SEVENTEEN EVERYONE BELIEVED she had been suffering from the flu. Sylvie tried to believe it herself. It was the same as the other times she cut herself off, no better or worse. In Seattle there would be a period every few seasons when she fell ill and she would have to gather herself into a normal, presentable state of sickness before Ames returned from his work at the synod offices. He was always tender to her, his renewed concern that she was innately sickly lining his forehead as he peered down at her while he took her temperature. She was volunteering then in various organizations run out of the church so it wasn’t such a problem to stay home for a few days, but here she had impetuously quit her habit and disrupted everything. She had not been able, for example, to come out and embrace and kiss the children the Stolzes adopted, and by this she felt doubly sickened. The three younger boys, Sang and Jin and Jung, were a boisterous, puckish threesome unrelated by blood but who always roved in a tight pack, playing pranks on their playmates and the girls and sometimes even the older boys, who’d chase them into the hills. Sylvie was the only one who was spared the odd frog in the shoe, a brigade of crickets under the bedcovers; once even Ames had found an oversized bird’s nest constructed from twigs on his classroom chair—he was nicknamed “Big Crane” by the children because of his lankiness and skinny legs. The three girls were the Kim sisters, who along with a dozen others regularly knitted with Sylvie, and each had given Ames her unfinished project to leave with Mrs. Tanner, three pairs of woolen mittens and matching caps, graduated in size. They were small enough that she could have finished all of them in the morning and sent them with Ames on his way to Seoul to deliver them before they flew out of the country, but her hands were too twitchy and she had to poke at her palms with the knitting needles to try to quell them, as she kept dropping stitches or stretching out the knitting too much. She had felt this before, though this time it wasn’t the steady, drenching enervation that laid her low but a pointed, angry sickness, her flesh and skin feeling as though they wished to pull away from her. Finally she had to give up the knitting, her nose running and her eyes hotly welling up with a relentless, involuntary flow that kept steady even after her frustration waned. Her head was sodden, as with a bad cold, but her limbs felt alternately prickly and numb and just as after the other times when she had suddenly thrown away her kit—this time tossing it, three days ago, in the fire the aunties built to heat the children’s bathwater—in a matter of a day harsh flashes of hot and cold swept through her body like vengeful weather. She was suffering because she had to suffer, because she needed to, every pincer and tremor and hard drum of craving a deserved punishment, yes, but also a reminder that she was still vital, still alive. She had little hope that she could ever bear a child and was not certain she wanted one of her own anymore, but for her husband’s sake she would endure. She could keep down only a few saltines and some sips of roasted corn tea. Ames brought these to her, insisting that she allow him to take her to the army hospital in Seoul. But she refused him, afraid the doctors would instantly recognize her ailment. I’ll be myself again in a couple of days, she told him, though she was fearful who myself might be this time when the sickness finally lifted; after the previous quitting, it felt as though her soul had been worn down by half, and by now the math was surely pitched against her. She didn’t believe he knew. But whether he did or not didn’t matter: this was the very last time, she was done with this ugliness, and when they returned to the States she would devote herself as never before to the work of his next ministry, which had been rearranged by Ames to be not in Seattle as planned but in southeastern Washington, outside of Spokane, where both of them knew there would be nothing around them but boundless fields of alfalfa and barley. She stayed in the cottage, seeing no one but Ames. She didn’t have to ask him why June was not appearing for her chores; the other morning the sharp tone of his voice had reached into her wracked sleep, June’s soft, flat murmurs echoing there as well, and when she arose she could see in his face that it would only make things impossible if she brought up anything about June. He was furious with the girl. There was not even two weeks remaining in their time here were and though she felt utterly wasted, she would somehow convince Ames that they must take her. But each time she tried to talk about June when he brought her tea or mentholated compresses for her neck, an easy reason to defer presented itself—he’d earnestly ask about where she was in her monthly cycle, or he’d simply tell her, as he did this morning, that he loved her, the locks at his temples appearing grayer than ever, his cheekbones jutting and sharp from his constant traveling, and all she could do was think again of his irreproachable character, how he had never sought anything but good for her and for everyone else, that he was just as fair and constant a man as he’d been every other day of his life. But look at you, she said to herself now, peering into a hand mirror to