Like Wind Against Rock: A Novel

by Nancy Kim

  January 8, 2010

  I had a dream last night that was so real that I am still uncertain if I was asleep. I was standing on the bank of a rushing river. On the other side was a figure, calling to me. The sound of the water was too loud for me to understand anything but the name she used, a name that only she and I knew. I stood on tiptoe, straining to see more clearly. Was it really her? She smiled and waved, beckoning me to join her. I wanted to swim out to her, but when I touched my toe to the water, I was too afraid of the cold, rushing current. I looked over at her, and her smile was sad. Then her features started to blur and melt away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and she disappeared.

  Why now, after so many years?

  January 16, 2010

  I write these words hoping that they will help me understand. It’s been so many years. Why does her image haunt me? Again, last night, I dreamed of the ghostly presence calling to me from the other side of the river. But why, and what does it mean? I am a married man, mostly happy, with a lovely daughter and a thriving dental practice. Other men would envy me and want nothing more, but my heart still yearns, even after fifty years. How would my life have turned out differently if I had followed my desires rather than run from my fears? I will always wonder. And so, I write to try to make sense of that time.

  I remember the day clearly. I was playing soccer in the courtyard with my friends. It was a hot day, even though it was already September and the leaves had started to fall. Still, we played like fools, running in the dirt, kicking each other in the shins more often than we managed to kick the ball. I saw my father standing in the courtyard. Next to him stood a tall white man wearing a pressed white shirt, gray slacks, and black-rimmed spectacles. He was holding the hand of a girl of about fifteen, my age. She had curly shoulder-length hair the color of wheat. A tortoiseshell barrette held it out of her face.

  I don’t remember exactly what happened next, although my mother probably called me into the house. I remember sitting on the floor in my parents’ house and worrying that my mother would scold me for sitting on the silk pillow with my sweaty bottom. Across from me sat the girl, wearing a navy-blue jumper with a white shirt. My own shirt was soiled because I had worn it for several days. She smiled at me. I was in love even before I knew her name.

  Her father was a missionary educator, meaning that he taught English but he also taught us about the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the first time I heard it pronounced that way. My mother always talked about Yesoo Christo, and it took me a while before I realized that Mr. Smith and my mother were talking about the same son of God. My mother was a newly converted Christian, and my father’s English was pretty good compared to others in the neighborhood, which I guess is why they chose to dine with us every now and then, usually on Sunday evenings. Before the girl was born, her parents had lived in Korea when it was still under Japanese rule. They spoke Korean surprisingly well for Americans. Even the girl could converse a little in the language, although with great difficulty. I could understand some English, as it was taught to us in school. We pieced together our conversations, weaving together words in Korean, words in English, until we thought we understood each other. I learned that her name was Shirley, but I can’t remember whether she herself told me or whether it was her father, or maybe my father, or maybe I just heard her father call her by this name. It is a name that I cannot say, even to this day.

  “Shoodee.”

  She looked annoyed. She held my chin between her fingers. “Say it right. Shurly. Shurrrly. Try.”

  “Shooodeeee. Shoooddeeee.” I knew the sounds were wrong as they came out of my mouth but couldn’t get them right.

  She smiled at my efforts. Her smile lit me up, like a match tossed into a pile of straw.

  January 20, 2010

  The war that aimed to unite the North and South succeeded only in hardening the division and upended the world for my parents, both of whom had relatives in the North. My mother had a sister, an aunt and uncle, and three cousins. My father had an older brother. In the years that followed the end of the war, on top of everything else, they had to reconcile themselves to the idea that they would never see these relatives again. There were stories, too. They heard that in the North, people were routinely tortured and killed. They heard that people were starving, and they had no books, no music. My parents were haunted by these stories. Even as others in our neighborhood gradually recovered from the war, my parents never did.

  Growing up, we never had enough food. I remember waiting in line to receive handouts from the American missionaries. We viewed them as our saviors, and we were grateful for what they gave us—the corned beef hash that we ate out of tin cans with our fingers and the stale bread that we gnawed at like hungry mice.

  Our house had no plumbing, so we used a hole in the ground behind the house. My parents clung to their education and their cultivation, since they didn’t have much else. My younger sister was sick with a coughing disease—it was likely tuberculosis, but there was no name for it that I can remember—and my mother was preoccupied. She must have been relieved when I was out of the house.

  My parents did not seem to mind that I spent the days with Shirley. They understood that she was different because she was the daughter of American missionaries. She was blessed by God.

  Shirley picked up Korean words easily for a foreigner, although she often stressed the wrong parts of words or emphasized the wrong syllable, so that it was difficult to understand her at first. Communicating with her took patience and effort. She was desperate for friends, but the other kids were intimidated by her wide gestures and her rough Korean, and they were unable to communicate with her in English. When she saw me on the street after our first meeting, she smiled and held out her hand. In it, she was holding an orange. I stared at her and looked nervously around, hoping that my schoolmates hadn’t seen. They would swarm around her and take all of it. I motioned for her to follow me. I led her to the back of a rundown shop where an angry dog was tied to a tree. It growled at us menacingly, but the ribs poking through its skin reassured us that it would not have the energy to break free. We crouched on the ground, and she peeled the orange. She pulled it apart and offered me half. Half! Such generosity. I would have been satisfied with one small section. I can still smell the orange and taste the juice. I was so grateful to her.

