The students left one by one, and when I was done for the day it was after nine o’clock at night. I slumped onto a chair in the empty studio and was smoking a cigarette when someone’s head peeked in. I thought it was the landlord from downstairs or the delivery boy from the Chinese restaurant collecting money, or one of the people who came in and out of the studio but was not related to me in any way. I turned my head and asked, “What is it?”
“It’s me . . . It’s me!”
Surprised, I did a double take.
“You are still here?”
He breezed into the studio. He had taken off his jacket and made himself comfortable, as if this was his own place.
“You didn’t see me while you were pacing back and forth? I was sitting over there the whole time.”
“Ah, I’m sorry. There were so many students here, I could not think of anything else.”
“Aren’t you going to offer me a cup of coffee or something?”
Now, I felt really bad.
“Sure, of course. Why don’t you take a seat?”
He did not do as I asked, but wandered around the studio. He looked at the students’ sketches as if he was a judge and pretended to look carefully at the small ornaments and handmade pottery on the bookcase and the dried flowers in a water jar. I placed a cup of coffee in front of another chair and began sipping mine.
“So, anything interesting going on in your life?”
“Huh?”
This time, he turned around with a dazed look on his face, like he was the one who had forgotten my presence. He looked really innocent when he smiled with his eyes disappearing into crinkles.
“Yes, something very interesting is happening.”
Song Young Tae came closer and sat down to face me. He said, “I have decided to become your student.”
“I don’t know if that will work. I’m only accepting students who are preparing for the university entrance exams. And that is for two months only.”
“Isn’t there a special private lesson?”
“Depends. It’ll be more expensive, though.”
“That’s fine. When can we start?”
“Whatever suits you. You don’t need to come every day, so how about twice a week?”
“That’s exactly what I wanted. We can start next week! So, let’s see . . . Well, the thing is . . .”
He looked around and pulled a little datebook from his jacket’s inner pocket.
“Wednesdays and Fridays are good for me. Does that fit into your schedule?”
“I’m okay if you come after six in the evening. By the way, why do you want to draw and paint?”
His answer came unhesitatingly, as if he were expecting me to ask him that question.
“Well, well, the thing is . . . because I want to be more flexible and open. In order to depict an object, you need various points of view and methods.”
“That comes much later. First, you need to look at it correctly and capture the image as closely as possible.”
“Still, I bet there are many differences depending on who is looking, what one sees and doesn’t see. And techniques vary, too. Hey, aren’t you hungry? Aren’t we missing something here?”
“I already ate dinner.”
“Ah, I see . . . Well, well, the thing is . . . How about this? Since you’ve decided to be my teacher, I the student would like to treat you the teacher to a drink.”
I felt like a drink after my long day anyway, so I happily accepted his offer.
“Sounds good. This is my turf, so let’s go to the place I know well.”
We left the studio, crossed the street, and walked to the local marketplace. There was a couple who set up a street food stand under a large tent every night, 365 days a year. The husband was short and thin, while the wife was tall and plump, so the students who patronized them for night snacks called it the House of the Fat Lady and the Thin Man. Song Young Tae and I lifted a door flap and walked into the tent. It was quite full, and we had to squeeze into a small space where the narrow bar bent into an L shape. He dropped his head and studied the ingredients displayed on the bar as if to inspect them.
“Is your eyesight that bad? This is hagfish, and cow intestines, chicken gizzards, cow’s heart. Well, I’ll order anyway.”
“Well, well, the thing is, I can’t eat those things.”
Song Young Tae was more fragile and discriminating then I had realized. I mean, it makes sense for a young girl who’s just started college to be squeamish at a street food stand, but isn’t it a bit silly for a man of our age not to be able to eat intestines?
“You have a very delicate palate?” I asked him in a mocking tone.
“Well, yeah, the thing is, I’m allergic to a lot of foods, so I just can’t eat anything . . .”
“And how did you survive prison with all your allergies?”
He downed a shot glass full of soju in one gulp and grinned widely.
“I can survive uncomfortable situations.”
“And what are the uncomfortable situations you’re referring to?”
“Well . . . all sorts of things. Sleeping on the street, not eating for days.”
“You’ve done all that?”
“I once spent a couple of months without any money in my pocket.”
It was ridiculous, and I had no idea what he was talking about and what would happen in a few hours, but I did begin to feel closer to him. He said he was hungry, but he did not even touch the food, and kept emptying glass after glass of soju. At one point, I thought he would swallow the shot glass, too. I was beginning to feel uneasy when we had finished three bottles in quick succession. I probably had about a bottle. He ordered another one, and I tried to stop him.
“Enough, that’s enough!”
