in a woman?” kept ringing in his ears.

Jae-Min’s knowledge of Ae-Ja herself was sketchy at best. He knew she was an art student in a private women’s college. She probed, unasked, into his affairs, which annoyed him. She was a spoiled girl raised by an indulgent, well-off mother. She was too cheerful and, at times, irritatingly chatty.

Rather than feeling sympathetic toward her, Jae-Min was embarrassed. Her emotional approach was burdensome to say the least, since he had no interest in her. He pretended to listen while his hunger grew—he had skipped breakfast that morning. He looked for a clock and finally, on a column above some beaded decorative curtains, he spotted one with its hands pointing to 12:40.

He had spent half an hour listening to Ae-Ja’s plaintive story. His back hurt; his resentment mounted. She was still looking down; her shoulders trembled under the white dress.

Although he rarely assessed other people’s clothing, Jae-Min suddenly noted coldly that the dress Ae-Ja wore seemed rather expensive. Born and raised in poverty himself, he regarded AeJa’s confession with skepticism.

His hunger pangs were sharper now, but he was reluctant to ask her to lunch. That would only extend the awkward situation. Looking at the clock again, he made up his mind to leave her promptly at one o’clock. It was now 12:45—fifteen minutes to go. In resignation, he was shifting about in his chair to get comfortable when he noticed a light on at a far corner table where no one had been a moment before.

A man and a woman sat across from each other. The man, a cigarette dangling from his lips, was looking away. The woman, in a white dress that exposed her long slender neck, watched him.

Her profile, so beautiful that it caused shivers in Jae-Min, belonged to none other than Sun-Young!

Jae-Min nearly jumped up.

Under the greenish light, Sun-Young’s dress took on an almost transparent sheen and her

face, though in shadow, was as fair as a gourd-flower in the moonlight.

Jae-Min stared. The man, whose face was obscured by the smoke from his cigarette, was Park Chang-Gon. At moments when the smoke thinned, Jae-Min could see Chang-Gon’s fierce frown. His heart began to pound with an anger he couldn’t fathom. What would he have done if the two of them were in a passionate embrace?

Sun-Young seemed inured to Chang-Gon’s mood. Her gleaming black hair with its bluish sheen hung just above her shoulders. Even though she was speaking, she seemed to Jae-Min as absolutely still as an artist’s model or a portrait.

“Could I possibly get a job at your company?” Ae-Ja’s halting question brought him back to the moment. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

Although annoyed, Jae-Min collected himself. “Why don’t you finish your tea?” he said, and watched as she picked up her teacup without a word. In a desperate effort to push away SunYoung’s image, he added, “So—you want a job?”

Ae-Ja drank half of the remaining tea. If she was hurt, she said nothing and did not leave.

Whatever she thought of his behavior, she showed no emotion.

“You didn’t have lunch yet, did you?” Jae-Min blurted out. “Shall we have lunch somewhere?” He rose to leave while his mind was irresistibly drawn to Sun-Young. Ae-Ja stood up and followed him.

Outside, the summer heat blazed, seeming to squeeze dry both people and buildings.

Everything looked smaller. Even the shadows seemed to have shrunk in the fierce heat. Jae-Min felt dizzy.

Then someone accosted him. “Isn’t this Mr. Woo?” It was Young-Ho grinning at him. His dark sunglasses made him look more personable than forbidding. “Have you had lunch?” He looked at Ae-Ja. “I see you have company. Can she join us?”

“We’ve already eaten,” Jae-Min said curtly and walked away. Young-Ho watched them leave, wondering if he had inadvertently done something wrong. Then he turned and went into the coffee shop to meet Min as had been arranged.

Chapter IX

Min didn’t show up for the 12:30 appointment even after more than half an hour had passed. Young-Ho had gotten somewhat used to people arriving late for their appointments, but today he decided he didn’t need to wait any longer.

He had serious doubts about Min. A week ago, someone had reported seeing him in Seoul the day after he was supposed to have left for the mine. Young-Ho himself had taken Min to Seoul station to catch the 8:50 train. Yet the other man had seen Min in Seoul at the very time next morning that he should have been arriving at the mine. At the time, Young-Ho had dismissed the witness’s insistence that he had, indeed, seen Min. It must have been someone else who looked like Min. The man insisted that he had accidentally witnessed an embarrassing scene in a coffee shop right there in Seoul. A middle-aged woman had seized Min by the collar and let out a torrent of abuse. The coffee shop manager, a woman experienced in such matters, led them expertly to the door. Otherwise, Min would have lost face and wouldn’t have been able to hold his head up in the streets of Seoul.

Young-Ho decided to forget the whole affair. After all, he had taken Min to the station.

Then something else occurred that aroused his suspicions. Ordinarily, Min would rush breathlessly to Young-Ho as soon as he returned to Seoul from the mines. This time, for some reason, he waited to telephone Young-Ho, saying he had arrived back in Seoul two days before. Unpleasant as it was, Young-Ho wasn’t really surprised. Deep down, he held a certain degree of suspicion toward Min and other businessmen he had met.

He rose to his feet, leaving the coffee he had ordered untouched, and was about to leave when he happened to catch sight of the two people at the corner table. He halted, surprised.

Through the haze of dense cigarette smoke the exquisite face of Sun-Young appeared, like an apparition in a fantasy. The man across from her looked familiar, but Young-Ho couldn’t place him.

He must have been smoking continuously, since a stream of smoke was flowing out from that corner and spreading to other tables. Neither the fiercely frowning man nor Sun-Young was talking. Too

stunned to collect himself, Young-Ho sat back down.

Sun-Young looked up at the man adoringly. In her posture Young-Ho saw a suppressed passion that sent a wave of shock to his heart. This was a totally different sensation from the oppressive feelings that had assailed him when he first saw her; nor was it like the endearing compassion he’d felt when she defiantly ordered her disturbed uncle to walk. No—this red-hot sensation that welled up in him was entirely new. It seized him with such force that he forgot where he was. With Bess he had never felt anything when, in her skimpy swimsuit, she would dance in the tight embrace of an unknown man. But here, now, he found himself shaking. His thin veneer of selfcontrol was dangerously weakened.

Through the pall of blue smoke he saw the couple as if they were two figures in a painting. In the next instant, the painting tore apart as the man, his face full of annoyance and loathing, got up and walked out without saying a word to Sun-Young. She seemed utterly crushed by his sudden departure. For a while she simply sat, then slowly she rose to her feet. The man had long since disappeared.

As she was about to go out the door, the waitress remarked rudely, “Lady, you didn’t pay for your tea!”

Young-Ho got up when he heard this. Sun-Young didn’t seem to comprehend. She stared at the waitress, who appeared to take this reaction as a sign of arrogance. She raised her voice even further.

“Are you going to leave without paying for your tea?”

Everyone in the coffee shop turned to Sun-Young who, like a zombie, just stared, then suddenly bolted out the door.

“The bitch!” screamed the waitress, running out after her. Several curious spectators moved to the door to watch the strange drama.

Almost beside himself, Young-Ho pushed through the crowd that had already gathered to see a beautiful, bewildered young woman in white being harangued and insulted by a short, pudgy waitress. He grabbed a handful of money from his pocket and shoved it at the waitress. “Here!” he hissed. “Here’s the money for the tea.”

An empty taxi cruised by. Young-Ho hailed it and pushed Sun-Young in and got in beside her.

“Where to, sir?” asked the driver.

“Wooi-dong,” Young-Ho answered, as though he had already thought of the destination in advance. As the taxi moved on, he tried to calm himself and lit a cigarette.

Sun-Young sat still as if in a daze. She held a sketchbook under her arm. That mute, dazed expression reminded Young-Ho of her uncle.

Neither of them said a word as the taxi maneuvered in the crowded, narrow streets over the Miari Hill. Taxi and pedestrians moved in a slow, dense stream; but Young-Ho was not annoyed.

Rather, he was filled with a sense of the scene’s vitality, of life being lived in its concrete, everyday activities.

A decrepit house with weeds growing on its roof displayed various cheap items under a shabby, handwritten sign: Everything You Need. Next to it were two small shops, one selling tin pots and pans, the other a meager supply of hoes and spades. Those who didn’t have store space had to sit on the sidewalk with straw baskets full of whatever they were trying to sell. Grimy children in dirty T-shirts busily licked the street vendor’s ice-cream cones. The watermelon man was slicing melons into several pieces and covering each piece in thin white paper, hoping they would sell more easily than whole melons. The street scene, though poor and shabby, gave Young-Ho a renewed appreciation of the vitality and appetite for life of the poor. He found himself suddenly calm.

As soon as the taxi emerged from the crowded streets, it began to speed up. At the car’s first jolt, Sun-Young’s sketchbook fell to the floor and opened in the middle. Young-Ho caught sight of a rough sketch of the statue of Venus done in excellent perspective. As he looked at it, he had the strange sense that a living Venus was being broken apart. The dizzying, unpleasant fantasy mirrored his inner turmoil, and in order to escape from it, he began to talk. What came out of his mouth was a preposterous story about America.

“I heard this story in the south. In the days of the Civil War, a plantation owner was like a feudal lord of the Middle Ages and his daughters were princesses. These princesses were raised under strict rules of conduct. For instance, they were severely reprimanded if their skirts happened

to be short enough to reveal their ankles. But in front of their black slaves they would prance around in the nude because the slaves weren’t considered to be human, just as people don’t feel shame in front of furniture. Just utter indifference.”

Young-Ho stopped himself. He was telling a ridiculous story, most inappropriate for a taxi ride with a dazed, heartbroken woman. He had wanted to say something, anything, to Sun-Young, but what had poured out made him blush to the roots of his hair. The truth of the matter was he wanted to confess his love for her.

Her resentment of him could be construed as a kind of interest, he mused. But what he had just told her probably made her despise him even more. He realized he was acting like an immature adolescent, yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself and began talking again.

“In fact, the princesses had no real life. They just indulged themselves in idle luxury, living off the blood and sweat of their slaves. That couldn’t be called a life.”

Instantly he became aware that his last remark might be interpreted as a rebuke to SunYoung. Aghast, he lit up another cigarette and then crushed it out immediately. Sun-Young’s lack of response made him more nervous. His awkward attempt at conversation was futile because she turned a deaf ear to everything he said.

She was past caring about why she was in a taxi with a man she despised or where it was taking them. The ashes of her passion lay in waste, but Sun-Young felt neither anger nor bitterness, only an empty loneliness. Perhaps, if she had opened her heart, this sense of hopelessness might have dissipated, but she only sealed it more tightly. Instead of realizing that she had held onto a foolish love and lost it, she sank into deep sadness.

Sun-Young bit her lips hard, trying not to let herself wallow in self-pity. She could not understand how Chang-Gon, a man who had had a series of woman-related scandals, could act as if he hated women. Her love for him had always been one-sided, unrequited. Perhaps it was brotherly indulgence she craved. Was he waiting for her to awaken from her misguided love?

The speeding taxi slowed and the driver asked, “Where to, sir?”

Young-Ho came to himself and realized he didn’t have a destination. He’d said Wooi-dong simply because he couldn’t let Sun-Young go home to where the Old Aunt would be waiting with

her sharp, all-knowing eyes. Besides, he himself was too agitated to think clearly.

“Where in Wooi-dong, sir?”

“Just drive straight ahead, please,” Young-Ho answered, having no idea where ‘straight ahead’ might lead to. Perhaps if they drove around for a while, Sun-Young’s composure would return and his own agitation would subside.

Then, as he stared blankly out of the taxi window, he caught sight of a colorful plot of land.

“What is that place?” he asked.

“What, sir?” The driver looked around. “Oh, that’s the rose garden. This must be your first visit to this area.”

“Please let us off at the garden,” said Young-Ho. Although he wasn’t particularly impressed by the bright colors, they did remind him of his mother. His memories of her were always connected with flowers—his beautiful mother surrounded by beautiful flowers. He was intensely proud of her. She nurtured and cherished flowers and refined her mind by tenderly taking care of them, making that care a part of her life. Just for a few moments he forgot Sun-Young who, to his surprise, came over silently and stood beside him.

“These flowers remind me of my mother,” he said to her. “She and my father met in China where they were both engaged in the anti-Japanese independence movement. Later they moved to Hawaii, where the first business they started was growing flowers. They changed to other businesses, but the seed of their success came from that one.

“To me, my mother is still beautiful, but people have told me that when she was young, her beauty was breathtaking. The Korean-Americans in Hawaii used to say that her flowers were as beautiful as she was. Her delicate hands were pricked by thorns, but that didn’t put her off. She didn’t seem to think of flowers as a commercial commodity. She found it worthwhile just to cultivate them. I respect her because whatever she did was her very best. She didn’t nurture flowers just to make a living from them, but lived with the utmost sincerity to make her life beautiful.”

He spoke slowly, emphasizing each word as he pulled at his upper lip with thumb and forefinger, a habit he’d had since childhood when he was serious. “I was raised among flowers,” he went on. “My parents sold flowers, but to me each one of them was beautiful in its own way. They

weren’t just things to sell. I think I was deeply influenced by my mother.

“I was told that when their first flowers bloomed, my father kissed my mother’s roughened hands and wept for a long time, while my mother closed her eyes and smiled.”

Young-Ho dared not say that because of his mother he was unable to love any woman, though he had met many. His mother’s love for him was intense, tempered by a desperate resignation. She seemed resigned to the fact that someday she would lose her son to another woman. The very thought of that made Young-Ho hesitant to pursue any woman. Now that he had met Sun-Young, he realized that his reluctance stemmed not from his understanding of his mother’s love, but from never having met a woman for whom he felt an all-consuming passion.

The emotions he had poured out about his mother were, in truth, his heartfelt confession to Sun-Young. To him, the slightly wilting flowers under the summer sun’s white heat had a certain pathos. He remembered a poet once saying that beauty was sadness. Here he was, a mature man of over thirty, temporarily forgetting his age and wallowing in sentimentality.

Sun-Young didn’t say a word. Among those roses in full bloom, her inner eye was seeing the red pomegranate blossoms and her father, who had been so fond of them. He had been vilified as a ruthless businessman and a politician with no conscience, but to her he was always a gentle, doting father.

The time and the rose garden hadn’t prompted Sun-Young to reveal her emotions as YoungHo had done. Her father’s excessive love for his family had been interpreted by others as a reflection of his egotism, a character flaw. Anyway, he had died. Perhaps death couldn’t be a way to be forgiven, but at least it would have the advantage of his being forgotten.

