by Y. Euny Hong
Ezra of the Peninsula
I KNEW what I wanted to do with the nine thousand dollars Zadie had squirreled away for me. But Joshua wouldn’t hear of it.
“But it’s not enough to help me, anyway,” I protested. “You can use it to repay your student loan, or at least the portion you took out for my surgery. Don’t tell me you’re refusing it because it was gotten by ill means.”
Joshua shook his head. “I told you in my letter, I never expected that money to be paid back.”
IT WAS DAY FIVE of our séjour in Korea. I was scheduled to meet up with Ezra Dwight. Joshua, who had met Ezra briefly at Jung’s dinner party, was less than delighted, but Ezra was the only person I could think of outside of my own family who could read enough Chinese to translate my great-grandfather’s letter.
Joshua and I met with Ezra at the NATO Café, tucked away in the basement of an otherwise grim commercial building. It was a favorite hangout of mine and Ezra’s, as it had big comfy sofas and the staff was really good about letting us choose the CDs we wanted them to play. Coffee was eight dollars and severely watered down, but they let us stay as long as we wanted. Especially now that Ezra was famous.
Ezra was reading a Korean newspaper when we walked in. He was dressed like a Yakuza, in a pin-striped black suit, black shirt, and black tie. He waved at me and Joshua and folded up his newspaper. Joshua had a dodgy look as we were choosing seats; he didn’t want either of us to sit next to Ezra. Joshua resolved the situation indelicately, by putting our coats and bags on the armchair next to Ezra, so that no one could sit there.
Embarrassed, I started fishing around in my purse. I said, “Okay, Ezra, here’s the letter. It’s to do with my great-grandfather’s alleged adoption. How’s your Chinese these days? Can you do this?”
Ezra looked it over studiously and pursed his lips. “I’ll take this home and work on it, okay? I’ve forgotten a lot of Chinese, but presumably not as much as you.” He opened his briefcase and put the letter in it.
Joshua said, “For someone who supposedly speaks so many languages, Jude, you sure are having to use translators a lot. Remember that illegal German stock offering memo I helped you with? Whatever happened with that, by the way?”
“Later. Later,” I said, baring clenched teeth at him.
Ezra, as usual, didn’t notice. He peered at Joshua over awful pink-tinted sunglasses and said, “And you, Jesse, how do you find Seoul?”
“The name’s Joshua,” Joshua said. “A bit congested. But a good deal nicer than Judith had warned. It must have been interesting growing up here. Jude showed me her anti-Communist posters. I couldn’t have imagined that an elementary school would prove such an ideological battleground.”
Ezra said, “Well, actually, Joshua, I think there’s something to be said for coming to school every day believing sincerely that the future of humanity depends on your fervent participation. Koreans aren’t jaded like Westerners are.” He punctuated his words with a bored wave of the hand.
Joshua cleared his throat and shifted in his chair.
Ezra interjected, “Anyone for a game of cards? Do you have any?”
“No, we don’t,” I said.
Ezra said, “No worries. I’ll take care of it.” He snapped his fingers and the waiter came running, and Ezra passed him some money and asked him to run out and buy us a deck of cards.
Joshua was incredulous. “You fancy yourself Lawrence of Arabia, but really you are Kurtz from Heart of Darkness,” he said to Ezra, plucking our coats from the seat next to Ezra and storming out of the NATO Café. I mouthed “Sorry” to Ezra. Thick-skinned as ever, he shrugged and made the “I’ll call you” sign by extending his thumb and pinkie from his fist and waving it next to his ear.
Joshua and I took a cab back to his hotel. When we got to his room, I turned on the television. Joshua said, “Ezra is a complete poseur. This ‘No one knows Asia like I know Asia’ thing.”
“But he did live in Korea his whole life.”