  After we ate the orange, we went for a walk. We passed another dog, this time a big shaggy one, lying underneath a large tree.

  “Why isn’t it tied?” Shirley wondered, nervous after our encounter with the first dog.

  “I know that dog. He belongs to my neighbor. He won’t run off anywhere. He is very old. My mother says that he will die soon.”

  We watched the ailing dog.

  “His legs are bleeding. Did he cut himself?”

  “No, my mother says his legs are too stiff to carry him. He gnaws on them because he thinks it will relieve the pain inside. Instead, it just makes it worse.”

  Shirley shuddered. “Poor dog. Somebody should put him out of his misery.”

  Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that an animal would be better off dead than alive and suffering.

  January 27, 2010

  Today, I returned from work with a feeling of great sadness. My wife had prepared a wonderful supper of fried tofu and mackerel. The house was clean. She was smiling brightly. Yet, her very cheeriness depressed me. The bright smile on her face deepened the lines around her eyes and showed off the yellowness of her teeth. The adoration that shone in her eyes blinded her to the disinterest in my own. She waited like an obedient dog while I washed my hands and changed my clothes. She enjoyed the meal with each bite that I took, while her own plate remained untouched.

  The meal was delicious. The mackerel was expertly poached in chige so that it was tender and moist inside and spicy and salty outside. The tofu was fried to perfection, the edges crisp, the inside silky as cream. But the deliciousness of the meal only made me more irritated. Why d
oes she spend all day cooking meals for me? So that we can chew in silence? She has nothing to offer me. No stories to tell, no wisdom to share. Only perfectly cooked fish and fried tofu. While I toil away to make a living, she shops and cleans and cooks all day, every day. It is hardly surprising, then, that she has nothing interesting to say to me when I come home. Our life together has become predictable and so dull that sometimes I want to flee. But she suspects nothing. After nearly four decades together, she is unable to decipher the clues I offer her about my unhappiness. I can only think of two explanations for her surprising lack of perceptiveness. Either she is stupid or she is fooling herself. Both explanations are unflattering to her and reinforce my belief that I made an awful mistake in selecting her to be my wife. My lifelong partner is stupid? My lifelong partner is self-deceptive? There is a third option, but it is unlikely. Perhaps she senses my unhappiness but just doesn’t care. I reject this third option, because if she truly did not care, then she would not go through the effort of fixing a delicious meal for me every night. Even tonight, she started to eat only after offering me seconds. After all these years in this country, I have never understood how my wife has remained so traditional. Even in modern Korea, the women are not so subservient to their husbands. It is as if we are living in a time capsule, only I manage to escape for hours each workday and for most of the blissful night. For it is at night when Shirley has started to visit me.

  Last night she came wearing a housedress with coverall straps. She smiled as she kissed me on the mouth. She removed her dress, slipping the denim straps off her shoulders as though they were made of silk and lace. Her body glowed with youth and vitality. Her hair glimmered like gold. I, too, was as youthful as she. We floated toward each other and consummated our desire for each other in midair. In the nonsensical manner of dreams, we were floating above a busy city street, and I could hear the sound of cars honking and people cheering below us. It started to rain. The water felt cool and cleansing. When I awoke, I was drenched in sweat. I had ejaculated in my pajama bottoms as though I were a teenager. My poor wife remained sleeping next to me, suspecting nothing.

  January 30, 2010

  Shirley comes to visit me every night. Sometimes she awakens me with a whisper. She calls the name that she gave me. It is an American name, simple and generic. John. She never wanted to use my Korean name, Il Joo, and I never made her. She remade me in her own eyes, and I happily succumbed. My new name was nondescript, a blank canvas upon which I allowed her to rewrite my identity.

  I was exotic to her, foreign, even though she was the one who was the foreigner. She would stay only for a few months. She was surrounded by those who looked like me, but I was the one who was different. I was the one who had to explain myself to her. Why did I take off my shoes inside the house? Why did I eat dried cuttlefish? Why did I not smile, even when I felt happy? We both knew that I was the one who was irregular while she was the norm, the point of reference. I had never seen anyone like her in the flesh, yet she was familiar. Her blue eyes and her big teeth and her wavy hair. Her smile was open and welcoming, hiding nothing. She was the image I had seen in magazines, in the movies. Even her name was familiar. Shoo-dee. Shirley. Like the movie star with the bouncy ringlets and the tapping feet. Like the sweet drink with the fancy candied cherry and the fizzy bubbles that sting the nose. Her image haunts me in my dreams. Wake up, John.

