The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  “Farewell.”

  We said our goodbyes like that, him inside, me out. I moved the little suitcase from one hand to the other, and I entered the world.

  The car door opened, and a man who must have been my nephew jumped out and walked fast toward me.

  “Uncle!”

  First, he embraced me tightly.

  “The things you had to suffer . . .”

  “Well . . . I managed.”

  He took out a piece of tofu and shoved it into my face.

  “Eat this. Mom said you have to.”1

  “Tofu? That’s all superstition.”

  “Mom said from now on, you do what others do.”

  I understood that as her most sincere wish. The tofu was cold and unseasoned and dry; it was hard to swallow. My nephew opened the back door.

  “You can spread out in the back, maybe get some sleep.”

  I looked around the car with awe, as if I was touring a luxurious mansion. My nephew started the car and took the road in front of the prison to a highway. The highway was already lined with cars with lights on, coming and going. So many cars. He took out a small object that looked like a transistor and began talking.

  “Mom? Yes, Uncle just got out. We’re already on our way. Yes, sure, he’s fine. Yes, yes, I’ll put him on.”

  He handed me the object. I felt timid and waved it off.

  “What is that thing?”

  “It’s a cell phone. Don’t worry. It works just like a telephone.”

  I touched the thing and put it against my ear. I tried to speak.

  “Hel . . . Hello . . . ?”

  “Hyun Woo? My God, after all these years . . . how long has it been? Is this real? Are you really out?”

  “Yes, I’m in the car, on my way.”

  She was unable to talk, and began sobbing.

  “Fine . . . fine . . . soon we’ll talk as much as we want. I’ll see you at home soon.”

  “Yes, I’ll see you soon.”

  I replied evenly. My nephew turned on the radio. A young woman cheerfully introduced light instrumental music. Because my sense of space had not fully recovered yet, it tired me to look out the window.

  “It’ll take at least three hours. The road condition is bad today.”

  Through the window, snowflakes blew onto the glass, some melting away, some forming a thin white line at the bottom. As the car entered the freeway, my ears were slowly deafened by the muffled noise. I was in a deep forest and the sound of the city seemed to be coming from somewhere far away. My basic instinct, the only thing that I had in solitary confinement, was self-protection. The scenery outside the window kept changing, but I couldn’t feel the car moving or tell how fast it was going. I drifted into sleep.

  “Wake up, uncle.”

  The car had stopped. I looked around.

  “Let’s take a break at this rest stop.”

  I walked toward the rest station, already full of people traveling since dawn, trying not to be separated from my nephew.

  “May I go to the restroom?”

  My nephew turned and laughed, startled.

  “Of course you may, you’re free to do whatever you want!”

  I was not yet confident enough to navigate this large space without hesitating. Looking at me frozen to the spot, my nephew reached for my hand. After using the toilet I touched the faucet to wash up and I panicked. I had never used something that looked like this. I didn’t know what to do with the hook-like handle that jutted upward, and I realized it was not something to be easily mastered when my nephew lifted it up lightly to let the water out and then twisted it precisely to get the right temperature. Then there was this machine that dried hands without towel or paper, from which warm air gushed out if you pressed something somewhere. An hour and a half earlier, before I left prison, it never occurred to me that I would have difficulties living outside. Stepping out of the restroom, my first encounter with outside culture, I was drowning in helplessness. I didn’t know what to do with my hands and feet. My nephew saw the state I was in.

  “Sit here for a minute. You’re not hungry?”

  “I’m fine. I don’t eat breakfast, even in there.”

  “Mom has been preparing a feast for a few days. We’ll eat at home. Would you like something to drink?”

  I surveyed the people eating and drinking. I saw a young woman slowly licking a coiled ice cream cone, using the tip of her tongue.

  “I want that.”

  “What, the corn dog or the fish cake?”

  “No, ice cream.”

  My nephew came back with a cup of coffee and an ice cream cone.

