The Mountain

by Paul Yoon

  Some nights she was too weak to go. Or too weak to head back, and they let her stay. When her nausea returned she slipped into the bathroom and did it quietly, with the door locked, the way she did in her room these days, with the new window blinds she had bought pulled down.

  The pain seemed less. Or she had grown used to it and could manage it better. Or she was better able to brace herself for it. The bruise, however, never went away. It remained on her cheek, the size of a coin, though no one noticed. If they did they didn’t say. At the factory it was covered by her mask. She wore it every day.

  She kept assembling cameras. She was given a new post at another station, and she recognized a piece of the bracelet she was putting together. There were fewer people on this line. It was more quiet. She felt at ease here, she grew less tired. She had a different manager at this station. On occasion, she would see the other one, crossing the lot to his car, his arm wrapped around Yonha and whispering something into her ear. Sometimes Yonha looked back, and Faye thought she saw in her expression a sadness. Then Yonha would embrace him with all her strength and bury her face in his neck as they went away.

  The woods along the river began to change. Faye saved enough money to buy a winter coat and boots at a used clothing store. She bought a teapot, too, and sometimes in the evening she would make tea and lean over the rail and look out at the river and the boats, the tire fortress in the playground. The falling leaves.

  She didn’t go out often other than to see the family in the lane house, though once she went to the skating rink on the outskirts of the city. She went with a few families and Yonha’s daughter, who were all practicing for the winter and the frozen river. She had less of an appetite now but they shared a bucket of popcorn. Neon lights blinked in the rafters. She sat and watched everyone spin and turn, approach each other and move apart again.

  Out of habit, she saved the Styrofoam cups from the skating rink vending machine. In her room she stacked them in different shapes along one wall, balancing as many as she could. It was something to do.

  One night someone knocked on her door. She had come in from the showers. She had changed and was sitting on the floor, flipping through a magazine she had found in the trash container. It was a travel magazine, thick and heavy, and she had been flipping through the photos. Montreal. A vineyard in France. Siberia.

  She opened the door to find Tad there, chewing on a fingernail, almost shy. It had been over two months. His face had healed. He looked the way she remembered him at the bus stop. But there were still bandages wrapped around his hand. He was carrying a bag over his shoulder and his sunglasses in his shirt pocket. He had just arrived.

  She wanted him to smile. When he did she moved into him, slipping her arms around his waist. She listened to him breathe.

  Is there gas in the tank? he said.

  Yes.

  He took her hand and they went down to the lot where she kept his scooter. Tad let her drive. He slipped in behind her and held her and she turned north up the river road, away from the city and the factories.

  It grew into evening. They drove under a clear sky, speeding past a boat on the river. She was wearing her winter coat. She spotted the bend and the old wooden sign and slowed, turning onto the dirt road. They got out by the fence and Tad carried his bag with him. He kept his bandaged hand close to his chest. They followed the path through the mounds of garbage, down the slope to the roped-in ring where the lights were turning on.

  No one had arrived yet. Only a few of the fighters who were warming up. Tad introduced Faye to the two he knew, the two he had brought over. They spoke briefly in Korean to each other and when Faye answered them their eyes brightened in surprise.

  They were brothers. They were each fighting. Faye asked if they ever fought each other. They laughed. They were hopping on their feet, warming themselves. Only outside the ring, they said, and pretended to swing at each other.

  She liked their playfulness. Their conviviality. The bond of family. It changed what she was about to see.

  Tad had moved across the ring. He was kneeling over his bag, fumbling. She went over and knelt and before she understood what he was doing he clipped a bracelet on her.

  They want to record the fight, Tad said.

  He pressed a button, releasing the camera and it hovered in the air, whirring. The screen came up. He told her she could adjust the screen size. It could be as small as a mobile phone or as large as a window. There was a track pad on the bracelet against which she pressed her finger to navigate the camera. She tracked up and the camera followed her movement. She flicked her finger over the pad, fast, and the camera gained speed, heading into the sky.

  She kept watching the screen. The speed of what she was seeing. The elevation. A cloud fragment. A leaf. The images shook and blurred. Tad adjusted the sensitivity of the track pad, to better match her movements. They practiced for an hour.

  In that time a crowd had formed by the ring. A woman walked around with a tablet, recording bets. Faye walked back up the slope. She stayed at that distance, looking through the screen. She hovered over the audience, recognizing the men wearing tuxedos and smoking cigars.

  Then the fight started and she began to record it, from above. She heard cheering. She kept the camera just over the string of lights and as the rounds went on she lowered the camera so that she could film at different angles. The image shook a bit but it settled and she captured footwork and the swings, the fighters’ faces.

  Tad checked in, climbing the slope, and they watched the fighters on the screen together. Faye stood to stretch. She turned to find the moon and stopped. In the high mountain across the river, she caught a faint light. She turned to Tad but he was concentrating on the screen.

  Faye waited. In between fights, when no one was looking, she moved the camera away and flew it over the woods, across the river. She pushed it higher. She watched as it skimmed the mountain slope, over the canopy, flying past the lights on the distant ridge. She slowed it down. She turned the camera around. She brought it lower and returned to where she had seen the lights.

