The Surrendered

by Chang-Rae Lee

  For two days she went about seducing the woman not with her body or character or any of the usual wiles but a furious and open desire. She kept touching her arm, brushing against her when they sat together, telling her how lovely she was, applying a constant, pressuring want that had the effect of cutting off all other avenues, all other possibilities; she would force her to relent. In the end, as if by her design, the poor riled woman finally led them from the exhibition hall past fire doors into the back concrete stairwell of the hotel, where they roughly kissed and groped each other before going up to the hotel room, their grunts echoing downward and upward in the dimly lighted well as though they were toiling in a catacomb.

  IT HAD BEEN LIKE THAT at the orphanage. After the Tanners first arrived, June had actually suffered what seemed a weeklong walking illness, hunched over like one of the older aunties, swallowing back a sour burning in her throat. She might not eat much for a day, or two, then would gorge herself until she could hardly breathe, her stomach feeling like it would burst. Of course once Sylvie and June got to know each other and June started cleaning the cottage for her it eventually went away, but for a while a certain effect lingered, a mild nausea just before she knew she would be with her, the same before any imminent parting: she’d feel she was going to retch, her mouth filling with spit as she ran off. Then, one day, she caught a glimpse of Sylvie changing out of some soiled blue jeans into a skirt before dinner, her long flanks chapped pink from the rough fabric, the smooth knobs of her knees almost showing through her diaphanous skin, and June, her chest burning, finally understood her discomfort might be the expression of a desire.

  She sometimes wondered, naturally enough, if Sylvie could ever have a similar feeling for her. It was pure innocence, of course; she could never link her emotions with the depraved carnality she’d witnessed during the war, for she was a child again in the woman’s presence, and she gave herself over to whatever Sylvie asked of her, even when she said that they should not spend so much time together, for the sake of the other children. June didn’t care a whit for the others but had agreed without hesitation or question. Still, she couldn’t help constantly testing the woman:

  “Would you have played with me when you were a girl?”

  “Of course! We always do things together, don’t we?”

  “But would you have liked me, if you were just one of us?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “But would you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it again.”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  June never fully believed her, though it hardly mattered. That she and Sylvie were together each day, that she could work in their house from after studies until bedtime, that she could always be within arm’s reach, this was the world for her, her only extravagance and riches. And it was reciprocated; even in the face of Reverend Tanner, who showed a growing antipathy to her presence, sometimes hardly even greeting her, Sylvie never minded her staying an extra hour, or two.

  And although it was true that Sylvie was no longer mentioning adopting her and taking her to America, June was sure that it was Sylvie’s way of respectfully allowing her husband to sit with the prospect, that he needed more time with the idea of having a child who wasn’t his own. She knew about their fertility troubles, if only from having stolen peeks at Sylvie’s leather-bound diaries, a collection of which she kept in a trunk beneath her bed. They were dated from the early 1930s and came all the way up to their arrival here, recounting her travels with her missionary parents and her adolescent and university days in Seattle and then her marriage to Ames Tanner. Sylvie had become pregnant a number of times but they had given up trying some years ago and June could begin to understand what they were doing in Korea, certain there must be reasons besides goodness and charity for them to have come to a place as awful as this. They could not possibly be there only to give of themselves. They were hoping for something, too, and in the tireless device of her mind she was figuring how she could give them what they wished. It was finally within her power. For the best thing about the orphanage for June was not ultimately its offer of food or shelter or schooling but that it was a world unto itself, though in a manageable scale, a world she could now exert herself upon, remake as she required.

  So she resolved herself to be disciplined and not bring up anymore the question of her adoption. She would patiently wait. Her bond with Sylvie was not just of a mother and daughter but that of comrades who by the curse of war had been sentenced to be alone.

