I'll Be Right There

by Kyung-Sook Shin

  Professor Yoon paused and looked around the room. I thought at first that he was trying to tell whether we understood the story. But then I thought maybe he had discovered something anew, something he had forgotten, about Saint Christopher. He held his silence for a moment and then resumed.

  “So let me ask you this. Are those of you here today Christopher? Or are you the child he carries on his back?”

  Professor Yoon’s story had started out like a single drop of rain amid the hustle and bustle of students preparing for class to end but turned into a sudden midday shower beating down on us. A clear ray of light from the last of the summer sun slipped in through a classroom window that someone had shut tight.

  Professor Yoon studied us expectantly, but nobody offered an answer to his question. The slogans of student demonstrators outside followed the ray of sunlight through the window and pushed their way again into our midst. Over his glasses, Professor Yoon’s keen and gentle eyes stopped on each of us in turn before moving on.

  “Each of you is both Christopher and the child he carries on his back. You are all forging your way through adversity in this difficult world on your way to the other side of the river. I did not tell you this story in order to talk about religion. We are all travelers crossing from this bank to that bank, from this world to nirvana. But the waters are rough. We must rely on something in order to make it over. That something could be the art or literature that you aspire to create. You will think that the thing you choose will serve as your boat or raft to carry you to that other bank. But if you think deeply about it, you may find that it does not carry you but rather you carry it. Perhaps only the student who truly savors this paradox will make it safely across. Literature and art are not simply what will carry you; they are also what you must lay down your life for, what you must labor over and shoulder for the rest of your life.”

  Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Professor Yoon. Nobody looked out the window. Even the boy in the back row had stopped twirling his pencil. The girl, too, had lifted her head and was listening intently.

  “You are Saint Christopher. You are the ones who will ferry the child across the river. It is your fate to brave the swollen waters. Though the waters may rise, you must not stop before the child reaches the other side. So, how do we cross this river?”

  It both was and was not a question. Professor Yoon’s voice dropped even lower and grew stronger.

  “We cross by becoming Saint Christopher to one another. By carrying the child across together. There is no difference between the person who crosses and the person who helps another across. You are not just Saint Christopher, carrying your pole into the rising waters. You are the world and its creators, each one of you. Sometimes you are the Christopher and other times you are the child—you carry each other across the river. So you must treasure yourselves and hold one another dear.”

  The trust that had been budding inside each of us spread throughout the classroom. Had one of the windows broken at that moment, not even the sound of breaking glass could have disturbed the gentle stillness.

  “So, my young Christophers! That is all for today. But before you go, I need a volunteer. Someone to type up the course reader for me.”

  No one said anything.

  “Anyone?”

  Saint Christopher, the child, the river, fate, us … I had started off taking notes but quickly became too absorbed in his story. I raised my hand to volunteer. I didn’t even think about it as I did so. Professor Yoon looked at me for a moment.

  “Your name?”

  “It’s Jung Yoon.”

  “Jung Yoon.” He said my name aloud once. “Thank you. Come to my office after class.”

  Even after the professor left, everyone remained seated. Finally, I got up to follow him to his office. When I pushed my seat back, the scraping of the chair across the floor echoed in the silent room. On that cue, the others also started to gather up their things and leave. Professor Yoon’s office was in the opposite direction of my next class. I glanced behind me. Myungsuh and the girl were walking under a large green zelkova tree that I had just passed.

  The girl had a distinctive walk. Anyone who saw it would not easily forget it. With the early-autumn sunlight pouring down on me, I stopped to watch her. There were many students by the tree. They gathered there in pairs or small groups before heading off in separate directions or staying behind to wait for someone. Yet even amid all those people moving at the same time, she caught my eye. She was the one I noticed first, not the boy walking beside her. But as she walked toward me with her bag hanging from her shoulder and a book in her hand, I still could not see her face. She kept her head down and shoulders rolled in as she walked, as if staring at her own heart. Nevertheless, she was beautiful. It was the skirt she wore, a flared skirt with white flowers on a dark blue background, with a white cotton jacket. The brightness of the tiny flowers blooming across her skirt clashed with the rest of her and made her stand out. When she passed the tree, the hem of her skirt floated up in the breeze. Whatever it was that made her different from the others seemed to emanate from that skirt. It was not a popular style for our age group; most wore pants or blue jeans. Even the students who did wear skirts never wore that kind of billowy style.

  The boy’s walk was just as distinct as hers. He looked like someone who walked on air, rather than someone who lived with his feet on the ground. One foot seemed already aloft before the other had touched down. If she looked like she was sinking into the earth, he looked like he might be whisked away by the wind at any moment. I watched them walk toward me and then turned around.

