by T'aejun Yi
“Really? Are you Maehŏn?”
“That’s my pen name.”
“Well I never would have guessed!”
“Thank you for reading my work so carefully.”
“If I’d known that, I would not have spoken so carelessly earlier.”
“How were you careless? You were very honest.”
“Well I never …!”
She did not seem to believe in chance. Her serene eyes drew into sharp focus. It was he who turned toward her first with a look of growing excitement.
“You are very different from how I had imagined.”
“In what way?”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t show yourself. You’re no match for your essays.”
“My essays …”
“You seem to be a very practical kind of person.”
He laughed. “Practical … well, I make my living by writing. But my writing is also part of me, and so I’m happy that you like it.”
Deep down he felt a little jealous of his own writing.
Something had happened recently. A photograph taken when he was a student in Tokyo had appeared on some book cover. At first, he did not recognize himself. Was I that young? Did I really seem that passionate to others? He recalled now how at first he’d been amazed, but then wanted to tear the photograph into pieces once he had taken a look at himself in the mirror.
The water flowed slowly and silently past the burial mounds and on downstream. Sand from the riverbed also floated down and rubbed at his feet. He felt sad. In his face he could see that a romantic spirit one hundred times more lively than that in his writing had been stolen by the years, and those years could never be retraced but only flowed ever onward like this water.
“I dropped out of Doshisha University.”
“Why? You were in the English Department?”
“Yes. My mother passed away, and I wanted to be in Kyŏngju more than Kyoto.”
“When was that?”
“The second anniversary just passed this spring.”
“And is your father at the shop?”
“He’s at Panyawŏl. We have an orchard, and it’s coming into maturity this year. So I’m taking care of the shop.”
“By running around like this?”
“One of my young relatives works there. When she died, my mother requested that I should be allowed to do whatever I like. I received the most precious inheritance in the world, you see. But my mother always understood me from when I was a very small child.”
“You lost a most wonderful mother.”
“I try not to feel too alone. When you think about it, is there anyone who isn’t alone?”
“Excuse me, but what’s your name?”
“You see!”
“What?”
“That’s the practical side of your nature … you say ‘excuse me’ a lot, and you introduce yourself by name. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Maehŏn felt a little uneasy. But as that uneasiness lifted he could feel his own long-lost innocence reviving throughout his body.
The girl swiveled around, pulling her feet out of the water. Maehŏn was instantly attracted to those ten wriggling toes trying to shake the water off onto the green grass. Even though everything about this young girl’s appearance seemed younger than her spirit, these toes looked younger still. He burnt with the simple desire to touch them, as he would pinch a baby’s cheeks. He quickly took hold of her two feet. In an instant, one hand had taken out his handkerchief. He dried between each of her toes, before placing each foot back into its shoe, from which he’d shaken the sand, and fastening it close. Later, he was surprised at how naturally his hands had acted. She too acted as if it were nothing.
When they climbed back up onto the main road, Maehŏn lit a cigarette, and the girl walked along, humming a simple tune that children sing. They each walked along with their own thoughts, as if they were each alone again.
“Sir, would you like to go to Pulguk Temple tomorrow?”
“Will you show me around?”
“If you will agree to go in this heat.”
“Then, let’s go!”
They separated in front of his inn after discussing what train to take the next day.
It was late in the evening by the time he had taken a bath and eaten dinner, and he felt tired enough to lie down. But when he did so, he could not fall asleep.
Somehow it seemed as if the girl would visit him after dinner. The sound of mosquitoes nearby and frogs croaking in the distance made the silence of the night seem more intense; there were no people around. He thought the girl might be waiting for him to take a walk to the shop. Even so he could not bring himself to sit up, despite smoking almost a whole pack of Haet’ae cigarettes. He hadn’t felt anything when he was moving around, but once he’d laid down it was hard to raise himself again. At times like these when he was at home, his wife would ask, “Why are you getting lazier and lazier?” But for several years now he had been quietly realizing that this was not laziness.
“Everything comes down to youth!”
Maehŏn rested his two parched hands on his stomach and tried to submit peacefully to the shapeless force that was pressing down on his joints more with each passing year.
The following day, the girl was already there waiting in time for the first train. The same dress, the same white shoes without socks, the same parasol. As soon as Maehŏn saw her, he ran toward her. He was really pleased to see her. He felt fresh, as if the morning was returning to his life as well.
Youth! Youth is a virtue all of its own!
They were only traveling one stop, but Maehŏn bought second-class tickets. This was more for the feeling of the purchase than for the journey itself.
The second-class car of the local morning train was empty. The girl chose a window seat. Maehŏn didn’t have the courage to sit knee to knee with her in such an empty car and chose a seat facing her.
“That’s Anapchi Pond.”
“That’s another royal burial mound.”
Maehŏn was more captivated by her lips and teeth, which glistened like autumn fruit as if she had eaten an oily breakfast, and by her bangs, which blew gently up and down as if alive. But the carriage did not only head into the sun and breeze. It also turned corners, throwing her face into shadow. That face had been lit up and plunged into darkness three or four times by the time they arrived at Pulguk Temple.