  “By the way, when was the last time you had something like this?”

  “Maybe about eleven years ago?”

  “Where?”

  “A prison officer bought me one during my furlough.”

  I took the cone and, like that young woman, began licking the end of its coiled tail with the tip of my tongue. As the cream melted into cool liquid in my mouth, I saw an open window and billowing drapes printed with small flowers. The scent of acacia drifted in from outside, and honeybees buzzed by the glass window. Then came the taste of the American gum drops my mother left for us during the war while she went out to earn money. There were red, yellow, blue, purple, and green ones, but the black one, it had a scent so exotic and distinctive. What did they use to make it so fragrant? I knew that world was gone now yet I missed it all.

  The sun was coming up. The sky was frosty and opaque, but it was no longer snowing. The streetlights on the freeway went out. Only the lights on the cars coming and going were still illuminated, like the eyes of wild animals. The landscape told me we were near Seoul. As the dawn slowly emerged, I was beginning to adjust to my surroundings. I fumbled around my inside pocket and took out the wallet.

  Like a blind man fingering braille, I stroked the outside of the wallet with my fingertips, hesitating a little. Yes, my mother had been alive then. The talisman was smeared with her worries and tears. I could not get annoyed and throw it away then, but what use was a talisman to a man of science? Mothers are not logical. Maybe I was now ready to throw it away. I took out the talisman and rubbed it between my thumb and index finger, then put it back again. I knew very well there was something else, the passport photo. The photo was stuck to the wallet. I took it out with my fingertips.

  In the photo, she is not smiling. Imprisoned with me for almost twenty years, the little thing had yellowed. But she was still there, with her hair, slightly curled up at the ends, framing her face. Her hair coiled as if chemically treated but I knew it was natural. Right here, her round forehead, her almond-shaped eyes with lightly creased lids, her high cheekbones, her mouth stubbornly closed, her air of cleverness and thoughtfulness. Without realizing, I whispered to her, it’s been a while. There had been a few letters exchanged a decade ago, but all contact was blocked after I was transferred to another prison. I lost all her letters. Other than immediate family members, no visitation was allowed. Only harmless, meaningless greetings were allowed in letters, and those from acquaintances had to be returned to the authorities after reading. The photo was taken away with the wallet when I was arrested. I knew very well where this photograph had been hibernating. Whenever the weather changed, I would go to the depository to return woolen blankets or retrieve winter clothes. There were perforated aluminum panels divided into sections like a bookcase, each compartment bearing the inmate’s number like a dog tag. Sorted into each slot were the worldly possessions of the now imprisoned owner, still smudged with his life, the smells of his body. An old pair of shoes with worn heels held the dirt of unknown streets and alleys the owner had passed through. A faded jacket with traces of rice wine still visible, an eyeglass case, summer clothes threadbare like rags, woven summer sandals that were once the height of fashion, thick hiking boots, assorted hats, rings, necklaces, and watches. Frozen at the moment the owner was caught, they lay there tied with string like a dead man’s memories.

>   For a while, I held onto her letters by copying them onto a piece of paper, but even that disappeared during the search and inspection before my transfer. I still remember how the last letter ended.

  When will you join me in Kalmae? We’re still there.

  Maybe I reversed the sentences. I put her passport picture beneath my mother’s talisman and closed the wallet.

  “Uncle, we’re entering Seoul now.”

  Cars were lined up, moving and stopping. I assumed we were near the tollbooth entering Seoul. I recognized the place from the days I traveled via express buses all around the south region for the organization. The entrance seemed a bit larger than it was then. After the tollbooth, cars were crawling.