Forgetting? Oblivion? Sun-Young looked into herself, full of past pain and trivial regrets.

Why couldn’t she forget? She shuddered as she realized that she was desperately holding on to past emotions that were worthless.

“It’s too warm. Shall we go?” Young-Ho asked.

“Yes,” she answered in a gentle, clear voice he had never heard from her before.

They got into the taxi, which Young-Ho had asked to wait for them. After a long silence, he said, “My parents are coming in the middle of September. I’m already looking forward to

introducing you to them.” He watched her face as he spoke and saw there a slight movement which he couldn’t interpret. “The house is so big there won’t be any problem,” he went on. “I’ve heard that people should rule the house, not the other way around. Am I right?”

Her thoughts had wandered away from Young-Ho and concentrated on the one problem that was, for her, most significant. “The owners of the house are coming, the owners of the house are coming and we must move out.”

Young-Ho laughed. “My parents and I are new, so the real owner of the house is you,” he said.

She focused on the impending arrival of his parents. “In the fall, the owners will come and we must leave.”

The taxi had already left the crowded street and was about to climb the Miari Hill.

Chapter X

“Sir, won’t you have some?” Young-Ho picked up the cut-glass bowl and turned to the Old Uncle. He knew he would get no response, but as a matter of courtesy to a living man, he offered the drink. As he held the bowl to the old man’s lips, he noted how methodically he drank each sip to the last drop as if he were a machine that had to fill itself with the liquid. Young-Ho put down the bowl and picked up his own, filled with pink water and thin slivers of fruit.

When the maid brought the drink she had commented, “It’s too warm today, ain’t it? That’s why the Old Aunt made this omija punch for you gentlemen.”

Young-Ho had never tasted anything like it—cool, sweet, slightly bitter, mysterious. It was the best thirst quencher, he thought, in the suffocating heat, not like Coca-Cola, which forced itself on the drinker. Just as the Old Uncle had done, Young-Ho drank his punch in one gulp and wondered if he was being overly philosophical about a mere bowl of summer punch.

He had never felt bored sitting with the old man whom everyone called a living corpse. In fact, he felt as if he were hearing endless stories when he was with him. Always, Young-Ho sensed some fundamental truth of human life in the old man’s existence, some significant, unknown drama, even though the Old Uncle sat erect, his pale lips pressed tightly with no hint of his eager gulping of the punch a moment ago. His hands hung loose at his sides like useless attachments.

Young-Ho set his bowl on the table and leaned back. Even under the thick wisteria leaves the sun was fiercely hot. The grass seemed on fire, but the trees looked more alive, thanks to the gardener’s faithful care. Crape myrtles bloomed like so many flames, as did dahlias and summer chrysanthemums. In this exquisite garden, sitting with the mute old man and enjoying the Old Aunt’s tasty delicacies, his depression eased. This land his mother had missed and yearned for all her life had taken a profound hold of him, too. He had begun to feel deeply fond of it.

But the rough, volatile mining business he had entered provided many jolting experiences.

Perhaps, he thought, wounds and betrayals made a man grow. Maybe it was foolish to define human life by the first betrayal one faced, but there were moments when he wanted to pack the whole thing in. Small mine owners streamed into his office, drunk with excitement about their gold mine here,

their coal mine or steel mine there, their lime mine or gem mine. In his opinion, they were all insane, avaricious profit-seekers.

Young-Ho sighed. Was this the land his mother had loved so deeply and unwaveringly? As far back as he could remember, she had told him about the extreme poverty of her homeland, which seemed forsaken by God. He had majored in mining technology in college so that some day he could mine Korea’s buried hidden resources and thus help his mother’s and his homeland.

Well, this is it! This is my learning experience, the first step I must climb, he told himself resolutely, and immediately felt better. The serenity of the garden helped his mood, too.

In general, the term “fate” wasn’t used about happy people, but it could describe people like him who were born in a foreign country but couldn’t assimilate even though they lived a comfortable life, and who also failed to find a home in their ancestral land. Young-Ho knew his choice was to challenge his fate and eventually win. He had no intention of passively accepting what fate handed out to him.

Suddenly, the Old Uncle yelled at the top of his lungs, “No, Hei-Ryon! Don’t go that way!

It’s dangerous!”

Young-Ho stood up in shock, even though it wasn’t the first time the old man had done this.

The Old Uncle didn’t seem to see the sizzling sun, the peaceful garden, or Young-Ho sitting across the table. In his open, vacant stare lurked the whole drama of his life. Young-Ho, bewildered, thought he saw in the sick man’s gaze the image of Sun-Young’s eyes.

Even before the paroxysm passed, the caretaker appeared at the old man’s side. He must have been watching nearby. He mumbled something soothing, and soon his charge stretched himself out on the bench. His arms hung loose, as if he had been doing strenuous exercise and was exhausted. As was usual after one of these outbursts, the caretaker remained mute.

“Why don’t you let him rest?” Young-Ho said. “He’ll be all right after a nap.”

The caretaker’s wrinkled face remained impassive, but Young-Ho noticed that his step faltered on his way to the open garden door. He and the Old Uncle were the only ones who used it.

Young-Ho had never seen the Old Aunt in daylight, and Sun-Young hadn’t shown herself for more than a week.

The heat didn’t subside even after sunset. For Young-Ho, who had lived in a house full of modern conveniences, this old house, despite its elegance, was hard to put up with. The electric fan got on his nerves; the dinner table dulled his appetite.

As usual, the maid brought in the tea tray too soon and flopped herself down in front of him.

Her doing so practically guaranteed that in winter, the hot tea would get cold and in summer, the cold tea would become lukewarm. Her presence irritated him no end.

She began, “Sir, you know the young lady?”

He was immediately attentive.

“Well, you see, she’s a painter or something. And she’s going to hang her picture on the wall to show people at a big place. It’s a…well…edsapidgin, I think.”

Young-Ho laid down his spoon. “You mean an exhibition?”

“Yes, sir, it is edsapidgin.”

“Do you know when and where?”

“From tomorrow, I heard. At some big building.”

Young-Ho managed to speak calmly. “Ajumoni, please go ask the aunt where and when the exhibition is going to be.”

A few minutes later the maid came back, crestfallen. She conveyed a message from the Old Aunt that since the exhibition was to consist of immature paintings by young students, a very busy man like Mr. Song would be wasting his time by attending.

Next morning Young-Ho had his secretary call every gallery and cultural center in the city to find out the location and time of the exhibition. Jae-Min watched Young-Ho with interest while all this was going on. He didn’t know his employer was an art connoisseur. Jae-Min himself had been invited to the exhibition by Ae-Ja. She had come by around ten the previous night. “The exhibition is at the Press Center,” she said. “In the past it was organized by the school, but this year all art students have entered their works and will be strictly judged. There will be a small reception tomorrow, since it’s the first day.

Please come for the one o’clock opening.” She left an invitation for Jae-Min, but he had no interest

in the event.

“Big Brother, you must go,” Jae-Ung said. “Ae-Ja is very talented. I think she’ll become rich and famous. You know, I’ve heard that applied art has more potential than fine art.”

Jae-Min’s heart went out to his younger brother, who had grown up an orphan. He was aware that Ae-Ja’s interest in him extended to Jae-Ung, who thought of her like a sister and found comfort and strength in her. For his sake, Jae-Min decided to attend the exhibition.

Now, after a series of phone calls, Young-Ho’s secretary reported to him that the exhibition was at the Press Club, and that there was to be a reception at one o’clock. Jae-Min found the whole situation hilarious.

Around noon, Young-Ho called him in to ask, “Jae-Min, do you like paintings?”

“I don’t know anything about art, I’m afraid.”

“Neither do I, but would you like to come to the exhibition with me? Sun-Young of our house has her work in it.”

Jae-Min felt his face grow hot. Young-Ho had said Sun-Young of our house, not SunYoung in the inner quarters of the house. The former was a much more familiar term. He told himself there was nothing wrong in Young-Ho being friendly with her. The way he talked, it sounded as though he knew what Sun-Young’s painting was about. Jae-Min felt inferior, the way he’d felt since childhood. What a coincidence!

Smiling crookedly, he answered, “Really? Then I’d be glad to come with you.”

Young-Ho didn’t purchase a bouquet or a potted plant, which Jae-Min inwardly approved. He thought such gestures were gauche and a little contemptible. He wished sadly that Young-Ho were the kind of man he could despise.

The reception hall was packed with mostly young people and a sprinkling of artsy middleaged men, obviously art professors interested in their students’ work. Young-Ho and Jae-Min entered from the sun-drenched street into the artificially lit hall and were momentarily blinded. All the colors in the frames dazzled and confused them. Still, they were both impressed by the vitality of the colors alone, a sign of the energy and creativity of the art students. Neither man knew or cared anything about the ideas or philosophy behind the works.

Young-Ho wanted to see Sun-Young’s work, but the dense, immobile crowd was clustered around the long table of refreshments. Beside the table a young man in thick glasses was discoursing on some artistic subject. People were actually listening to him! He spoke too fast and too earnestly, clearly nervous and worried that his speech didn’t appeal to very many in the audience.

“In ancient times,” he was saying, “some macaronic shapes were etched in the clay, obviously by human fingers, and that was the birth of art. Those shapes were evidence that the wandering apes were turning into our human ancestors. Twenty to thirty thousand years have passed since then, and human hands still itch to leave macaronic shapes on sand or in sticky clay. Art is visual, they say, but art cannot ignore the tactile. Furthermore, the basic, most fundamental impulse is tactile creation, which is an essential part of ink-and-brush art.”

The speech was clearly something the young man had heard or read and was so esoteric that people in the back rows began to whisper, while others moved on. Desperate, he raised his voice. “The great mural art was used to teach official theology and to encourage sublimation of human yearning for the heavenly world. It moved people profoundly for a while, but that was only superficial. Eventually it became only technically masterful, the result being inevitable corruption of the senses.”

Someone in the audience clapped, not in appreciation, but to cut off the speech. Instantly, the atmosphere changed. People began to disperse in twos and threes to the exhibition hall. YoungHo immediately began searching for Sun-Young’s picture, which he found hanging on the dim east wall.

It was a difficult painting for him. He was struck by its intensity. Its basic pattern was a spiral. The primary colors alone were powerful, but here and there slivers of gold and silver emitted a strange magic aura. Overall, it was both ultramodern and classical. It seemed to Young-Ho that the painting had been created out of the spirit of his elegant house.

Deeply impressed, he wondered whether the basic spiral pattern meant the universe. Were the glistening gold and silver the glory of life? And the dense yellow—was it the cry of the suffering?

The happy vermilion, the uneasy cadmium yellow, the point where all these returned to—the universe? He was so transfixed he wasn’t aware that Jae-Min had brought Sun-Young to him.

Sun-Young stood quietly, as usual, but her face was flushed. Presenting your own work is tantamount to a confession, and she felt shy, but also relieved.

Jae-Min couldn’t fathom his motive in finding and bringing Sun-Young to Young-Ho of his own accord. Was it self-torture, or an attempt to gauge his position and thus escape heartache?

In the next moment Ae-Ja appeared, her face pink with excitement. Superficially, SunYoung’s and Ae-Ja’s expressions were the same, but the content was different. Sun-Young’s confession was made to no one. Ae-Ja’s had in mind a definite person, whose response she nervously anticipated.

Young-Ho finally became aware that all eyes were focused on him. He turned to see the two young women. One face was mysteriously exquisite, the other flat and ordinary, yet for an instant, they looked to him almost like twins. He blinked a couple of times and saw two entirely different faces, although both were equally rosy and excited.

Then, out of the crowd, a man suddenly emerged and hastened toward Young-Ho. It was one of Young-Ho’s employees from the accounting office. He was panting and perspiring.

“Mr. President, sir, we have a big problem!”

“Why?” Young-Ho asked. “Has there been an accident?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Min…He’s in the hospital. Both of them.”

“Both?”

“Yes, sir. Please come with me.”

Twenty minutes later, Young-Ho was in the K. Hospital emergency room with two of his employees, surrounded by dingy white walls, empty beds, and heavy silence. He waited half an hour before he lit up a cigarette and offered one to each of his men.

“Is the operation still going on?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. They took X-rays first and said the operation would take quite some time.”

“Will they be all right?”

“I don’t know, sir. The doctor said the woman had lost too much blood.”

Silence again.

Young-Ho didn’t understand the whole affair, nor did he know what he was supposed to do. He had been told that Min had persuaded a widow to invest in his mining business as a partner, but he’d bought stocks instead and lost every penny of her money. He had been harassed day and night. That day, when they accidentally ran into each other in the street, the woman cursed and swore and seized Min’s collar, threatening to kill herself and her daughter. Humiliated beyond endurance, Min had struggled to extricate himself and they had both fallen, rolling into the path of an oncoming truck.

What an absurd story! Frustrated, Young-Ho threw down and rubbed out the still-burning cigarette with his foot, then lit up another one with shaking hands, overcome with distaste for this whole society. Furious and disgusted, he crossed and recrossed his legs while his two employees hung their heads, their hands clasped together as if they were to blame.

Suddenly they heard loud footsteps approaching: not hospital staff, but Jae-Min and the girl in flower-print dress and matching necklace from the exhibition. Young-Ho recognized her right away.

Ae-Ja was beside herself. Her eyes held unspeakable fear, sorrow, and pleading. From her pale, trembling lips came only one word: “Mom? Mom? Mom?” No one spoke. Then a young doctor came toward them, his white gown spattered with blood. “I’m deeply sorry,” he said solemnly. “Has the family been notified?”

“Did both of them…?” asked Jae-Min. “The man is still holding on,” the doctor said, “but the woman had lost too much blood.”

Ae-Ja collapsed as if somebody had knocked her down. Young-Ho quickly caught her in his arms.

Chapter XI

The minute Young-Ho stepped into the garden, he paused. Twilight. The setting sun was darkly reflected in unlit windows. The smooth lawn was a wide blue blanket with the Old Uncle in the white chair, statuesque in white clothes. What caught Young-Ho’s eye, however, wasn’t the fine contrast of blue and white but the presence of a girl in white at the old man’s side. At first he thought the girl was Sun-Young, but then he realized it was a different girl. He was more hurt than disappointed.

The girl stood close to the Old Uncle, but Young-Ho sensed an abyss between them.

Together, they were the very image of a loneliness in which neither could unseal the iron curtain of isolation. The distance between them was more than that of old age and youth. Rather, it was that of experience and the lack of it, a chasm that could never be bridged.

