by Naomi Foyle
When he checked the display he blinked: Sydney. Well, that was a turn-up for the books.
“Hey, Sydney—what’s up?”
“Oh, same same. I’ve got a few days off for Chusok, so I thought I’d give you a call.”
As he pictured her sharp little face, a chorus of reindeer began hooing and groaking as they thundered through a pine forest in search of their herdswoman.
“Jeez, Damien—what the hell are you listening to?”
“An opera about Mongolian tribal people. The guy from Gorillaz wrote the music.”
“You really need to get out more. D’you want to come to Lotte World with me tomorrow?”
Lotte World? Crikey, she really was just a kid. But before he knew it, he’d agreed.
Sydney met him outside Chamshil Station, brandishing a blue-and-white polka-dot umbrella. The rainy season was coming to an end now, leaving a gentle mizzle trailing in its wake. They walked through the apartment complex on the way to the park, stepping carefully around the puddles. Above them ginkgo trees were turning a buttery yellow and their fan-shaped leaves drifted in swathes down the streets. On every corner old women were selling apples, chestnuts and persimmons from carts covered with tents of turquoise plastic.
“One of my privates served me a persimmon last week,” Damien mentioned. “How charming, I thought. A tomato served with a baby food spoon.”
“I love these dried ones.” Sydney stopped to buy some. “They’re all furry and mushy. Yum.”
Damien pulled a face. They walked on, through a psychedelic ocean of umbrellas: students with fluorescent pinks and greens, businessmen with loud checks, ajummas parading outrageous flowers. On the steps of the buildings girls stood chatting, twirling their ruffly pop-outs or resting them on the floor, like lap-dogs on the end of metal leashes.
“Don’t you teach near here?” Sydney mumbled, her mouth full of persimmon.
“In that building.” Damien pointed out Yoon So’s apartment block. “Two terrorist pre-teens—you’d better protect me if they see us. If I don’t bring Sailor Moon stickers, I’m afraid for my life.”
But Sydney wasn’t listening. “Hey, there it is!” she cried, pointing at a block of concrete looming up ahead.
Though it looked less inviting than a bowling alley, LotteWorld was one of Seoul’s premier attractions: a vast indoor park filled with mountain scenery and faux Euro-style villages, funfair rides and a giant skating rink, where a lone speed-skater was practicing his simian arm swing. Above the sparse crowd, skylights filtered the day’s gray glow.
“Let’s do that.” Sydney pointed to a circuit of mechanical hot-air balloons creaking and squeaking along the tracks fixed to the wall twenty feet above their heads. Admiring the way her orange trousers clung to her bottom, Damien followed her to the ticket booth.
Perched inside a wicker basket, circumnavigating the perimeter of the park, they surveyed the chintzy majesty of Lotte World. Sydney’s bare forearm brushed his as she clutched at the rim of the basket. She smelled like a piece of warm tropical fruit.
“Up, up and away,” he said, quietly.
She gestured at the fake trees beneath them. “Man, those leaves are dusty.”
He leaned forward and blew gently down into the arena.
She gave an exaggerated cough and moved a half-step away from him. “I want to go on a scary one next,” she announced.
Hidden behind a Bavarian town hall was a roller-coaster called the “French Revolution.” It was small, but the loop-de-loop screamer made them both sick to their stomachs. Afterward, they found a park bench on which to recover. Beside them, a life-size mechanical donkey lifted its tail and with a wicked hee-haw shot a plastic ball filled with chocolate at two yelping schoolgirls.
That cracked them both up. They spent the rest of the afternoon teasing each other, eating ice cream, ogling Korean wedding parties and trying as many cheesy rides and shows as possible. After “The Fantastic Odyssey,” a rickety light show in a cavern set to Debussy-type muzak, complete with sprinklers and dancing papier-mâché waves, Sydney grabbed Damien’s arm. “Time for the photo booth.”
A bunch of colorful wigs hung on hooks outside. Sydney tugged a scraggy green mop-top over Damien’s head and chose a bright red lion’s mane for herself. Squeezing into the seat behind the gray curtain they jostled for space, their hips rubbing as Sydney wriggled beside him. She inserted some coins in the slot and threw her arms around his neck. Their frozen faces were reflected in the glass over the camera.
