by Min Jin Lee
HER JOY WAS SONG.
When Leah Han was eight years old, her quiet mother died of tuberculosis. A year later, Leah received an overwhelmed stepmother prone to stomachaches. As a teenager, she found herself at the tail end of the shuffle of six older brothers and an impoverished minister father. At night, she made dinner for seven men and her infirm stepmother and spent Saturdays standing over a cold washbasin with waist-high heaps of laundry piled up beside her. For Leah, the church was her childhood embrace and God the Father her only comfort. Throughout her life, when she sang hymns, Leah felt the ecstatic communion of music with her Father, and when she sang a solo, the heavens seemed to open up and she felt the light of His praise showering softly upon her. It was at church where Leah felt most happy, almost girlish, and through sacred music, life prickled inside her, insisting on a divine love within her disappointed heart.
On Palm Sunday, as with each Sunday morning, two hours before services began, the sixty-member choir of the Woodside Pilgrim Church gathered to rehearse in the basement practice room—its floors laid with mismatched squares of red and black linoleum. But that morning, Mr. Jun, the seventy-eight-year-old choir director, took his place behind the lectern and took a few more minutes than usual to compose his thoughts. Next to him stood Dr. Charles Hong. To the choir’s dismay, the younger man had come to church wearing blue jeans and a crewneck sweater. To his credit, he wore a brown tweed jacket that was well cut, but it was not new. His clear skin gave him the look of a healthy middle-aged man who neither ate nor drank in excess.
“Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is Dr. Charles Moon-su Hong. He is your new director,” Mr. Jun said, his voice faltering and sad.
A murmur rose from the choir, then just as quickly, a hush fell as Dr. Jun continued to speak.
“As you know, I have had some health weaknesses.” Mr. Jun coughed for effect. Everyone knew about his prostate cancer treatments. He’d been talking about retirement for the past five years but was never able to find an adequate replacement. “And though it is sudden”—Mr. Jun paused again meaningfully—“I have decided to move to California after Easter to live with my son. I will get better medical attention there.” He smiled only when he said the words my son. Mr. Jun’s son was an anesthesiologist in Los Angeles and the bright light of Mr. Jun’s life.
“But enough about my poor health. There will be time enough for that later.. . .” The aging tenor with the resilient vanity of half a dozen men of greater accomplishments coughed again. He tried to sound more uplifting.
“Dr. Hong is the brilliant son of my genius mentor and friend, Dr. Joo-Jin Hong, of Seoul University’s Conservatory of Music. Dr. Hong is a graduate of Juilliard, where he received his doctorate in music.” Mr. Jun articulated the name of the school with reverence. “He is an accomplished pianist and organist, as well as a gifted voice teacher. He is also a composer and is currently writing a song cycle commissioned by the world-famous Lysander Quartet. Dr. Hong has a special love of choral music, which has led him to us.” Mr. Jun smiled. “What a tremendous blessing it is to have him work with us. I hope that you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, will love him and care for him as much as you have cared for me.” Mr. Jun, greatly influenced by the letters of St. Paul, often tried to speak like him.
His hands behind his back, Charles bowed his head and said nothing.
The choir whispered among themselves. The bass with the double chin said to the tenor, “Young guy.” Kyung-ah Shin, the attractive soprano seated next to Leah Han, smiled in his direction. “Look, honey, no wedding ring.” Leah didn’t want to get caught talking. Mr. Jun hated it when the choir members talked during rehearsals. She checked his hands. There was no wedding ring, but on his right hand, Dr. Hong wore a gold signet ring with an oval lapis lazuli. He wore no other jewelry. Kyung-ah elbowed Leah. “Do you think he is gay?” She pronounced the word gay in two syllables: geh-ee. Kyung-ah touched her earrings—black Tahitian pearls with paper white diamonds framing them. On her pale throat, she wore a matching choker necklace with a diamond clasp. Kyung-ah and her younger sister, Joanne, owned three wholesale sneaker stores in Manhattan that had grossed over 1.7 million dollars in business last year. She’d bought the jewelry for herself last Christmas, believing that she should get herself whatever she deserved.
