I looked up. The words were swimming in front of my eyes. I felt as if Mother were swinging a shovel against the back of my head. Did I understand what I’d just read? I read it over a few more times to see if I’d got it wrong. But I hadn’t. The barrier that had blocked my life had never existed to begin with. My mother had conspired with Auntie to rob me of my life.
Confusion scattered inside my head. I really was a son of a bitch. What a cruel thing this was. It had made my life a ruse. It had made me an idiot.
The way Mother and Auntie had treated me flashed before my eyes. I thought of all the things I’d given up, the things I’d had to accept, the awful nights I’d trembled in despair. All of those things had been because I thought I had epilepsy. Rage coursed through my veins; my body burned up like a piece of coal on fire. I felt as if I were breathing inside a blaze. I wanted to run out onto the roof and scream into her face: Why? Why did you do this to me?
‘Don’t throw a tantrum,’ I heard Mother say behind me. The swing was squeaking again. I stood up and opened the blinds. She was sitting there looking up at the sky. Her long dark hair floated in the wind, her small pale feet scratched at the floor, and she whispered, ‘Can’t you see there was a reason for all of that?’
Of course. Of course there had to be a reason. There had to be a good reason to ruin my life. It would be in her journal. Yes, Mum, okay, I’ll calm down and find out the reason. But it’d better be convincing, convincing enough to make me understand. You know it takes me a while to get things sometimes, right? And you know I hold grudges for a long time. So you’d better help me understand this properly.
My mobile began to ring. I picked it up. A beautiful name decorated the screen. Aunt Hag.
It was 5.30 a.m. The longest day and night of my life had ended. A new day was finally arriving. For the last few hours I had wrestled with all the evidence. I had soaked the bloody wool blanket, sheets and clothes in the bathtub. These were impossible to get rid of; I couldn’t burn them or throw them out. There was no way to hide them; I would just have to try and wash them.
I began with the simplest method, filling the bath with cold water and detergent and stepping on them to work the blood out, changing the water frequently until it ran clear. When I couldn’t feel my feet, I got out of the tub and warmed them with hot water before starting again. The results weren’t that satisfactory, given how much effort had gone into it. The bloodstains had turned dark brown, but that was it. But the act of doing something calmed me down. My emotions had burned out and my head had cooled. I’d recovered the will to make it through all this confusion. I needed to know.
I didn’t feel like going straight back to the journal, though. I was scared. I was afraid that Mother would enrage me from the grave, that my body and mind would instruct me to punish somebody. And to make matters worse, the person I would need to punish was testing the limits of my patience by calling me incessantly. She’d called at midnight, then again ten minutes later. I didn’t pick up, as I was angry and it was too much of a risk – I was ready to explode.
I’d remembered Google only five minutes earlier. It was as if my brain had stopped working. I looked up how to get rid of bloodstains. Expert tips popped up. Rub with toothpaste, rub lightly with face wash, cover the stain with grated radish, dab with a towel doused in hydrogen peroxide. These were clever ideas, but they wouldn’t work on the heavy blanket or the sheets – I wasn’t dealing with a speck of blood. I decided to remain loyal to the bleach. I shoved the blanket, sheets and clothes into the bucket and took the Private Lesson jacket out of the closet. I might as well wash everything that had to do with that night.
I went downstairs to the laundry room and put the clothes in the washer-dryer. I picked the ‘normal’ cycle and pressed the ‘quiet’ button as I didn’t want to risk Hello barking from below.
The phone started ringing again as soon as I’d loaded the machine. Auntie. 5.56. I couldn’t ignore this one. She would know I was up by now. I pressed the talk button.
‘Did you go to bed early last night?’ she asked, sounding annoyed.
I hadn’t wanted to talk to my mother’s younger sister on the phone at midnight. I’d wanted to sleep. She too should have been in bed by midnight, whether she was sleeping with a man or a woman or an animal or by herself, I thought.
‘Yu-jin?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Oh, I see. I was going to go to bed too, but then I got so curious I had to call. Didn’t you get your exam results?’
I was curious too. Why of all times would she think about that at midnight? ‘I passed.’
‘Really?’ She sounded shocked, as if she were saying, You, of all people?
That just annoyed me; I knew she had already heard from Hae-jin. Then again, everything that came out of her mouth annoyed me.
‘Your mother doesn’t know yet, right?’ Finally, the point of her call. She sounded blindly certain. I know you know where your mum is.
‘Her phone’s still turned off, so I sent her a text.’
‘She hasn’t called? It’s been twenty-four hours. Shouldn’t you go and look for her?’
Did she really think I wouldn’t know that she’d called the police? Maybe she knew that I knew but was trying to get me to react. ‘Well, you’re getting me worried now.’
‘So what are you going to do? Do you have a plan?’
‘I’ll talk to Hae-jin when he gets home.’
‘Oh, he’s not home?’ asked Auntie innocently.
‘He’s in Muan.’
‘Why?’ she asked, feigning curiosity.
‘For work.’
‘Oh, work. So what will you do now?’
A long sigh escaped my lips. When would she hang up, at the end of next year? ‘I was about to go for a run.’
