The Old Garden

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  “Yoon Hee . . . she is so pretty,” she whispered.

  Thanks to Eun Gyul, we did not have to say much. I just sat next to Jung Hee and looked down upon our baby, too. Jung Hee did not take her eyes off the baby, but her fingers moved across the floor and found my hand and covered it with hers. She held my hand tightly, and I smiled at her. The Soonchun lady spoke, almost to herself.

  “Her complexion is a bit dark. Maybe she takes after her father. Although I hear that tanned skin is fashionable these days.”

  We two sisters just sat there, saying nothing. Maybe she thought she should not have mentioned him, or maybe she realized that we did not want to chat. The Soonchun lady exhaled and got up.

  “Well . . . we should get going.”

  “Are you going back to your house?”

  She replied in a whisper, matching the mood of the room.

  “Yes . . . you know what? Your sister is here, so why don’t you join us for dinner tonight?”

  “Thanks for the invitation, but we have so many things to talk about, and . . .”

  “Oh, alright, don’t worry, I understand.”

  After they rushed out of the room, Jung Hee opened her mouth.

  “How are you?”

  I just smiled back at her, meaning, how else could I be?

  “Did it hurt a lot?”

  “No. Everyone does it.”

  “So you named her Eun Gyul.”

  “Yeah, I spent the whole day with a book.”

  “Maybe I should name my daughter Geum Gyul.”

  Finally, she released every question that she had been holding inside.

  “What on earth . . . why didn’t you let us know what was going on? What were you waiting for? Where is that so-called poet? Does he know?”

  I wanted her to stop talking, even if it was just for a little while, so I changed the subject.

  “You want a cup of coffee? Let’s go over there.”

  I got up first and opened the small door to the studio, and I offered the makeshift chair to Jung Hee. While she looked around the room and studied unfinished paintings, I made coffee. I handed a cup and saucer to her, and she took them and sipped as she studied your portrait.

  “Is that him?”

  “I was going to paint it. It’s not done yet.”

  “I’m sorry. I still don’t really understand.”

  “No, that’s okay. He’s just begun serving his sentence.”

  My sister kept sipping her coffee and sat silently for a while.

  “It’s really weird.”

  “What is?”

  “I once read in a book that children not only inherit their parents’ limitations, but they end up embracing their parents’ flaws as their own. I wonder if you became like this because of our father.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Did you also believe in his ideology?”

  “Not everything, but I did agree with a lot of what he thought. We all have principles, don’t we? Even the rich and the dictators.”

  “Hey, watch it. Is that the way he talked?”

  “No, this is the way everyone talks. I just want this world to be a place where there is respect for things like freedom and people’s basic rights, their lives. That’s all he wanted, too.”

  “I know, I know, I met a lot of student activists at school, too. And I know they’re okay, they’re fine, but I hate that they think they’re somehow different and better. And I don’t like their war games, their struggle for power.”

  “I’ve been reading Buddhist scriptures lately, and there was this one sentence, that a Bodhisattva is someone who performs good deeds without realizing it. When you fight with evil, you begin to resemble it, and there is no way to uproot all desires and ambitions. That’s the limitation of human beings. But don’t you think they are beautiful because they risk everything?”

  “I don’t know, I really don’t know. Why you? Why do you accept a life with him when there is no promise for tomorrow?”

  “I guess that’s my life. Out of nowhere he came to me one day, and I lived with him for six months. What’s left of our time together is Eun Gyul. And paintings that I want to finish. I guess I’m talking like him now. He once said the thing that is so special about people and the world we live in is how it changes. From now on, although for how long, I don’t know, I’ll experience those changes from outside while he does so in darkness. I want to do my best.”

  Before my father passed away, we spent days and nights together for months, and we became so close that we could understand each other by simply looking into each other’s eyes. Later, I had to untangle all the knots by myself. I guess my mother had already done that when my father was in the mountains. But I was his daughter, not his wife, so it took longer. Yes, there is no bargain in life. In order to find answers to the mysteries of life, one has to suffer and endure pain. Only then the answers are revealed, one at a time, and you only find out as much as you have gone through. That’s the truth.