check the condition of her neck, which was tormenting her with its itchiness, the skin now scratched raw and almost bleeding. Look at this Sylvie Binet, with two bloodshot horrors for eyes, the fever-matted hair, the ghoulish pallor that would certainly frighten the younger children. But she wondered if she wanted to be cured. Ames once said that although an awful thing happened to her in youth she had pulled herself far past it, but in truth she wondered if she would ever possess the necessary strength. She often felt a great part of her had been fixed in time, that despite appearances she had been simply stuck in place, never quite getting anywhere. Maybe that’s why the children liked her; it wasn’t her bright, golden hair or even her obvious adoration of them but their instinctive sense that she was as vulnerable as they, as desperately keen for a lasting bond. That she had never quite grown up. She remembered her father telling her in Manchuria how this world was littered with those cut off in mid-bloom, all this wasted beauty and grace, and that it was their humble task to gather as many as they could and replant them. It didn’t matter that they were stomped and torn. That the soil was rocky and poor. She must be the sun and rain. As long as she kept vigilant, as long as they never gave up, the blooms could thrive again. She was sure this was true of the children. But what of a person like her? Could one ever reroot her own long-trampled self? Or would you in perpetuity need someone to pick you up at certain intervals, pluck you from the slow rot of your being? It was a good thing that people buried themselves in mostly shallow graves. If she thought about her adult life, it was an existence of constant exertion and work, but also one marked serially by the compulsion to yield. And however miserable and dissolute she ended up, however wretched in that suspension of utter fall or erasure, there was an undeniable seam of what must be gratitude, too, a kind of relief in finding yet another path to giving herself over. Hector was still angry with her. By the time Ames announced the news of their departure last week they had already ceased their trysts—during Ames’s last absence she had not shown up at Hector’s door—and he had stopped speaking to her as well, avoiding her, steering himself away from wherever she was and taking his steel pail full of tools to do some job or task in another part of the compound. After lights-out he had begun to head into Itaewon again, and if it showed in the clouds darkly shading his brow, in his unruly, unshorn hair that made him look even younger than he was, like a gruff teen, there was no change in his habit of working all through the day. He was almost out of work to do. She was not afraid that he would confront Ames, or tell him about them. Hector was the least of talkers. The nights they had spent together they hardly spoke, and at the end of only the second night he had told her, unprompted, that they shouldn’t have an affair. She didn’t know if that meant she shouldn’t come visit again. Yet it had been an affair to her, for it wasn’t only the carnality she craved (which was as sharpened, as ardent, as she had ever known), but even more the easeful, inertial pull of the hours together afterward, as if they were floating on some quiet water instead of a bed. He’d drink his liquor and she’d bind her arm or thigh and soon they dissolved into each other in the tight well of his cot until she felt them become the pool itself, she
dding all their mortal properties. It was a feeling akin to when she was a child and slept between her parents in a stifling hut in West Africa and the heat of their three bodies put her in a near-trance of fever that let her hear their blood coursing together like a wide, whispering river. In her dreams she became that bloody river running out far past the land and into the sea. For what had she witnessed daily from her earliest memory of their missions but the fragility of the body, every needless face of sickness and hunger, of merciless injury and death? Even then she imagined how she could make it so that the people they lived among could change form in waking life as she did in her sleep, somehow live without this living, and it was when she helped relieve Reverend Lum of his terrible pain that she saw a first kind way. But she was at the end of her own ruinous clemency. She had to release herself. She must cease. When Ames left on his last brief overnight she found herself again at Hector’s door after midnight and saw the weak yellow lamplight through the slats and was about to push inside when she saw herself in the clutch of her kit and her hand began to shake, both in anticipation and in dread. The tremors subsided but then a hard knob rose in her chest and she could barely breathe; she had to walk back to her cottage by propping herself against the exterior walls of the dormitory, and once inside she dropped hard on her knees to the floor. The next day after the midday meal Hector caught up with her in the kitchen and asked where she’d been and although the aunties spoke no English anyone could tell he was confused and hurt. She turned away from him and he trailed her across the yard and in an odd reaction that only drew more unwanted attention she broke and half-ran, feeling a tightness in her chest. He followed