Once the Shore

by Paul Yoon

  “You don’t have any questions?” he asked.

  “The Fox and the Maiden,” she said, knowing she had missed it.

  But once in the bedroom she listened to the radio regardless, searching the stations. She lay in bed and turned the volume down so that the songs murmured. She pressed her ear against the speaker. From behind the walls came the familiar sounds of the house. Against the rooftop, the ice shifted like frightened mice. The heating pipes sighed.

  The days passed and her father packed and took breaks by marking the real estate listings in the newspaper.

  There was recess at her school, for the winter, and Mihna remained outdoors in the afternoons. She stayed with the ponies, smelling the camphor on their coats, and if she heard her father approach, she took the trail that led into the woods where she listened to the chatter of birds, the soft tap of her shoes against the snow and the wet leaves. Among the evergreens the air smelled sweet, like the house after her mother bathed, and recalling this, she blushed.

  Each day she walked until she reached a cliff that overlooked a small clearing below. Across the expanse the forest continued and far beyond stood the peak of Tamra Mountain, set between clouds. The trail sloped to her left and there, at the bottom, beside a small boulder, she collected snow in her gloved hands and built a miniature snow house. She spoke aloud as she did so, pretending she was the narrator on the radio, or sang the songs she had learned from her mother.

  And it was on one of these days, not long after the businessman left the farm, that the ground ahead of her, in the clearing beyond the trees, flickered for a moment. Perhaps it was a deer or a fox, she thought. Perhaps it was simply the snow that had begun to fall just then. Mihna did not move, watching.

  What she soon identified, however, were the glimpses of a body, split in her vision by the trees: a woman’s head, her hair frozen, curved like a shell. She was recumbent, supporting herself on her elbows, and Mihna at first thought she was dead. But then the woman’s breath rose in puffs, clouding her face. Her arms were translucent, like smoke. She wore a sleeveless dress with a sash tied around her waist. The dress was a pale blue, like the one her mother wore in a photograph Mihna kept on her dresser.

  But the woman was not her mother. She was not a woman Mihna had ever seen. And either in shyness or fear, perhaps both, Mihna turned and ran up the trail and through the forest, leaving her snow house unfinished. A branch stung her cheek but she continued to run until she returned to the fields, where the ponies, unchanged, were sniffing the leaves of the camphor tree.

  At the edge of the woods, by the gate, she waited for her heart to slow. Her father, on the crest of the hill, was heading toward the stable below. He did not see her. He walked slowly and when a wind swept through, clutching his body, he seemed unbothered by it.

  A year had passed since Mihna’s father buried his wife beside her parents, at the base of a small mountain in the central part of the island. Her heart had failed her, sudden in its departure, although in retrospect she had for days complained of dizziness, a slight pain in her chest. “You’re overworked,” he had said, on the last morning they awoke together. “Sleep a little longer.”

  It was after her death that the ponies, all of them, began to gather beside the tree she adored, through the seasons, searching for the scent of her hair, which they had grown used to, licking her braid and tugging at it whenever she fed them.

  For three decades they had been married. A month they had known each other before then. Nara was twenty-four when Linn proposed to her. Linn was two years older. The farm, once his parents’, had not changed since. “You are kind,” she said, accepting. It was kindness one remembered above all else, she added.

  The child was unexpected, Nara already in her forties by then. For years they had tried, and with it grew the belief that parenthood wasn’t intended. But she became pregnant and when she told him, she pointed up at the ceiling of their bedroom. “A god must have tripped,” she said, referring to the folk tale. “And out fell from his pocket a stone.”

  In that first week after her mother had gone, Mihna wouldn’t speak, covering her ears when the ponies whinnied. She stayed in her bedroom and listened to the radio. Her father brought meals to her and they both ate on the floor, their backs leaning against her bed. He spoke of his day and asked of hers, knowing she wouldn’t answer. In their solitude he felt the fatigue of silence, as though his body were being stripped, bit by bit, and he knew not how he came to be on this farm. He slept little, staying on his side of the bed, the other half untouched.