“Sure, as a foreigner. As a white male. As the descendant of an old trading family that apparently cofounded one of Korea’s first universities. As a TV star, who in America would not even get a role playing the role of the Wall in a Catskills production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ve seen the way people on the street look at him, as if that prick is some kind of glorious cherub. He’s enjoyed that gawking admiration his whole life, and now it’s part of his character. No wonder he couldn’t hack it in the States.”
“That’s funny, because he thinks I’m the one who couldn’t hack it in Korea. He and I are the same.”
“No way. Don’t you dare compare yourself to him. It’s normal for an Asian person to live in America. It is not normal for a white person to want to live in Asia.”
“Very enlightened, Spinoza.”
“In his case, it’s true. He lives here to be given special treatment. You had that option, with your family’s background, but you didn’t take it. That’s admirable, but there’s one thing I still don’t understand. You came into this world with the blessing of knowing where you come from, with every ancestor documented through the ages. And yet you’re completely unmoored. History is supposed to give one solidity, but not in your case.”
“If you’re trying to say my unhappiness is by my own hand, fine, I agree with you. But at least I fared better than poor Jung.”
Joshua was downcast for a moment before saying, “I hate to say this, but it’s probably a good thing Key is dead. Otherwise they’d have had to carry on this affair their whole lives, through marriages and children and grandchildren.”
I began to cry.
“It’s okay,” he said. “He can’t hurt her now.”
“I miss her,” I said. “And I miss him. The Dormouse is dead.”
33
The Wet Nurse
EZRA CALLED the next day.
“I’m sorry about Joshua’s behavior yesterday,” I said.
“Huh? What? I thought we were hitting it off.”
“Whatever. Did you take a stab at the letter?”
“Yes, and Jude, you are not going to believe what it says.”
“Je vous écoute,”* I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Okay. An official scribe signed and sealed the letter, but it was a wet nurse who dictated it to him.”
“A fucking wet nurse? Of what pertinence is that?”
“Of extreme pertinence. She’s your great-grandmother. My oh my, Jude, you’re descended from a teat-for-hire. And an illiterate one at that, if she had to hire a scribe. The letter says something like the following:
Greetings to All Concerned Parties:
I am writing this letter, by the aid of a scribe and in the presence of two witnesses, to reveal a secret. Previously, this disclosure would have deprived me of the material comfort that has bought my silence all these years. As it happens, however, the issuers of this bribe have defaulted in their final largesse, so the truth can little hurt me now.
Master and Mistress Lee, my liege and lady who retained me years ago as a wet nurse to their son, Lee Chul-Soo, have these fifteen years paid me to conceal the following: I am not their boy’s wet nurse. I am his mother.
Now, it is well known that Chul-Soo is not the natural-born son of my lord and lady; they have in fact just legally adopted him, claiming him to be the orphaned son of a distant cousin. This adoption has been sealed by the royal magistrate, as is necessary in cases where a large legacy is involved. But this adoption is void, as Chul-Soo is not well-born, but the son of an illiterate farmhand and a wet nurse.
My husband and I were descended from agricultural laborers who have been in the Lee fiefdom for generations. We were born as ssang nom, of the lowest social class.
I was married off at sixteen. In the fullness of time, I became large with child, and gave birth to a son. Then Mistress Lee, the wife of our lord and master, gave birth shortly after I did, to a sickly, colicky, wan little boy. She asked me, peremptorily, to become wet nurse to her child. I
did not have a choice in the matter; my husband’s livelihood depended on our master’s and mistress’s good humor.
Mistress Lee moved me out of my own house and into the main house, so that I could feed only her baby and not my own. Fortunately, my son, Chul-Soo, was robust and jolly and grew strong even on milk from goats and cows, administered by my own mother. Mistress Lee’s boy, meanwhile, grew weaker and cried more with each passing day. He seemed only to imbibe the ill feeling and resentment I passed on to him through my milk.
Mistress Lee slapped me whenever her boy cried. “What have you been eating?” she would ask. She had the cook put me on a strict diet. She locked me in a room and had bowls of dates brought to me, and she would not release me until I had eaten them all. This was all meant to provide the optimal nutrition for a strong, virile boy. But he died suddenly in his sleep at six months.