  The one omission in the diaries, she noticed, was any mention of Sylvie’s parents’ deaths. Sylvie had already told her they had died in Manchuria, where they were missionaries in a place much like New Hope, and June imagined Sylvie to have been orphaned like herself, cast out on a solitary road, compelled to make her way back to life by the force of her own tireless will. There were many years separating them, of course, this again would be a question of waiting out time, and she saw herself in their resumed lives as Sylvie’s secretary and housekeeper, her girl-in-waiting, her handmaiden, someone she could use and count on at any moment of the day or night. She would be indispensable to her, and in return Sylvie would envelop her with her passion and grace, guide her through her education to her own womanhood, when June would not marry unless she had Sylvie’s blessing, indeed perhaps never abide anyone else as closely, as purely.

  June knew the depth of her own feelings, for it didn’t please her at all to see how deadened the Tanners’ marriage had become. She could hardly bear Sylvie’s unhappiness. No one else could know, as she did, how they were so wanly self-encapsulated, how they rarely touched each other anymore, not even a hand on the arm, the briefest embrace. They spoke to each other warmly enough while out on the orphanage grounds but in the house they seemed caught in their own cold amber, June stripping their separate beds once weekly, the sheets redolent of nothing but sleep. Yet she couldn’t help but feel sorry for Reverend Tanner as well. Late one afternoon, while he was writing letters at his desk and she was in the back room making up his wife’s bed-Sylvie was helping Hector with the last of the digging for the new sewer-Tanner called her name. She assumed she’d misheard him but he called again.

  “June, would you come here, please?”

  She came out holding a dusting rag lightly dampened with lamp oil and began wiping the top of the rolltop desk.

  “That’s all right, June,” he said, motioning for her to stop. “I didn’t mean that. Please sit down.”

  He’d never offered her such a courtesy before, and she was hesitant to take it.

  “You don’t have to sit,” he said, taking off his bifocals. The sleeves of his white shirt were crisply ironed, the fabric against the mottled skin of his wrists as papery as the stiff white linen garments the dead were clothed in.

  “How old are you, June?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “You’ve been here since the end of the war, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s fine here, but it’s not a home, is it?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I wonder: Do you know what you’d like to be when you’re an adult? Would you like to have your own family?”

  She nodded, not because she definitely wanted one or had even considered it, but because she was sure that was what he wanted to hear.

  “Mrs. Tanner and I would have enjoyed our own family, too. We weren’t graced in that way. But we have all of you now, and we’re very pleased. I value being here, among all of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Tanner thinks a great deal of you. You know this, obviously. She admires your intelligence and spirit. Your resolve. Do you understand what that is?”

  “She says I don’t like to give up.”

  “That’s right. You may be surprised to hear this, but I admire that about you as well.”

  June said thank you, not knowing how else to reply. She was uneasy in his presence always, but now only more so, given how directly he was
speaking to her. With his graying cowlick loosened and flopped down over his brow, his long, narrow face seemed softer, younger. His eyes were very blue up close, the color of the fancier marbles her younger brother used to play with.

  “When I’m away on my trips to the other orphanages, I’m sure you spend more time with Mrs. Tanner. You don’t have to deny it. It’s all right. This last time I was away, I was worried about her. She hasn’t been herself of late, as you know.”

  “She is tired often,” June said, recounting herself how many times in the last weeks Sylvie had asked her to leave so she could rest.

  “Yes,” Tanner said ruefully. “But one of the things that gave me comfort was that she had you to keep her company. I see the benefit of this now.”

  “I try to help her with many things.”

  “Yes, yes. Please keep doing so, especially when I’m away. She gives herself so completely to the demands of the orphanage, and by the end of the day she has nothing left. I think she has begun to suffer for it.”