Charles smiled politely, unaffected by the puffed-up introduction. In his own mind, he was the forty-eight-year-old son of a rich man with no money of his own. He’d failed marriage twice, received a worthless doctorate of music and obscure prizes for organ competitions. The church was paying him eight hundred and fifty dollars a month, a laughable amount of money to live on in New York, but Charles didn’t need much in terms of daily maintenance. Also, his voice lessons earned him at least three hundred dollars a week. With both jobs, he wouldn’t need his father’s monthly allowance anymore. After his second divorce, his older brothers’ persistent remarks about how their elderly father still supported the supposed “artist” in the family had become impossible to bear.
Charles had never directed a choir before, but he was a good voice coach. Mr. Jun had boasted that the woman singing the solo today, Deaconess Cho, had a finer voice than Kiri Te Kanawa and Jessye Norman. Charles looked over the seating chart on the lectern and spotted Leah in the soprano section. Deaconess Cho was a petite woman with slight shoulders, a pale face, and smooth white hair. She wore almost no makeup, in contrast with the pretty, dark-haired soprano seated next to her, whose eyes were painted like a tropical bird. Leah felt his hard stare, and she turned away, taking in a desperate gulp of breath.
Kyung-ah, who missed little, saw him observing Leah. The new director was interesting to her. A sexy woman, Kyung-ah fully expected him to notice her. She touched her black hair and checked for stray crimson lipstick in the corners of her mouth with her pinkie. She wished the acetate choir robe she was wearing didn’t hide her favorite Claude Montana suit, which cinched in her small waist beautifully, flattering her hips and shapely legs. She wasn’t looking for herself so much; Kyung-ah was long married to a pleasant, hardworking man who was a little dull. But her sister was still single. She always scanned for prospects for Joanne, who was an excellent cook and good with children.
Charles went over the seating chart, matching names with faces as Mr. Jun droned on about what the purpose of a choir was. The choir was a predictable collection of fish-eyed men with jowly faces and exhausted mothers with dyed black hair, their eyebrows drawn in too darkly in brown pencil, wearing lipstick shades that no longer complimented them. They watched him like careful students, and he felt no kindred attachment to them. How could he possibly direct this ragtag bunch of immigrants who wanted to sing to their Jesus?
The week before, at his job interview, the Reverend Lim had asked Charles if he believed in Jesus Christ. Charles had replied, “The Lord is my shepherd.” The nearly dwarf-size minister, oblivious to sarcasm, couldn’t have been more pleased; to him, there could be no more perfect answer than this. Charles had recited a fragment of the first verse of Psalm 23, written by David, a brave warrior king and, of course, the Bible’s most famous musician.
When the sermon ended, the choir rose to sing the offertory. Leah began the first verse of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” When she opened her mouth to sing, Mr. Jun closed his eyes for a moment in relief. The others joined at the refrain, but the shadow of Leah’s voice continued to track the piece. Charles, who was seated in the first pew, felt compelled to examine Leah’s face closely, unable to believe the high register of her vocal instrument. She had a rounded voice with a complicated range of feeling. It did in fact remind him of some of the sopranos that Mr. Jun had mentioned, but her exquisite sound wasn’t cultivated in any traditional sense, and he could hear a raw sorrow in it. In a way, it recalled the lament of pansori music with its inexplicable anguish. When she stopped singing, Charles felt profoundly alone and yearned to hear her sing again. Her voice had lifted him from his stray thoughts, and he collected himself
.
When the choir stopped singing altogether, they sat in their seats, and the congregation called out, “Ah-men, ah-men, ah-men,” in sober gratitude and praise. Leah bowed her head and smoothed the robe over her folded knees. Kyung-ah tapped Leah’s thigh re-assuringly. She, too, was a good singer but accepted that comparisons could hardly be made between them.
At the rehearsal following the service, the second one of the day, the choir reconvened in the practice room, many of them carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a piece of cake. For the members of the choir, life was organized around practice and church. In a week, there were two rehearsals on Sundays, one on Wednesday nights, and Tuesday night Bible study. Their robes off, their postures more relaxed, the singers gabbed about where to go to dinner after this rehearsal. Most of them were friendly, and many of the women belonged to a geh—the monthly savings pool. Even the ones with families with small children tried to figure out how they could get together for dinner at one another’s homes. The mood was always lighter in the second rehearsal than the first. The men would grumble to Mr. Jun about the level of difficulty in some of the hymns, and the women gossiped, goading the director to chasten them. Charles noticed the shift in mood, too, and he wondered how he would fit in his new role. In age, he was more or less their contemporary and didn’t view himself taking on the role of an eccentric father.