“We’re just getting started, and you’ve had enough already? Let’s get just one more bottle and we can stop.”
“Are you drunk?”
“What are you talking about? I may doze a little while drinking, but I never get drunk.”
He managed to order one last bottle and drank it down as fast as he had before. When there was just a trickle left at the bottom, I found him falling asleep, just as he predicted. Ugh, how could I get out of this ridiculous situation? I was so angry, I wanted to slap the back of his head, still covered with those madman’s disheveled curls, and leave him there, but I decided not to. I was embarrassed and annoyed, and I wondered what others might think, especially the couple who owned the place, but I could not abandon him there. So I dragged him back, somehow managed to get him up the stairs, and threw him down on the sofa. I was so angry, I sat across from him and lit a cigarette.
“What the fuck is this?”
But he seemed peaceful, slumped on the sofa, smacking his mouth. I calmed down a little as I smoked. I took off his shoes, because I did not want my sofa to get dirty, and his glasses. I put the thick windows through which he viewed the world onto my eyes. I could not see a thing, it was all blurred and cloudy. I placed the glasses on the coffee table and turned off the lights.
Anyway, Song Young Tae somehow entered my daily life. He was a year older than me, well, six months to be exact, and we started college the same year. From the beginning, he seemed like just a child to me. When I taught him to draw, I did not ask him to sketch plaster casts like the other students, but told him to draw everyday objects. I told him to take his shoe off and sketch that, and he did so meticulously. For the first month, he came twice a week every week, quite diligently, but later, perhaps because he was losing interest, he began to skip a day a week. At the end of the summer vacation, I was very busy with final evaluations for those finishing their two-month curriculum, and I barely had time to say hello to him when he did show up. I had no weekend, not even a free Sunday. But students would disappear like a low tide until winter, right before the college entrance exam season, so I had no choice but to work hard. And once the schools were back in session, I needed to go to my classes, too.
It was a S
unday afternoon, even busier than usual. When I walked behind the partition to answer the phone ringing off the hook, I saw him sitting there, taking over the sofa and working on a translation project like he always did. I had not seen him for almost two weeks.
“Well, well . . . It’s been a while.”
“Jesus, how many times did I tell you that you should not start every sentence of yours with well, well?”
“Sorry. I got into the habit of doing it while I was making fun of the head of security in the big house.”
After I finished my phone call, I decided to chat with him a bit. I was trying to be polite, but I also needed a break, and I felt awkward charging him for classes that he kept missing. I studied his face and realized that it was completely sunburnt. His exposed arms were beyond sunburnt—they were peeling badly.
“Have you been somewhere?”
His answer was unexpectedly simple.
“We go on holidays, too.”
I snapped, because I felt that his answer was too easy given the era we were living in.
“What a wonderful life you have,” I said as coldly as possible. “Why on earth are you taking drawing classes? Trying to find a new hobby?”
“Well, and this is based on my childhood experiences, but the reason a slacker suddenly becomes interested in studying is usually the new female teacher at school.”
“Since you’re the laziest student in this studio, you’re losing interest, I assume?”
“Not at all. It’s just a different way of showing my interest.”
It was so preposterous, I had to laugh. I had never considered him, not even for a moment, in that way. When I was at school, I talked as little as possible, answering only yes or no to the professors who always said the same things, and it was pretty much the same with my friends. At the studio, I talked to my students only when absolutely necessary, and after they left I spent the evening staring at a blank canvas. Sometimes it occurred to me to call my mother’s house to listen to Eun Gyul babbling, or to talk to Jung Hee about our mother.
“By the way, what have you been working on all this time you’ve been squatting at someone else’s place?”
I picked up the open book. I saw the title was in German.
“I’m translating.”
“Did you find a job? Maybe I should charge you rent for office space.”
“Well, well, the thing is . . . I’ve been mobilized to work as a free labor force.”
“What’s the title?”
“A few chapters from The Poverty of Philosophy. And some more from The German Ideology.”
“This is for a publisher?”
He stared at me silently, then he gathered his books and papers and stuffed them into his bag.
“These are to be used as textbooks at a training center for professional activists.”
“You shouldn’t bring your conspiracy into someone else’s workplace. Besides, what kind of change can be achieved with books?”
Song Young Tae took off his thick glasses and blew on them, then rubbed them gently with the end of his shirt and put them back on.
“There’s a paragraph that I know very well. Well, well, it goes like this: ‘Men should be aware of their own powers in order to organize them into a social force. When the man is not able to separate himself from that social force and no longer considers it a political power, he is truly liberated.’”
I do not know why, but I felt a sudden pain in my nose, and my eyes felt very warm. I thought of you. I couldn’t even remember how long it had been. I felt as if I should write you a letter.