  I sit up, listening to the sound of her voice, which I can still hear clearly, even though my eyes are open. I turn to my wife, who doesn’t hear anything. She sleeps with a clenched face, as though she knows that she is losing me to a memory. I want to tell her not to fear, for there is nothing to lose. It is too late. I am already lost.

  February 3, 2010

  Why do I remember all of this so clearly, as though it happened just yesterday? She was the love of my life. When she kissed me, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The pleasure was so sweet that I knew I would burn in hell. Her parents visited occasionally, bringing vegetables and canned goods. Sometimes they stayed for dinner, and afterward, the grown-ups would go for a walk. Sometimes Shirley and I would join them, but as we became more familiar with each other, we declined their invitations. I wonder now whether this was craftiness on her part. Did she intend to seduce me from the start? Or did the idea unfold before her slowly as we spent more time together? Did I become more appealing to her as she got to know me?

  “Come here,” she said. “No, over here.”

  She leaned her head toward me so suddenly that I instinctively moved back.

  “Stay still.”

  I stared at her. Her eyes closed, and she pursed her lips and pressed them to mine. She frowned slightly and pulled away. She opened her mouth but not her eyes. My mouth had fallen open in surprise. She leaned toward me again. This time, I could not move. I felt her tongue against mine. I thought I would die.

  One thing is certain. I had no say in the matter. I would do whatever she asked. I would lie, steal, beg, borrow. I would betray my parents and my friends and myself.

  One thing I did not know then, but I know is true now, is that I had also betrayed my future. My future wife, my future family. My future self. The memory of her taints my existence even now. How can I say I love my wife when I know that I once loved someone much more? I can never love anyone the way I loved Shirley. Would I still love her if I saw her again?

  She is probably fat now. She is probably wide in the hips and thick in the thighs and middle. She probably has fatty arms that jiggle when she waves them. She probably wears glasses. She is probably wrinkly and wobbly. Yet I would still love her, I would still want her. I know it as certainly as I know anything.

  Do I regret anything? Would I have resisted, knowing that she would destroy all possibility for any real happiness with anyone else? That my life afterward would be only black and white, shadows and shapes without definition?

  February 6, 2010

  The memories are now more intense. This is what it means to grow old. I am more alive in my head than in my body. But back then, I lived through my body. Where was my head? Where was my head when I agreed to meet Shirley in the woods behind the school? My feet were present as they marched me to our meeting spot. My heart was present as it pounded in my chest. Perhaps that was all there was to me back then.

  The air was crisp and cold. The sky was clear. I smelled smoke from a neighbor’s fire, heard the cries of my friends as they played at the schoolyard. I walked past them, ignoring their greetings, their questions. I turned the corner, toward the woods. The leaves had turned on most of the maple trees. Pine cones littered the ground, and I kicked them as I hurried past. I saw Shirley up ahead. She was wearing her blue jumper with a white shirt. She raised one hand and waved. I ran to her.

  “Why did you ask me to meet you?” I wanted to pull her into my arms but was afraid.

  She smiled at me in her lopsided manner. She reached out to me and did what I wanted to do to her. She pulled me so close against her that I could feel her heart race.

  “Wait,” she whispered.

  I could do nothing else. She took one of my hands and placed it underneath her shirt. She kissed me on the mouth, her tongue prying apart my lips. I reached my other hand underneath her jumper.

  It began like that. Slowly, at first. Then, one day, we were not able to stop.

  I look at the characters carefully scripted onto the page. I have no business reading this. Everyone is entitled to their secrets. These are a man’s most private thoughts, his personal memories. I am convinced Alice’s father did not intend for anyone else to read this. He probably did not expect to die. He would die again if he knew his notebook was in his daughter’s possession, that it is now in the hands of a complete stranger.

  I will explain to Alice Markson that this notebook is not meant for me to read. It is not something that she herself should read. She will understand when I tell her that I do not feel comfortable, that I did not know what I was agreeing to do. Surely she hers
elf did not know what she was handing over to me. Even if she suspected that it was a personal diary, she could not have guessed what it would reveal.

  Or maybe I will tell her that I am busier than I thought, that I have no time to translate this for her. I do not want her to know that I have read even this much of it, that I have accessed her father’s most private memories. She would feel deceived and wonder why I did not stop immediately. She would be right to wonder. I should not have read even as much as I have.

  I close the notebook and slide it back into the yellow envelope, pressing down on the metal clasp to secure it. I resolve that I will return it to Alice on Tuesday.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I am trying to fall asleep, but my mind is racing with worries about giving my father’s notebook to Mr. Park yesterday. What if Mr. Park knew my father? The Korean community in this area is still relatively small and tightly knit, at least for my parents’ generation. But I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering what it says, and I’ll probably never be able to afford to pay a real translator.

  But my father’s notebook isn’t the only thing that is keeping me awake. Earlier tonight, I met Janine for dinner at El Toreador. She was unusually contemplative. The musician she picked up last weekend hadn’t called, and she saw an old boyfriend—or lover, anyway—at the post office.