her to her cottage and without knocking stepped right inside and embraced her. His smell was gamey and sharp. She asked him please to go but he kissed her and she couldn’t help but kiss him as well but the door had drifted back open to the sight of some children in the central yard, paused in their games, and she panicked and pushed up hard at him. Her hand glanced him on the cheek, but he shrank from her as if she had smashed his face. He bolted from the cottage just as the sedan transporting Ames from his overnight drove through the gate. She couldn’t tell if Ames had seen him leaving. It was only several evenings later that Ames asked if there had been something amiss or in need of fixing in the cottage, not mentioning Hector at all, and when she told him there wasn’t he nodded and didn’t pursue it. Later Ames came into her bed and wanted to make love and she must have surprised him with her intensity for he was as physical with her as he had ever been, so lost in the moment that he was unaware of his hand pressing her throat, nearly to the point of her losing consciousness. Yet she had not resisted him in the slightest. He seemed to know that he could do whatever he wished to her, that she would give herself over to any extent, and in the veil of perfect darkness he was not so much a man as a fury, this starved force that sought out every peccant part of her. He fell asleep half atop her in the single bed and by morning the one side of her was numb. He dressed quickly for the day and kissed her but wouldn’t meet her gaze; it was always like this after their lovemaking, from the very beginning, a pale light of shame in his eyes. Perhaps it had nothing to do with her but this time she felt the depth of all her lies. As if he sensed something awry Ames embraced her, and she held on to him. What would she be, without him? That afternoon, while he took the children on a hike, she removed her kit from its hiding place in the trunk beneath her bed and threw it in the fire, aware of the miserable hours ahead of her but knowing that they would be so for the very last time. Ames now returned from breakfast with a bowl of beef broth for her. It was milky white, made as it was in the Korean style, shin-bones completely boiled down. She didn’t want it but he asked her to try some and she took a sip and then another, the soup dense and rich and salty. Her stomach felt calm and she sipped some more. But then something seized and turned and spit up in the washbasin next to her bed. Ames braced her as she gagged. She wiped her mouth, her burning eyes. “I shouldn’t go tomorrow,” he said. “You’re not getting better.” He was scheduled to go on his final trip to visit two recently opened orphanages along the eastern coastline. It was a slow journey on the poor roads across the coastal mountain range and down along the peninsula, three full days to go out and return. “I’ll be okay.” “I don’t see how,” he said. “You look as if you’re dying.” “I’m not dying.” He looked down at his hands. “Do you want me to go?” “Of course not,” she said. “We have so little time left. No one wants you to leave. The children as much as I.” “I can have Reverend Kim go in my place.” “Do you truly think he can? Do you think he knows yet how an orphanage ought to be run?” Ames didn’t answer. “Sometimes I wonder if he knows much besides conducting the liturgy.” “And how to eat,” she said. “He’s a champion eater, isn’t he!” They laughed easily, the first time in a long while. Ames said: “He’s a good man, though. He’s smart, if a bit dreamy. He’ll learn.” “I hope so,” she said. “But sometimes I worry. He never spends any extra time with the children. He has no natural feeling for how to be with them.” “Perhaps sending him now would do him some good. Force him to connect.” “That would be fine if we weren’t leaving, and you could go visit. But this is your last chance. Why should those children have to lose the benefit of your being there? Just because I’m not feeling well? I don’t want you to have to go anywhere, but should you take a chance with their welfare because you’re worried about me? I’d only feel worse, knowing they would be shortchanged.” “I wish that you could come with me.” “I will if you want.” “How can you? Look at you. You have no strength. Besides, if you did come we’d be leaving Reverend Kim in charge.” “The aunties and the children can handle him.” “But of course Hector would be here.” She would have wished for Ames not to say his name. But he went on: “You know, I’ve been thinking it might be best if he could stay around. I mean after we’ve gone. I know I’ve told him otherwise. But now I think I was wrong. Hector still doesn’t seem to know it, or perhaps he knows and doesn’t care, but he’s good for the children, in his own way.” She nodded but was silent. “I was thinking that perhaps it’s not so terrible, to have an adult around who’s not telling them what to do all day. Who’s not a preacher. I think I’ve been too strident about what I expect of them. Sometimes I think I’m not seeing who they are. They’re children, yes. But they’re not innocents, and maybe it’s not the worst thing to have someone like Hector around, who is obviously not so certain of his future. Who clearly struggles. But he works as hard as anyone I’ve ever seen and I know the children recognize that, too, and I wonder if that’s not better for