“Say kim chi!” she hissed. The camera erupted in four white thumpy flashes, capturing two gleeful idiots; pouting movie stars; funhouse villains; sorrowful clowns.
They waited outside for the booth to spit out a sheet of stickers: sixteen tiny photos of a couple of nutters in wigs, surrounded by a frame of palm trees, sun and sand. Sydney stashed her half in her purse; Damien slipped his in the back pocket of his jeans.
“I’ll put one in my address book,” she said. “Next to your name.”
“Better write in pencil,” he warned.
Her smile drooped. “Are you going back to England soon?”
“Not if I can help it.” he said grimly.
“Because of the fallout?”
He tensed up. “That too. But I always planned to save some money and go traveling.”
“But you’re going to be in Seoul a bit longer, right?” She sounded so anxious, it was flattering.
“Yeah, sure. Until December.” He shrugged. “If Lucifer’s Hammer hasn’t hit by then and we’re not all washed away by a world-wide tsunami.”
“Lucifer’s Hammer,” she scoffed, “that’s just a scare story. Da Mi says the world isn’t going to end on the Solstice; she says it’s already transforming into something way better.”
“Haven’t seen much sign of that yet,” Damien snorted. “Sorry, who’s Da Mi?”
“You know, my scientist friend.” She brightened up. “Hey, that job is still going, if you want to make some extra cash before we’re all drowned.”
This time he almost felt bad about letting her down. Her Korean friend was probably really generous to her, but super-pushy; he’d seen that kind of relationship between English teachers at the hagwon and their agents; he always felt sorry for the foreigners. “Thanks, Sydney,” he said. “I’ve got more than enough work lined up.”
She pouted, then cocked her head up at the skylights. “Hey, the rain’s stopped. Wanna check out the boating lake?”
“So how do you rate it?” Sydney asked on the subway home.
“LotteWorld?” Damien thought about it. The place was cheesy, but its faded grandeur had touched him with a sense of eerie familiarity. “In a way,” he reflected, “it reminded me of London: all gray and shabby, but still convinced it’s the greatest show on earth.” He paused, then corrected himself. “The way London used to be, I mean.”
Sydney touched his arm. “Hey, I’m sorry,” she said.
Christ, was he getting choked up? “Cheers,” he replied, awkwardly patting her fingers. She dropped her hand, and he looked away, up the aisle. By the doors, he noticed, the strap-hangers were parting for a legless man who was propelling himself down the center of the train, his hands in white cotton gloves, his muscular arms hoisting his torso along the floor. He was wearing a Hammer T-shirt, its graphic of a comet with a devil’s tail hitting the globe half-obscured by the tray of chewing gum hung around his neck.
“Ask him if he’s selling the T-shirts,” Sydney whispered.
Stopping in front of them, the man began to chant, a droning incantation of which Damien could only make out the word “Yonsei.” Whatever his spiel meant, it took grit to make these rounds in his physical condition. Damien dug out some change and chose a packet of Chiclets. Girls always liked them. The man nodded sagely, pocketed the coins, and moved on.
“An old guy was chanting like that on the train the other day,” Sydney said as he tipped a couple squares of the gum into her palm. “Everyone was
laughing at him. Then he turned to me and asked me if I knew why I was here. ‘Beautiful daughter of God,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. Be happy.’”
“That’s all right then.”
“It’s true, though, don’t you think?” Her eyes were shining, her skin almost translucent in the fluorescent light of the carriage. “What the Buddhists say? That we can be happy all the time if we want?”
Damien shrugged. “If you don’t think about the past or the future, maybe. But if you do just live in the moment, other people will run your life for you. Personally, I’d rather be a bit anxious sometimes.”
The train was drawing into Edae. Damien got to his feet. “Nice to see you again, Sydney. Give me a call—anytime.”
She jumped up eagerly and gave him a kiss on the cheek. The doors slid open. He looked back as the doors closed and caught a glimpse of her staring into space, a fierce look on her face as if she was arguing with someone.
Suddenly he was stabbed with panic. He wanted to bang on the doors of the carriage, jump back on the train, pull her out of her seat and drag her up into the daylight with him.