Young Ho’s first reaction was cold cynicism, but the next moment—for the first time since his arrival in Korea—he began to feel a mysterious emotion, almost like a religious experience. His mother would have called it a moment of blessing from God. Feeling as soft as the darkening sky, he walked toward the white-clad figures.

His steps made no sound, but Ae-Ja was aware of his approach. She stood in dark shadow, facing east, but her body language showed clearly she was glad to see him and a little awed.

“I…I went to your office in the afternoon,” she stammered, “but you weren’t in, so Mr. Woo brought me here.”

Young-Ho had forgotten about inviting her to his office. He was reminded of a crude old saying passed on to him by the stupid maid, something about a person accidentally slipping on someone else’s feces. His involvement in the matter of Min and the widow left a bad aftertaste and accounted for his indifference toward Ae-Ja. Now, feeling apologetic, he feigned cheerfulness.

“I’m sorry about this afternoon. I had to go to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry quite unexpectedly.”

This was a lie. At 11:30 a.m., the time of his appointment with Ae-Ja, he had been at the

gallery looking at Sun-Young’s picture again. The week-long exhibition was to close that day at five.

The profound emotional impact he’d felt on seeing the painting the first day had lessened because of the intervening events—Ae-Ja’s mother’s and Min’s deaths and funerals. Although the details of the picture weren’t as clear in his mind as they had been, he remembered vividly how deeply he had been moved.

The truth was that he wanted to see Sun-Young far more than the painting. To his surprise and delight, she was there among the crowd that had gathered for the show’s closing. Standing apart from the crowd, her long neck shadowed by her jet black hair, she seemed lost in her own space. The air around her seemed somehow thinner and cooler. She looked like a woman who was unapproachable. At the same time, she seemed helplessly unprotected, open to anyone who would dare come near. Young-Ho hesitated, then decided on the latter interpretation. He strode over to her and whispered her name.

“Miss Sun-Young.”

When she turned to him wordlessly, registering no surprise, he was convinced that she had indeed been waiting for him. But her face remained impassive except for a slight lifting of her long lashes.

Undeterred, Young-Ho said, “You must be very tired. You’ll have to move the painting this afternoon, so why don’t you take a break?”

Not even waiting for her to respond, he moved behind her, suggesting they go somewhere else. She surprised him yet again by walking out with him. He thought she might have been too tired to resist.

In fact, she was exhausted from waiting for Chang-Gon every day at the gallery, hoping against hope that he would drop by at least once. But despite her confessional painting to him, he never came.

Outside, the sun sizzled in the streets. Young-Ho escorted her as though guarding something infinitely precious. He was so focused on her that he forgot he had a car in the gallery parking lot.

They walked on in silence, Sun-Young feeling utterly abandoned. Young-Ho was sharply aware of his position in this country and the confining reality he had to overcome.

The noon siren wailed as they approached the Daehan Gate.

“Shall I call a taxi?” Young-Ho asked, conscious of the perspiration beading on his forehead.

“I’d rather walk,” she answered. They continued their mute march on the road to Shin-Chon until Young-Ho noticed a sign with two red tassels hanging on both sides. Buyongru, obviously a Chinese restaurant. But what had actually caught his eye was the row of hibiscus in full bloom on the second-story Chinese-style veranda.

Hibiscus, the tropical flower of his home. He couldn’t pass it by. “Let’s go in,” he said, letting Sun-Young precede him. She moved as though she had no will of her own.

There were no hibiscus inside the restaurant, only a middle-aged couple sitting in the far corner. The rest of the seats were empty.

“Welcome to our restaurant,” said a young Chinese man in fluent Korean.

“Are there seats on the second floor?” Young-Ho asked.

“Yes, there are, sir.”

“I want a table where I can see the flowers.”

“Yes, sir. Please take the stairs over there.”

The entire second floor was empty. Apparently, the restaurant was one of those places where people drop in for quick between-meal noodle soups. Young-Ho sat facing the row of hibiscus. A Chinese man with heavily pomaded hair and long sideburns came up with hot, wet towels and asked in a perfect Seoul accent, “What would you like to order, sir?”

Young-Ho felt embarrassed that he himself spoke Korean with a foreign accent. “What do you have? The best you can offer.”

“Anything you may want, sir—sweet-and-sour pork, Chinese salad, Chinese cold noodles, and…”

Young-Ho ordered a few dishes. Sun-Young didn’t touch the towels, which were watersoaked and looked unclean—often the case in a seldom frequented, unpopular eating place.

She looked at the flowers without emotion, but Young-Ho fell into a fond remembrance of his home, where hibiscus was the state flower and where Bess had often worn it in her hair.

For a moment he imagined the flower in Sun-Young’s hair. Since her grandmother’s death she had remained in white mourning clothes. The brilliant hibiscus might be too overwhelming for her pale, demure face, he thought, and mentally removed the imaginary flower from her hair. He decided not to mention the hibiscus. Instead, he asked, “Miss Sun-Young, have you ever flown in an airplane?”

She shook her head and smiled, revealing even teeth. “I am a country girl, aren’t I?” “You’re a noble lady from a noble house.”

“But I came to a Chinese restaurant with a man I’m not close to.”

“Please consider me close, won’t you?” His spirits soared. This was the first real conversation he’d had with her. Before now, she had been a wall, resisting all his attempts at dialogue. Could it be that her hostile antipathy had been a sign of interest in him? Now, at this moment, she even had a playful smile on her face.

If he had been more rational and analytical, Young-Ho might have been insulted, for SunYoung’s sudden mysterious change was the antithesis of what he thought. Her complex feelings about Chang-Gon were similar to those Young-Ho had toward her.

Perhaps the innate cruelty in women comes out in the form of friendliness. Be that as it may, Young-Ho was happy. He had changed since coming to Korea, becoming more pensive, at times even gloomy; but at this moment he had reverted to the person he’d been in Hawaii, comfortable and cheerful. He put his arms on the shabby, bare table to look at Sun-Young more closely.

“I flew in an airplane for the first time when I was thirteen,” he told her. “It was the year World War II ended. You call yourself a country girl, but before I flew, I’d lived in a kind of…of confusion.” Groping for the right words to explain what he meant, he gestured with his hands. SunYoung seemed more relaxed.

“I hadn’t gotten out of the fairytale world,” he went on, “but I’d just begun to step into the world of science. I had always thought of clouds as mysterious things that floated high in the sky. At the same time, I learned at school that clouds were formed by moisture and atmospheric changes.

But I didn’t see any contradiction between the two concepts.”

The dishes he’d ordered still hadn’t come. As was often the case in poor, patronless

eateries, the food had to be prepared from scratch. Still, it didn’t matter, for neither of them had any appetite.

“While flying over the Pacific, I had the shock of my life. The huge cloud layers were not what I’d looked up at from the ground. The groups of clouds, both small and large, looked like islands, separate and independent, and a rainbow arched between them.” His eyes shone. “It was a reality I had never dreamed of. It was an incredibly moving sight. Even though the clouds might vanish at any moment, their beauty in that particular moment made me deliriously happy. I also learned that reality wasn’t just something visible.”

He looked into Sun-Young’s dark eyes and saw no playful light in them. “Since then I’ve formed a conviction of my own and have followed it,” he continued, “but there are times when I worry that scientists may become narrow-minded. They want to see only what is clearly defined.

They’re incapable of enlarging or transforming anything. They see only what is there.”

Sun-Young shook her head and said, “But they lift the curtain of ignorance for us. They make us see clearly by removing superstition and stupidity. I respect them. But artists are people who have the ability to see invisible things. That ability is given only by God.” Young-Ho felt both uneasy and elated. “Since I’m not an artist, I don’t know,” he said.

“Some say that art is not glory but a curse. It’s too hard to understand.”

The food finally came, but none of the dishes were much good. They had no appetite and so left the place.

Back home, Young-Ho was relieved when Ae-Ja accepted his lie about why he had missed their appointment. “Shall we go inside, Miss Ae-Ja?” “If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay here,” she said, looking around with appreciation. “I’ve never seen a garden like this. In high school I learned the word yusue, but I couldn’t quite grasp its imagery. Now I know what it means—deep, quiet beauty.”

“Yes, I fell in love with the garden myself and decided to live here,” he said. “By the way, did you say Jae-Min came with you? Did he leave?”

“No, he went through that door over there to say hello.”

Min’s death and that of the girl’s mother had left Ae-Ja alone. Somehow Young-Ho felt that

he had to take care of her— a totally irrational feeling. He had no duty to do so. He didn’t owe them anything. On the contrary, he was one of the injured on account of Min’s chicanery and death.

Yet he felt he had to protect Ae-Ja. She and the housekeeper were left in the house owned by Ae-Ja’s mother, but in fact it had already been seized by a creditor. Young-Ho couldn’t buy a house for her. In any case, a young student might face difficulties if she owned and tried to manage it. The funerals had intervened and Young-Ho hadn’t had time to formulate a concrete plan. Even if he had kept the appointment with her that morning, he wouldn’t have had any suggestions for her.

But now when Ae-Ja mentioned the door to the inner quarters, he had a sudden flash of inspiration. He would ask the Old Aunt to take her in!

The sunset dimmed into darkness. Lights were turned on in all the rooms in Young-Ho’s quarters. He felt the dew dampening his shoes. The Old Uncle sat in silence, his eyes closed as though in a deep sleep.

Then someone appeared through the gate—not Jae-Min, but the old caretaker. Ae-Ja shrank back in surprise. As always, the caretaker uttered not a sound, but bowed to the old man and then lifted him up. The Old Uncle, his eyes still closed, leaned on him and stood. The two elderly men trudged toward the door.

“Let’s go to the inner quarters too,” said Young-Ho. “Whose quarters is it, may I ask?”

“The family who live there and who you are going to live with.”

“Me?” “If you don’t want to, there’s nothing I can do, but your house is already in someone else’s possession.”

Shocked at the news, Ae-Ja could only stare. That very afternoon on her way to the house with Jae-Min, she had told him she would sell her house and open a design studio with the money.

She planned to earn her living from it while finishing her senior year of college. Everything would be all right, she assured him. Now, shaken to the core, she stumbled several times on the way to the garden door with Young-Ho.

Inside the quarters, Young-Ho explained his idea to the Old Aunt. She stood a little apart from him, listening. Then slowly she turned to Ae-Ja. For the first time, Young-Ho could see her face clearly even in the dim light. She was of medium height, with a prominent forehead, watery eyes, and thick lips. She definitely didn’t fit the image he’d had of a sagacious, all-knowing lady of high virtue, strong-willed and decisive.

She stared at Ae-Ja with those watery eyes half closed. Her fleshy lips showed little resolve, but gradually Young-Ho’s confusion about her turned to awe as he noted the keen, penetrating light gleaming in her eyes.

Again she turned sideways. In her perfect high-class Seoul accent she said, “Since it is your wish, how can I refuse?”

“Miss Jeong, I may have been presumptuous,” Young-Ho said, “but I hope you’ll accept.

You said this house appealed to you. People who were attracted to it have gathered to live here.

Besides, there is a student here who can be a friend for you.”

In the next breath he asked, “By the way, where is Miss Sun-Young?”

“She said she had some sort of meeting, a kind of after-show gathering,” said the aunt.

“Then…has she already left?” He couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“I think she is still at home. She just brought her painting back.”

“Since Miss Ae-Ja is going to live here, I think it would be nice if they were introduced to each other.”

A moment’s hesitation, then the Old Aunt said, “I’ll go and call her.”

Before she could do so, however, Sun-Young appeared in the main hall. Still in white mourning, she stopped in surprise when she saw the gathering. Jae-Min stood behind her.

“Miss Ae-Ja Jeong, say hello to Miss Sun-Young,” said Young-Ho. Then, speaking directly to Sun-Young, he added, “I’ve asked your great-aunt’s permission for Miss Ae-Ja to live here.”

A slight frown clouded Sun-Young’s face. Ae-Ja, for her part, looked alarmed and a little hostile as her eyes took in Jae-Min. “I…I think I’ll find another place,” Ae-Ja stammered, more openly defiant.

Young-Ho said nothing. He understood how Ae-Ja felt. In the awkward silence that ensued,

Sun-Young spoke up. “Excuse me. I don’t have time now—I’m in a rush.” She started down the steps to put on her shoes, but before she reached the ground, the Old Aunt’s stern voice rang out.

“Sun-Young, welcome Miss Jeong. She is going to be part of our family.”

Chapter XII

Young-Ho left the office around four and, since there was little to do that afternoon, told Jae-Min to go home. This meant Jae-Min was home before seven o’clock, earlier than usual, to Jae-Ung’s delight.

“Big Brother!” he said excitedly. “We still have time!”

“I don’t understand…time for what?”

“Ae-Ja is going to have a farewell party because she’s moving tomorrow. It’s at 7:30. You didn’t forget, did you?” Jae-Ung began to hum a popular song, “Ah, my strange heart, Ah, my first love.” His changing adolescent voice sounded like a rooster’s first crowing.

A few days earlier Jae-Min had seen him squeezing pimples. Seventeen. Acne and pimples and a hoarse voice were signs of a healthy body overflowing with energy. He was glad, now, that he had come home early, and proud of his younger brother’s growth.

Ae-Ja’s house was orderly, uncluttered, nothing like a house just before moving day. The mother-of-pearl-inlaid furniture had been burnished till it shone, and the western-style living-room suite was in place. Everything showed signs of a well-cared-for household. Jae-Min remembered Jae-Ung’s question from long ago: Big Brother, what is a superannuated gisaeng? Although only Ae-Ja and her mother had lived in the house, its odor strangely suggested a masculine presence, which made Jae-Min uncomfortable. He sat in an armchair and looked around again. Though he’d been a next-door neighbor for years, he had never come inside this place until Ae-Ja’s mother’s funeral. On that day, everything had been in disarray.

The house seemed too big for two women to take care of. A fine bamboo screen hung over each door, and every piece of furniture, though old, was rubbed and oiled to a dark brown sheen.

The antique chests were lined with valuable ornaments, and on the red sandalwood dressing table stood a Yi-Dynasty white celadon vase filled with summer chrysanthemums and dahlias. On one side of the main hall stood a screen painting of flowers and animals. On the opposite wall was a modern tapestry. Between them were exquisite celadon pieces in a glass cabinet. Everything looked so luxurious that Jae-Min could hardly believe Ae-Ja’s mother had died because of financial ruin.

The dinner table was brought in, laden with delicacies. Clearly, the housekeeper had gone out of her way to cook the best farewell dinner possible. Jae-Min was overwhelmed by it all—the embroidered silk cushion he sat on, and the heavy silver spoons and chopsticks, which he found difficult to handle.