“It does seem abrupt, but I’ve already spoken with Dr. Hong about his conducting today’s rehearsal. I have to meet with some people tonight to arrange my leavetaking next week. And naturally, he will be with you on Wednesday night as well.” Mr. Jun appeared heartbroken. “But I will see you next Sunday at services.” He smiled and paused. No one could tell if he was done or not. “You are like, like. . . my sons and daughters,” he said, and began to cry. Charles moved closer to him and took his hand to hold it. “I am sorry,” Mr. Jun said through his tears, “I am an old man, and when you are old like me, you will consider the things you care about with greater. . . feeling.” He wiped his nose with a handkerchief, and Charles patted his back.
Kyung-ah stood up to clap for him, and the others followed. Everyone wept. It was like watching your father give his possessions away before he died. Mr. Jun was a fussy man who had served the church faithfully for over twenty years. At every opportunity, he spoke about his personal sacrifices for Jesus in terms of time, talent, and money that he could’ve earned doing something else. “But with our gifts, we must reflect His glory!” Yet over the years, through his dedicated service, the choir had changed their view of him from a broken fixture to the tolerated uncle, then to a kind of beloved parent who ultimately wanted the best for them.
Mr. Jun remained at his lectern, his spine rounded, head perched delicately on his stooped shoulders. Leah sobbed uncontrollably, and Kyung-ah put her arm around her shoulders. When the applause died down, Mr. Jun picked up his cordovan briefcase and tan raincoat. His jaw was clenched to keep himself from saying more and to stifle his sobs. When he got inside his brown Dodge with the pair of Jesus fish decals on the bumpers, he put his right forearm over the steering wheel and dropped his heavy head on it. Mr. Jun wept no less than when his angelic wife had died.
After Mr. Jun had closed the practice room door behind him, Kyung-ah went straight to the corner of the room and picked up a spare collection plate. She opened her wallet and dropped seven hundred dollars into the plate. She passed it to Leah, who opened her purse and put in all the cash she had with her: a hundred and sixty-seven dollars. No explanation was necessary. They were collecting Mr. Jun’s departing gift. A person got sick, lost a husband, or even in happy times like a wedding or the birth of a child: A hat was passed, and soon after, a manila envelope stuffed with cash would be presented. Even if one Korean was nothing in this strange land, a church full of Koreans meant something to each other, and they intended to care for their own. Kyung-ah would see to it that a plaque was made up, and there’d be a ceremony next week. Charles was moved by this gesture, but he pretended to busy himself with the sheet music he’d brought. When the plate returned to the soprano in the black suit, he sought their attention.
Charles was nervous. He spoke in Korean; his Seoul accent was undeniable.
“We’ll be following a schedule that Mr. Jun has kindly drafted for me for the next three months. I understand that next week’s program is the same as last year’s, so none of you will be surprised by the music in it.” He did not smile, and he’d flattened his normal speaking voice, which like his tenor singing voice was mellifluous and tender. His father, the famous professor, used to say that the first day of class was the most important: “Establish your authority from the top, and never yield in the beginning. Later, you can be more flexible. Never, ever begin with softness.” Life, to Charles, was a series of related acts, and those who succeeded in life seemed to understand the necessity of consistent performances at a high level. Charles was an inconsistent performer. All three of his brothers were successful professors in Seoul. All four of them had doctorates, but he was the only one who could not handle the negotiations and finesse of a life in the academy. Charles ended up quitting every teaching job he was ever offered.
Charles turned to the seating chart. He called the members one by one to the front of the room. Each person was asked to sing “Happy Birthday.” Charles remained standing as he listened to the sharp tenors, the thin sounds of the baritones, the piercing shrills of the untrained sopranos. A few of the altos were passable and, thankfully, they did not shout. Some of the sopranos were altos, and some altos were really mezzos. Whatever compassion he’d felt a few moments before for Mr. Jun was fading. It was his fault that the singers didn’t know their own sounds. He called Kyung-ah Shin, the woman who’d first stood up to clap and started the collection for Mr. Jun.