  After the Olympic Bypass, the car sped up again unlike those in the opposite lane, going to work. There was Youido district.2 Sprouting across the river was a small forest of concrete buildings. When I was a child, I could cross a dyke there and go swimming in a pool underneath the Ghost Rock every summer evening. Neither the pool nor the rock remained. The Yang Mal Hill was blasted when I was still outside. No more reed fields, no more peanut fields. I remembered the evenings I gazed at the Sam Gak Mountain colored by the sunset on the way back from fishing in that thin stream of river with my brother. From pink to red to purple, the Sam Gak and In Wang mountains changed colors and then became submerged in darkness. I sat there and watched for a long time, sitting on a warm gas pipe from the American base, until my little brother complained he was starving. Sometimes, practice planes with propellers rose from Youido Airport and flew by, shining like toys.

  My sister was living in a new development at the outskirts of town. My head swam when I looked up at the twenty-story building. I followed my nephew as closely as possible, surrounded by tall buildings in every direction. We took an elevator to the fifteenth floor, and my sister ran out as soon as he rang the doorbell. My brother-in law was standing behind her. She hugged me by the neck and burst into tears.

  “My God, you’re here in our house! Am I dreaming?”

  It had only been a year since I’d seen my sister last. After my mother’s death she had come to visit once or twice a year. Both my sister and her husband were professors, and it was difficult for them to leave Seoul unless it was a holiday or a vacation.

  Inside, my aunt and cousins were waiting for me. I didn’t feel like myself yet. Halfheartedly, I managed to break into a smile and exchange pleasantries, but their words only reverberated in my ears, and I couldn’t make out one single word properly. My brother-in-law gazed at my face and understood.

  “Tired? Go lie down and rest,” he said.

  “Without eating anything?”

  “Uncle doesn’t eat breakfast, even in there,” my nephew answered for me.

  “Is that so? Then go take a nap.”

  “I guess you didn’t sleep very well last night. Go ahead.”

  My brother-in-law gently pushed my back, and my sister took me to her son’s bedroom. She drew the curtains and quietly closed the door. The room was so much larger than what I was used to, I somehow felt afraid of the empty space next to the bed. I turned toward the wall. It was not a bare cement wall, but covered with wallpaper. The wall was one thing I was used to. In the middle of that wall, I pictured many things. I clearly remembered the stains all over the cell walls. There were stains on the ceiling, too. I used to remember my childhood, when I would lie in a field of grass by the river, looking at the clouds moving about on a summer sky, swept by wind, gathering and separating. I remembered imagining many stories based on their shapes.

  Sometimes I had wet dreams. Women I did not know appeared. One night, bright with moonlight, I was barely asleep and opened my eyes just a slit. There was a slender woman, her body wet like a fish, standing upright and looking down upon me. Where did she come from? I was wandering around the empty, winding corridors, because I wanted to leave here, this desolate place, but I always returned to a place that looked just like the first floor of the prison building. Around the staircase was a small store like those you find in train stations, where teenage girls were gathered. They were chattering and nibbling on something. None of them looked at me as I approached. A woman in her forties, perhaps the owner of the stand, was looking at me. Her face was only darkness. When I asked her where the exit was, she laughed out loud and shouted, her voice echoing through the corridor.

  Why don’t you stay here with us for a while? You wanna leave already?

  That faceless woman was probably the owner of the building. But seldom did the face of someone I knew appear. I would think of one person right before going to sleep, missing her, but I never saw her.

  I got up late in the afternoon. I tried to taste each dish they laid out in front of me, but the seasoning was too strong, unfamiliar. They were all cautious, gently probing to see whether I felt comfortable. I was not able to give them long, detailed answers, just yes or no. Is it tasty? Yes. Are you tired? No.

  I talked to my younger brother, who had immigrated to the United States. It was a long phone call, him talking about his family and his business, while I just listened. My aunt, out of the blue, wanted to talk about the possibility of my getting married soon, emphasizing that it was my mother’s dying wish to see me paired with someone suitable. I didn’t have to come up with an answer, thanks to my sister’s intervention. The first day out of prison I was in a stupor, like someone suffering from chronic fatigue. I kept seeing myself as if from a distance. When I tried to open a door, I had to tell myself, you’re about to open the door. Only then could I do it.