Madame Lee blamed me for the death of her son and claimed mine for herself. For relinquishing my son, and for my silence, I have heretofore been amply paid. But if another installment is not made forthwith, I will release this missive to the royal magistrate, who will have no choice but to nullify Chul-Soo’s adoption. This will strip him of his title and legacy. Though he is the child of my womb, I am willing to risk this in order that right be done by me.
If, on the other hand, my demands are met, all will be better off: Master and Mistress Lee can protect their legacy through their son, my descendants will live as nobles, and no one will be the wiser. Posterity will forgive me for my venality.
Signed: [Seal] Witnesses: [Seal] [Seal]
The nineteenth day of the sixth month, 1889
“So,” said Ezra, “Are you impressed? By my translation skills, I mean?”
I sighed. “Heike was right,” I said, recalling her thesis on wet nurses and how they destroyed aristocratic families.
“Who’s Heike? Is she cute?”
I thanked Ezra and hung up.
My ancestor was a wet nurse, one who tearlessly sold her baby. No wonder we’re such assholes.
I had no way of coping with this discovery. If I had been more like Joshua, I would have appealed to the wisdom of great literary masterpieces. But all the literature on the subject of mistaken parentage — Lorna Doone, Tom Jones, Tess of the d’Urbervilles — involve children born into the lower classes who later learn that they are actually of noble birth. There is very little guidance on the reverse scenario, in which an uppity girl raised as a blue blood discovers that she is descended from an illiterate wet nurse. To what text do I turn for guidance? What homilies can offer me solace now?
JOSHUA’S REACTION to the news of my ancestry was predictable in its stoicism, but surprising in its content: “I never once doubted your stories about your background, but I always suspected that you doubted them.”
“Good for you,” I said.
“Sorry,” said Joshua. “I guess this must be upsetting for you, huh? But it’s actually kind of cool, don’t you think? Your ancestors had pluck. I always told you that you were too smart not to have some peasant stock in you.”
I could not be so blasé. I would never get back those years spent under that suffocating cloud of gloom that hovered over our family, arising from the resignation that we could never again achieve the glory that, as it turned out, we never had to begin with.
When I told my mother of my findings in the family archives, her response was strangely flippant. “Don’t tell your father,” she said with the slightest traces of a grin, which meant that she wanted to be the one to tell him herself.
“But I bet he already knows.” She looked disappointed.
She continued, “You may find this hard to accept, but these things matter far more to you than they ever did to my generation. It is often the case that Koreans living abroad become more Korean, more traditional, than their counterparts living in Korea. Being uprooted made a zealot of you.”
“Oh, I became a zealot? Is that why Father forbade me to become a professional pianist, deeming it an unfit career for an aristocrat?”
“Forbade you? No one forbade you. It just fell away. You had no talent.”
“What?!” So I wasn’t delusional after all; I really was raised amid cruelty.
“I shouldn’t have said that, probably,” back-pedaled my mother. “What I meant was, don’t you remember? We took you to that piano competition. One judge said, ‘Your reach exceeds your grasp,’ and another said, ‘You do not possess the emotional depth for this piece.’ You became angry with us, accusing us of forcing you to play a piece that was too difficult for you. You gave up piano of your own accord.”
Uh-oh. Now that I thought about it, her version of events seemed accurate. How very disruptive is the truth, how violent. But there was more to the story, and I was remembering it now. I said indignantly, “You heaped insults on me for days. And you co-opted the phrase ‘Your reach exceeds your grasp’ and relished saying it to me for years thereafter.”
My mother shrugged slightly and said, “You needed toughening. The world your father thinks he grew up in was gone before he had a chance to grow up in it. Or maybe it never was. His parents did him a disservice by shielding him from this fact, and your father passed on this disservice to you. But that doesn’t mean you should blame him. You had other choices besides the ones he gave you. You never paid any attention to what I wanted for you.”