  Though he must have slept, for one night he was awoken by a hand stroking his hair and for a moment he thought it was his wife’s. But it was Mihna’s, that hand connected to a child’s arm, her shape taking form in that darkness, her hair sweeping across his chin. “Papa,” she said. “I’m all right now.” And then she left, shutting the door, and, thinking it a dream, he returned to sleep.

  The next morning, she began to speak, as if she had been doing so all along. “When I woke,” she said. “I said hello to Mama. Will you say hello?”

  In her voice lay what he believed was the beginning of acceptance and the rhythm of the farm returning and he nearly cried out of relief and an exhaustion that he had only now recognized. She helped with the ponies, walking with him before school and then again in the evening before suppertime. She cleaned the stable and at the house she sat beside him on the couch as they watched the television or read magazines. He cooked for the child, steamed buns filled with sugared beans, the way her mother had done, picturing Nara’s hands and the ingredients she used, how the flour caught under her fingernails and how he had cleaned them with a toothpick, holding her palms.

  Before bed on Saturdays, they rode the ponies in the dark, through the trails, guided by the moon, something they used to do on occasion in secrecy, as Mihna’s mother never allowed it. He recalled the mischief of this, and realized he expected Nara to be waiting for them at home, frowning. He would shrug sheepishly, winking at his daughter. But none of that occurred, and when they approached the house he saw the shutters closed and behind its walls an emptiness, contained, and the desire to enter it lessened.

  The months continued in this way, with more effort than he understood. There was not so much her memory but the memory of her death and it clung to him and the house and the grounds like ash. Still troubled during sleep, he waited for the bedroom to brighten with the morning. He had done nothing with her clothes, her shoes placed by the front entrance from the last time she touched them, her toothbrush still above the bathroom sink, her soaps as well. Her scent remained in the closets and, like some slow poison, he began to grow nauseous from it and kept the door shut. The clothes he wore—a handful of shirts and pants—were slung onto the backs of chairs.

  “It’s so quiet,” he told Mihna one evening, standing and pacing the living room. He went to open the door and let the cold air embrace him as he watched the hills darken and above them a pair of clouds wrap around the moon.

  “You like the quiet,” his daughter said. “You said so yourself. You always liked it.”

  It was true. Born here, he knew no other home, no other sound but what he heard among the fields and inside this house.

  “Mama liked it, too,” Mihna said.

  Did she? he thought. He was no longer sure. The house had become foreign to him, indistinct, and no longer shared. He began to notice parts of it he had not seen in what seemed to be years. There was a specific corner of the living room where a bookstand stood, the open pages of his father’s calligraphy book yellowed by sun. A particular drawer in the kitchen where his wife had saved coupons, now long expired, from the city’s supermarket. The linen closet, with bed sheets he didn’t know they owned.

  His childhood, too, seemed to have occurred elsewhere, his parents’ home envisioned in another town, another island, perhaps, one from which he had left. This sensation, in particular, intensified throughout the weeks, as if he had been traveling all t
his time and only now felt the longing to return home.

  It was six months after his wife’s death that Linn, late at night, rummaged in his desk drawer and found a business card with the company logo of a hotel on the top left corner, a name at the center. It was well past office hours, he knew, and he wasn’t expecting anyone to answer. He listened to the telephone ring, imagining a dark office in the city. He hung up. He called again. He did this several times. He listened to the man’s recorded voice over and over again. The man had approached him years ago, offering a generous price for the land. They would keep the ponies, he promised. For the tourists. Linn could provide lessons. The house, however, would be razed. A golf course would be built, the hotel overlooking it.

  Linn left a message, inviting the man to visit the farm. And then, checking to be sure Mihna was asleep, he went into the kitchen and placed the leftover buns onto a paper plate. As quietly as he could, carrying the plate, he stepped outside.