Ae-Ja, wearing an apron as though it were an accessory, had no visible shadow of sorrow, and no sign of anxiety about moving to a strange place. As she urged the two brothers to try the dish of seasoned and steamed chicken, she said casually, “Did I tell you I got a job at the Minerva Department Store?”

“A job?” Surprised, Jae-Ung glanced at his brother.

“I must have forgotten to tell you. Well, the director of interior decoration at the store came to see me. He said he had seen my work at the exhibition and liked it. He offered me a position doing interior decoration and window displays. He said he already had other specialists but he planned to expand. I told him I had a few months to go before graduating, and he said I could work part-time until then.”

“Great!” Jae-Ung exclaimed. “I’ve heard that design graduates are really in demand. And it’s such a modern career.” He thought a moment, then added, “Does that mean you won’t have to move after all?”

Ae-Ja sighed. “This house has already been taken over by a creditor. It’s run down, but I’ve lived here a long time and I’m attached to it. The reality is, though, I’ve no place of my own to live now.”

Jae-Min thought she showed little regret. Perhaps she’d been born with a large dose of adaptability. In a purely material sense, she had been brought up in affluent circumstances equal to Sun-Young’s, but she didn’t seem to live under the oppressive influence of the past or the heavy weight of tradition that Sun-Young did.

“But how are you going to live in a stranger’s house?” Jae-Ung asked.

“Well, first I’ll pretend I’m a refugee, just like during the Korean War. I was ten then. I know grownups had a terrible time, but I was excited about all the new things happening.” Ae-Ja laughed, but Jae-Min saw her eyes redden and felt a touch of sympathy for her. He remembered the day

when, at a coffee shop called ‘Karosu’, she had confided in him about her financial troubles. That day, noting her expensive dress, he’d had no sympathy for her. Now he was ashamed of his callousness.

Perhaps all these luxurious things amounted to little more than rubbish; throw-away items, so to speak. It was often said that licentious people ‘threw away’ money at a ‘gisaeng house.’ By contrast, his own worn and dented tin pots and the cheap secondhand desk and file cabinet bought with his first paycheck might be far more valuable, because they meant something to him. The more he thought about this, the more understanding and generous-spirited he became. The silk cushions and heavy silver utensils no longer oppressed him, and he could eat heartily.

Still, as he wolfed down the fine food, he couldn’t help imagining an entirely different scenario, in which an elegant garden of white flowers, neglected and abandoned, withered away. In their place, weeds began to sprout in such abundance that they overpowered everything with their energy. Soon the flowers were gone and the garden was buried under the weeds. Perhaps the weeds had been the garden’s original owners. Seoul, a concrete-covered metropolis, had no weeds anywhere, but before the city was modernized, it might have been a city of weeds.

For an instant, he felt a sharp pang at this ominous premonition about Sun-Young.

Ae-Ja showed no sign of awkwardness or unease from the first day she moved in. She was like a plucky animal in a new cage. She had been ashamed of her late mother’s attitude, which she might have actually inherited without knowing it. Her cheerful voice brightened the mornings in the silent house.

“Good morning, Ajumoni. I’m going to school now. Bye!” Those friendly words sounded out of place in the general quiet of the house, like theatrical pronouncements, perhaps. Ae-Ja carried on conversations with the talkative maid and even the mute old caretaker.

Young-Ho often noticed her sitting with the Old Uncle, who always obeyed Sun-Young.

Now, he was just as submissive to Ae-Ja. But the two young women were exact opposites in their ways of dealing with him. Sun-Young tried to order him back into the old quarters beyond the gate, but Ae-Ja coaxed him out of it and into the garden.

Young-Ho found it relaxing to be with Ae-Ja. He was comfortable enough with her to share a joke or two, but all the while his longing for Sun-Young deepened.

The day when he saw the Old Aunt laughing with Ae-Ja, he was stunned. He had believed that the Old Aunt and laughter could never coexist. In that strange scene he saw a solemn truth, the expanding energy of life.

He knew the two young women should never be compared, but every time he saw Ae-Ja, he thought of Sun-Young. Ae-Ja epitomized strength of will, energy for life, while Sun-Young seemed a fragile symbol, a delicate blossom. One had her feet firmly planted on the earth while the other hung on a withering vine. Was that why beauty was so vulnerable and sad? Sun-Young, nurtured in a noble family, was a vision of elegance, while Ae-Ja, who had grown up in society’s shadow, had turned resolutely toward the sun and was full of life-force.

One must live at whatever cost was on one side, and One should stand in lone nobility was on the other. Young-Ho understood the former’s common sense, but he also yearned for the latter’s beauty.

Ae-Ja showed little residual grief over her mother’s horrible death. Rather, she seemed to be thriving in her work at Minerva Department Store.

Lately, Young-Ho had had a few surprises. One morning he discovered the wooden partition between his desk and his secretary’s had been replaced by a beautiful screen.

“Miss Ae-Ja came in early this morning and put it there,” his secretary explained, smiling as though savoring the memory of her meeting with Ae-Ja. “Oh, did she?” Young-Ho studied Ae-Ja’s handiwork. It contained a deer, various flowers, and clouds, all in a simple modern design, full of light and joy. What a contrast to Sun-Young’s painting that had moved him so, an abstract work based on a spiral pattern! There was no point in comparing fine art and applied art; it might even be insulting to do so; but if you could identify each concrete object in a painting, wasn’t it art for the eyes and not for the soul?

Ae-Ja’s decorative art began to appear in the rooms of the house, and on the balcony and balustrade, but it didn’t detract from the magical beauty of the place. Young-Ho, the guardian, and Ae-Ja, the ward, got along fine.

Ae-Ja’s new life at the old house made Jae-Min feel at ease, but under the surface his thoughts were far more complicated. Society generally considered years of experience rather than the calendar number when measuring a person’s age. Jae-Min felt as though the six-year difference between Young-Ho and himself had been somehow reversed.

He hadn’t seen Sun-Young for quite a while. He knew she was neither particularly hostile nor especially attentive to Ae-Ja, since she had been brought up to be magnanimous to people or matters of no real concern to her.

Jae-Min didn’t want Ae-Ja to know that the old caretaker was his great-uncle, a feeling he was surprised to discover in himself. It had nothing to do with what Ae-Ja might think of him, but rather what kind of place she occupied in his mind. He realized how irrational he had become.

A few days before, Jae-Ung had complained, “Big Brother, you know, I ran into Ae-Ja and she’s changed a lot. I asked her to come visit us and she said she was too busy. She acted all hoitytoity.” Jae-Min found himself sympathizing with his brother.

At the exhibition, Jae-Min had reflected upon himself in relation to Ae-Ja only as a man, but now he was aware of social class. Perhaps he was oversensitive because of his uncomfortable position in relation to Young-Ho and the two women. At the time of the exhibition, Young-Ho had appeared to be longing for Sun-Young, but in recent days he seemed much more confident, at ease, happy, even playful.

To add to the complexity, the company had organised a day out at Chungpyong, the popular seaside resort on the Eastern Sea. Young-Ho had been up to his ears in resolving the problems left behind by Min’s embezzlement and death, not to mention a new venture started jointly with a mining company that had found a vein of gold near the Kum River. Right up to the last days of August there had been no time for a summer vacation, until the company employees and their families went to the resort.

The person who enjoyed the outing most of all turned out to be Ae-Ja. To Jae-Min, her behavior seemed exaggerated and unnatural, confirming his prejudice against a gisaeng’s daughter.

And yet he felt aggrieved at her seeming indifference to him. Wallowing in his own tangled emotions, he stayed by the barbecue while everyone else enjoyed themselves.

Chungpyong looked and felt like a foreign land to someone like Jae-Min, who had lived in poverty all his life. The summer heat hadn’t diminished, but the water was perfect for swimming.

Young-Ho looked comfortable and free among the colorful beach parasols, the kaleidoscopic swimsuits, sunglasses, water skis and summer cottages. He was handsome and sleek in his bathing trunks. Jae-Min was miserable. In his eyes, Young-Ho, despite his freckle-free Korean skin, was no better than a foreigner; and neither was Ae-Ja, who was frolicking shamelessly in a yellow swimsuit.

Young-Ho was an expert water skier.

“Can I learn?” asked Ae-Ja. “Of course, it’s easy. I’ll teach you,” Young-Ho responded. They walked toward the motorboat, chatting in the familiar form of Korean. He had a turn first on the skis to show Ae-Ja how, then he helped her with shoes and ropes and hopped into the steering seat. As any novice would do, Ae-Ja promptly fell into the water as soon as the boat started. Young-Ho jumped in and brought her up.

Jae-Min felt sick to his stomach watching their frivolous behavior, even though he knew Young-Ho had to rescue her. They were shameless, both of them!

Jae-Min had put on bathing trunks, but he never left the barbecue and the buffet table, since he’d been put in charge of managing the clean-up.

He didn’t notice how downcast Ae-Ja was on their way home.

Chapter XIII

“I wonder what they’re like?” said Ae-Ja in her clear, resonant voice.

“They must be old,” the maid said.

“Why would you say that?”

“Well, since they are Mr. Song’s parents, they must be old.”

“But you shouldn’t say that!” Ae-Ja laughed.

In the next room Sun-Young was skimming through a drawing book, but listening to their conversation.

“I hear they’re very rich,” the maid said.

“Yes, Korean-Americans from Hawaii. Maybe rich, but ignorant, fat monsters,” Ae-Ja exclaimed. “Once I saw some of them at Bando Hotel on their visit to the homeland. They were repulsive!”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the Old Aunt’s stern voice rang out. “You should never say such things!”

Sun-Young let the drawing book slide out of her hands as her heart pounded. It’s over, she thought. Yet she herself didn’t know what was over. Was it the present uneasy occupancy of part of the house that the family once owned? Or was her own tightly sealed mind just searching for an exit?

She was aware that her anxiety and desperate questions were not caused by the house situation as such, but by the fact that she had no place to go, nowhere to find peace. She felt a bone-chilling loneliness. Out there, the others were talking about the expected arrival of the new owners, but she couldn’t join them.

Are they all so eager for the new owners to arrive? she wondered. Even their idle curiosity sounded like betrayal.

She stepped out of the room and moved slowly toward the garden as if her feet knew where she wanted to go. From the garden door she could see the Old Uncle in his usual white clothes reclining on the chaise longue under the wisteria. She couldn’t tell if he was asleep.

She had never regarded his loose garment as a shroud, as others did. Perhaps it was

because she had grown up seeing it. Nor had she ever felt some mysterious drama in the old man’s demeanor, as Young-Ho did. Ever since she could remember, the Old Uncle had been as he was now. Because he had never married, he wasn’t called ‘Little Father’, as her father’s younger brother had been, but ‘Uncle.’ Sun-Young had been his best friend, even though they had no conversation.

There was only the blood connection between them, and the Old Uncle had always been a part of her life.

Isolated from the everyday life of the household, the Old Uncle could never be like water, Sun-Young mused, because water would reflect the images of others. Rather, he was a rock, a stone statue. Just like a girl in a legend who grew up talking to herself in front of a rock, Sun-Young had lived all her life with this rock of a man. There had never been any conflict between them until the house was sold to Young-Ho and the Old Uncle insisted on sitting out in the new owner’s garden, which Sun-Young’s pride could not allow. It was the first sign of the stress she was feeling.

In the autumnal dusk descending on the garden, she became newly aware of a kind of purity about her Old Uncle. The grass was, as usual, meticulously taken care of, but there was a distinct aura of decline about the yellowing blades of grass. Instead of dazzling colors, the chrysanthemums and autumn roses were tinged with decay, like an aging noble lady who would rather not be seen in direct sunlight. Still beautiful and elegant, but fading.

She moved slowly to her uncle. In his clear, childlike eyes the garden was reflected like a distant vista. Images trembled in them as on glass orbs. Her heart ached for the old man, his total purity uncolored by subjective views or bias. His life was like a death that still breathed. Whether he had been through a trauma that had driven him to this condition, or whether he’d lost his mind at some glorious pinnacle, Sun-Young could only guess, but at that moment she felt a deep sympathy for whatever experience he might have had.

She bent and gently touched his arm. “Uncle, the breeze is quite chilly. You might catch a cold.”

“Uh, uh.”

“I’ll bring you a blanket. Please wait a moment.”

“Uh, uh.” His response was a meaningless sound. She brought the blanket and put it around

him, then stayed on at his side, sure that he could rest a while. Sadly, she noticed his bony wrists.

In the stillness, her mind returned to the traumatic experience she’d had a few days earlier.

Chang-Gon had not come to the exhibition, even though she had waited breathlessly every day, enduring the pain and humiliation. Finally, after a week, she called him, shameless and almost pleading.

Chang-Gon answered in his usual indifferent manner. “I have an appointment today.”

“Will it take long?” she’d asked him.

“Er…I’m not sure.”

“After the appointment?”

“I have no special plans.”

“Then I’ll be there. Where is the appointment?”

He mentioned the seedy coffee shop where they had once met. Sun-Young went up the creaky steps at exactly 5:40 p.m. and found a wobbly wooden chair. She tried to ignore the painful awkwardness of being alone in such a place. Not having the nerve to look around, she picked up a discarded newspaper and hid behind it.

Ten minutes passed before Chang-Gon’s voice said, “What did you want to talk about?”

Apparently he had been there for quite some time and had deliberately ignored her until that moment.

Sun-Young hadn’t known what to say first, although her pretext was that she wanted him to help her find a job. Find a job? Somehow the expression sounded meaningless, unfamiliar, as if she didn’t yet realize how desperate her situation was.

The moment she became aware of Chang-Gon’s eyes roving, she bit her lip and hung her head. He lit a cigarette and blew the bluish smoke in her direction. Neither of them spoke.

“Mister Park,” a woman’s sharp voice called.

Chang-Gon raised one hand and gestured for her to wait, but the woman strode toward him, her heels clicking.

“You kept me waiting too long,” she said. “Maybe next time. See you!”

“Wait!” Chang-Gon shouted. Then he turned to Sun-Young. “If it’s nothing important, you’ll

have to wait. Today I have urgent business to take care of.” With a sheepish grin, he followed the woman, who conspicuously, rhythmically swung her hips.

Shocked and humiliated, Sun-Young couldn’t move. She only just managed to get back down the creaky steps.

