The tranquility in Kalmae had been shattered. The rainy season was over, the mosquitoes in the bamboo forest became fat, and everywhere things grew tired and dark green. Yoon Hee’s school was on vacation, so she no longer went there. We spent most of the time in our house, only going out when it was absolutely necessary. We did not want to be seen by anyone. But during that July there was something that Yoon Hee and I had to accomplish.
On the first day of vacation she was crouching in the kitchen, stretching a canvas. I was moving about in the room, pacing, then lying, then sitting, then reading, all without meaningful intention.
“Why are you making so much noise so early in the morning?” I asked Yoon Hee.
“I’m making my frame.”
She always referred to her canvas as her frame.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to paint.”
I did not probe further, as I normally would, but rather left her alone. Yoon Hee did not explain either; she simply stretched the canvas cloth over a wooden frame and nailed it. She studied it to make sure the cloth was taut. Afterward she turned to me.
“Can you help me?”
I thought she wanted me to lift something heavy or put the canvas somewhere high up, so I jumped up and went to the kitchen. Yoon Hee picked up a small chair and placed it in front of me.
“Sit there.”
Without knowing why, I perched on top of the chair. Yoon Hee came toward me. Without saying anything, she turned my body sideways toward the window, then turned my head toward her.
“What are you doing?” I asked, embarrassed.
“I want to paint you,” she replied calmly. “So that you can remain in that frame for a long time.”
I grinned.
“Well, that’s unnecessary . . .”
Yoon Hee glared at me with unforgiving eyes.
“Unnecessary?”
She began to squeeze oil paints onto her palette.
“Hyun Woo, you’ve already left this place. I want to keep you here in the painting.”
I knew she was not joking around, so I closed my mouth. Yoon Hee did not say much after that. She picked up her brush and began painting. I thought perhaps she was doing an outline, sometimes narrowing her eyes to gauge the light and shadow, but she never stopped moving her brush, continuously looking back and forth between the canvas and me. She did not stop when she spoke again.
“It shouldn’t take long. You’re not going anywhere until the summer vacation is over.”
I could not tell if she was talking about her painting or our life together. A little angry, I shot back, “I’m leaving this place before summer is over. I do not want to inconvenience anyone.”
Yoon Hee stopped painting.
“I can barely capture your shadow now. I cannot paint your face without looking at it, not yet. Maybe I won’t be able to finish painting you before the end of the summer.”
“Can I move?”
“As long as you keep the same basic posture, it’s okay. But your thoughts should remain in the same place.”
“What thoughts?”
She stopped painting again. This time, she held up the brush and narrowed her eyes, measuring the distance between us. I felt a little tired and powerless, but I stared back at her sharp gaze, poised on the tip of her brush.
“Just think about this place, nothing else,” Yoon Hee mumbled as she began painting again. There were times when she had sketched my likeness in her sketchbook with charcoals or crayons. She was not satisfied with any of the drawings. If you are an artist, I guess the most basic skill is to depict the likeness of a person as closely as possible. Some of her sketches did indeed look like me, capturing what I considered to be the distinctive features I saw in pictures or reflected in mirrors. But most of them looked a little different from me. At first, I pointed out the ones I thought were a faithful depiction of my likeness and told her that I liked them, but Yoon Hee felt the opposite. She said she did not like them for that very reason.
“A person’s face is not an object like a kettle or a glass or an apple. A face is an expression. It is a vessel projecting one’s heart. The artist should be able to see that. Moreover, we’re together all the time. Who knows?” Yoon Hee mumbled as she kept painting. “Maybe I’ll finish it after you’re gone.”
In an instant, I thought of the past few months, the peaceful days when nothing happened, yet much did, the clear recollection of the little things that happen in everyday life. I thought of the sense of spring’s arrival, and the deepening of that season as it enriched the land around us. I thought of the rain and the wind and the thunder, the sound of birds and water, the laundry and fishing spot we found, the pool and the fish and the smell of water plants.
“It’s like you’re pushing me away.” Yoon Hee kept moving her hand and then uttered in an indifferent voice, “I saw the newspaper.”
When we first began living in Kalmae, we had agreed that there was no reason to bring in the outside world. I listened to the radio news once in a while, but we decided not to subscribe to newspapers. Above all, we did not want someone to visit us regularly to deliver them. At first I felt a little uneasy, but soon I got used to it. Listening to the radio became a cumbersome and burdensome exercise, so I stopped that, too.
“I saw it at the school, purely by chance . . .”
I had to say something now.
“I saw it, too. When I went to the Chinese restaurant in the next village.”
“I thought you did. Why didn’t you say something to me?”
“Because you’d worry.”
Deliberately, I tried to sound cheerful and indifferent. Yoon Hee put her brush down and got up from her chair in front of the easel. Suddenly, she rushed at me, grabbing my head in both her hands and hugging it to her chest. Coming from her body I could smell turpentine, like pine trees.
“Is that why you said you’ll leave before the summer is over? Is that it? Tell me.”
I kept my head against her chest and waited quietly. Her lips traveled down through my hair to the crown of my head, to the temples, to my cheeks.