  On that night, guided by a flashlight, Linn walked down the hill. The stars shone, domed above the horizon, the silhouette of the forest like the shadows of flames. He raised his flashlight up toward the sky and watched the beam fade. He heard the scuffing of hooves as he approached the stable, their movements caused by curiosity, an unexpected visit, the sound of boots cracking the snow. He paused, turning to gaze at the glowing windows of the house, and he imagined each room connected not by a single hallway but a vast and intricate maze, the corridors shifting, he and Mihna and everyone who had ever lived there hidden and separate, asleep and in dreams.

  A pony whinnied and he entered the stable, turning off the flashlight so as not to frighten the animals. The doors groaned and moonlight came with the wind, covering the aisle and the silver eyes of the ponies that widened with eagerness. He greeted them with a low muttering, as he had done since childhood, petting each of them between the ears and thinking then of his own father whose entire body appeared calloused, like the bark of a tree, but you would never know it from his embrace. He longed for the man and felt his chest grow heavy, for with the tiredness of these past months came not the sensation of aging but its opposite: he was a child and the world unknowable.

  The ponies craned their necks, having caught the scent of the buns, and he laughed quietly and spoke to them, his voice echoing off the beams of the roof. And then, with a waiter’s flourish, he lifted the top plate to reveal the food and began to tease the animals, lowering the plate and passing it underneath their noses. The ponies grew agitated, spiking their heads in the air, pleading. His playfulness lasted only a few seconds, no more. But it went on, it seemed, and he lived within it, walking up and the down aisle, past the stalls, the white breath of the ponies puffing from their noses.

  Afterward, he carried the buns in one arm and with his free hand he broke off a piece and let the ponies lower their heads and take the crumbles, making sure there was enough for all of them. He covered the right stalls and then returned, feeding the ones in the left. At the last stall, Linn pressed his forehead against the pony and shut his eyes, listening to the animal chewing.

  “I have to go,” he said, his lips grazing the pony’s fur. “I have to go now.”

  He had known this one the longest. He was a pinto and they named him Comet. One evening there had been a meteor shower and Linn and his parents had stayed awake to watch it from the hill, drinking tea with a blanket wrapped around their shoulders. For each star that fell they honored the dead they had known. And the living? Linn had asked, and his father pointed at the ones afloat, not yet dropping, not for years.

  The snowfall was heavy now, the sky darkening. In the bathroom Linn opened a cabinet where they kept the bandages. In their new house, wherever it would be, he would do the same, keeping the medicine and the ointments beside the bathtub so that Mihna would know where they were.

  The child sat beside the dining room table and he went to her, kneeling to dab ointment on her right cheek. He then unpeeled the bandage and placed it over the cut. “You should be careful,” he said, calmly, so that Mihna would know that he was not angry. Her hands were still cold and Linn cupped them and blew his breath onto the tips of his daughter’s fingers. “You shouldn’t wander alone,” he insisted, knowing it was impossible for her to be with him always.

  In the past year they had each found their own habits, the patterns that formed their days. He didn’t look for her or call for her if she wanted to be alone. He offered her that—her moments of solitude, if she desired it, as he himself did.

  How quickly she grew, Linn thought, holding his daughter’s hands, comparing the lengths of their respective fingers, the skin of her palms already turning rough. Happiness with the child had been introducing her to the ponies.

  In the kitchen the rice cooker hummed, steam rising from its steel cover. A soup with tofu and vegetables was being heated on the stovetop. On occasion Linn added chili powder, tasting it with a spoon.

  “You could start packing, Mihna,” he said. Across the room the child sat, swinging her feet like pendulums. Out the front windows, the fields were replaced by his and Mihna’s reflections. He opened a newspaper to the apartment listings, skimming the prices. There was still time but now that the farm was no longer his, he felt a sense of urgency. He reminded himself to ask for more boxes at the market. “You’ll bring whatever you want,” Linn said. “You’ll bring the radio.”

  “Did you give away Mama’s dress?” Mihna asked, rubbing the bandage on her face.