It was already dark. She turned into one alley and then another and finally emerged onto a street directly in front of the military government’s Supreme Council. Every window in the tall building was lit up, making it look homely and warm: a contrast to the stern, military air it wore during the day. An endless stream of passing car headlights would briefly light up the gingko trees before darkness reclaimed them.

Sun-Young stood in one spot on the sidewalk. She had no place to go. She was absolutely alone: a real, searing loneliness, not mere schoolgirl sentimentality. An empty taxi slid to a stop in front of her.

“Where to, young lady?” the driver asked when she was inside.

“Straight ahead.” Sun-Young closed her eyes. The young driver, bursting with energy, drove the car almost recklessly.

“Where to?” he asked again.

“Just straight ahead, please.”

After a while, when the driver asked the same question again, Sun-Young said, “Where are we?”

“Yongsan, miss.”

She looked out and saw Quonset huts, barbed wire fences, English-language sign boards, and some neon signs. They were near the American army base. Then she caught sight of a group of strange-looking women loitering near the fence. Though in darkness, their gaudy western-style dresses were conspicuous. Most had their heads wrapped in colorful scarves. They would stand together in a group, then scatter, then move here and there. In their exotic clothes, they looked like alien beings.

“Now where do you want to go?” The driver sounded uneasy.

“A little further ahead, please.”

Sun-Young suddenly remembered a passage from a book whose title she had forgotten:

In ancient Babylonia, there was a bazaar every night for virgins about to face their wedding night. Virginity was considered evil, so husbands who wished for wives without the evil magic sent their brides out to the streets, where they offered their virginity to the first man they met and received gifts in return. They offered the gifts to the temple to appease the gods, who would rid the brides of their evil magic.

She had thought such a custom barbaric, unclean, and strange. But while watching these women near the barbed wire fence, she felt as if some divine power was working for them.

The shock she’d suffered earlier made her somehow equate the Babylonian brides with the street women.

“Where to now?”

“Where are we?”

“Samkakji.’

“I’ll get out here.” She got out of the cab and began to walk slowly toward Itaewon.

Soon she ran into similar groups of women walking up and down, restless in the deepening darkness. Some held their arms tightly around themselves as if to preserve their body heat and scent. Others strode about, flaunting their heavy makeup and garish clothes. Deals were made in the darkness or, more often, under the lamplight. Someone tapped Sun-Young on the shoulder.

“Hey!” the man said, his breath reeking of alcohol. It was a tall GI. Sun-Young quickened her step, but the soldier kept up, walking beside her. “Hey, come here,” he said in good Korean, tugging at her arm.

Suddenly, a Saenara taxi stopped in the street and a man leapt out of it. He ran toward them, grabbed Sun-Young’s shoulders roughly, slapped her hard, and pushed her into the taxi.

“Let’s go!” he shouted to the driver, and bit his knuckles in fury. It was Jae-Min, on his way home from a foreign residence in Itaewon which Young-Ho had sent him to visit.

Sun-Young wept silently.

A week passed, and Sun-Young regained her composure. Unlike before, when she had obstinately refused to step into the garden, now she sat and breathed in its beauty. The pomegranates were ripening under the old gardener’s care. They swung delicately in the light breeze. To herself, she whispered, “My pomegranate trees, my pomegranates!” One day in the distant future, perhaps the seeds might be found in the calcified ashes, she thought, smiling bitterly.

She wasn’t aware that Young-Ho had just stepped into the garden. He smiled broadly, surprised to see her and the Old Uncle sitting together, happy to see her in the garden.

Chapter XIV

Young-Ho woke to the sound of hymns being sung by the congregation of a nearby church; a new church, where people had begun to assemble every single morning at the crack of dawn. It didn’t even have bells yet, but its congregation seemed overly enthusiastic to Young-Ho. Their energetic singing was so out of tune that it was more like words murmured with occasional tuneful interruptions. Now and then there would even be wailing.

The badly sung hymns grated on Young-Ho’s nerves. In his irritation he lit a cigarette, then immediately crushed it out. The problem was that waking up brought to mind what had happened at his office the day before.

He had been meaning to write to his mother, but had paused for a few minutes to collect his thoughts. Outside, a dreary autumn rain fell, but his office was quiet and cozy. Then suddenly the atmosphere was shattered by the secretary’s announcement of a visitor. It was Ae-Ja, her coat drenched and open in front, her hair clinging to her forehead, her eyes wild. She stumbled to the sofa and slumped down, then began to weep, her chin buried in the collar of her coat.

Young-Ho didn’t move to her side right away. After a moment, he went over and put a hand on her shoulder. “What happened?”

She shook her head ferociously and covered her face with both hands. Her body was rigid, as if wired to explode. “I was just at the district office,” she began, “and I found the most unbelievable thing.” Her lips twitched, but she tried to calm herself. “I found that I am my mother’s sister, and that my maternal grandfather is actually my father and my maternal grandmother is my mother. My name is actually Bong-Sun Jeong.” She laughed hysterically. “I’m not my mother’s illegitimate daughter, but her sister! Don’t you think that’s ultramodern? A real three-dimensional birth register.”

Young-Ho surmised that she’d gone to the district office to get her birth certificate in order to get a new job after graduation.

“Isn’t it a miracle,” she went on, “that I was completely in the dark? From elementary school on, every time I needed documents my mother got them and submitted them to the school. I

certainly didn’t know Mr. Chung-Shik Jeong was my maternal grandfather. I didn’t know my mother was his daughter. But now I know everything. I was completely fooled. Mother was so loyal to the man who wouldn’t even acknowledge me as his daughter, and I believed her love was genuine and I worshipped her. That hypocrite of a man—” She ground her teeth at the colossal deception.

Young-Ho, speechless, felt only confusion. He knew Sun-Young’s father’s name was Chung-Whi Jeong. But of course, there could be people with the same name. Besides, the samesounding name could have different Chinese characters. That happened often in Korea. He shook off his confusion and the beginnings of suspicion, but he still couldn’t find the right words to console Ae-Ja. “My mother was a fool,” she said. “She deceived even me, her supposed daughter. Why did she tell such a huge lie when she must have known that someday the truth would come out? I feel sorry for her—my stupid mother.”

“I’m sure there must have been good reasons…unavoidable circumstances,” Young-Ho said lamely. “You’ll find them out in time.”

He offered her lunch but she refused and strode out of his office. She didn’t come home even after the curfew siren rang. Concerned about her, and to allay his own uneasiness, Young-Ho went to the inner quarters.

Forbiddingly composed as always, the Old Aunt listened to him but said nothing.

“I feel so sorry for Miss Ae-Ja.” No response. Then, in the silence, he blurted out the name that had been vexing him. “When I heard the name Chung-Whi Jeong, I was reminded—” “Enough, please!” the Old Aunt interrupted. It was a strange admission of what Young-Ho had suspected. Shivers ran down his spine.

“Then?” he waited.

The Old Aunt turned sideways as she always did and remained silent for what seemed to Young-Ho a very long time. Finally, she said, “She was the same age as Sun-Young. They’re only two months apart.”

“Then you’ve known this all along!” he exclaimed, but after that she would say no more.

He hadn’t been able to get to sleep until late that night, and now he’d been awakened at dawn by the bad hymn singing. Yet today, he was touched because the singing sounded like a desperate plea. He found it oddly comforting, as though it were pursuing, catching and embracing something transcending human existence. The singing held more sorrow and longing than religious feeling—human frailties and suffering. He imagined the atmosphere in the church was anything but sublime—probably a stink of kimchi and fermented bean paste.

Through his window he saw the milky light of a misty dawn. The rain had stopped. So had the singing. The house had returned to its habitual silence. Young-Ho sank into a deep reverie about Mr. Chung-Whi Jeong, Sun-Young, Ae-Ja, the Old Aunt who knew everything, and the deaths of Mr. Jeong and Ae-Ja’s mother, stories that would never be told.

If there were an element of fate in all this, it was his own inadvertent role in bringing Ae-Ja to the home of her real father. Young-Ho wondered if all the members of the household were like dust motes swept into one corner by fate.

He lit another cigarette. The English word ‘polygamy’ came to mind. Sun-Young and Ae-Ja, light and shadow, with Mr. Jeong in the middle.

A mere two months apart in age, the two girls stood, one in light and the other in shadow, both betrayed by their father. Having never met the man, Young-Ho felt he was hardly in a position to blame him. Perhaps he had tried to do his best for both of them—for Sun-Young by registering Ae-Ja as the daughter of her maternal grandfather, and for Ae-Ja by supporting and taking an interest in her. Yet Young-Ho wondered if a man could, by nature, be faithful to two women at the same time.

I have been deceived by that hypocrite, Ae-Ja had said. Those could have been SunYoung’s words as well.

Laughing bitterly, Young-Ho said aloud, “Why am I making excuses? For whom? For Mr. Chung-Whi Jeong? No, no need. Then, for what?”

He began his morning routine in a curious mood.

Ae-Ja didn’t come home the next day either. As her guardian, Young-Ho couldn’t simply do

nothing. He decided to consult Jae-Min. He told him everything, and finished by saying, “I don’t think anything will happen, but she has had the shock of her life.”

Jae-Min blinked fiercely and said nothing. Young-Ho saw an expression of disgust on his face and sensed a sudden gulf between them, wider than their difference in age. It was true that they were different in upbringing and temperament. In a way, Young-Ho envied Jae-Min’s naiveté.

“Jae-Min, I don’t think we should worry too much about Ae-Ja,” he said. “This incident— shocking as it may be—might prove to be a good opportunity for her to get into the so-called real world. By being betrayed, people gain the strength to question and resist next time.”

When Jae-Min still said nothing, Young-Ho pursued the point. “You know, we’re all born in betrayal, don’t you think? Life is betrayed eventually by death, and living always contains dying.”

“Do you mean then that we should always compromise with what is wrong and dirty?” JaeMin retorted.

“Dirty? What’s dirty and what’s clean? There are a lot of countries in the world where polygamy is practiced openly.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but what you’re saying is beside the point,” Jae-Min said. “I don’t care how many mistresses Mr. Chung-Whi Jeong had, but registering Miss Ae-Ja as her maternal grandfather’s daughter was disgraceful!” He paused, then continued. “Anyway, it’s no concern of mine. I was disgusted at first, as if I’d accidentally stepped on a turd in the street. It was just a reflex on my part.”

“Did it occur to you to clean it up yourself?”

Another pause, then, “No. I just wanted to get away from it.”

“Maybe I’m the same,” Young-Ho said, “but the turd doesn’t just belong to whoever did it.

You and I, we all have them.” Then he added, “I envy you.” He didn’t know or care whether JaeMin understood him. He decided to let it go, convinced as he was that by betraying and being betrayed, people developed stronger, tougher relationships.

Everyone had to overcome betrayal and start again if they were to go on living. Young-Ho believed Ae-Ja was strong enough to carry on. Since she’d had a little dose of betrayal from childhood on, she must have built up enough immunity to cope with the most recent one and begin a

new life. Perhaps she wasn’t as shocked as others might think.

The first day passed without further incident. As Jae-Min showed no inclination to help out, Young-Ho had to see the Old Aunt. When he stepped into the garden, he caught sight of Sun-Young standing under a pomegranate tree. As tradition and the Old Aunt dictated, she was still wearing the white mourning clothes. The sinking autumn sun lit her figure, so that she looked like a spirit from another world. His heart filled with aching love for her.

What he had said to Jae-Min earlier faded from his mind, and a deep yearning for the pure and beautiful stirred within him. He thought he understood Mr. Chung-Whi Jeong, in that all the torn and scattered thoughts and emotions in a man could coalesce into one clear understanding.

Without hesitation or awkwardness, Young-Ho thought I love you. He had once thought those three words embarrassing and common, but now he realized how sincere they could be. They filled him with exhilarating joy.

“Miss Sun-Young,” he called quietly, walking resolutely toward her. She turned and watched him approach.

“The pomegranates have begun to turn red,” she said with a smile.

“Yes, they are almost ripe,” he stammered, moving closer to her. “Miss Sun-Young—” He was about to say the most important words to her when the bell on the gate rang violently.

Chapter XV

The old caretaker opened the door to the garrulous maid, who had rung the bell with unusual force. She’d never used the front gate before, either, and now she ran toward Young-Ho with an oddly excited expression.

Young-Ho stood where he was, feeling neither alarm nor anger at the maid who had just ruined the most important moment of his life.

She held an empty grocery basket. Evidently she had been on her way to the market, but never got there. Breathless and agitated, she reported, “Miss Ae-Ja just passed by here. I tried to talk her into coming home, but she said she’d be back in a few days. I tried to bring her home, but —” “She’ll come home in a few days, as she said,” Young-Ho said nonchalantly. He turned to Sun-Young. “I haven’t worried much about Miss Ae-Ja because I’m sure she won’t do anything rash. She has a very strong will to live and carry on. At least, that’s my impression.”

For an instant Sun-Young’s face flushed, then turned pale again. She remembered her own recent reckless behavior. She felt burdened by her turbulent emotions, and for the first time realized there was something to be said for common sense and the commonplace. She had to acknowledge that Ae-Ja’s cheerful laughter wasn’t mere empty noise, and that she herself missed human contact.

The maid left, looking very dissatisfied. Young-Ho remained silent, his whole attention concentrated on Sun-Young under the pomegranate tree. He put aside his planned confession of love and the story of Ae-Ja, aware that words of any kind would only ruin this moment. In the orange evening glow, reflected in the pond, stood the exquisite figure of Sun-Young.

Unlike her real face, which always seemed set and resigned to what was to come, SunYoung’s face in the pond varied at the slightest breeze or the smallest change in light. Neither weak nor aloof, it was a face that urged a man to be decisive and strong.

While he gazed at her, she moved hesitantly toward the inner quarters. He was unable to hold her and felt overwhelmed by the pain of unrequited, unexpressed love. That night he stayed

awake till the sound of the hymns began.

Four days later, Ae-Ja came home as cheerful as ever, acting as if nothing had happened.

The Old Aunt and the caretaker went back to being their usual selves, and so did the loud-mouthed maid. Young-Ho didn’t question Ae-Ja as to her whereabouts during her absence.

However, the incident brought to an end the leaden, deathly silence in which the family had lived since the death of Chung-Whi Jeong. The family and the house had seemed to exist outside time; Young-Ho’s purchase of the house and the passing of the Old Lady hadn’t changed things much.

The free-spirited Ae-Ja often came to the outer quarters complaining that she felt stifled in her room, where the walls were hung with Bokhun landscapes and Saimdang paintings of birds and flowers. At the same time, she admitted to appreciating Bokhun’s elegant touch and Saimdang’s simple, familiar subjects.