‘But the sun’s not up yet. Do you always go at this time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yesterday too?’
I prayed that someone would yank the phone out of this woman’s hand. ‘I said I slept in yesterday,’ I snapped loudly. ‘I told you that.’
‘Okay, Yu-jin. No need to be angry.’ She sounded taken aback.
This was what always happened. The sisters would fill me with rage, and then act surprised when I fought back.
I promised to call her when Hae-jin was back, and hung up. Then I went back to my room and opened the journal. It took me two hours to read the entries from 2002 to 2000. The entries from 2000 were numerous.
Friday 21 July
Yesterday Yu-jin went to summer camp in Mount Jiri with the swimming team. I was worried as soon as they left. I worry about his safety more than anything else. He was suffering side effects from the initial medication, so we’ve switched to another brand, and we’re pushing back the new regimen until after his liver function returns to normal. Hye-won was against this trip because of that, but I ended up letting him go.
I couldn’t keep ignoring his pleading eyes. The coach is there, the other kids are there. What could possibly happen? I sent him without telling her about it. I couldn’t sit still all day. I just stared at my phone. I knew the coach would call me straight away if anything happened.
The phone rang around dawn. I knew it was the coach before I even opened my eyes. He said Yu-jin was missing. He said he found out when he made the rounds. Nobody saw him leave the camp. He said the police and emergency workers were searching nearby but they hadn’t found any trace of him.
I got in the car and the coach called me again as I drove through Inwol Tollgate. They had found him. He’d been at a bed-and-breakfast eight kilometres away. He had come pounding on the door at dawn. My hands were shaking.
He was asleep when I got there. He looked okay; he had scratches and he was bruised in places, but he was fine. I sat down next to him, and a policeman asked whether anything like this had happened before. Did he have a habit of wandering at night? Did he have a chronic illness, like somnambulism or narcolepsy or epilepsy? No, no, no, I kept saying.
It didn’t make any sense, and the coach and the police agreed I should take him home. He slept the whole way back to Seoul. I wanted to wake him up and ask him, What happened? Tell me the truth.
I remembered exactly what had happened, even though it was a long time ago and the events before and after the incident were a little faint. That afternoon, on my way back from playing in the creek, I had found some strange metal contraptions in the potato fields. I asked Coach what they were, and he said they were traps to stop rabbits from eating the crops. He told me not to go near them. Which was the easiest way to send a nine-year-old boy straight to them. At night, when everyone else was asleep, I left the camp with a flashlight. I was curious; could you really catch a rabbit with these traps?
I crouched under an acacia tree where I could see the traps, turned off my flashlight, and waited for the rabbits to appear. I wasn’t scared; it wasn’t dark at all. With the full moon in the sky, the forest glittered, and gold stars hung low above my head. I don’t remember how long I waited. I started drifting off at some point, listening to the sounds of the night as I rested my head. An owl hooting, a frog croaking, a cricket chirping, water trickling…
Suddenly, a strange sound. Under the bright moon, I saw a dark leaping shadow. I stood up. A rabbit. An ash-coloured wild rabbit was leaping up and down, its hind leg caught in the trap. I stepped closer, and a sweet smell washed over me. Its back leg, with the tight loop digging into it, was drenched in blood. Its frightened eyes glistened, wet and black in the moonlight. My heart thumped. ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I’ll untangle you.’
I began to unwind the wire from the stake. It was wrapped around it several times, but it wasn’t hard to undo it. It just took some time. The rabbit writhed and bucked, and as soon as the wire loosened it bolted away. I followed it. I wasn’t trying to catch it to do anything to it; I was just curious about what was going to happen, where it was going, how far it could go with that long wire still on its leg, whether it could survive the blood loss.
It darted through a bush, across a creek, up a hill and under a tree. I didn’t use my eyes; I followed the scent of blood. It smelled as strong as meat being cooked. I could see it as clearly as a flame. The rabbit slowed. At first, I had to run to keep up, but soon I was just walking. Then it stopped completely. It was hiding under a thorny bush. It didn’t run away when I approached. I stuck my hand in and grabbed it, but it didn’t move. I picked it up by the ears. It was limp. It was dead. I lost interest and threw it into the bushes. I don’t remember much after that. It wasn’t important.
A question occurred to me now. Had that been a coincidence or inevitable? The rabbit sixteen years ago and the woman two nights ago; the two situations were identical in that I’d smelled blood, I’d stalked a frightened creature in the middle of the night, I’d ended up with a corpse in my hands, and both had happened while I was off my meds. The night sixteen years ago was the seed of the flower that bloomed two nights ago. The only difference was that the girl hadn’t been injured when I spotted her.
Maybe she was on her period. It wasn’t rare for me to smell menstrual blood in an enclosed space like a lecture hall or a classroom; it was easy to identify the person who was bleeding since it had a clear, unique smell. But in a forest or on a wide-open road? How was that possible unless you were a hunting dog?
Looking back, I realised that I had been attacked by smells every time I stopped my meds. Usually they were pungent – blood, fish, sewage, dirt, water, trees, grass. Even perfume or scented oil was strong and unpleasant. This whole time I had believed it foreshadowed a seizure. Now that I apparently did not have epilepsy, I didn’t know what my strong sense of smell meant.