them than any sermon from me.” “You’ve only done wonders for them. Here and at all the other orphanages. No one could say anything otherwise. They love you.” He clasped her cheek. “I have to teach now. Will you be all right?” “I’ll be fine.” “I’ll bring you something again at lunch.” “Please don’t,” she said. “I can make myself tea. That’s all I need.” “All right. Will you do something for me, dear?” “Yes, of course.” “I was hoping that you would speak to Hector. When you’re feeling better, I mean.” “What about?” “I’d like you to ask him to remain here, after we’re gone. I doubt my asking him would do any good. Don’t you think it would be best if he stayed on? I don’t know how I or Reverend Kim will find someone else who would know to do all the necessary things, before and after the winter comes. I think only you have any chance of convincing him.” “He won’t listen to me.” “Why not? He’s always thought so highly of you. Am I wrong?” “We haven’t spoken very much of late.” “I have noticed that,” he said, his wire spectacles still in his hand. The late-morning sun was streaming in from the window and brightly lighted the side of his face. He looked tired himself, worn down, and then oddly childlike, his sky-blue eyes appearing immense against the tight, drawn skin of his brow. “Did something happen?” he muttered, looking down at his spectacles. “Did he offend you in some way?” “No.” “Then what is it?” He waited, but she didn’t answer. Finally h
e pulled on his eyeglasses. She was sure he was going to say something difficult now, something irreparable and lasting, but he paused in mid-breath, literally swallowing the words. He reached for her then, and she shut her eyes, a flinch tensing her neck, but all she felt was his tender stroking of her hair. “You should rest now,” he said, his own voice weary. He got up and put on his black suit jacket. “I’ll be back after lunch, to look in on you.” “I’ll pack for you.” “Just rest. I’ll do it. This is as good a time to learn as any. Because you were sick I had to help the three boys gather their things. We ended up simply stuffing what we could in each of their satchels. Nothing stayed folded. Jung wanted to bring his collection of rocks, Jin his live beetles. It was such a mess that Mrs. Stolz had to take everything out and start again, and I must admit I felt completely useless. You’ve spoiled me.” “I’m the one who’s spoiled,” she said. He leaned down and kissed her. “When I get back, I think we should tend to each other as much as we can. And do so right up to the time we settle down again in Spokane. Can we do that, dear? Can we promise each other?” “Yes.” They kissed and embraced again, but before he could leave she said, “I’ll talk to him, Ames. I’ll try.” He nodded from the bedroom doorway. “I won’t expect that you can change his mind. I won’t expect anything.” She was asleep when Ames departed the next morning, the driver from the church office in Seoul picking him up before dawn. She must have woken just as the sedan headed out beneath the arched gate and down the hill; in her dreams she heard the squeals of children but it must have been the car brakes and she had quickly risen but by the time she opened the front door of the cottage there was nothing in the frigid air except the lean, sweet perfume of motor exhaust. When it dissipated she felt even colder in her nightgown, the buildings about her barely discernible in the dim, rising light. Ribbed batons of clouds underpinned the sky. They would blow away soon. Ames had told her he wouldn’t rouse her and yet she still felt as if she had been abandoned. He had gone not a kilometer and she felt the loneliness already. Her body wasn’t frantic anymore but now felt instead like a forlorn hive, every chamber of her desiccated and empty. As if she were made of a thousand tiny tombs. Of course it was having been left now to her own devices that was most disturbing, making her wish that it was mid-morning already, with the Reverend Kim long arrived, the children bolting about with the aunties keeping after them, the pitch and shout of the day careening them all forward. She needed time to speed up. But there was no sound or light or movement, and rather than just turn back in and shut the door, she stepped in her bare feet onto the chilly ground. The shock of it made her gasp. But her mind was finally clearing and the cold air was bracing her and she didn’t want to sleep anymore despite her physical exhaustion, for she was sick of sleep, and she stepped forth in the darkness toward the dormitory, her thoughts alighting on the children. She wiped her feet on the towels the aunties placed before each of the three inner doors in the small vestibule; the doors led to separate dorm rooms, one side for the boys and the other for the girls. The one in the middle led to the chapel Hector had built. The vestibule itself was filled with their shoes, which because they were donated were of an unusually wide variety, sneakers and sandals and dress shoes and boots. Her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, everything made stony-looking in the weak blue light. And though she wanted now to peer in on June, missing the sight of her pretty, round face, a face so much more placid than her soul, she could not bear to speak anything of the coming days. For what could she have said to the girl? How