  “What are you gonna do now?”

  Jung Hee seemed to be frustrated. She was gesturing with large movements, and she raised her voice. I tried to indulge her.

  “I just told you. I’ll do my best.”

  Jung Hee fetched her purse and took out a cigarette. She appeared to be quite used to it, inhaling the smoke deeply and exhaling as if she was the woman with too many stories to tell.

  “I have no choice but to support you, I guess.”

  After a pause she added, “You are . . . amazing.”

  “Thanks. You’ll help me, right?”

  “What, in dealing with our mom? Don’t worry, I’ll do more than that. Eun Gyul is, so to speak, a daughter, just like us.”

  There was a little spark in my heart, as if I was being electrocuted. Right at that moment, Eun Gyul began to wake from her nap and cry. I sprang up and went into the room to pick her up. Her diaper was wet. I put her down again and changed her diaper.

  “Hi, sweetie . . . I know, it doesn’t feel good, does it? You’re such a good girl. Mommy will clean you up and Mommy will give you something yummy, too, okay?”

  As I murmured to the baby, Jung Hee moved to the narrow wooden porch in front of the door and sat down to watch us. I had done it so many times at that point, I could do it with my eyes closed. I put some baby powder on her and picked up both legs to secure the cloth diaper under the rubber band. Then I put her legs down and secured the front of the diaper. I carried her in my arm, then mixed a precise amount of formula in a bottle already filled with water and shook it with one hand. Still seated behind the threshold, Jung Hee watched my movements, dazzled.

  “You feed her formula?”

  “Yeah. I breast-fed her for a while, but I don’t think it’s enough.”

  “I don’t know . . . does this happen to everyone? You do it so effortlessly, you look like a woman who has raised a half-dozen babies.”

  “Anyone can do it, it comes to you naturally.”

  After Eun Gyul finished her bottle, I placed her upright against my chest and patted her back. She burped. I put her down again and sang her a lullaby, the one passed down from our grandmothers to our mothers to us, the one with a monotonous melody.

  Sleep, sleep, our little baby

  Don’t bark, little dog, don’t crow, little rooster

  The mouse is sleeping, the birds are sleeping, even the stars in the

  sky are sleeping

  Swaddled in her mother’s arms, whining while still asleep

  Return to sleep, little baby, sleep well, sleep well

  I felt more at peace after Jung Hee’s visit. Eun Gyul began crawling, and she smiled at me, too. As the baby grew, time seemed to speed up as well. The first snow came down in the middle of November. It was just a dusting, but people in Kalmae said an early snow meant a better harvest the following year. I had made a decision that I would leave there with Eun Gyul in the spring, for our new life. I told you I had decided to go to graduate school. Thanks to my question
able personal life, I could no longer be a teacher in a small town. But most of all, I needed to find a way to survive on my own. I guess I had become tougher than I used to be when I was with you.

  Eun Gyul was fine throughout the day, she ate well and she played well. But one night, she was crying and made a strange noise whenever she coughed. And her forehead was covered in cold sweat. I touched it, and it was burning. I knew nothing and got scared. Above all, I was terrified that if something happened to this child I would be left alone in this world. I wrapped her in a blanket and put her on my back, then put another blanket on top of her. I ran down to the main house.

  “Ma’am . . . I think there’s something wrong with our baby!”

  The Soonchun lady and the vice principal came out to the room and studied her, touching her forehead.

  “She’s burning up and wheezing. It doesn’t sound good. Let’s call a cab, fast!”