“When I read the newspaper, I had this premonition that if you leave this time I will not see you for a long, long time. Why summer? Stay through the snowy winter, think about it again when the new spring is here. I can quit my job, we can go deeper into the valley.”
“Everybody has been caught, so how much longer can I last? And they’ll leave the others alone only when I surface.”
“I’m not going to just sit here and do nothing if you have to go.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll find those still in hiding. I’ll fight against the military dictatorship.”
“You’re already doing that.”
“No . . . please, wait just a little more. You never know when things will change.”
From the day she began painting my portrait, Yoon Hee became quiet. Sometimes she asked me to go into the next village and get her green apples. Now that I think about it, she must have already been pregnant with Eun Gyul by that time. I was so foolish, I had no idea. She seemed so vulnerable and sensitive, yet, for my own convenience, I simply assumed that she was conflicted because of my dangerous situation and her desire to keep me there. I thought, Ah, this woman really wants me to stay. Until then, Yoon Hee was never weak. She fit into the stereotypical image of an artist, independent and self-centered, and she rarely showed her inner emotions. Looking back, Yoon Hee was pregnant with our baby. The reason she desperately argued for next spring was because that was when Eun Gyul was to be born.
I have been looking at the portrait of me that she left behind in Kalmae. At first it was only of me, but after a long time she added her self-portrait to the same canvas, as though she were looking at my youth from behind. There is dark shadow around my eyes, my cheeks are hollow and my face is thin, revealing the anguish of that time. The background is the dark red of dried blood. That must be the world surrounding me. On top
of that dreadful red there are vertical stripes of cobalt blue, and that transparent blue somehow manages to make my gloomy and tired face still appear youthful. From mid-July to early August, while she painted the portrait, there were more hours of nervous silence than we had had in the preceding few months of languid comfort. But it was then that we realized how deep our relationship had become. We gazed at each other without speaking, and I discovered Yoon Hee’s mysterious smile. It was not a big smile, but a very faint one that was barely a smile at all, as if she was about to say something. Yes, now that I thought about it, she was not looking at me by herself, she was looking at me with our baby. There used to be a latticed window in the portrait, but it was gone now, and a little further back Yoon Hee emerged. She said she painted it before she became ill, so she must have done the self-portrait three or four years ago. Unlike the dark background I had to bear, hers was a thick coat of light gray paint, close to the color of a dove. Her brushstrokes appeared to be a lot rougher and more mature. Her high cheekbones, the little lines under her eyes and the gray in her hair, her cheeks painted with overlapping colors, together they betrayed her withering youth and her solitude. But her eyes were calm and collected, and there was that mysteriously tender smile. Here were a thirty-two-year-old man and a woman in her forties, depicted in different colors and distinctive tones, standing side by side and watching the world beyond the canvas. She was right behind me, not looking at what was right in front of her but staring at something far away, over my shoulder. Where was I looking, so nervous and pained? And where was she looking years later, with the hindsight of her age? Which way in the world were we going?
In our garden, asters and cosmos began to bloom. Yoon Hee’s school was about to start again. Our friends in Kwangju, those who had somehow survived and gone through humiliating trials, were released from prison on the thirty-sixth anniversary of the liberation, some pardoned, others paroled. Either way, they should have been grateful to be alive, but they also had to live the next decade with the guilt that came from owing their lives to others. Around that time, Yoon Hee was almost done with my portrait. It became all that was left of my youth.
Before the season changed, it was rainy and windy. During the rainy season of early summer, the atmosphere was filled with sticky, hot, humid air, but on a rainy day on the cusp of autumn, a gloomy chill filled the sky. Even the still green leaves left the violently shaking branches and floated away as if they had been kicked. The thunder in spring comes from far away, in summer it is impatient and close by, and in autumn, even thunder disappears from the low sky, as if the world is sinking.
I didn’t know why, but I didn’t feel good. I felt dizzy all the time, I had to take breaks when I climbed stairways. If I left the school building after being in there for a while, or if I stepped out of a shadow into the sunlight, the sky would turn from yellow to dark black. You know that I decided to take a leave of absence soon after school began. My health was one issue, but above all, I knew for sure by then that you would leave. The day I handed in my notice, I bought a fat chicken from the next village. It was a cute hen, its comb small and dainty like a flower and its feathers reddish brown with a light brown tail. I chose her from the chicken coop at a butcher’s stall in the market. As soon as I pointed her out, the female owner in a rubber apron took up a crude cast iron knife and adroitly turned around. It did not look like she was doing much, but in a few minutes she presented to me a naked piece of meat, whose wings and legs stuck out like branches on a bonsai tree. Like my mother used to, I bought a small bag of sweet rice, garlic, dried dates, and a handful of young ginseng roots. The truth was, I thought I would throw up if I even caught a scent of cooked chicken, but do you remember how poor our diet was that summer? All we had were greens we grew ourselves. Oh yes, I forgot, there were those stone morokos you caught. They were good. You told me how to cook them with seasoning and pepper paste and honey, how to combine them all in old soy sauce and braise them at low heat for a long time till the bones melted away. Whenever I stopped at the market on the way home, you acted like a little child, checking each bag to see what I had bought. Sometimes I bought sweet rice cakes with bean flakes, or wormwood cakes covered in sesame oil, and you would be so happy that you would hum a song while devouring them.