could she ever console her? With the fact that she and Ames were not going to take any children at all? That she was finally as unfit to be a mother as she had been a wife, and even a mistress? That she was a bleeding heart and a coward, a person unfit, it turned out, to be herself? Their departure was imminent and Ames had not mentioned the subject of adoption and she could not breathe a word of question. As far as she knew, the arrangements they made on arriving in Korea to adopt some to-be-determined number of children had not yet been canceled. But it was no matter; Reverend Kim had confirmed as much the other day, when he gave Ames an envelope with the tickets for the first flight to Japan. There were just two, as Ames had specified. They had always assumed that they would take four with them, or five, or ten, as many as they could. But now they would return childless, which, she could now begin to see, perhaps as Ames had already seen, was a mercy for all. She slipped into the boys’ room. She had ventured into both rooms before on certain restless nights, the sight of slumbering children a calming medicine. Here, as in the girls’, they slept in rows broken in the center by a large potbellied coal stove that the children took turns feeding through the night. There was no central heating and in the heart of winter it was important to keep it hot because there was no insulation in these walls, but this time of year it didn’t matter so much and the stove was now barely warm to the touch. The air was heavy and dampened with the smell of their bodies, and of sleep, and at this preadolescent stage it was much the same scent as in the girls’ room and though Sylvie could see how it might be off-putting or unpleasant she didn’t mind the sour fatness of the smell, in fact half-adored it, like day-old cake. She was tempted to lie down for a moment in one of the three newly empty beds. Their sleep was hard, so deep as to appear almost deathly, though one of the older ones looked as if he were being beset by awful dreams, his face pinched up like an infant’s, his fists guarding his head. “Mrs. Tanner?” said a voice behind her. It was Min, leaned up on an elbow in his cot. Despite what had happened to his foot he had remained the target of pranks by the three boys who were adopted by the Stolzes. He was the only boy who used to come to the knitting group; he told her he wanted to make a present of scarves for whoever eventually adopted him. The boys kept teasing him and he stopped coming before he could finish, and Sylvie had had to complete the second one for him. But the teasing had still continued, particularly by the just-departed trio. Once she’d had to wash his hair, which was full of ants, as they’d dribbled some syrup in the lining of his cap. Hector made the boys help him shovel out the latrines as punishment. “You are okay, Mrs. Tanner?” “I’m checking the fire,” she whispered. “I’m sorry to wake you. Please go back to sleep.” “I am not sleeping,” he whispered back. “You are cold?” “I’m fine.” She crouched down beside him, covering her chest and knees with her arms. She realized she wasn’t even wearing a robe over her thin nightgown, that her hair was an unruly, matted mess. It had been nearly a week since she had bathed. “Are you cold?” He shook his head. She cupped his cheek but he wouldn’t lie down again, his face full of concern. He said, “You are sick, still?” “Not so much anymore. I feel better.” “I am happy,” he said. “I am waiting for you yesterday.” “What for?” He swung out his legs and quickly ducked beneath the cot and tugged out a canvas bag. From it he pulled two neatly folded scarves, both camel-colored, and handed them to her. “For you and Reverend.” “Oh, no,” she said. She tried to give them back but he immediately understood her fear of their implication and so he insisted, if somehow confusingly, “Not for me. Not Min.” There was stirring, and murmurs from some boys nearby, and Sylvie took one of his blankets from the cot and led him out of the room. It was cold in the vestibule and she wrapped him in the stiff woolen throw, then wound one of the scarves about his neck. She tried to hand him back the other but he pushed away her hands. “You must keep it, Min. Please. They’ll be wonderful presents, just as you intended.” She paused, carefully measuring his eyes. “Whoever is lucky enough to become your parents will cherish them.” “No.” “Please. This scarf can’t be for me.” “I am not needing them anymore,” he said. “I am staying.” “For the moment, yes, but not forever. The children who just left, you’ll be leaving someday just as they did.” “You and Reverend are leaving first.” “Yes.” “I know you must go.” “Yes.” “I wish they are staying,” he said. “The other children?” He nodded. “Even the boys who left?” “Yes.” “Truly? They were not always the kindest. Especially to you. Thi