She took her time to get to her spot next to the piano. Her range was not developed, but she had potential. Her ripe eyes appealed to him, and the way she looked at him privately, her back turned to the choir, was sexual, and he found this amusing. Her clothes were rich-woman flashy, big shoulder pads, cockroach killer heels, the too-dark hose. But her waist was tiny, her ass round, and he liked red lipstick on women. Lots of diamonds—likely one of these women who had husbands with cash businesses. Kyung-ah Shin’s wedding ring was hard to miss. It had been a long time since he had been with a Korean woman, certainly, a very long time since a married one. His virginity had been lost to a lonely housewife in Seoul—the shy wife of his college professor. If given the opportunity, he’d have happily fucked the married soprano who was giving him the eye. There was nothing shy about this one.
Leah was next. When she stood beside him, he was taken aback by how young she looked. From afar, because of her white hair, he’d thought she was ten or fifteen years older than what she must have been. She didn’t look more than thirty-five, and her smooth face looked as if lit from within. There was something so pure about her expression, as though she’d never had a bad thought in her head. If she dyed her hair, she would have looked twenty-eight, but it was evident that to do such a thing would have violated her submissive nature. She was a gorgeous woman, her features small and fine, but he didn’t feel aroused by her as he had with the older woman Kyung-ah Shin. Leah was slimmer than all the others, with a narrow waist and straight, boyish hips. There was a modest swell of bosom rising from her severely cut gray dress, reminding him of a German voice teacher he’d once had in England. The only exposed skin on her body was her face, neck, and hands. Then he realized that she was built like his first wife, Sara, a tiny Italian soprano, who grew very fat at the end of their relationship.
Instead of “Happy Birthday to You,” he had her sing the first verse of “A Mighty Fortress” just so he could hear her sing again. What was wrong with her? he wondered. Something about her just rankled him, despite this voice worthy of ancient cathedrals. She was too Korean. Probably dumb and quiet. In bed, she’d probably just lie there. Her downcast, overly modest expression was irritating. But as sh
e sang, he couldn’t fight the clutch in his heart, the same as it had been at the service earlier. Her unearthly sound arrested him. So rarely had he heard such good tone and range in an amateur singer. Her breath control was astonishing. If she were younger and had funds, he’d have encouraged her to enter competitions. She’d have won them, he bet. When she finished, Charles nodded and said nothing. He called on the next person. At the end of rehearsal, he’d finished up all his notes for each singer.
“Please return on Wednesday evening at seven-thirty. I expect that we will have a two-hour rehearsal. Thank you.” Charles nodded uncomfortably. He grabbed his knapsack and jacket and fled the room.
As soon as he was gone, Peter Kim, the baritone, an insurance salesman for New York Life, gathered round the choir and told them about having once visited his house two years before. Peter knew one of Charles’s brothers from school. Charles Hong was the fourth of four boys. His great-grandfather and grandfather had had a monopoly on the manufacture and distribution of MSG—the food flavor enhancer. His older brothers were academics like their father, but all of them were tycoons. Only Charles, the grandfather’s least favorite, had gone to Europe and America to study music. If he’d stayed in Korea, he would’ve received a great deal of money annually. But he hadn’t. All his life he’d just studied music and taken little teaching jobs here and there. He used to return home regularly until his mother died several years before. He was forty-eight years old, divorced from his Italian wife of eleven years, and divorced from his Swedish wife of four years. He lived alone in Brooklyn Heights in a large limestone town house that his father had bought for him in cash. He had no children. The women gasped at this.
“When I went to his house for the appointment that his brother had set up for me, he’d forgotten all about it. He was home alone, eating boiled rice and frankfurters with hot sauce off of a card table. In that huge expensive house, he had no furniture except for a gigantic piano and a sofa. He said he didn’t need any life insurance. ‘Who would lose if I dropped off?’ Anyway, he gave me a beer and a CD of Tristan and Isolde.” Peter shrugged. “He’s a nice enough man. I don’t even think he remembered us ever meeting when I sang today.”