  It would take time, he knew, for the child. He thought of that. Last night he had dreamed that he was young and his father had come to him from across a field with a pair of horses flanking him. Without speaking, Linn had joined him.

  “I kept her clothes,” he told Mihna, then returned to the newspaper. There was a house close to the city with a view of the sea. “Would you like the sea?” he asked.

  When the soup was heated he ladled it into bowls, Mihna’s with rice mixed into it, and brought them to the table. A photograph of Mihna at the base of Tamra Mountain hung on the wall. In the picture she was leaning against the wooden rails that sectioned off the trail. She wore the sunglasses they had bought for her on that day, too large for her head, the plastic frames in the shape of stars.

  “She looks pretty in that dress,” Mihna said.

  He didn’t know which dress she was referring to.

  “The one in the picture,” she said, pointing down the hall, to her bedroom. “The blue one.”

  Nara had worn it on their honeymoon. He had bought it for her and presented it in a silver box. She had danced in it, at a restaurant, and he followed her lead, not minding the people watching in amusement. He wore a suit. He had never danced before.

  “She does look pretty,” he said, thinking of her youth. “And I’ll give it to you when you’re old enough.”

  He wondered if that would turn out to be true; he hadn’t thought of it until now.

  “But I don’t think she has it,” his daughter said.

  “Mihna,” he said, but the child didn’t respond, looking through the window. He finished the soup quickly. He promised he hadn’t given it away. He promised one day she would have it. He raised his hand. Mihna, hesitant, took it, this gesture soon transforming into a game of thumb wrestling. The child, smiling now, kneeled atop her chair and leaned forward, her hair skimming her soup. Her thumb moved with vigor and, with her brows furrowed, she slipped her tongue out of her mouth. Her thumb was double-jointed and had the ability to bend backward slightly, a fact Linn used to boast of, for it was said that it predicted the talents of a musician.

  When Mihna won, satisfaction rose from the corners of her mouth, her tongue retreating, and she returned to her soup. Linn, standing, wiped the ends of his daughter’s hair with a napkin. Mihna ignored him, eating quickly, and Linn told her to slow.

  When she was finished, she carried her bowl into the kitchen, where she slid it onto the counter. She returned to the table and took her father’s as well and the
n she retired to her bedroom and listened to the radio. The show she liked wasn’t on so she hummed along with the songs, changing into her striped pajamas.

  Beside her bed lay the photograph of her mother in the dress. Her mother sat beside a table on a veranda. Her legs were crossed. Something had caught her attention, to her right, and so her face was in profile. Her hair was tucked behind her ears and it hung down over her shoulders. Her mother was twenty-four then, Mihna remembered.

  Later, when her father knocked on the door, she hid the photograph under her pillow.

  “Mihna,” he said, entering. “Is it too cold for you?” He sat beside her, pulling the blanket up to her chin. He was holding a chocolate bar he had half eaten. She had brushed her teeth but he said that he didn’t mind, offering the rest. She held it with both of her hands, the pillow tucked under her neck. It was her favorite, he reminded her, picking up the crumbs she dropped while she ate it.

  “It’ll be a better place,” he said, as he had mentioned several times. “A new house. You can help me decide. We’ll still see the ponies.”

  “Papa,” she said. “Is there a new house nearby? Are there new neighbors?”

  He misunderstood her. He thought she was referring to their departure, that there would be a new house, there would be new neighbors. It would be an adjustment, he said, but he was certain they would be fine. He stroked her hair the way he did with the ponies and he wiped her lips with his thumb and kissed her on the corner of her mouth. His lips felt dry like the grass in the fields during autumn.

  It had occurred to her that they were in fact moving so that her father could find another wife, another mother for Mihna. “Divorce,” one of the girls at school gossiped, months ago, speaking of someone they knew. It was what they did these days, another girl said. There were the television shows and movies to tell them. “Two husbands,” she added. “We will have two. First, for love. Second, for fun.”