  The vice principal called the taxi company, the Soonchun lady put her coat on and got ready to go to the hospital in the next village. As we waited for the car to arrive, I suddenly became a devout Christian, like my mother. I did not know any other prayers, so I just kept repeating the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. By the time the headlights appeared on the narrow road between the orchards, I was crying. We rushed to the hospital. Already, the downtown area was empty, all the stores along the main street closed. Just a few neighborhood dogs were prowling around. Years later, after hearing about other people’s similar experiences, I realized I was not the only one who felt so helpless in a situation like this, and that it was not just because I had been alone with our baby. But at that time, I felt sorry for Eun Gyul, that she had to have me as a mother in a world like this. I pitied her and felt so helpless, I just wanted to sit down somewhere. I felt that way even more when we arrived at the hospital and had to bang on the tightly closed door of the darkened building. The Soonchun lady tapped my shoulder.

  “I don’t think anyone is here,” she said. “But I bet the house behind the building is where the doctor lives, so I’ll go get him. You stay here and wait.”

  The Soonchun lady walked into a narrow alley next to the hospital building and knocked on the gate of a house. The light came on, there was a mumbling sound of people talking, and I heard her calling for us.

  “Eun Gyul! Eun Gyul!”

  I ran over there as fast as I could. It was an old, Japanese-style house. The light at the entrance was on and the gate was open.

  “Everything will be fine now,” the Soonchun lady said. “The doctor’s coming.”

  “I feel so bad, it’s late at night.”

  “What do you need to apologize for? I bet he was just watching baseball on television.”

  A bald-headed man in a sweater came out and told us to come in. We walked across the courtyard and entered the hospital through a back door. On the second floor was the waiting room, and we rushed through to the doctor’s office. I placed the baby on the examination table and was ordered to take off the blankets. Before he placed the stethoscope on her delicate skin, he questioned me.

  “She has a high fever, and her glands are swollen. Any other symptoms?”

  “She was fine until dinnertime, she finished her bottle, too. For the last couple of hours, she’s been coughing, her breathing has been labored, and she’s been very hot.”

  The doctor listened through his stethoscope, he opened her mouth to examine her tongue and throat, he took her temperature.

  “Has she received all the vaccinations after birth?”

  “No . . . not yet.”

  “Hmm, how old is she?”

  “Nine months old.”

  “She’s got whooping cough. So she is not vaccinated for measles?”

  “No, we live out in the boondocks.”

  That was what everyone said if they did not live in town.

  “Fortunately, we caught it in the earliest stage. I’ll give you something for tonight, but you need to come back tomorrow.”

  I was a little relieved. Eun Gyul was not even crying any more; she whimpered like a puppy once in a while but remained quiet otherwise. She got shots, I received medicines, and the doctor cracked the door open from inside so we could exit through the front door. Outside it was even darker than before. We walked to the taxi station where cars were waiting for passengers late into the night. The Soonchun lady patted Eun Gyul, who was wrapped in blankets on my back.

  “Wow, you are so lucky! You get shots and medicines for that? Listen, Miss Han, whooping cough or measles were not considered serious illnesses when I was raising kids. Every kid got them at one point or another, just like catching a cold! It just means she’s growing up.”

  I made the decision that night that I had to leave Kalmae. And somehow I knew that I could never be a good mother.

  Years later, when I spent a lot of time in front of a television, I once saw a documentary about of lions in the wild. You know what? The male lion does nothing! He is needed for a few minutes in order to procreate, but that’s about it. He is useless at raising cubs and helping them to survive. He looks great with his golden mane and he wanders around in a dignified manner, but he spends most of the time yawning or taking a nap. He growls when he wants to assert his power over females and to confirm rank in his family, and he fights with other males to rule more females, but that’s it. When hunting for food, the lionesses work together to catch their prey while the lion stands back and watches. When the food is ready, he strides in and takes the best part. He takes no interest in his cubs, and sometimes he kills them so he doesn’t have to be bothered. Only the lionesses feed and raise the cubs, and they take care of one another’s babies, too. But the lions fight and kill each other. When a lion kills a rival, he kills everyone that belonged to his rival, including any cubs and lionesses who defy the new leader. It has something to do with preserving the purity of the bloodline.