The narrow hired bus was packed to bursting with people. In such cramped conditions the girl needed more room than Maehŏn.
“I’m all right, really. Please make yourself more comfortable, sir.”
He cringed each time the bus jumped on the journey up the ten-ri hill, as if he were riding a horse.
“What do you think? Isn’t it better than in the photographs?”
They had only taken a few steps since getting off the bus before they stopped. The scene was ripe with a bucolic lyricism that made it seem unlike a temple. It was as if dancers might appear at any moment and glide down the floating stone staircases, known as the Green Cloud Bridge and White Cloud Bridge.
“When I come here, my favorite thing is to walk up and down those staircases! I wonder what Silla women wore on their feet?”
Maehŏn followed the girl up the White Cloud Bridge, and then the Green Cloud Bridge, before walking through the Sunset Gate. The graceful altar of the Hall of Great Virtue was in the characteristic Silla style, made of stone and about the height of a man; to the east was the Jeweled Pagoda and to the west the Shakamuni Pagoda. Above and beyond the pagoda’s religious significance, Maehŏn thought that it must be the greatest work of art upon which a person could ever gaze. Its harmonious combination of space and solidity could hardly be matched in its natural majesty by any Greek statue.
“You see all these cornerstones left here and there? Apparently there used to be more than two thousand buildings inside this temple!”
“They must have stood side by side, row upon row.”
“Everything went
up in flames at once, it must have been a blazing sea of fire, mustn’t it? Just imagine, only these two pagodas survived that sea of fire. How heroic, how tragic!”
With these words, the pagodas looked even more majestic. The gentle curves of the Jeweled Pagoda attained the pinnacle of feminine beauty—they seemed to have been melted into shape rather than chiseled from stone—whereas the Shakamuni Pagoda was simple apart from its elaborately woven hair, and left a powerful impression as if one hundred Deva kings had been gathered together in it. It was the apex of masculine beauty and formed a perfect contrast with the Jeweled Pagoda.
Maehŏn and the girl sat side by side all morning on the Pavilion of Floating Shadows watching the clouds pass over the pagodas, as leisurely as if they were clouds themselves.
They ate lunch at the hotel. Cool-looking easy chairs were placed in groups in the hallway, as if it were an observation deck. The girl led Maehŏn toward the chairs with the best view over the Pond of Shadows. They leant far back, he holding a cigarette, and she a fan on which were printed the symbols of yin and yang, and they gazed into the distance. It must have been some tens of ri through the hazy air to where the dark green mountaintops formed a circle, layer upon layer, and at their feet lay a valley that glittered like a mirror.
“So that’s the Pond of Shadows!”
“Yes. Where Asanyŏ drowned herself … I love to sit here and look down upon it!”
The scene evoked the same kind of eternal nihilism as the Five Burial Mounds. On closer inspection there were small hills, woods, twisting roads, winding streams, small villages in the folds of each mountain, rice paddies, and dry fields, and above them all floated the clouds, which cast shadows on the villages and the streams … but at a casual glance there was merely the green earth and the misty air, and nothing else.
Maehŏn threw his cigarette to one side and yawned slowly. Soon they were both fast asleep.
Maehŏn was the first to wake from the heat of the sun on his legs. His entire body was damp with sweat. Drops of perspiration had formed on the girl’s forehead. He took his handkerchief and tried to lightly dab her face as carefully as possible. She gently snored away, unaware. With each breath her rounded breasts rose and fell. He took her fan and quietly waved some air onto her, all the while trying to match his breath with hers. He was surprised at how much more quickly she drew breath. For every five of his breaths, she took six. He was struck by the loneliness felt upon losing a travel companion, and once more wiped the perspiration rising on her forehead. The sun was now encroaching upon more of her face. Her lips moved, she swallowed and then opened her eyes.
“Oh, I slept so soundly, not even a dream!”
“That’s good.”
“I wonder if that’s how death is.”
“I wonder!”
The two of them walked back down to the stream and refreshed themselves with water. The sun was turning red and beginning to set on the mountaintops. The girl bought a fan with a photograph of Pulguk Temple on it from a shop in front of the hotel. And then she bought a ticket to go back on the evening train.
“You don’t want to go to the Stone Grotto?”
“I’d better take the evening train home.”
He did not ask any further. There was more than an hour left before the train would leave. They walked up White Cloud Bridge and Green Cloud Bridge again, and further up the hill behind the temple, passing behind the Jeweled Pagoda. The seasonal rains had left holes in the grassy path in places, but otherwise it was a pleasant walk up through a pine grove. When they reached the top, clouds had cloaked the sun and burned the color of a red rose. They sat on the grass, facing the evening sun. With each moment, the Pond of Shadows was tinged with a deeper shade of red. A fortuitous air seemed to wind around the mountaintops, and from somewhere a gentle breeze blew in. The girl opened her fan. The evening sun cast a bewitching dye over both the fan and her face.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Would you please write something on this?”