Every time I stopped taking the pills, I’d returned to myself. So my sense of smell must be part of my true nature. If that made me see the world a certain way, which affected my life in a certain way, which in turn took my life down a certain path, then I could see how it might become a problem. Maybe that was why Auntie had prescribed the drugs.
Friday 28 July
Hye-won was angry, saying that a mere nine-year-old was toying with her. Smirking all the while. He apparently hasn’t been cooperating in his sessions after returning from camp and going on the new regimen. He exhausts her with crafty wordplay, and in group therapy he sets a bad example by being rude to the other kids and egging them on. During hypnosis, he pretends he’s hypnotised and unspools lie after lie. She says that yesterday he acted like he had become unconscious from being so deeply hypnotised and made her panic.
What do I do? I knelt by the Virgin Mary and asked, Mother, wise Mother, what do I do?
I remembered fighting for years with Auntie. I was resistant to her treatments for a few months after being banned from the pool for taking Yu-min’s box. After we moved to Incheon, Mother offered me a deal. If I underwent treatment sincerely and honestly, she would let me swim again. I accepted. Auntie had won.
I went downstairs. The wash cycle had finished a long time ago. I pressed the drying button and returned to my room with a bottle of cold water. The next entries were in June 2000.
Saturday 3 June
We marked the forty-ninth day of their deaths. After Mass at dawn, we got in the car. Hye-won offered to come with us, but I said no. I wanted it to be just the two of us. For me to be able to continue with this, I have to shake off the things that are hurting me. I wanted this short trip to be a new beginning.
We stopped at the flower market in Seocho-dong and went straight down to Mokpo. He was like a shadow next to me. He didn’t move or talk. He didn’t even say he was hungry or he had to go to the bathroom. He just sat there, leaning back, looking out of the window or playing with his Rubik’s cube.
I realised I’d rarely had Yu-jin next to me in the car like that. If I drove, either his father or his brother sat in the passenger seat. I preferred having Yu-min next to me. I could drive a long time without noticing how tired I was because he chatted so much. I never thought about Yu-jin as he sat in the back. Now that Yu-min isn’t here, I realise how quiet Yu-jin is. I remembered my sister saying that it would take something special to make Yu-jin’s pulse quicken, and how she was afraid because she didn’t know what that might be.
It took five hours to get to the harbour at Mokpo. We caught the ferry that went to Tan Island. Summer had already arrived and hot, damp wind blew from the brown ocean that had swallowed my family. Thunderstorms were forming along the horizon and the forest was turning greener. The trees were growing apples from the places where the flowers had fallen. Everything looked so peaceful that it made me want to weep.
I pulled up to the lodge and the manager came out. He showed us to the cabin we’d stayed in, the one with the two clean rooms, the long living room, the picture of the sunset hanging on the wall, and the terrace from which you could see the bell tower. It all looked the same but it was much quieter now. I couldn’t hear the sound of the bell in the wind.
We unpacked and left the house. Yu-jin carried a bouquet of chrysanthemums and I took a box of their clothes. We walked along the path lined with trees, which had felt so long before but now brought us to our destination quickly. We walked slowly but it didn’t even take twenty minutes. When we arrived at the cliff, the sun was sinking behind the horizon.
I opened the box and took out my husband and son’s clothes. I’d picked them out a few days ago. Yu-min’s favourite red jacket and the navy suit Min-seok wore the most often. I lit them with a
lighter. The flames blazed in the westward wind. I sat next to the fire, thinking about that summer day ten years ago, the day when I discovered I had a remarkable knack for making children. Exactly three months after I had Yu-min, I’d become pregnant with Yu-jin. So Yu-min was the child I conceived the first night I spent with Min-seok before we even married, and Yu-jin was the child that came from the first time we were together after I gave birth. I hadn’t been careful enough.
It was awful. It was worse than that; I felt as though I’d become a raging beast. Min-seok was an only child so he was thrilled, but I didn’t feel the same way. He’d begun his business importing furniture and I was working hard as an editor. I thought I might need to give up work. I didn’t like what I saw when I imagined growing old and being responsible for two kids. For a few days, I even wondered whether to keep it or not.
This pregnancy was as different as the boys’ personalities. Yu-min had been boisterous in utero, kicking, punching, making me jump. I was so nauseated that I couldn’t eat much of anything until I was about to deliver. He was two weeks late and had to be induced; maybe he preferred being inside.
By contrast, Yu-jin was so calm. He was quiet and watchful, but he came into the world impatiently; prematurely by C-section due to placental abruption. I went into shock after losing a tremendous amount of blood, and they had to perform a hysterectomy to save my life. He had nearly killed me in the process of his own birth.
They grew up to be even more different. Other than their looks, everything about them was a contrast – their interests, their personalities, their behaviour. Yu-min was outgoing and charming, loved by everyone. Yu-jin was quiet and reserved, yet he was the one who drew the most attention. Quite a few people would stop suddenly in the street and stare, drawn by a strange magnetism that couldn’t be put into words. Although he didn’t mix with others or react, he made you aware of him.
The Good Son Page 16