“Whose book is that?” I asked quietly.
“A man with a long beard, Marx. But he wrote this when he was still a young man. For us, this is only the beginning, too.”
I got up quickly, trying to hide my red eyes. Because of the tear gas, I cried until my eyes were swollen every time I went to the university, even when I covered my face with a surgical mask, but there was no emotion involved in those tears. Human language is so powerful. I did not think those awkwardly translated sentences were poetic, but they reminded me of you all the same.
Years later, even when those sayings of Marx seemed ancient and trite, if I heard them spoken by someone else or read them in subtitles at the movies, or whenever I heard drunken students at a pub singing the “International,” my heart felt colder, just as it did when I listened to songs from the past drifting out of an old record player. One night in Berlin, or was it early morning, I was silent as Mari scribbled something on the table with spilt beer, and the café turned into a festival, champagne bottles popping open. This was all later, years later.
“Ma’am . . .”
Someone said quietly, and I turned around to find him, still there, peering from behind the partition. I was actually a little happy to see that he was still there.
“What is it now?”
“Well, nothing much, just that tonight I would like to treat you.”
“I am not going unless you take me to a really nice place.”
Without knowing why, I took a look around the shabby and disorganized studio before I followed him down the steps. There was a dark gray car parked on the street. A chauffeur jumped out of his seat when he saw Song Young Tae and walked around the front of the car to open the back door.
“Get in.”
Song Young Tae gestured like a doorman at a hotel, swinging his arm to point to the car. Confused for a moment, I still got in. When he climbed in and sat next to me, the car took off. It was a German car, rumored to cost as much as a small apartment.
“What is this?”
“I’m researching the basic conflict. I am borrowing it for a little while from someone, but he’s not the real owner either. He stole it.”
We went to one of the fanciest places at that time, the sky lounge at the top of a famous hotel. So many people were out and about so late at night. We sat by the window, looking down on the city unfolding below us like a field of stars. We ordered drinks. I kept silent at first while continuously sipping on my drink. Once I was a little drunk, I began to openly provoke him.
“Look, I want you to stop pretending, okay? I know who you are, I know exactly who you are! You are the son of a nouveau riche!”
He dared to talk back: “I know Mr. Oh very well.”
“How does someone like you know an ascetic?”
“He is a friend of a friend.”
I felt even more cruel, and I could not stop myself.
“Don’t you dare show off in front of me. I heard from Jung Hee all about you. Your family owns how many acres?”
Unexpectedly, he gave up quickly.
“None of them belong to me. Listen, Yoon Hee, I’m just . . . someone trying to be aware.”
“Awareness my ass. Your father was a member of parliament after the reforms in ’72, wasn’t he??”
Suddenly, he banged the table with his fist, and without the usual stutter, spat out, “Yes, he was, so what? An intellectual can choose his class. You want to accuse me of original sin?”
I just shut my mouth. I drank what was left in my glass in one gulp, as if it was ice water, and got up. My head spun around and I felt weak around my knees, but I put my weight on my heels and walked straight to the elevator. Since I did not see anyone in my peripheral vision I assumed he had remained in his seat. He was a bastard, and I didn’t ever want to see him again. Pretending he was inarticulate.
I do not know how I got back to my studio. As soon as I walked in, I put a record on, took a beer out of the refrigerator, and drank by myself. Somehow my eyes stopped at my hand holding the beer glass; I saw my fingertips, and then I saw dark red paint chips under my fingernails. Drunk, I wondered if it was blood under my fingernails, wondered if I scratched myself somewhere without realizing why. Then I fell asleep.
The story of Song Young Tae is becoming a little boring and too long now, isn’t it? No matter what, I did get to know him better and found out his many virtues and strengths. H
e was the only male friend I had. The foolish bastard, he ultimately made an outrageous decision. Kwangju could not be another Paris Commune, so what was the destiny of an intellectual of the eighties? I am thinking of the yellow sun setting on the empty field that fall, the year of his journey where he took a long roundabout way to get to his destination.
After that night of bickering I ran into him one day, by chance, at the university. I was eating lunch at the cafeteria, and someone sat down in front of me, crashing his tray onto the table.
“Okay if I sit here?”
He was using the casual form of speech. Well, we already had done so the night we fought, so I assumed that’s what we were going to do from then on.
“No one’s stopping you.”
“I’m sorry about that night.”
“Why?”
“I know I acted like an asshole.”
He was mumbling and I felt sorry for him, and thought maybe I had been a little unfair. But I also thought he deserved it and quickly hardened my face.
“Whatever you do, I hate anyone who shows off.”
“Han . . . Let’s be friends.”
The Old Garden Page 31