  June nodded. Indeed she was suffering, which the aunties saw as physical illness brought on by exhaustion, the untreated water, the strange food, by having to wake each morning to a sad, destroyed land. This often happened to foreign aid workers, they said. At some point they just broke down. But June knew Sylvie’s trouble had less to do with the conditions than with something else, that she had fallen into what she referred to in her diaries as “the ash pit,” a hole that seemed to drain all her energy and will. It seemed to June the condition would come and go mysteriously. At first when Sylvie didn’t appear at the morning meal, Reverend Tanner would announce that she had taken ill and was resting, but as the frequency had increased in the past weeks he did not say anything, and someone like young Reverend Kim would suddenly appear to teach her class for the day, and sometimes the next. And when this was the case, June would know she could simply let herself inside the cottage in the afternoon and do her chores, though not to knock on the bedroom door if it was shut. Sometimes she wasn’t napping but sitting as still as a stone on the wooden step out back, and when she’d see June she’d smile and beckon to her, let her sit beside her and embrace her with her long, slack arms. They wouldn’t talk or even move, the woman’s breathing faint and shallow. If Reverend Tanner showed up they would separate and sit up and she would notice how Sylvie would instantly brighten for him but then practically collapse the moment after he left. One day it was raining and she found Sylvie outside again on the step but this time she was sitting with her head on her knees, her wool sweater and housedress soaked through, her hair a matted, tangled mess, the shivers visibly running through her body but going completely unregistered in her face, a lifeless mirror of the chalky, overcast sky.

  “It’s why I ask you, June,” Tanner went on, “that you let me know if she’s been particularly unwell. She tries to hide her distress from me and for the most part I feel I’m in the dark. I have more traveling ahead of me and I wish you could be my eyes and ears. Even after hours, if you wish.”

  “At night?”

  “Whenever you believe she needs you. Or seems lonely. I’m afraid she’s lonely too often.” His gaze wandered, like he’d lost himself for an instant. But then he said: “It’s for her sake, her well-being, you understand that, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said, patting her arm. “Thank you.” He opened his fountain pen to resume his letter writing, pausing for her to leave.

  “Do you still want a family of your own?” June asked. “Or will you stay here forever?”

  “Forever sounds like a very long time,” he said. “But you never know.”

  “What about your own family?”

  “We’re still thinking about that.”

  “There are many children here,” she said, desperate to sound generous. “You must meet so many children on your visits.”

  “Yes, I do. So many. All worthy and good. Really every last one of you.”

  When he uttered those words she took his implication whole; she went back to her chores with the conviction that Reverend Tanner had made a bargain with her, that all she need do was to remain his wife’s closest helper, her devotee, her constant friend, and then, if she must, let him know what trouble might lie ahead. She knew he meant Hector, there could be no one else, it was only he who was spending more time with her since she had grown infirm.

  She kept vigilant of their movements whenever Reverend Tanner spent a night away, but it wasn’t only for him. One night she tried to watch them but they extinguished the oil lamps and the only thing she could do was listen. There was hardly any sound to start, not even any shifting or creaking from his cot, just the barest rustle of clothing, the press of lips, the scantest murmurs, and then, finally, the breathing. His breaths came first, very low, and then hers as if it were difficult, as though a patch of thick gauze were covering her mouth. Their rhythm ticked loose and various until suddenly it unjumbled, clicked in. All the while June, tightly crouched in the peerless dark between the wall and a kerosene barrel, was suppressing her own breath, her lungs aching for release, the gleaming painting of their lovemaking begun to screen in her mind. Strangely only her belly felt alive, this yawning breaking emptiness that pushed low and hot while the rest of her went heavy, dead, and it was only when they were finally done and surely fallen asleep that she dared move, her hands and feet tingling and shaking enough that she had to crawl on her elbows from the storeroom.

  The following day, having returned to the orphanage, Reverend Tanner sat down next to her during the evening meal. June sat alone now, having agreed not to monopolize Sylvie’s company. She had completely forgotten about her conversation with Tanner on awaking that morning, her throat parched, her head fogged and aching, as if, like Hector, she had been drinking all night.

  “How goes it, June? Is everything fine?” he asked. Sylvie was at a far table eating with the younger children. Hector was not present, being likely out in the field.

  She could merely nod, not yet ready for his questioning.

  “You don’t seem terribly certain,” he said, though almost jocularly, as though he didn’t in fact wish to hear anything else.

  Her memory of the previous night was a stilled curtain but its music now rose up in her chest and brought the skin of her neck to life, her cheeks feeling as though they were suddenly flushed. She thought Tanner would take her aside for an interrogation but all he did was brood a moment with a half-expectant, half-wary gaze and say brightly, “Well, I must be going. Good day, June.”