He gently took her fan. He took out his fountain pen and gazed at the evening sun, deep in thought for a while. Then he wrote a verse by the ancient poet Li Yishan:
夕陽無限好
只是近黃昏
It was a lament that the evening sun is beautiful beyond limit, but dusk comes all too soon. He had thought of this verse as he felt the sun set on his own life. This brilliant girl took the fan and quietly drew it toward her eyes, which she then closed.
“I will write to you.”
The sunset did not last much longer. Although they stood up quickly, it was already dusk as they walked back down the path. Maehŏn accompanied her to the station and sent his precious companion away in the dark on the evening train.
He stayed at Pulguk Temple for four days. But he never went up to the Stone Grotto. Each day he sat in the hotel hallway, looked out over the Pond of Shadows and wearily faced the evening sun.
A few days after he returned home, a letter arrived from the girl. Autumn in Kyŏngju is beautiful, she wrote, and particularly the Five Royal Burial Mounds and the view of the Pond of Shadows from the hotel at Pulguk Temple. If he were to visit in the autumn, she would accompany him to Pulguk Temple and stay there a few days. Her name was signed at the bottom, T’aok, Jewel on a Cliff.
“T’aok!”
He replied immediately. He wrote that he had vowed upon his return to make another trip in the autumn and that in the end he had decided to save the Stone Grotto until T’aok could accompany him. Together with the letter, he sent a limited edition copy of his collection of essays.
Another letter arrived from T’aok. She thanked him for the book and for saving the Stone Grotto, and added that she was eagerly awaiting his autumn trip to Kyŏngju.
Autumn came. In truth, it came all too soon for Maehŏn. And while he hesitated, it seemed to go far too quickly as well. Yet it was not any particular work schedule that restricted his movements. He had no choice but to send a letter postponing the trip until the following autumn along with the lament, “Living a simple life is also a kind of blessing, but I don’t seem to have been allowed that.”
Sometimes he missed T’aok. Not Kyŏngju, but T’aok. Then he would wonder why he was waiting for autumn.
Several times he left his house in the morning after saying, “It looks as if I have to go down to the countryside today.” But once he had left and thought some more, he would feel embarrassed that he was going just to meet T’aok.
Am I in love with T’aok?
He would shuffle back to his house, teasing himself that by now he was probably taking four breaths for every six of hers. He would sit for a long time and stare at the Silla earthenware on the table, the one about which she had said, “It would be even more still left as is.”
And yet, for old and young alike a life crisis seems to hit the most often in spring. Unable to quietly endure, he finally went down to Kyŏngju before the azaleas had dropped their blossoms. T’aok was pleased to see him. But from the moment he saw her again, he did not know how to control the instant change in his heart, was this wonder or disillusionment? She seemed completely different. The T’aok in Kyŏngju was someone he could have waited until autumn to meet. It was as if the one who had twisted him up inside more with each passing day had been a temptress he himself had produced, whereas when he stood in front of the real T’aok, all his depraved thoughts disappeared in an instant.
“You seem to be quite the romantic, sir!”
She said this, quite politely and with an expression as serene as still water. His own faltering stability was washed clean by that calm water. As if waking from a nightmare, he told himself, “It’s really better this way.”
They went first to the Five Burial Mounds. She climbed up the pine tree, and he followed her. The nihilistic atmosphere of the mounds was no different in spring from summer.
That same day they went to Pulguk Temple. The long staircases of the Green Cloud Bridge and the Whit
e Cloud Bridge possessed the same lyricism, as if a dancing girl would appear and slide down them. The pine leaves were a fresher green, but the Jeweled Pagoda and Shakamuni Pagoda struck the same pose in exactly the same color.
Oh, you two sphinxes! Will you stand there forever?
He grew a little melancholy.
By the time they reached the hotel, the Pond of Shadows was already buried in the thick dusk. They ate dinner by lamplight, retelling old legends and talking about literature and art, about the rise and fall of nations, and sometimes stopping to listen to the deepening night and wonder where in the world that same moon must be shining dimly. In the end it was Maehŏn who struggled to stay awake and ended up snoring.
On the following day they went up to the Stone Grotto. The grotto was a purely man-made temple, which did not seem to converse with nature. It was art at its ecstatic height. As T’aok said, they could only wonder at being able to feel the beauty of muscles and silks rendered in stone. She said she wanted to tear the baby finger from the right hand, where it lay in the Buddha’s lap, and take it home. At first, Maehŏn thought it would suffice to merely look at the grotto and understand the concept. But the weight of such vital beauty confused him unbearably. He began to examine the grotto from the point of view of its structure. Soon he was exhausted.
He went outside for a rest, and then began to examine the Buddha statues. It seemed merely frivolous to praise the statue of the Buddha at the front. As he looked at the eleven-faced bodhisattva that stood behind the Buddha, he realized that without a grasp of religion or philosophy it would be impossible to make manifest such sublime beauty, which exceeded that of any beautiful woman. He called to T’aok. They stood side by side before the bodhisattva. He stroked the bodhisattva’s plump hand, and then with the same fingers stroked T’aok’s equally plump hand. When he encountered his own depraved desire in that instant, still tenacious at the age of nearly fifty, when one is supposed to understand heaven’s meaning, T’aok, whom he had forgotten momentarily, had become his own sublime, eternal woman.