Though in a state of decline, the house still held a number of valuable works of art, collected over the years thanks to wealth and a discerning eye. Even though the family was in desperate financial straits, the Old Aunt refused to sell them. As a result, Young-Ho had been made to feel like an unwelcome guest instead of the owner.

Despite the fact that Ae-Ja was a student of design and not fine art, she had a critical eye for classical paintings. “Bokhun was Danwon’s teacher. Danwon went with him to Daema Island, where Bokhun died. If you look at this stone bridge in this picture, you can see his masterly strokes,” she said.

Of Saimdang’s painting, she commented, “Look at these two ducklings fighting for food in the water. Aren’t they dynamic? The movement of their feathers, the vibration of the water…”

Always on the go, she explained and commented on every painting in the outer quarters till she came to one particular oil painting in the main hall, an unsigned portrait of a young girl aged about eighteen or nineteen. “Hmmm. I wonder whose work this is?” she said. Probably instructed by the artist, the girl was smiling brightly, her clear eyes wide open. A lace shawl covered her head.

Ae-Ja narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing the portrait. “She’s beautiful.”

Young-Ho knew little about art, but the portrait was his favorite. It was a slightly sentimentalized rococo-style portrait, but the pure beauty of the girl was flawless. Judging by the stature of other artists in this house, he guessed that this painting had also been done by a renowned artist.

It was hard to believe, but Ae-Ja didn’t seem to fully comprehend that this house was her father’s. The walls held no portrait or photograph of anyone living there. In Young-Ho’s eyes, this had initially only increased the elegance of the place, but now it seemed to hide a sinister secret.

Sun-Young continued to avoid Ae-Ja, but at least she didn’t turn up her nose at the other girl’s loud voice. Since both of them were busily preparing their final degree projects, the house had reverted to its habitual silence.

Still, there were small, everyday episodes, such as a couple of visits by Chang-Gon, who always came when Sun-Young wasn’t home to ask the Old Aunt about her. Sun-Young never found out that Jae-Ung had dropped in under the pretext of visiting the old caretaker. He waited in vain for Ae-Ja, then left.

Young-Ho woke every day at dawn to the hymns from the church, and spent his every moment thinking about Sun-Young. Meanwhile, he and Ae-Ja had become close enough to talk and joke easily with each other.

As for Jae-Min, he was as sincere, diligent, and meticulous in his work as always. But at certain moments he would stop whatever he was doing and stare blankly. He didn’t look gloomy, just confused. The feeling of disgust that had filled him when he first heard about Ae-Ja’s family had since been replaced by a kind of heavy despair. On the surface, he had become less sociable, more cautious.

Young-Ho, observing this, thought Jae-Min had probably been more shocked by Ae-Ja’s disappearance than he’d guessed and regretted that he had told him the story. The truth was, JaeMin was guarding a secret that Young-Ho knew nothing about.

The incident had happened on a chilly wet day, the day after Ae-Ja disappeared. Despite the fact that Young-Ho had asked him to do so, Jae-Min had no intention of searching for her.

Instead, after work, he joined an old friend in a cheap bar. With a dish of boiled octopus for an

appetizer, they had a couple of drinks of rice ale. Suddenly they heard a loud altercation. A man came through the rickety door, pulling the hand of a woman with a piled-up hairdo, dark eye shadow, and a garish dress. The man plonked himself down on a wobbly wooden chair.

“Sit down,” he ordered.

“No! I’m leaving,” the woman retorted angrily.

“Sit down!”

“No, I won’t!”

The man instantly rose and slapped her.

“You bastard!” she screamed. “You’ve no right to hit me!”

Several drunken men shouted from the corner. “Wheyyyy, showtime! Go on, go on!”

The man was Chang-Gon. Furious, Jae-Min sprang up, kicking his chair away. He strode over to Chang-Gon and ordered in a low, harsh voice, “Stand up!”

Chang-Gon, intoxicated beyond reason, looked up at him.

“Stand up!” Jae-Min repeated. To his surprise, Chang-Gon meekly rose to his feet and they went out into the darkness. The woman had long since vanished.

The two men somehow ended up in Jae-Min’s room. Jae-Ung hadn’t yet returned from his supplementary English lessons at an institute. The room was filled with male odor like leather on a damp day.

Chang-Gon began to cry, his fists pounding Jae-Ung’s desk, sobbing, “Sun-Young, SunYoung, Sun-Young.”

A cold shiver ran down Jae-Min’s back. He stood like a statue, too stunned to speak, glaring down at the crying man.

After a while, Chang-Gon pulled himself together and gave a wry grin. He tried to light a cigarette without pulling on it, but the match burned itself out. He threw down the cigarette and picked up the newspaper for no particular reason. “Woo Jae-Min,” he said, “would you please listen to the story of a poor fool?”

“Once upon a time there was this poor fool of a guy,” he began. “He was an aspiring poet.

At fifteen or sixteen he began to scribble what he thought were poems. He thought poetry was

worth sacrificing his whole life for. But at seventeen, he realized beauty was a thing of sorrow. SunYoung was only nine years old. I saw her for the first time when I visited her brother In-Taek. It was a moment of revelation. Fate. Her innocent smile and clear voice became a wound in my heart.”

Chang-Gon had turned pale. With a self-derisive sneer, he said, “I made it through my adolescent years without getting into trouble, not because of poetry, but because of Sun-Young. I would say to myself, ‘If I do this, Sun-Young won’t like it.’ Yes, it was almost a religious faith, a sacred belief.” He threw aside the newspaper. “But I lost my faith, I lost it!”

Jae-Min couldn’t take it any more. “Chang-Gon, please get a grip on yourself. Stop it!”

“I know you don’t want to hear any more of this sob story, but please hear me out,” ChangGon said with a wan smile.

“The Korean War broke out three months after I first saw her. Our families took refuge together in Pusan, where I became a college student. Even once I was an adult, poetry and SunYoung still watched over me.”

The clock in the landlord’s room struck nine, almost time for Jae-Ung to return, and JaeMin was nervous. Chang-Gon kept talking.

“The year I graduated, I enlisted in the Army. I was twenty-three—exactly seven years ago.

I was assigned to the front line. Every time I was home on leave, I’d go to her house before I went to my own. She became more beautiful and elegant as she grew older. It’s true, I admit: from the beginning, she was unattainable for me, a higher being.

“One day, I paid a visit to Sun-Young’s family and met her father. For some reason, no other family member was there. Mr. Chung-Whi Jeong said he would like to ask a favor of me because he needed someone to run an errand for him, so I said yes. Then he gave me a white envelope and told me to give it to a woman in a certain tea room in Mugyo-dong.”

Chung-Gon closed his eyes for a while, then he continued. “The woman was a cheerful, outgoing type, perhaps a little over thirty. I didn’t know who or what she was or what kind of errand I’d done. After that, as time passed, she and I became close. No—intimate.”

Chang-Gon stopped and addressed Jae-Min. “Jae-Min, do you remember In-Taek’s accident, when he died? He’d found out about his father’s mistress and me, his best friend, and I

know he was puritanically fastidious about such matters.”

Jae-Min couldn’t say a word.

“After In-Taek died, I never saw the woman again. I’m absolutely ruined, but I don’t feel hatred, disgust or contempt for her. I only feel sad about human frailty, and I blame myself for what happened. I don’t think she betrayed Mr. Jeong. She simply gave in to her feelings, a typical tendency for a woman who lives in shadow.”

Chang-Gon soon left. Jae-Min didn’t have the presence of mind to detain him. The man had talked far too much, but there were two things he had said that stayed with Jae-Min because they seemed to be directed at him, too.

The first was From the beginning, she was unattainable for me, a higher being. The second was It was almost a religious faith.

Chang-Gon’s confession had been awful, but Jae-Min felt no disgust or contempt. He couldn’t forgive Chang-Gon, but he could understand him.

Since that day, Jae-Min had felt a huge change in himself.

Despite such behind-the-scenes incidents, the residents of the House of Pomegranate Trees lived in peace until the day Young-Ho’s parents arrived after a thirty-year absence from their homeland.

Chapter XVI

Young-Ho’s parents arrived without fanfare, thirty years after they had left. For them the homeland had been the very foundation of their lives and the object of passionate longing, but when they arrived, no one they used to know was there to welcome them.

Young-Ho’s mother, Mrs. Hei-Ryon Park, felt like weeping as she watched the flowing water of the Han River. To be back here in the liberated motherland moved her deeply. Tears welled in her eyes, but her face remained composed. Life’s vicissitudes were hidden beneath her serenity.

Although the three of them were now reunited after a long separation, they had little to say to one another. Watching his mother’s profile as her eyes turned only to the scenes outside the car window, Young-Ho felt deep sympathy for the complex emotions that extended far beyond the mere happiness of coming home. The huge crowds of people coming and going in the streets didn’t look lively and vigorous, but lost and purposeless. Young-Ho felt as if he were to blame.

“You know why people look like that? It’s only a little while since the war ended,” he said, as if making excuses for them.

He remembered the story of his mother’s home town somewhere in Kyonggi Province, more like a village, where blue irises bloomed in the morning and the wind swept over fields of grass. Seoul, with its war-torn, desolate streets crowded with vagrants, was not her home. But even if she went back to her home town, no one would be there who might recognize her. She would still be an outsider. Now Young-Ho began to realize why his father, Ho-Sang Song, had been reluctant to come back.

Behind his dark glasses, Mr. Song’s eyes were closed. His usual somber mien always agreed with his dignified character, but today it made him look weak and lonely.

Father has gotten old, Young-Ho thought.

“Mother, how does everything look? Can you see a tremendous change?” He spoke cheerfully, putting his hand on his mother’s as he used to do.

“Yes, so much has changed,” Mrs. Park said, pulling her hand from under her son’s to put it on top of his. It was an old habit of theirs.

His love for his mother renewed, he became cheerful and energetic. “Still, a lot of things haven’t changed at all,” he said, thinking of Sun-Young. “As you used to say, young Korean women are very pretty.”

His mother laughed. “In my opinion, women in the streets seem to have changed the most.”

“Changed how?”

“So much in every way. Just one glance and I can see change beyond belief.”

“Mother, the change is just superficial. You’ll see.”

She turned her eyes away from the window and from her son, but before she could speak again, the driver stopped the car in front of the house and honked the horn.

Unusually, the door remained closed for a long time before the new errand boy opened it.

Young-Ho had a glimpse of the caretaker forcibly dragging the Old Uncle through the garden gate.

The old man resisted desperately, his animal-like moaning audible on Young-Ho’s side of the garden.

The errand boy ran to help the caretaker, and the three of them disappeared through the gate.

“He’s an old man from the inner quarters who loves this garden,” he explained to his alarmed mother. “He’s a little senile.”

Too shocked by the old man to respond, Mrs. Park merely followed her son. Young Ho’s father was silent.

“Isn’t this a beautiful house?” Young-Ho was behaving like a kid showing off, and he felt a bit sheepish. Neither parent spoke, but gradually they seemed to relax as the shock of seeing the Old Uncle faded.

“Yes,” Mrs. Park said quietly, “it’s a beautiful Korean house. And look at the pomegranates!”

“Yes, the house is famous for those trees. In fact, it’s called the house of pomegranate trees.”

“Pomegranate…a tree of the East.”

“Everybody who comes here is charmed and fascinated. I fell in love with the house the moment I saw it.”

Young-Ho ascended the five-tier stone staircase to the main hall. The last of the sunlight

lingered in the dark windows where the three people were reflected like cameo figures on a mirror.

They seemed irrevocably separated from each other in this sunset reflection. Between the mother and Young-Ho, who took after her, stood the difference in gender and age. But between those two and the father, a wider chasm seemed to exist. Before they could become aware of this isolation, however, the lights came on in the house, erasing the revelatory reflection.

Young-Ho opened the glass door, but the maid was not waiting for him. The Old Aunt must have had a hand in this, he thought, smiling.

“This is the outer quarters, but it’s big enough for all of us. Mother, this room is for you, and that room is mine. Father’s room is the one facing south-east.” He opened the paper lattice windows. “Why don’t you have your baggage brought up first and rest for a while before we go out to dinner at Chung-Hyang-Won? My secretary made a reservation and will be waiting for us there.”

Mrs. Park pulled off her gloves. “Young-Ho, I don’t think I want to eat tonight.”

“I know you’re tired,” he said, “but that’s all the more reason you need nourishment. Now, let me help you with your coat.”

Just then someone knocked at the door. It was Ae-Ja, holding a tray of hot towels and three covered bowls. “You must be very tired from the long trip,” she said, not a bit shy. “Bath water is prepared, but I thought you’d enjoy the hot towels and a warm drink first. There’s pine nut gruel in the bowl.”

Mrs. Park looked quizzically at her son.

“This is a student from the inner quarters,” Young-Ho said.

“My name is Ae-Ja,” she said, and smiled.

After she was gone, Mrs. Park turned to her son. “You said Korean women hadn’t changed.” It was hard to tell whether she was impressed or displeased.

“Mother, I meant the real, true Korean women.”

“Real, true Korean women?”

“You’ll find out in time.”

“I shall look forward to it.”

The phone rang. It was Young-Ho’s secretary calling from the restaurant. “We’ll be there at

seven,” Young-Ho told her.

But the dinner had to be canceled. Mrs. Park collapsed; to all appearances, her chronic anemia and fatigue from the long trip were to blame. Young-Ho thought his mother had been overcome with emotion while looking over the house. He didn’t know that her collapse was caused by the shock of seeing the portrait of the young girl.

Three days passed. The visiting doctor said Mrs. Park would be just fine when she had recovered from the long journey, but she remained weak and listless. Unable to follow the usual routine of returning expatriates, touring historical sites and well-known spots in the city, she adjusted to everyday life at the house as if she had been living there a long time. After three days of rest in the traditional Korean room, she felt strong enough to go down to the garden.

No leaves had fallen, yet a distinct air of autumn decline was apparent. The tips of the abundant chrysanthemums were fading.

They were the very image of Mrs. Park, who was fifty-three. She had no gray hair, a stillsmooth forehead, a narrow high nose, and luminous eyes. There was no visible sign of aging. She couldn’t be called a beauty, but was a good-looking woman with an elegant and genteel demeanor.

She gazed at the chrysanthemums and autumn roses so painstakingly tended by the gardener, but her eyes were taking in something beyond them. Dark shadows flitted across her face, but whether it was the sadness of regret or sweet happiness, it was impossible to tell.