  For three days and nights, I stayed at my sister’s house, going back and forth between the living room and my nephew’s room. My sister and her husband decided that I needed a full physical examination after observing my odd sluggish behavior. Except for the first day, I wasn’t able to sleep for more than a couple of hours each night. When the time to rise approached, I became anxious and stood out on the terrace for a long time. Looking into a mirror in the bathroom, I found a strange man gazing back. With my nephew’s help, I went out to the neighborhood stores or to the public bathhouse, but I didn’t even think about going out the door by myself.

  They packed my underwear and toiletries. I was admitted to a university hospital. They paid for a deluxe single room with an attached bathroom. The small room was furnished with a single bed with my nametag on the headboard, two chairs, one love seat, a television, and a small refrigerator. I walked in there and thought I had returned to my prison cell. Finally I was comfortable and relieved to be alone. I followed all the rules, obeyed the nurses without question. I was an exemplary patient; I found it so easy to do as I was told and stick to the schedule, to skip a meal or take medicine or follow someone to somewhere else in the hospital. I had no major illness, doctors told me, but my eyes had deteriorated a great deal and my gums were in even worse condition. Because of gum disease that was now almost impossible to get rid of, my molars were no longer anchored in place. One doctor told me the possible causes were stress and malnutrition. A neuropsychiatrist thought I was about to have a nervous breakdown, common for those who spent years imprisoned. I would be insomniac, claustrophobic, and unwilling to talk or make physical contact with others. If I was lucky this should last only about three or four months and then the symptoms should disappear, but there was a possibility the condition would last for more than a year. I was getting old, but I did not want to lose my mind; I took the prescribed medicine every day, twice a day.

  About a week into my hospital stay, my nephew called just before lunch hour. He was in the neighborhood with his mother and asked me to join them for lunch. Without asking for permission from the nurse in charge, I changed into my own clothes and left the hospital. I walked down to the street without any incident. People passed me by and none of them seemed to stare at me.

  I came to a crossroads. Without thinking, I took the one in the middle. I was on the university campus, and the road I took was the central avenue from the main ga
te to a cluster of school buildings. I took a few steps and realized I was headed in the wrong direction, but I could not turn around. Students going to their classes clogged the street. I was a salmon swimming upstream. I bumped shoulders with them, blocked one student’s way while trying to avoid running into another. I became too conspicuous. Some kids glanced at me, others avoided me and walked around. I saw the main gate and told myself this ordeal would be over once I got there. I took one step at a time, deliberately and slowly. I became nauseous and couldn’t stop sweating. Beyond the main gate was a grand avenue full of traffic. Cars whizzed by, leaving dusty fumes behind. I thought every bus and truck was about to run over me. Holding on to a tree, I stood on the sidewalk for a while, then collapsed. My stomach was queasy and I spat onto the ground. I took a few more steps, then took a rest, counting the roadside trees one at a time. Finally, I got to a busy neighborhood full of restaurants, but I couldn’t even attempt to look for the one where I was supposed to be. I sat on the steps of an overpass and waited for my nephew to find me.

  “Uncle, what’s wrong? You’re not feeling well?”

  He came to me and reached for my hand, pulled me up.

  “Well, just a bit dizzy . . .”

  “I guess it’s still too much for you to go out.”

  We walked to the restaurant where my sister was waiting. I finally calmed down after sitting in a corner for a while.

  After lunch, it was decided that my sister would take me back to the hospital along a different path, over a quiet hill behind the hospital. My nephew, who walked so fast, strode ahead of us for a while, then came back. He looked at his mom, then turned to me.

  “I have to go back to work. I’ll see you later tonight.”

  “Sure, sure. I know you’re busy. Go ahead.”

  We walked through tall trees still holding onto a handful of dry leaves. Once in a while, a car went by slowly. The air was refreshing and cool and clean. A couple of magpies flew up and down, joyfully screaming. My sister opened her mouth.