ngs will be better now. No more surprises.” “I don’t care about that,” he said, with a perfect equanimity. “I wish they are not happy. I wish they are here.” She didn’t know what else to say. He held out the scarf to her and she took it; she wrapped it around her neck. She bent down and hugged him and kissed him on the crown of his head and he suddenly clung to her, his bony little arms strong enough to press painfully against the back of her neck. It surprised her, how much it hurt, like something would fracture, even snap: chalk against chalk. But she didn’t steel a grain of herself, or try to shed him, letting him clamp her with all his might. She lifted up but he wouldn’t let go and he was hardly anything, or else everything; like every child here he was an immeasurable mass, and she cradled him for what seemed a very long time, waiting him out until he was drained of all force. His shoulders sank and then his head lolled on her, like he was suddenly asleep, like he was lifeless, or wanted to be, but when she turned to carry him back inside, gathering the end of his blanket in her free hand so they wouldn’t trip, a flash of pale in the darkened vestibule caught her eye. A hand or half-hidden face. She expected the sharpest glare. But glancing at the girls’ door, she saw there was nothing there, it was fully shut, and she took Min inside and settled him into his cot. “I’ll keep this for now,” she whispered, tucking the blanket beneath his chin. “Present.” “But I’m going to give it back to you.” To this he shut his eyes. “Okay? Before we leave. Please promise me.” But the boy pinched his eyes tighter, and then slipped beneath the covers, making his wafer of a body disappear in the well of the cot. THE REST OF THAT DAY was the coldest of the year yet. At most forty degrees Fahrenheit. Despite the open skies and the clarifying brilliance of the unimpeded sunlight it seemed only to grow colder as the hours progressed, winds from the north racing intermittently through the compound. In danger of dispersal were the fallen leaves and pine needles all the children had gathered just yesterday into several large piles that were to be collected and composted for the gardening next spring. Reverend Kim, who had arrived mid-morning and given the lunch prayer with Sylvie standing tall beside him with a new woolen scarf banding her throat, idly paged through a newspaper inside the main classroom while everyone else tried to sweep and rake them now into a central, mountainous pile. There were no classes this Saturday, with Reverend Tanner gone. But as if the winds had some deep objection to their efforts, each time they came close to clearing the ground once again a fierce gust would shoot across and instantly erode the top third of the new pile. The winds died down and they raked quickly, but another hard gust blew through and made a sail of the thin canvas tarp with which they were trying to blanket the pile, the muslin-colored sheet kiting wildly up in the air. It ended up festooning the peak of a short, lone pine at the far edge of the field. In frustration one of the boys gave a feral, guttural shout and ran and dove headfirst into the still-huge pile. He went in practically to his calves. Hector, who had been directing the work silently and joylessly, stepped forward to pull him out, but perhaps on seeing the boy’s feet waving comically, and the children cheering him on, he relented and dropped his rake and let himself fall as stiffly and heavily as a dead man, hands at his sides. The children shouted with joy. A boy followed, next two of the girls, and soon the rest of them were jumping in, paddling and writhing in the crinkly mass of leaves. Soon even June wanted to take a turn and after waiting for the others to clear out set her feet for the run. There was no cheering as with the others. But Sylvie clapped for her and June sprinted, sliding headfirst into the dispersed pile, which at that point was barely knee-high. When she got up, the knees of her trousers were scuffed reddish from the ground. Her face was tight with a strained smile, and as the others began collecting the scattered leaves to rebuild the pile she drifted away with her arms crossed, her hands tucked tightly in her armpits. Hector tried to see if she was okay but she kept them hidden and walked off. Sylvie caught up with her as she headed toward the dormitory. “June? Are you all right? Look at your poor trousers.” There were dirt-smudged rips in the fabric and Sylvie knelt and brushed them off. “Are you hurt?” Sylvie lifted her pant cuff but June drew her leg away, and it was then that Sylvie saw the condition of her hands. They were torn and bleeding, tiny black pebbles embedded in the fat part of one of her palms, a triangular flap of skin on the other roughly peeled back, exposing raw tissue. “Oh goodness, June! We have to wash and bandage you.” “I am okay.” “No, you’re not.” “I will take care of myself,” June said, pulling back her hands. She sounded not so righteous as strangely overexcited, as though she had eaten an entire box of sweets or been given the wrong medicine. “Please, Mrs. Tanner, I do not want to bother you!” “You’re not bothering me, June. You never have.” “Please, I am fine,” she said, and before Sylvie could do anything else she ran off, sprinting behind the dormitory. Sylvie followed her but by the time she rounded the far end of the building the girl had disappeared. At the head of the path that led through the thick underbrush of the foothills Sylvie stopped to listen for movement. There were no sounds except for the threshing by the breeze of the tall, dry grasses and spiky weeds. And yet she suspected that June was still there, just as earlier, when she was with Min in the dormitory vestibule. Back in the yard, the children and Hector were beginning to re-gather the leaves onto the tarps so