  For days afterward she tried to determine what to do. All her considerations foretold only trouble if they should continue, and yet she found herself hoping for Reverend Tanner to spend an evening away again. It was like the hunger she didn’t suffer anymore, this grave sensation so resident that it took on its own life, its own existence, was the body within her body that now drew all her energies. At fourteen her figure was at last changing, after being stunted during the war; since living at the orphanage she’d put on more than eight kilos, mostly on her thighs and hips and on her chest, which the older boys glanced at, but warily, fearing she might catch them and take it as a provocation to fight. She noticed this and sometimes she’d sit back wherever she was and make a show of closing her eyes, let them look at her for as long as they wanted. She might even press her shoulders back, to accentuate the new fullness. Her doing so wasn’t in vanity or pride, or from the slightest interest in any of them; it was pure experimentation, a trial to determine how it felt to be an object of desire, and she found that the more she felt their stares the more her own desire fired, trebled, eventually took on its own reason.

  So she stayed silent when in the ensuing weeks Tanner departed on his various trips, and waited for Sylvie to emerge from her cottage in the middle of the night. Whenever she and Hector let the oil lamp burn, June could see them glide over each other with a patience and tenderness that was the opposite of the jerky, horrid couplings she’d had to witness dur
ing the war. And though she was startled by the broad, taut ropes of his body, her eye kept resting upon Sylvie’s calf, her knee, the way her belly would grow shallow under his kisses and dip far enough below the spur of her hip that she appeared starved herself. She had the loveliest glow, the light seemed to stream from her eyes, from her half-opened mouth; nor did the illumination dissipate until well after they were done, when June saw her open a small black kit and remove a needle from its velvet-lined well. Hector did not take it himself but he helped her, binding her calf with the rubber cord and tapping her heel and then shooting her with the medicine that made her shiver and then go slack, turn a ghostly bone-blue.

  When Reverend Tanner was present June would sometimes stay late with Sylvie in the back room. He allowed it enough times that after a while her presence after the generator went out became almost customary. They would all be reading, Sylvie and June in the narrow bed, Tanner in his own out in the front sitting room. He always retired earlier than they, and they took turns whisper-reading aloud by the oil lamp books from the army base library, children’s books but also others that Sylvie had chosen for her, Little Women and Great Expectations and The Good Earth. Sometimes June would ask Sylvie to read A Memory of Solferino to her and she’d refuse at first but always eventually yield, the passages entering them, June thought, with both pain and bliss like the medicine in the kit, and making them cling more tightly to each other.

  One night June fell asleep there, and when morning came she awoke to find herself wearing one of Sylvie’s nightgowns and tucked in the spoon of her slumbering body. She carefully turned into her and took in the warm, round scent of her hair, the sour-sweeter one of her neck, and masked her eyes in the scant damp of her nightgown; then on succeeding nights she would pretend to fall asleep and then watch Sylvie slip outside to the chair in back with her kit, feel her when she returned, her weight seeming to have doubled as she fell against June’s chest. It was then that June waited, sometimes hours, for the measure between Sylvie’s breaths to lengthen, for her to descend further into deepest sleep. This happened almost nightly: she would turn, lie on her back. Her lips would soften and ease. If there was starlight or moonlight her face and long throat gleamed with its luminance, this woman an ashen statue, only half alive. Here was the only beauty in the world. And then one night June could not help herself; she pulled back the blanket as if it were the frail leaf of an antique book. Her hands crept to Sylvie’s throat, where her nightgown opened, and undid the mother-of-pearl buttons that ran down to the hem; she took them one by one, the near half of the nightgown falling away, exposing the whole length of Sylvie now to the cold night air. June touched the belly, grazed the lowest rib, the small, flattish breast no fuller than one of her own. The nipple pushed up between her fingers, as dense as clay, and without knowing what she was doing she put her mouth over it, closing her eyes. She couldn’t breathe again, her heart as if collapsed in her chest, this tiny leaden node, poised for Sylvie to protest, to stir. But she did not. Nor did she when June’s hand slid down and nestled in the burning cup of her long legs, not moving, nor stirring, neither wanting the other to wake.