  I wasn’t thinking about the lions because I wanted to talk about men and politics and civilizations. It’s just that one cannot help but pity a mother and her baby. Nature binds them together, yet it can also be cruel and careless toward them. And there are times when they have to be separated mercilessly. Speaking of the lions, what about their prey, the buffalo? The mother buffalo watches her calf from afar as he is captured, and when his legs, pointing to the sky, stop convulsing, and the lions begin to devour his body, the mother simply sniffs and walks back to her herd.

  Ah, I have become a mother like that.

  The winter ended, and the spring of ’83 arrived as the frozen streams slowly melted away, the pussy willows turned green, and the yellow flowers of the spice bushes bloomed.

  I have mentioned that I had already decided to go back home on that winter night Eun Gyul was rushed to the hospital. Home? You’re not with us, but our home is really here. I decided to go back to my mother’s house and beg for her help. Eun Gyul needed a family who would love her and take care of her. I informed the Soonchun lady of my decision and sorted through my art supplies, books, other important items, and necessities for Eun Gyul. I packed them in boxes and shipped them first, so all I carried for the bus ride with Eun Gyul was a diaper bag. Eun Gyul was almost a year old then. As I promised, I sent a letter to my sister a few days before our departure. She replied with an express letter, which encouraged me.

  Dear Jung Hee,

  Finally, I am ready to go back to Seoul. I can’t thank you enough for all the wonderful things you sent me. The clothes, the pacifier and baby food, how did you know to find such things? I realized how uninformed and foolish I was as a mom after reading the baby book you sent. And thank you for the book of poetry and other books I had requested. There is a passage that caught my eye, so I am writing it down for you:

  The echoes of a shaken tree branch remain in the heart of a flying bird. The trees on top of the mountain are swinging wildly in the wind, but there remains in the falling leaves the warmth of a touch.

  So, have you prepared our mother for the surprise
? I will dare to ask for everyone’s help. I told you I want to go to graduate school. There is no special reason, I just think I need a better foundation in order to become self-sufficient and raise my daughter on my own. I need some time before I can do that. I will tell her everything, you just drop a hint or two. I hope you meet a normal, ordinary person and make up for everything that I have done and will do to her. I think we’ll arrive in Seoul by next weekend at the earliest.

  I think I wrote in my last letter that he sent me a postcard informing me that he had received a life sentence. But didn’t people come back alive from death row during the last administration? Maybe he’ll be back in about three years. Maybe it’ll take a little longer than that. Or maybe he’ll never see this world again, as long as it is divided into two and there is no earth-shattering change.

  My dearest sister,

  I was so glad to receive your letter. I knew Eun Gyul’s birthday was coming up, so I was getting nervous. As soon as I got your letter, I began to look for the right moment. On Saturday, I invited Mom out to dinner. I just got paid—I told you that I’ve been tutoring? And I just got a raise, too, so I asked Mom if I could treat her to dinner at a nice restaurant. She kept saying she was too busy, so I went to see her right before dinnertime. The wedding season is coming up, and her store is actually busier on weekend evenings with brides-to-be and their mothers buying fabrics and traditional dresses. As I expected, the store was full of customers, but I waited patiently. Around nine at night the store suddenly emptied. When I reminded her of my promise, she seemed to be pleased. I dragged her to a restaurant I had in mind. It was not too busy by then, since the earlier diners had already left. We were seated at one of the best tables, by the corner window with a view of Nam Mountain and the city at night. I started by informing her that you had resigned your position at the school, that you were planning to attend graduate school.

  But you know what? It’s really uncanny, she’s so quick. Remember? She was always like that when we were growing up, too. Our father would spend the whole day with us, playing and sharing meals together, but he was still clueless about a lot of things. But her? When she came back from the market, she took one look around the house and just looked into our eyes, and she knew exactly what had happened that day.