they could be dragged to the compost pile near the gardens. Sylvie felt strong enough to help them, and once she began sweeping she was glad for the exertion and the closeness to the children. Her heart suddenly heaved with the realization of the time she had wasted: four days spent inside the cottage, and now there were only ten more before they would depart. Min worked near her, gathering errant leaves with a rustic hand broom made of bound twigs. He was obviously pleased to see that she was wearing his scarf but didn’t point it out or say anything. He was a mindful boy. His small stature was painfully obvious now that he stood among others his age, and when they momentarily crossed paths she couldn’t help but quickly press his oversized head to her coat. A broad smile lighted his face. Several girls then joined them and they worked together and soon the rest of them spanned the width of the makeshift field, everyone sweeping and raking in a single row, making one another brush faster, if mostly in the spirit of play. Hector worked at the far end of the line, his back to her. If he had been in a good humor when they were all jumping in the pile he had all but shed it now. His wide shoulders pivoted powerfully as he raked, the reddish dust kicking up in low billows about him, the sound of his tines rasping loudly against the hard ground. His strong, steady rhythm was easily distinguishable from the rest. She could almost feel his scouring through her feet. He hadn’t spoken a word to her yet and although she was thankful he was keeping his distance she wondered if he could sense her attention. She was trying not to look at him but the sight of even his heavily clothed form after nearly a week of not seeing him kept drawing her eye. It was not so much a desire to be with him or to touch him that made her glance but her own wonder at how willfully she had forgotten his shape, which was so unlike Ames’s, and frankly her own, his body completely un-angular, blockish, as if he were made of sections of trunks cut from various-sized trees. Even his fingers about the rake handle had the property of a certain primary thickness, while all her life she felt herself as being composed of only the thinnest reaching branches, third- and fourth-order limbs. She knew with Hector her feelings were base and wrong and in every way contemptible, but there was the truth that she desired his form, the magnificence of which he was completely unaware. She hadn’t ceased to feel its density, the uniform heft of his flesh when she drew him into her and she rowed them, he the heaviest oar. She had always tried to make herself invulnerable to beauty, her parents acclaiming only the sublimity of deeds, of selfless effort. The beautiful work. The last person who had so arrested her breath was Benjamin Li, whose outward beauty had been completely unlike Hector’s but had infiltrated her all the same, this beauty that was disrupted beneath the surface, veiling some errancy or even wreckage. T
he leaf pile had again grown mountainous and Hector told a few older boys to grab hold of a corner of the tarp, while he took another. They pulled together but their corner didn’t budge and the boys lost their footing and fell down. The children cackled wildly. When they were ready again Hector counted to three and they pulled in unison; the pile began to move, Hector gripping the forward corner of the tarp, and when it looked as though the boys would falter, some of the others, including Sylvie, took hold of the lead sides. Several children stood between her and Hector. He glanced at her bloodlessly but her gaze didn’t waver and he had to look away. She could not give in to him now, let him keep shunning her, for these few days Ames was gone would be the last chance they might freely speak. She had not lied to Ames about wanting him to stay or about how much the children at the newer orphanages would benefit from his visiting, but it wouldn’t be untruthful at all to say that she had hoped for this chance. Hector counted again and all together they dragged the pile about fifty meters, to the spot near the garden where they collected the compost. Once there, Hector went around to the other side of the pile and then waded through it while pulling the tarp in his hands, crouching and using his weight for leverage to flip the huge load over onto itself; for an instant it completely covered him before he stepped out, his hair and clothes tagged with pine needles and leaves as though he were a wild creature of the woods. The children brushed him off and after a moment’s hesitation he stretched out his arms and even bent down so they could reach his head, letting them pick him clean. Since the field was cleared, and with no other work for the day, the older children organized their usual afternoon soccer match, the younger ones playing jacks with stones or running about in games of tag. Reverend Kim had not yet come out from the dining hall and would probably remain there until supper, after which he would drive back to Seoul. Hector was now gathering the various brooms and rakes, and when he knelt for a hand broom, the high raft of the tools he was balancing on his shoulder nearly toppled and Sylvie stepped forth quickly and picked it up. She neither moved nor handed it over and without speaking he walked to the garden shed where he kept