“What did you ever want for me, other than for me to have an incorrigible sense of self-loathing?”
My mother was silent, and even paler than usual. “Just because I couldn’t be the sort of mother you wanted doesn’t mean that I had nothing to teach you. I got a Ph.D. in the hard sciences in the sixties; women didn’t do that in those days, Korean or otherwise. It didn’t do any good, apparently. I hoped you would be strong, ambitious, hopeful. Instead you took after your father’s side, and became so weary while you were still a child. I imagine that it’s my fault. Why would any child listen to the colder of the two parents. But my responsibility was to protect you first. I bribed your teachers. You didn’t know about that, did you? I don’t badger people into expressing gratitude the way your father does.”
I was perplexed. “Bribed them how? How was that supposed to protect me?”
“When you were attending school here in Seoul. You came home crying every day because they used corporal punishment. Sometimes you came home with welts on your shins; sometimes you trembled just from witnessing someone else getting thrashed. I paid off your teachers every month not to hit you. Didn’t you notice that the paddling dropped off after the first few months?”
Actually, I’d always wondered about that.
I never cried before my mother if I could possibly help it, because she would always respond by literally looking the other way. But I was finding it difficult to hold back. I was moved by the act she had kept secret, and also sorry for her that this was really the best she could do.
I said as flatly as I could manage, “Our family does everything through bribes, it seems. So be it. But tell me one thing: why are you so cold?”
“If you must know…” said my mother, bearing the sincere but worried expression of a tone-deaf person who has been asked to sing.
*“I’m listening.”
34
Dead Pets
I ALWAYS KNEW that my mother had a bizarre phobia of forming attachments with things. Not just with people, but even with the most trivial of inanimate objects. When I visited my parents in Seoul during school holidays, I used to bring several pounds of my favorite gourmet coffee, which was impossible to find in Korea. My mother asked me to stop bringing her coffee, explaining, “When I run out of this nice coffee I won’t be able to adjust back to the horrid coffee they have here. I’m quite serious. No more nice coffee.”
Along similar lines, she would never allow me any mammalian pets. She would say, “When they die, you will be very, very sad.” I had always cited this as an example of her heartlessness.
I was, however, allowed lower-or
der animals. I got my first pets when I was four. They were a pair of hermit crabs, which my father spontaneously brought home after work along with a small book with color photographs called Caring for Your Hermit Crab. The crabs smelled like rotting fish and made an unnerving scratching noise all night long. My father didn’t understand why I was so averse to them; he would take them out of their bowl and try to force me to play with them. I awoke one morning to discover that one of the crabs had exited his shell, fully exposing its pink fleshy skin. Apparently none of us had read Caring for Your Hermit Crab, or we would have realized that the creature was looking for a bigger shell to occupy. Not knowing what else to do, my father threw both crabs in the trash, while they were still alive. I have found shellfish revolting ever since. The rabbi would have made some kind of wisecrack about that, if he had known.
Several years passed. By this time we had moved to Seoul. While shopping in the Namdaemum outdoor bazaar in downtown Seoul, I spotted a peddler selling tiny turtles. I bought a pair for less than a dollar. But it was almost impossible to tell whether they were dead or alive. I noticed one morning that the pair looked unusually slow, but since I couldn’t really be sure, I kept them for another week. At that point, the shells had softened considerably and I took this to mean they were dead. I buried them in one of my mother’s potted plants. Months later, our maid tipped over the potted plant and broke the pot, and the two blackened turtle carcasses spilled out onto our veranda. Even then, they continued to look very much as they had while they were alive.
Then there was the praying mantis. It wasn’t a pet, really; just something my father caught for me and put in a jar. I fed it some dragonflies I had caught in my butterfly net, and watched it pick up the dragonflies in its hands and eat them, looking eerily like a well-mannered human eating a chicken drumstick. When I was sufficiently disgusted, I threw out the jar, living mantis, mauled dragonflies, and all.