Young-Ho tried in vain to find some trace of his mother’s family and friends in her home town, which had been devastated by bombing during the war. By contrast, Mr. Song, who had remained glum, received an unexpected call from an old friend. From then on, he went out often.

Even though Young-Ho’s household had grown with the arrival of his parents, an errand boy, and a girl, daily life returned to a quiet routine after the initial bustle. Lately, it felt to him as if the old caretaker and Ae-Ja were the only people living in the inner quarters. While his mother was still resting in bed, Young-Ho sensed the unusual care of the Old Aunt in the special dishes and herbs she sent via the maid. She herself, however, would not meet the newcomers. When Young-Ho asked about Sun-Young, the answer was always no, she wasn’t home. The Old Uncle was never

seen in the garden.

One day when Young-Ho was coming out of the shower, the maid stopped him. At first she hesitated, then she blurted out, “The family is moving away.”

“Moving away?”

“Yes, I just overheard the Old Aunt asking Miss Ae-Ja what she was going to do.”

Frustrated and hurt, Young-Ho was at a loss. His mother had yet to meet the family and he hadn’t told her about the history of the house. He had hoped to tell her after he introduced SunYoung.

Hesitating only a moment, he dressed and strode over to the inner quarters. No one was stirring. It was as if the family had already left.

The maid followed him uneasily and called out to the Old Aunt, who appeared through the noiseless paper door. She didn’t seem surprised to see Young-Ho. As usual, she stood sideways and turned her face away from him. Her dismissive attitude intimidated him.

“I hear you’re moving away,” he said, watching her. Her profile, hidden in shadow, gave no hint of her feelings. She didn’t answer.

“If you are uncomfortable, I’m sorry, but if you move away I shall be very disappointed.”

Still no response.

Nervous, Young-Ho began to stammer. “In truth, I was going to ask Miss Sun-Young—” “One can live in a house only while one has the right connection with it,” the Old Aunt interrupted.

“But what is the right connection, may I ask?”

“To be able to live in harmony.”

“If that’s true, wouldn’t going on living here make the right connection?”

The Old Aunt didn’t answer.

“I really wish you’d stay on. In fact, I beg you. We’ve already met and gotten to know one another—isn’t it the right connection already? And by sharing the house, we’ll make the connection even stronger.”

Daunted by her silence, Young-Ho nonetheless continued to plead. “As you know, my

parents have come. My father has friends to spend time with, but my mother will be completely alone if you leave. She will be lonelier than she was in Hawaii. If she’s that lonely in her own homeland, you might as well say her life has been nothing but a long yearning for an illusion. Please help my mother.”

Even as he spoke, Young-Ho knew he was pleading for himself as well as for his mother.

But the Old Aunt’s lips remained sealed. After a painful silence, Young-Ho was about to leave when she whispered, “Our family is no longer the owner of this house.”

Surprised, he paused. “I myself feel like I’m not the owner,” he said. “If your family moves out, I know I will feel as if I am occupying someone else’s vacant home. Until now, I’ve enjoyed being a kind of guest at your house.”

But the Old Aunt didn’t respond to this, either.

The next day, Young-Ho explained the situation to his mother and led her to the inner quarters. Instead of taking the hallway that connected the two quarters, they went through the garden gate as a formal visit required. The moment they entered, however, they were struck by the presence of the Old Uncle reclining in front of the chrysanthemums and cosmos in his shroud-like white clothes. As always, he lay perfectly still.

The moment he opened his eyes and saw the mother and son, his eyes widened. His arms jerked up wildly, then dropped. Mrs. Park, alarmed, clung to her son.

“Mother, don’t be afraid,” Young-Ho comforted her. “He’s just an old man from the inner quarters.”

Chapter XVII

“Father?” Young-Ho called quietly. There was no answer.

“Father?” he called again. Still no answer. Had his father gone out? Young-Ho gently pushed open the door. Mr. Song lay fast asleep on the heavy silk futon, resting his head on both arms in a most uncomfortable position.

“Poor Father, sleeping with no pillows,” Young-Ho said as he entered. For their homecoming, he had prepared traditional bedding for his parents, but he realized now that their years in America might have made such bedding uncomfortable. He brought out a pillow and put it under his father’s head. That was when he caught sight of a crumpled piece of paper under his father’s waist. On it were some words scribbled in Chinese.

Something about the paper felt ominous to Young-Ho, as though it were an evil talisman.

The way the paper was savagely crumpled made him think that perhaps the words on it were full of hatred, anger and menace. He decided to leave it there, however, and covered his father with a silk coverlet.

Even after he emerged from the room, he couldn’t shake off his dark foreboding. His father was a taciturn man who didn’t show his emotions. At times he seemed candid enough, but there was still a sense he wasn’t truly revealing what was in his heart. A serious, somber man, some might call him; others might say a dark, secretive man. Young-Ho thought a man like his father could probably be explosive if his passions were aroused.

With a heavy heart, Young-Ho sat in a chair on the balcony. He didn’t feel like going into his mother’s room. Instead, he scanned every corner of the garden.

Autumn was at its sad peak. The maple leaves and ivy were brilliant red and orange, the chrysanthemums still in abundant golden glory, but the roses bloomed only with a last, desperate effort. The grass was still green, though it had begun to lose its vitality. Even the fiercely blazing summer sun had calmed and now lay gentle on the grass. In the air full of fall fragrance, Young-Ho was edgy, tense. Nothing had turned out as he had hoped. His mother had recovered from the journey over, but since her visit to the inner quarters, she had stayed in bed. His father was hardly at

home. The family was breaking up. Today, a Saturday when he didn’t have to go to work, was no exception: the three remained apart.

But what agitated him more than his family situation was that he hadn’t been able to see Sun-Young for a long time. He had suspected the Old Aunt of sending her away, but Ae-Ja straightened him out on that point.

“Why, she’s home,” Ae-Ja had told him, “and she goes to school every day. By the way, Mr. Song, I’ve rented a room. The Old Aunt hasn’t said anything, but I don’t want to tag along when she hasn’t asked me to. Even if she does ask, I won’t go with her. I want to be alone—and free.”

The word ‘free’ coming from her lips amused Young-Ho. He thought she’d always been a free spirit, living a life full of vitality. And yet, she wanted more freedom.

After he discovered the Old Aunt’s determination to move, he began to dread his future family life and the enormous empty space he’d have after the other family moved away. He pictured his mother, his father, and himself—each in their own shell—left behind in the old house. He remembered the maid once saying, “People should be masters of their house, not the other way around” Now he was beginning to understand what she meant, and that in turn aroused an urgent longing in him for Sun-Young.

He had visited the Old Aunt several more times, but she was like a clam—an enormous, ugly clam. Inside the rock-hard shell, an amorphous flesh changed its shape. He could not, would not leave Sun-Young in its grip.

Days passed in this same uncertain state. In his earlier life, when he had a knotty problem to solve, he would go to one of the Hawaiian beaches and swim until he was exhausted. Now, he lit a cigarette and tried to think. No sound came from either of his parents’ rooms. The whole place was like a morgue. In the garden there was no hint of a breeze—the leaves seemed frozen. Was the whole scene just a dream? Once, long ago, he had had a nightmare in which his mind was running away but he couldn’t run after it or scream for help. Today, he felt a similar helplessness. Close to breaking point, he rubbed out the cigarette. Then he noticed the garden gate opening, and the next moment Sun-Young appeared.

Young-Ho rose to his feet in a daze and watched as she moved slowly to the trellis of rose bushes. Chinese characters signifying double joy were etched on the walls all the way to the tips of the eaves. How ironic that dire tragedies had happened beneath them!

Sun-Young stood still, the very image of a sadness so deep it could never be dissolved.

Young-Ho remembered how, on that first day long ago, he had seen her standing at the balcony balustrade. Then, he had been intimidated by her youthful hauteur, but today he was deeply moved by her sorrow. He promised himself he would never let her slip out of his life. He came outside, put on the white rubber shoes, and stepped quietly down to the ground, never taking his eyes off her.

As though unaware of or indifferent to his approach, she didn’t move, but gazed at the fountain in the pond and the pomegranate trees with their red, ripening fruits. It was she who spoke first, however, when he came to stand beside her.

“I wanted to see the garden for the last time,” she said.

“For the last time? What do you mean?”

“Tomorrow is September 20 by the lunar calendar: an auspicious day for moving, I was told, because it has no evil signs in it.”

“Miss Sun-Young,” he began desperately, but she didn’t seem to hear him. Instead she said, as if to herself, “Mr. Song, please let my uncle spend the whole day in the garden today. From the day after tomorrow, you will not have to lock the garden door.”

“I’m truly sorry to hear that. As I’ve said, this house belongs to you, and I—” But before he could finish, Sun-Young turned away.

“I’ll bring out my uncle.”

Young-Ho felt as if an illusion had vanished in front of his eyes. When Sun-Young reappeared, she was leading her old uncle. He wasn’t wearing a formal coat, but over his usual loose outfit he had on a jacket ordinarily worn for outings. Young-Ho recalled how long ago she had virtually herded the old man from behind; today she was leading him by the hand so gently that he thought he saw another side of her.

“It’s been a long time, sir,” Young-Ho said to the old man, though fully aware that there

would be no response.

The Old Uncle’s vacant eyes filled with joy as he looked around the garden and finally located his chair. Neither Young-Ho nor Sun-Young spoke. Above the chrysanthemum bed, honey bees buzzed. They swooped down into the flowers and flew up in swarms, white from one angle, black from another. The Old Uncle’s eyes swept past the fountain and settled on the pomegranate trees.

“Uncle, you can see the pomegranate seeds, can’t you? They are ripe and open.” SunYoung’s voice was full of sadness and regret.

“Once I had a dream in this house,” Young-Ho said. “In it, someone said the day the pomegranate fruit ripened, the true owner of this house would come. I know you have grown up here, but as far as I’m concerned, you’ve come to this house for the first time as the true owner.”

After a long pause, Sun-Young replied. “Tomorrow, I leave this house, never to come back.

Every year, about the time the pomegranates ripen, I will miss them terribly.”

“Miss Sun-Young!”

“Please forgive me, but please do not take me for my aunt’s puppet.”

“I’ve never—” “My Old Aunt seems to have been controlling everything since my father’s death, but the truth is, I simply withdrew into myself.”

“I think I understand.”

“I don’t know how to explain this properly, but I’ve found that what I thought I had in myself wasn’t there. I thought I had someone who filled me, but when I looked into myself, I found there was no one but me. That someone wasn’t an individual entity, only a medium, and I saw a warped image of myself through it. I’m ashamed to be saying this. Eventually, I took myself out of my inner self, and there was nothing left in me.” Sun-Young’s confession was the longest speech she’d ever made in his presence, and Young-Ho was taken aback.

“You must be very tired. You seem overwrought,” he said, and then was ashamed of his inane response. Luckily for him, Sun-Young paid no attention and went on with her monologue.

“I remember Stendhal once said that a man who sees something in a woman over forty is the

man who remembers her when she was twenty. Although I’m barely over twenty, I’ve begun to feel as though I were a woman from the past. I wanted someone who knew me when I was twenty.

Then I realized that I was really nothing, even when I was twenty. It was a rude awakening. Well, perhaps not. Anyway, it gave me a sense of absolute loss.”

“Miss Sun-Young!”

“I just wanted to etch this garden deep in my heart. And my uncle…” She stopped and looked down. Her long lashes trembled over her cheeks as she delicately rubbed her uncle’s shoulder. “Even in his blank state, Uncle loved this garden and I wanted him to enjoy it for the last time.”

“Please don’t say ‘for the last time’,” Young-Ho said. “This house is yours.”

Suddenly, he became aware they were being watched. He looked up and thought he saw someone stealing away from the door. The calm sunlight lingered on the window panes. Blue sky and white clouds hovered above the trees. Perhaps, he thought, it was only the clouds’ shadows he had seen. He shook his head in doubt and turned back to Sun-Young, but he had not been mistaken. His parents had been watching them from their respective windows.

Mr. Song had been half awake at the moment his son covered him. Perhaps because of his uncomfortable position, he’d had a series of unpleasant dreams whose content he couldn’t recall. If dreams were remembered clearly, they could be interpreted in some way, but forgotten dreams only seemed to leave a bad aftertaste. He had been lying there half asleep for a while when he suddenly remembered the piece of paper lying under him. He shuddered wide awake.

Mr. Song’s face registered both loneliness and pain. His gloomy, half-closed eyes twitched a few times. Finally, he rose to open the door and stepped on to the balcony. Immediately he saw the three people in the garden, but instead of calling to them, he pressed himself against the wall, hiding himself from view. Then he rushed back to his room and slammed the door. He sat beside the traditional window, which had several tiers of secondary windows. The last of these was made of rice paper and wooden lattices and had sprung open when he slammed the door. He spied on the three through the window for a few minutes, then abruptly stood up and began pacing the floor.

Mrs. Park, having been unwell for several days, was unaware of her husband’s agitation.

Despite the doctor’s diagnosis that fatigue and the long trip were responsible for her condition, she knew the real cause lay deep within her. It wasn’t a recent wound but an old one that had begun to fester again. In fact, it had never healed in the first place, but had been willfully hidden away. She had buried what was most important to her as a woman, and which should never be revealed as a mother.

Her past should never be touched again. She was a virtuous, faithful wife and a selfsacrificing, loving mother. If even a piece of the past should show itself, she would suppress it.

It was for that reason she had hesitated to return, despite the intense longing for home.

Raised in stern Confucian tradition and, later, in a rigid Christian education, she had always been of an uncertain, cautious mindset. On the day she saw the girl’s portrait in the house, she had fallen into utter confusion, shaken to the core by this picture of herself thirty years before. The rococo style clearly showed the artist’s romantic love for the model. Thirty years ago, the man who painted it had placed the white shawl over her and whispered, “I love you.” In the years since, she had tried to forget him, living with hidden guilt. She knew the past was irrevocably gone, but the pain and renewed yearning in her heart was something she now had to bear.

Once, years earlier, Mrs. Park and her husband and son had traveled to Canada in late fall at the invitation of Young-Ho’s school friend. They had climbed a hill, but found that the air at the top was much chillier than they had expected, so they had gathered fallen branches and built a fire.

The branches they thought were dead began to ooze hot sap, a sign that they still held life in them.

The sight had moved her to tears. Her heart began to pulse with the old pain.