“Let’s make a chicken stew!”
When I said that, you pushed your stubbled face into the kitchen and said something silly.
“What are you trying to do, fatten me up?”
“Isn’t it too late for that? Tomorrow, I’ll make spicy beef soup.”
“What’s going on? Did you get a raise?”
“No, we didn’t eat properly during those dog days of summer, so I decided to cook everything over the next three days.”
I filled the cavity inside the chicken with ginseng roots and sweet rice, and I closed it up with white thread. When it began to boil, however, I began to feel queasy and I could not bear it. I did not want you to notice, so I shut my mouth and covered it with my hands and went outside. I vomited before I could find a place to squat down. It was not like there was anything left to come out, just liquid, but the nausea would not go away. I was worried and decided to go see a doctor. I had to be extra careful that you would not notice anything. I would have told you if we were going to be able to continue our life in Kalmae, if you were not suffering from the guilty feeling that you were the only one in a comfortable hideout. I knew what the two of us would have to face after sending you away. I thought about contacting my sister, but what was most important to me was for you to go through that process with no reservations. I was encouraged when those who had armed themselves, fought with weapons, and been fortunate enough to stay alive were pardoned on Liberation Day. I did not know that you were about to fall into a dark, bottomless pit. They were hostages freed to show the newly formed government’s mercy, but you and your friends were the new sacrifice made to justify a new wave of repressions to come.
“Hyun Woo, I’ve decided to take a leave of absence from school.”
You did not appear to be too concerned.
“Well, that’s good. Why don’t you start preparing for the national competition? You should concentrate on painting now.”
I remained cautious for the next few days, trying to control my emotions. And then the typhoon came, signaling the beginning of autumn. I did not want to look at the orange asters shaking under the cold rain as soon as they bloomed; instead I cut an armful and put them in a round clay jar that we used to store pepper paste. We stood on the porch together and watched the leaves blow away in the rain and wind. And I remember us sitting next to each other on a torn cardboard box in front of the fuel hole and building the fire. You start by placing a bunch of twigs in the fuel hole and lighting them. At first, the weak flame makes a crackling sound as it moves from one twig to the other, then, all of sudden, the whole bunch catches on fire. We put dry logs on the fire and watched as the resin still stuck to the log smoldered. Sometimes the twigs crackled and sparked, and a little piece of burnt wood landed on my bare foot. I would scream, and you would put your finger into your mouth and rub my foot with it.
“Saliva is the best cure for burns.”
“That’s disgusting.”
One night the fuel hole was glowing, touching our faces with warmth and light as darkness fell. I felt so relaxed and languid, I put my head on your back. Through your back, I heard the air moving in and out of your lungs, and your heartbeat. Silhouetted in the glimmering light, I saw your shaggy long hair sticking out and felt somehow helpless. I grabbed the back of your head where hair spread out like a sparrow’s tail and jiggled it.
“Look how long your hair is. You need a haircut.”
“Hey, that hurts.”
Remember how it rained all through the night as I cut your hair? I took off your shirt and made you sit on the floor covered with newspapers, draped a sheet around your shoulders and gave you a mirror to hold, so that you would not be too bored. I used to cut my friends
’ hair, so I was pretty confident. All I needed was the double-sided blade that you used to shave, held between my thumb and index finger. I opened my left hand like a comb and raked it through your hair, and I held onto a handful as if to bite it with my hand, then sheared the ends lightly. When you use a blade instead of scissors, the tip is not cut off, but sliced at an angle, and it made your hair shine. It twinkled as you moved your head.
“Hmm, not bad, not bad at all,” you said, while looking at your own reflection in the mirror and shaking your head. “But why is it so shiny?”
“Because I used a blade. I think it looks good. It’s as if stars had showered down on your head.”
I was kneeling behind you and you were sitting on the floor holding the mirror. In it were our faces, mine hovering on top of yours. You looked into the mirror for a while without saying anything. Perhaps it was the same composition as that of our portrait I finished many years later. I wonder what you were looking at. Whenever someone gets a haircut, nice and neat, it means there is going to be a change in his everyday routine, in his appearance. You quietly put the mirror down and turned around to face the real me behind you.
“I’ll be leaving soon.”
My heart dropped. I thought I would say it first. I wanted to tell you to leave the two of us here, but hurry back.
“When?”
“Maybe the day after tomorrow or the following day.”
I raked your hair scattered on top of the newspaper with my hand. I collected it all, but there was barely a handful. Do you know what I did with it? Without thinking about it, I went out and opened up the tin shield of the fuel hole and threw it in, little by little, onto the red embers that remained. They burst into flame with a scent of burnt skin. I flicked off every tiny particle of your hair from my hand into the flame. Later I read in a book that soldiers, before going to the front line, cut their hair and nails, wrap them in a clean piece of paper, and leave them for their mothers or lovers. And what did I do? They say you burn the hair when you say goodbye to those who have already passed away.
The Old Garden Page 23