  It was a large house. A tiled roof. A garden. Behind her she heard a horn. Clapping. Then, on the screen, in the field behind the large house, a strange, pale tree.

   •

  The first brother won. The other lost. They remained in good spirits, collecting the money they made. They met girls. The girls took them in their cars into Shanghai. It was nearing dawn. She had come down from the slope and returned the camera to Tad. When the ring was clear he collapsed on the ground and stretched out.

  Let me be, he said. Let me sleep.

  She sat beside him and ran her hands through his hair.

  I want you to come with me somewhere, she said.

  He was drifting, looking up at the brightening sky.

  Anywhere, he said. After I sleep.

  She flicked a finger against his face, waking him.

  What happened to your cheek? he said.

  I fought, she said.

  He didn’t respond.

  Tad, she said.

  He hummed a song. He began to drift again.

  Tad, she said. Please come.

  He opened his eyes and yawned. He got up and held her face, looking at her. She helped him stand.

  They took the scooter farther down the river, looking for a road that would lead them up into the mountain. She found it a kilometer away, steep, unpaved, and Tad doubted the scooter would be able to climb. She tried, driving up the slope as the road grew steeper and they began to wind around the side of the mountain. Here the leaves had all fallen. They drove over them and over sandbags that someone had placed in a gap where flooding had destroyed the road one year. They drove for almost an hour, climbing.

  She could feel hints of morning when she saw the house from a distance. It was in the old style with a gate and a courtyard. It was a mansion. They pulled into the driveway where she could see the remnants of the garden she had seen from above, a pond that had not
been cleaned. The windows were dark and one of the main doors was ajar.

  They parked in the front. She pulled out her father’s pocketknife from her boot, and for the first time Tad looked at her, concerned. Puzzled. She took his hand and they entered, coming upon a hall of some kind. An abandoned hall with high rafters and holes in the ceiling so that there were towers of dim light everywhere, illuminating the broken pieces of statues that once stood against the walls. The statues of horses, their heads, their hooves, their armor. There was the sound of water dripping somewhere. She was holding Tad when she almost screamed, watching as one of the broken statues sighed and rose, stepped over the others, and approached them, shaking off dust. The two of them not yet understanding that it wasn’t a ghost but an actual horse that slipped by them and down the hallway. The great echo of its hooves. As though, living on the mountain, it sought the company of its own image.

  They followed it, passing a piano in the corner with its top gone, revealing the insides. Faded tapestries hung on the walls. At the end was a door that led outside. The horse stepped out onto a paddock and trotted away.

  It was as though they had stumbled upon somewhere even farther than where they were. Her feet ached. Her body. She ignored the growing pain under her rib. She took off her shoes and left them in the corridor. She let go of Tad and crossed the field, heading toward the pale tree. She didn’t know if he was behind her. She heard nothing. She kept walking until she was there. The disfigured branches. Her father who had climbed this mountain and walked here, already dying, too weak to go on any farther. What had he planned to do? He collapsed under the tree. The chemical plant owner had found him the next day, still breathing, the knife locked in her father’s hand.

  There was a stable in the distance. She caught the flash of a small flame in a stall. She gripped the knife. The other horses had sensed her and were peering out, their eyes catching what remained of starlight.

  She saw his cigarette glow before she saw him. He had been brushing a horse. But it wasn’t him, it wasn’t whom she thought it would be, whom she wanted it to be. It was someone else, someone she didn’t know. He wore tall rubber boots and had a gray beard. She had never seen a horse so close before. It distracted her. Its grandeur. Its ease and slowness, the earth smell of the coat and the slopes of the neck, the way the muscles curved.

  Here, the man said.

  He offered her the comb. Like this.

  He had seen the knife. He waited. She didn’t know what to do. She tucked the knife in her waistband and took the comb. He guided her hand, pressing the comb against the horse’s flank and circling.

  It loosens the dirt and dead hair. Massages the coat.

  She hadn’t yet spoken. He kept his hand over hers and they curried the horse. He let go. She kept currying.

  Good, he said, and left the stall and went out into the paddock she had crossed. He sat on a bench and faced the field and the far tree. The abandoned mansion.

  He didn’t look back when he said, You are one of the children.

  She stayed with the horse.

  The ones who swam in the river, he said. You’re the only ones who ever come up here.

  She stopped. She felt the horse shift and turn its head toward her and nudge. Across the field, she saw Tad talking to an older woman. She wore a long wool coat like Faye’s and her hair was braided. She was inspecting his bandaged hand.

  Someone came up here? Faye said.

  Sure. Someone always comes up. Someone like you. Looking for him. Looking for who knows what. For something to make them feel better.

  She asked where they were, whether any of them were still alive but he didn’t know.

  And him? she asked. Where is he?

  He shot himself. Years ago. Here.

  He slapped the bench. He said that he had been the groundskeeper. He had taken care of the horses, too.

  So no one is here?

  I’m here, the groundskeeper said.

  He pointed across the field at the woman who was now holding the camera.