I’m sorry, Jessica. The words bubbled up in his head like mud.
Christ, man, let it go.
32 / Pusan
Chusok was beautiful, so healing for Mee Hee’s sore spirit. Each of the three days was filled with cooking and eating, and special ceremonies for the ancestors. The first evening the women sat together in the kitchen making songpyon, of course, taking great care to shape the rice cakes as prettily as possible to ensure they would all have beautiful daughters in the coming year. After many jokes and Grandmother songs, they quietly laid the sticky dough balls in big baskets on top of the pine needles they’d collected and steamed them until the scent of the needles filled the Meeting Hall. Then it was time for the first taste.
Older Sister’s songpyon was plump and stuffed with roasted chestnut meat; So Ra’s was pointy and filled with honeyed peas, and Mee Hee’s was slender and sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds.
“Your daughters will be delicate and pretty, but a little bit nutty,” Dr. Tae Sun teased.
“They will be like Su Jin, then,” she whispered.
“Perhaps Su Jin is making sweet and tender songpyon right now, to have a daughter like you,” he quietly replied.
The next day Dr. Kim arrived in time for breakfast. After they had eaten, she took the women on a walk in the woods. There, in a clearing, was a turtle shrine, which, Dr. Kim said, they could visit whenever they wanted to honor their ancestors. The village was far from where they had all grown up, but the geomancy lines beneath their feet were traveling back to their old homes in the North, to let the ancestors know the way. All morning the women tidied the clearing. Then they placed piles of songpyon, persimmons and apples in front of the shrine, praying and singing and sending all their family members love and respect.
That afternoon was filled with games: tug of war and seesaw, and a tournament of Flower Cards. Then, after they had cooked chestnuts and rice and meat and fish and had served the doctors, the women ate and washed all the dishes before putting on the long white robes Dr. Kim had brought with her. They gathered in the garden and danced in a floating circle under the full moon.
This was the spirit of Chusok: the spirit of the harvest moon that swelled the earth with nourishment and abundance, and would swell the bellies of the women with good food and with babies. This was a time to celebrate being women, to be unafraid of the night, to rejoice in sisterhood. Holding hands with Chin Mee and So Ra, Mee Hee gazed up into the huge, beautiful face of the moon. Please, she asked silently, beam your blessings down on Su Jin too.
After Chusok, Mee Hee began to laugh again. As the days grew shorter and the nights colder, Dr. Tae Sun started to visit her house in the evenings, bringing with him a pack of Flower Cards. Dr. Kim had asked him to keep her company, he said that first night before teasing her about her studious shuffling technique. Once, Mee Hee noticed him looking at her arms, but he never mentioned the wounds she had inflicted on herself. She wanted to tell him not to worry, that ever since Dr. Kim had comforted her she had never again felt the urge to repeat those harmful, shameful actions. Instead, she concentrated on making things nice for him, sewing decorative wall hangings and mats, cooking special treats.
One night he praised the ddok she’d made, had said that he could happily eat it every night of his life. Her own mouth was bulging with the glutinous rice dough and she hadn’t dared to reply, but in the lamplight she had noticed a speck of icing sugar dusting the corner of his mouth.
That night on her yo she lay awake, imagining herself reaching across to brush it away.
But she was being foolish, she knew that. The doctor was only being kind, keeping her company, helping her get emotionally strong and ready for motherhood. The work helped too. All through October the women kept busy, some in the pottery shed, making vases and bowls for the VirtuWorld gift shop, others in the garden, picking and braiding cords of persimmons to hang to dry in the pantry. In the Meeting Hall, the looms filled up with bright lengths of wool: blankets and scarves for the winter.
The cold started to bite in the first week of November, and by the end of the month the ondul heating in the Meeting House was turned up high all day. They had to keep warm to keep well, and to sew—that was the job Mee Hee liked best, sitting next to So Ra on a cushion by the window, a needle in her hand as keening strains of pansori music and tendrils of jasmine incense uncoiled in the air.
“It’s nearly December,” So Ra remarked one Friday at the end of November. “I wonder if it will snow soon.”