Since her shock, she had refused to go near the portrait. Overcome by dread and anxiety, she wouldn’t go out into the garden either. Her mental and emotional turmoil seemed to worsen with her inactivity. Often she reached for the Bible, as she did on this day when she caught sight of the three people in the garden. She shivered at the appearance of the old man in the shroud-like clothes.

His face was that of death itself, but he absorbed the attention of the two people with him, reclining loosely between them in a kind of symbolic scene.

At first she thought the young girl was Ae-Ja, but when the girl glanced up, Mrs. Park was amazed at her beauty. Even though she couldn’t see her son’s face, she observed the way he leaned

so earnestly toward the girl and knew he must be very much in love.

“It’s only natural,” Mrs. Park whispered, and turned to read the Bible, which always calmed her.

The autumn sun set, and the house sank into darkness. The Song family had a quiet dinner, each absorbed in their own thoughts, and then dispersed to their rooms. The night deepened amid the sounds of insects and the evening church service. Soon the preliminary curfew siren wailed.

Young-Ho tossed and turned in bed till the curfew siren sounded at midnight. Unable to sleep, he decided to finish the book he’d been reading, but after half an hour he gave up because of a blackout. There was no moonlight, only inky blackness. He closed his tired eyes and listened to the insect cacophony.

“Fire! Fire!” someone shrieked.

Young-Ho sprang to his feet. “My God! Mother!” He ran toward her room.

Chapter XVIII

The fire damaged only a part of the inner quarters, but the human cost was enormous . The Old Uncle died, and Young-Ho’s father sustained third-degree burns over his entire body. The Fire Department was investigating the cause of the fire, but what baffled everyone was that Mr. Song, who everyone had thought was in his room in the outer quarters, was rescued from the inner quarters.

People felt awe and pity at the sight of his heavily bandaged body. They guessed that he had rushed over to save the Old Uncle the minute he heard the scream, knowing that only women lived in the inner quarters. Doctors said Mr. Song had only a slim chance of surviving.

The day after the fire Mr. Song became delirious and, though under heavy sedation, began to babble incoherently. Among the muddled words, Chung-Kwon Jeong, the name of the Old Uncle, popped up often. Once, he said distinctly, “I didn’t set you up. I didn’t. I didn’t know those bastards were waiting there to trap you.”

Gradually, a picture built up from his broken, incoherent phrases. Something dark and mysterious in his horrible groaning became more horrifying, as if in his death throes he was about to reveal a secret he’d guarded closely all his life.

Two days passed. His screams of agony didn’t stop except when he was too exhausted.

Because of other patients’ complaints, he was moved to the ICU, but his animal-like howling continued. Doctors changed his dressings every day even though they knew his death was a foregone conclusion. They did so not to help him heal, but to keep dead tissue from rotting. His body was a lump of burnt flesh.

Just as an actor lives a life during his short time on stage, Mr. Song spewed the very core of his life in his heart-rending screams. Neither his wife nor his son had ever heard so many words coming from him. Drunk on unbearable pain and morphine, Mr. Song relived the life he had never revealed. In his delirium his early days of poverty came alive as beautiful, while his serene, comfortable life of later years loomed dark and murky.

“Chung-Kwon, Chung-Kwon!” He cried out the name he could never push into oblivion.

He and Chung-Kwon had been friends in their student days in Tokyo. Chung-Kwon, the son of a wealthy, renowned family, was a generous soul who helped Ho-Sang in many ways that made HoSang’s life bearable. But as is often true of people who have grown up lonely and poor, Ho-Sang had a warped, cynical attitude which he turned like a weapon on his well-meaning friends, especially Chung-Kwon. Still, they remained friends until Hei-Ryon Park appeared in their lives. For her, HoSang gave up his ambition, his commitment to fight for his homeland’s independence, and even his loyalty to his friends.

His rambling words indicated that although he hadn’t intentionally led Chung-Kwon into a trap, his actions had resulted in Chung-Kwon’s capture by the Japanese police.

Hei-Ryon had lost her will to live after Ho-Sang told her that Chung-Kwon, the man she loved, had died in a Japanese prison. It was rumored that he’d been executed after betraying his compatriots. Soon afterward, Ho-Sang and Hei-Ryon left Tokyo for Shanghai. Once, Ho-Sang said derisively, “Well, it looks like in the end Chung-Kwon turned out to be no more than a son of the bourgeoisie.” Hei-Ryon didn’t believe him, but she said nothing.

Ho-Sang’s guilt and regret began to gnaw at him after he became convinced of Hei-Ryon’s trust and faith in him. His life had been based on pain and suffering behind the facade of gentlemanly sobriety. As the years passed, his inner distress and quiet prudence merged into the grave character so respected by his family and the Korean community in Shanghai and Hawaii. His past had sunk steadily into oblivion.

Until the day he saw Chung-Kwon at his son’s house.

So shaken was Ho-Sang by the shock, he began to fear his wife, although she seemed not to have recognized her old love in his pathetically altered state. Silently, gradually, she lost her strength and stayed in bed. Spurred on by fear and guilt, Ho-Sang hatched a plan to get rid of Chung-Kwon, even though the old man was no better than dead. In excruciating pain and under the potent spell of morphine, he had recurring nightmares about what had happened that night.

He had waited in tense agitation for the curfew siren to sound. For an hour or more he stayed in his room, before stepping out into the hall. He had no weapons but the powerful hands of a second-degree karate champion. He tiptoed to the fuse box he’d found days before, opened it, and

pulled the switches. Pitch-black night with no moon or stars enveloped the house. At that moment, he saw a dimly lit room in the inner quarters, probably candlelight. On the paper window he saw a silhouette of the old man’s sculptured profile. Now Ho-Sang knew he wouldn’t have to grope his way to the old man’s room: a lucky break for him, even though for Chung-Kwon, day and night had long lost their meaning.

Ho-Sang trembled in the mild breeze as he watched the silent house. Soon, the old man’s silhouette disappeared. Perhaps he had lain down. Every room was dark and there was no sound of human movement. Ho-Sang, no longer trembling, moved quickly.

The paper door opened without a sound. Chung-Kwon lay under the flickering candlelight and showed no surprise or fear at the intruder’s entrance. His eyes were sunk so deeply in their sockets that Ho-Sang couldn’t see whether they were open or shut. He raised his powerful hand and chopped the place just underneath the old man’s ear. That hand had been known to kill an ox with one blow, but the moment it descended, the old man moved and Ho-Sang hit him in the shoulder instead. There was the sickening sound of bones cracking.

Then an extraordinary, unexpected thing happened. The old man hugged Ho-Sang’s legs with fierce strength, and as he tried to sit up, he knocked over the candles. Instantly, some papers around his bed caught fire. Panicked, Ho-Sang desperately tried to free his legs, but the old man’s grip was impossible to loosen. Ho-Sang’s flailing arms fanned the flames, which had begun to climb the paper door.

“Fire! Fire!” he screamed, his legs still shackled in the old man’s arms. How could a man on the point of death have so much strength?

The arms of the old man loosened suddenly as the flames reached his head. When people rushed in, the two men were engulfed in the fire.

Days and nights passed while Ho-Sang’s feverish moaning and incoherent babbling went on and on. Neither the doctors nor the family could do anything but wait for the end. Other patients looked askance at Young-Ho and, to his consternation, the police—considering him a prime suspect in their investigation—took him down to headquarters for questioning.

In the morning, he was released from the police station and went to the hospital, groggy from fatigue and worry. While standing in the hospital hallway, he heard people talking.

“Apparently that man over there is his son.”

“Poor young man. He must be in despair.”

“From his screaming, you can tell he’s not going to die soon. He’ll probably live to be ninety.”

“Yeah, still screaming, I suppose.”

“I can’t sleep. I was awake all night last night.”

“Why on earth did he have to come to our ward?”

“He was in another ward, but he raised such a racket they moved him here.”

Young-Ho sighed deeply and went out. He’d had to take care of the Old Uncle’s funeral and the clearing of the fire-damaged part of the house, but what troubled him most was the mysterious cause of the fire and the investigation focusing on him.

Told that the Old Uncle was the former Chung-Kwon Jeong, Mrs. Park fainted, but then quickly recovered to faithfully attend to her husband. In the days since the fire she had aged and seemed indifferent to everything around her, the very personification of the old saying, Slight sorrow makes one talkative, but deep sorrow makes one speechless.

Chung-Kwon Jeong had been mistakenly accused of betraying his comrades. He was thought to have been executed by the Japanese, but in fact, he had remained to the end loyal to his friends and resistant to Japanese torture so savage that it made him little more than a vegetable from that time on.

Mrs. Park, hearing about his heroism, was deeply moved by his strong character, but at the same time it hurt her to cast doubt on her husband. It pained her that she had hidden her first love all those years while growing to love and respect her husband. In the end, her heart was left empty as she sat beside the howling, bandaged body. Informed of Chung-Kwon’s funeral by a man from her son’s office, she merely expressed the usual traditional condolences.

“The police are really bothering Mr. Song about the cause of the fire,” the man said.

“I know. I appreciate everything you’re doing,” she said quietly and turned to her husband.

The cause of the fire was known only to that bandaged man and herself. She felt as if a cold wind were blowing through her heart, which had become a wasteland.

The day Ho-Sang’s howling began to subside, Sun-Young and Ae-Ja, both in mourning white, came for a visit. Mrs. Park was sorry Young-Ho wasn’t there to see Sun-Young. It would have comforted him. His father’s burns and his mother’s ordeal were tearing him apart. On top of that, he’d been hounded by police while overseeing countless matters relating to his office, his house, and the old man’s funeral. When Mrs. Park learned that Sun-Young was an art student, she saw a certain poetic justice in that the aesthetic genes of Chung-Kwon, the artist, had come out in his niece. Mrs. Park felt hopeful for the family’s future.

Silent and fearful, the two girls watched the mummy-like figure. Sun-Young put white chrysanthemums in a vase, and Ae-Ja placed a basket of fruit on the window sill.

Ho-Sang died soon after they left, surrounded by his wife, Young-Ho’s secretary, and the hospital staff. Young-Ho was detained at the police station while his father breathed his last.

In the end, he had the luck to be buried in his homeland. Though there were no relatives present, the funeral was a grand affair, thanks to Young-Ho’s business partners and people from the mining industry. Visibly thinner, the Old Aunt arranged the ceremony down to the last detail. In stark contrast to her former flinty attitude, she wept profusely at the death of Chung-Kwon, that lonely ghost who had never married and who had lost his mother only a short time before.

Strangely, the Old Aunt now seemed hesitant to move out, perhaps out of consideration for Young-Ho’s family after all that had happened.

October was coming to an end. On a fine, spring-like day, Young-Ho invited everyone who had helped with his father’s and the Old Uncle’s funerals to the garden, so that he could express his gratitude. Grills were set up, and again the Old Aunt directed the helpers and took charge of every aspect of the occasion.

Mrs. Park smiled for the first time since the fire as Sun-Young presented her with a bowl of rice punch.

Ae-Ja, peeling an apple, suddenly blurted out, “I’m leaving today.”

“Leaving?” said Mrs. Park.

“Yes. I bought a small shop. Lately, design has become quite a lucrative field, and I think I can be independent. There’s living space behind the shop.”

“This house will be desolate without you.”

“I’ll come to visit often. We’re in the same city, after all.”

One of Young-Ho’s executives said, “I may be wrong, but President Song might be better off selling this house. I’m not superstitious, but—” “You mean this house is haunted?” Young-Ho interrupted.

“Yes…” said the executive uncertainly.

“A haunted house? I don’t believe in such things,” Young-Ho declared. “This house is beautiful and appealing. Besides, this is where my father and the people I’d have loved have passed away. You might think it’s horrible that so many have died in it. On the other hand, because they died here, it should never be abandoned.”

He watched his mother as he spoke. “I’ll build a new house on the same spot the fire destroyed. If there is still an evil presence, I’ll tolerate it, because good and evil coexist. Just as Noah’s Ark held humans, animals, and fish dreaming of a new world, so would I build a new world.

If there is evil, there is goodness too. God created good with evil. I’ll accept such a world and welcome it.” He spoke slowly and distinctly, as if he were putting his thoughts in order by speaking them aloud. “Generally, I don’t like the word ‘fate’, but to live life sincerely may mean suffering the deep wounds inflicted by fate and carrying on.”

Faint lines showed on his previously smooth forehead. He had matured in the past few days.

His mother was impressed and comforted by what her son said. Perhaps she had lived with few firm principles, but to have lived and survived in such turbulent times was in itself an achievement.

Young-Ho sipped his drink and continued. “Until now, I didn’t feel like the real owner of this house. Somehow I felt uncomfortable, like an unwelcome intruder. I reasoned it was because I had been raised in a foreign country, but now I realize that the presence of evil was the master of this house. I had given in to it without knowing. Now I know I am the owner and master, not because I paid for the house, but because I truly believe it belongs to me instead of me belonging to it.”

The executive who had raised the question of the haunted house raised his glass. “Then this

calls for a joyful toast.” Everyone followed suit. Jae-Min, who had had a few drinks but was still sober, moved over to the Old Aunt.

“I heard that Chang-Gon emigrated to Brazil,” he told her quietly, but clearly enough for Sun-Young to overhear. “I didn’t know.”

Young-Ho came over to them. “Miss Sun-Young, this house is too big for me. Will you live here with me?” He looked straight into her eyes. She looked down demurely, but there was no stiff resistance in her demeanor.

The sun began to set. Ae-Ja put down her glass. “I’m afraid I have to leave now. I have things to move to my new place.”

“I’ll take care of that in my car,” Young-Ho admonished. “Stay and enjoy yourself.”

“Going isn’t a problem. I have to unpack and arrange things,” she replied.

“Then this is our farewell party for you.”

“Right, and I thank you all.” Ae-Ja smiled brightly and started toward the garden gate.

Suddenly, Jae-Min called out to her. “Wait a moment, please. I’ll help you move.” He ran to the gate and opened it for her. Everyone smiled at their retreating backs.

The twilight made enchanting patterns on all the windows in myriad incandescent colors.

The breeze was beginning to grow chilly, but no one wanted to move.

GLOSSARY ajumoni: a term for any married woman, usually middle-aged.

Bangol ajumoni: Bangol is the name of a town or village where the woman (ajumoni) is from. dong: an area or neighborhood of a city. kan: 99 kan is the largest size house a commoner was allowed to own. pyong: is an areal unit used to measure the size of rooms or buildings in Korea. One pyong is approximately 3.3 square meters.

Bokhun: a famous painter of the Yi Dynasty Saimdang: a famous painter and poet of the Yi Dynasty