  My wife is here, he said.

  As it grew lighter she could make out the smaller house near the mansion, where the two still lived.

  She heard Tad’s voice traveling toward them. He and the woman had wandered away from the tree. For a moment they were huddled together and then Tad stepped back and the woman lifted her arm as the camera detached itself from her wrist. It flew up slowly, then gained speed and disappeared into the sky.

  Have you told him? the groundskeeper said.

  Told him?

  For the first time the groundskeeper turned around to look at her in the stable.

  You clench your hands. You’re often nauseous. You rub the side of your stomach because there is something there and you don’t want to get help for it because your father didn’t and you’re afraid.

  She ignored him and went back to currying the horse. She shook her head.

  Will you? he said.

  Tell him? she said. I don’t know.

  Tell him, he said.

  She left the horse and joined the groundskeeper on the bench. She was still holding the comb. She placed it on the bench beside her and then took out the knife, too. She laid it beside the comb and ran her toes through the grass.

  What happened to the tree? Faye said.

  From across the distance, morning came into the mountain.

  MILNER FIELD

  I.

  Before my father died, he told me a story.

  He was still well enough to walk, and I had taken him, along with my daughter, Philippa, to the park. It was where he liked to go every day since his retirement. For forty years my father had been a doctor in a town in New York, a few hours north of the city, and he ended up staying there, having grown accustomed to the climate and the region—the great river and valley, the apple cider and the dairy, the golf courses, the stories of Washington Irving and the novels of James Fenimore Cooper.

  His favorite English word was: foliage. I remember he used to practice saying it out loud in front of the mirror in his bedroom before he went to his office so that he could have something sociable to talk about with his patients. I would be sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing his lab coat, the pockets of which held parking receipts, chewing-gum wrappers, and his stethoscope, not wanting our neighbor, who was my sitter, to arrive. I would watch as he tied his necktie, spritzed on some kind of fragrance, and said into the mirror, Foliage, as though it were the gravest or most profound of matters. And sitting there behind him, staring at his reflection, I said it back to him, slipping on his stethoscope and listening to my heart and the strangeness of my own voice.

  My father had emigrated from South Korea in 1976 and he used to tell me that he would go back one day, in particular in those early years after my mother passed, and I used to brace myself for this, for some kind of return for him and a leaving for myself.

  I don’t remember being disappointed or anxious or frightened by this possibility. I didn’t have many friends, so it was always just us. And as long as there was this—us—I thought that I would manage. But I did, as a child, think of New York as a kind of temporary station, and a temporary life where I never wanted anything, or pretended to not want anything, hiding that desire for a new bicycle or a comic book for that elsewhere we would most certainly end up in.

  Of course this never happened. We didn’t go anywhere. I grew up. He grew old. And I did leave, to other places, but he stayed, picking up golf and taking walks in the park.

  Maybe park isn’t the word I am looking for. If I recall it was a nature preserve of some kind, with a parking lot and paths that wound their way through acres of land on the eastern side of the valley. There were long fields with wildflowers. An open structure the size of a barn that could be rented for performances and weddings. If you walked all the way to the end there were benches along a cliff overlooking the river, the bridge, and the city of Kingston on the other side of the valley. He liked sitting there and watching the
cargo boats head upstate and to Canada. The freight train that appeared once a day in the afternoon. The hawks.

  Sometimes he liked to tell me about the train he and his parents had hopped with fifty others to escape fighting during the war. His parents had convinced him that they were embarking on a great adventure. For a long time during that ride he didn’t understand that something was wrong. That the country was on fire. He peered through the slats and for the first hour saw nothing, and then he saw everything. For three days he saw and heard everything from a train car the size of four beds.

  I knew my father as someone who was reserved and shy, who was dedicated to his work and to his patients but who remained in the car when he picked me up from school, a parent who always cooked me dinner but left me alone in the kitchen to eat it. Someone who was both there and not there.

  But once in a while he would tell me a story. A story from his life. It would come unexpectedly, as though he were finishing a private thought, and I liked listening, even if it was one he had already told me because we didn’t speak very much throughout our lives, and when I was young a story felt like the two of us speaking, like he wanted me to be a part of whatever memory he had tunneled into.

  The story he shared that day as we sat on a bench facing the valley was one I had never heard. Even now I am unsure why he spoke of it in that moment at all. I remember that he was very tired from the walk, and I felt guilty for urging him to go on so that we could reach the cliff. It was selfish of me, I knew, because my daughter, Philippa, was with us, and I wanted to impress her. She was six then. Seven years earlier I had met her mother, married her, and we had lasted until a few months ago. I still called her my wife. She had moved back to Berlin, and tomorrow Philippa would go back to her. I wasn’t yet used to not seeing my daughter every day. Watching Philippa, in the high grass of the cliff, I was already missing her. And missing my wife.

  She was German and a geologist, and one Christmas I was invited to a staff party at a restaurant, because I ate at the bar every Friday, to treat myself, so they called me a regular. I work with satellites, and the restaurant was near the office, so I would go there to watch the news or a part of a movie they were playing, and then return to the computers and the data.