the tools. He came out and went right past her and she watched him transfer a load of firewood to a wheelbarrow and push it to the main dormitory building; he was replenishing the fuel for the woodstoves in the dorm rooms and the chapel. She waited until he was inside and then made her way over. He was coming back out for more when he saw that she had an armful for him. He took it and went inside the vestibule. “You’re not going to talk to me anymore?” she said. He didn’t answer and she followed him into the chapel, where he deposited the wood next to the stove in the far corner. He was responsible for preparing the stove in the chapel for services, though now because of the cold weather he was lighting and extinguishing it nightly as well. The chapel was aglow with light from the small window he’d put in the roof, the gray-painted pews, the gray-painted walls, the plain wooden cross suspended by wires attached to the backs of its arms. “Is that it, then, Hector? Is that all?” He said to her: “You’re leaving the day after Thanksgiving.” “Yes.” “Maybe you ought to go the day before.” “Why do you say that?” “This way we’ll all know the blessing we’re missing when we’re giving thanks.” “Please don’t be cruel.” “I’m not being cruel. I’m just saying it like it is.” “You know I don’t want to leave.” “I don’t know that,” he said, his voice rising. “How would I know that?” “You do,” she told him. “Then you can stay.” “I want to, yes. But if I did, what would happen? Do you think anything good would come of it? Do you think we could work together like simple colleagues?” “You mean like you are with your husband?” “Please don’t be like that. Don’t act like a boy.” “Isn’t that what you want?” “Please stop.” “Isn’t that why we were together? Because you wanted someone you didn’t have to be righteous and responsible with, and who gave you a good screw besides?” “Fuck you.” She turned to leave but he caught her by the wrist and pulled her in and tried to kiss her and she turned away, covering her face. He persisted and she slapped him. But he held on to her anyway, not even flinching when she raised her hand again. She tried to wrench away, but his grip on her was fierce, unbreakable, as though she were manacled to a rock wall. “You’ve taken pity on all of us, haven’t you?” he said, tugging her closer. “I’m talking to you now! I want you to listen to me now! Before you came this place was no better or worse than any other orphanage in this damned country. Which was just fine for the kids and the aunties, and even for me. There’s enough food and a roof and no more killing, and so what else is there to want? But you’re leaving, and what do we have now? You know what I found one of your girls doing after your husband announced you were leaving?” “Just let me go—” “It was Mee-Sun. She was at the well pump, drinking water straight from it like she was dying of thirst. I passed her twice before I noticed she wasn’t stopping. She was just drinking and drinking, getting her sweater soaked, and I had to pull her off it. I thought she was going to drown herself. I asked her what the hell she was doing, and she said she felt funny inside, because you weren’t going to be here anymore. For some reason she felt like she was hungry again. She said she used to do it during the war, so she wouldn’t feel so empty inside.” “What would you have me do? Don’t you think I want to take every one of them?” “Then take them!” he said, grabbing her other wrist. She resisted him and he pushed her against the shed wall with enough force that for a moment she thought he might hurt her. And if he did she wouldn’t care. She wouldn’t fight. “Did you think you could come and go so easily? Is this what happens in that precious book of yours? I want to know. I thought it was about showing mercy to the helpless, to the innocent. But I think that book of yours is worthless. In fact, it’s worse than that. It’s a lie. It’s changed nothing and never will. That battle he describes, when did that happen?” “A long time ago.” “How long?” “Almost a hundred years.” “A hundred years! How many people got slaughtered in that time? Got ground up to nothing? How many went up in smoke? I’m not even counting us leftovers. But you, you do your part, don’t you? You offer us hope and goodness and love. You’re indispensable. But no one can help you. Isn’t that right?” “No.” “So you have to help yourself. Finally I know why. I’ve figured it out. Because you know in your heart that once you’ve come here you can’t give up anyone. Because when you do, you leave every last one of us.” He let go of her then but she held on to him, afraid all at once of his absence, of being left alone, and though she turned her face away, he pulled off her knit cap and tightly clasped her hair and kissed her roughly on the face. Then he kissed her mouth and she turned but he held himself against her and when her own mouth softened all of his fury seemed to find her, his hands running over her as if she were difficult clay and he was desperate to remake her. But there was no need. She pulled him against her on the wall and she kept her mouth on his while his hand pressed her from beneath, rocking her, anchoring her on its hard seat, and after the days of unwinding wretchedness her body came wholly awake, alive. She didn’t wish it but it was true. She was cured.
Chang-rae Lee Page 17