“Pardon?” Mee Hee looked up from her stitching. She was embroidering the word VirtuWorld into a silk handkerchief, overlapping letters that reminded her of birds flying in the sky. The work was fiddly, but now she was used to it, she could let her mind wander occasionally to thoughts of Tae Sun. Tae Sun. He had told her to call him that now—but only at night, in private.
“I said, it’s nearly—” But she stopped as abruptly as the music.
Dr. Dong Sun was standing by the CD player, his face clammy and drawn. “Sisters,” he said, “please, put down your work. We have news of Su Jin.”
Like dried leaves in a sudden wind, hope and fear rustled through the room. But Dr. Dong Sun’s shoulders were rigid, his fist clenched around a pen. His news wasn’t good. Mee Hee carefully folded her sewing and set it aside.
In a jostle of nervous excitement, her sisters trooped into the Meeting Hall, following Dr. Tae Sun, who joined his brother at the top of the room. The women arranged themselves expectantly on cushions. Mee Hee’s heart began to pound.
Dr. Dong Sun’s forehead was sprinkled with sweat. He cleared his throat and clicked his pen. Mee Hee willed Tae Sun to look at her, but he was staring over their heads. His face too was drained of color.
Dr. Dong Sun began to speak: Our sister Su Jin was dead. Her body had been found in Pusan, in a bad area near the docks. She had been attacked. Her neck was broken: it had happened very quickly; she wouldn’t have suffered. Dr. Kim and Mr. Sand-uh-man were bringing her back to the village tomorrow, to lay her to rest in the mountain earth.
The news rolled across the Meeting House floor like an iron ball. The women gasped and cried; So Ra clasped Mee Hee by the shoulders. Pain burning in her chest, Mee Hee looked wildly around for Tae Sun, and at last his eyes met hers—but only for a moment. Like a helpless schoolboy, he twisted his tie, waiting, like everyone, for his brother to tell them what to do.
“There will be no more work until after the funeral,” Dr. Dong Sun said hoarsely. “You may pray for Su Jin now, or do as you wish.”
“I’ll pray that no one else is so stupid and selfish as to run away!” Older Sister shouted. Several women sucked in their breath.
“Now, now—” Dr. Dong Sun began, but Older Sister was determined to continue.
“We all know that cities are evil places, full of greed and suffering and dirt. But she called us b
umpkins and yokels—well, who’s still alive to breathe the fresh air and eat the carrots from the garden? I’ll pray for everyone here, but I won’t pray for her. She brought this disaster on her own head!”
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” So Ra said quietly, holding Mee Hee close. “Su Jin was young. She just wanted to explore the world.”
“I’m sure Older Sister doesn’t mean what she says,” Dr. Tae Sun stammered. “She’s in shock, like all of us.”
Her plain face pink as a potato, Older Sister hoisted herself to her feet. “I’ll help the cooks prepare for tomorrow,” she muttered. “There’ll be a lot of extra work to do now.” Without a backward glance, she clumped into the kitchen.
“They should make her chop the onions,” So Ra snorted. “Maybe then she’ll manage a tear.”
“At least she’s trying to help,” Young Ha objected. “Su Jin was never very kind to her.”
“Everyone knows she hated Su Jin,” So Ra hissed, “but she could still show a little compassion, at least for Mee Hee’s sake!”
“Please, So Ra,” Mee Hee pleaded. She could see the doctors exchanging worried glances. “Don’t let’s argue. Su Jin wouldn’t like—wouldn’t have liked—that.”
“No, we mustn’t fight,” Younger Sister insisted. “We should pray for Su Jin’s soul.”
“Thank you, Younger Sister.” Dr. Dong Sun raised his voice above the growing mutters. “This should be a time of togetherness, not division. Mee Hee, you should not be alone tonight. We’ll help you move your bed into So Ra and Chin Mee’s house.”
Tae Sun shrugged, almost imperceptibly. No, there was nothing he could do, Mee Hee understood. He couldn’t come and comfort her tonight.
So Ra and Chin Mee usually slept separately, but that night they pulled So Ra’s yo into Chin Mee’s room and placed Mee Hee’s between them. When they returned to the house after dinner, they lit a candle, changed into their nightdresses and got into their beds.