  I reached Professor Yoon’s office and was about to knock, but the door was already ajar. I pushed it open. The professor looked up at me. It looked at first like there was a partition between his desk and a sofa, but it turned out to be stacks and stacks of books serving as a room divider. Professor Yoon’s desk sat behind the books.

  “Come in,” he said, the upper half of his body materializing from above the stacks. I saw that he was holding a sheaf of paper. “Have a seat over there for a moment.”

  Professor Yoon seemed to have been in the middle of something or was busy straightening up his desk; when he sat back down, I heard papers being shuffled. I remained standing and looked around his office. It was drab. There were no plants or picture frames—just books, crammed into industrial shelves designed to hold as many books as possible, and not so much as a calendar or a mirror hanging on the wall. Old books, which looked as if they would crumble to pieces if I touched them, were shelved backward so the titles were not visible. I had never seen books shelved that way before. I reached for one out of curiosity but was stopped by a knock at the door. Professor Yoon and I looked up at the same time. The door opened and in walked the boy and girl I had just seen walking toward me beneath the zelkova tree. They had also been heading to Professor Yoon’s office. The professor looked at the two of them and stood and walked over to the sofa, the sheaf of papers still in his hands.

  “Aren’t you bored of me yet?” Professor Yoon said to the boy. “Seems time we went our separate ways.”

  He was smiling warmly. Myungsuh scratched his head and grinned, as he had back in the classroom.

  “I wanted to introduce my friend to you,” Myungsuh said.

  “You weren’t enough, so you brought a friend? Have a seat. You, too.”

  Professor Yoon looked at me as I stood in front of the bookshelf. I felt I was experiencing this moment over again, even though it was happening for the first time. When we all sat down, Professor Yoon and I were next to each other, and the boy and girl were across from us. It felt awkward to sit next to Professor Yoon, but it would have been just as awkward to sit next to the girl. She and Myungsuh were like each other’s shadow, making the thought of sitting between them inconceivable. It was strange. As we sat there, the feeling of déjà vu persisted, as if we had sat that way before. The boy and I looked each other in the eyes for the first time. His eyebrows were jet bl
ack, as if they had been rubbed on with charcoal—the kind of black that made you feel as if you were being sucked into it. Each time his face changed expression, his eyebrows moved first. His friends could probably tell what mood he was in just by looking at them. Below his brows, his thoughtful-looking eyes seemed to smile for a moment before skipping over mine and settling on the girl. The girl kept her hands in her pockets and did not look at me.

  “We’ve been friends our whole lives,” the boy named Myungsuh said. “She goes to another university. She’s on a leave of absence right now and would like to audit your class. We came to ask your permission.”

  When I heard him say how long they had been friends, I pictured Dahn’s face.

  “She’s on a leave of absence from her regular school?” the professor asked.

  “Yes,” Myungsuh said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Yoon Miru.” Myungsuh answered for her, but Professor Yoon kept directing his questions to her.

  “Mireu?”

  “No, sir. Not Mireu. Miru, as in the poplar tree,” Myungsuh said again.

  Yoon Miru. I whispered her name to myself, quietly, so no one else could hear. Yoon Miru. Yoon Miru.

  “Why do you keep answering for her?” Professor Yoon asked. “Are you her lawyer?”

  Myungsuh smiled bashfully.

  “Why do you want to sit in on my class?” the professor asked.

  Miru raised her head. Finally I could see her face. She blinked and lowered her head again. Her eyes were dark, so dark that they seemed to be all pupils. Though she was looking down, I could see her smooth forehead. The bridge of her nose was high and narrow. She had full, bee-stung lips, which gave the contours of her face a graceful beauty. If that were all, she would have been memorable enough for just her pretty face and fair skin. But then she took her hands out of her pockets. I flinched. It was an instantaneous reaction. Her hands. Despite her smooth face, the backs of her hands were withered and wrinkled. They looked like they had been soaking in water for too long. Miru, so pretty with her dark eyes and fair skin, had the hands of an old person. That was the answer to the curiosity I had felt, why I had wondered who she was ever since trying to get a glimpse of her face in the classroom, and the key to the incongruity that could not be explained by her flared floral-print skirt alone. She must have felt my eyes on her hands because she slipped them back into her pockets. Professor Yoon seemed to have noticed them as well. He looked as surprised as I was. An awkward silence opened up between us.

  “What happened to your hands?” Professor Yoon asked Miru.

  I would never have guessed that Professor Yoon would be so blunt. Her hands were painful even to look at. She took them out of her pockets, lifted them up in front of her, spread her fingers, and looked down at the backs of them. I had not expected her to do that. She stared at them as if they belonged to someone else.

  “I burned them,” she said.

  That was the first time I heard her speak. Her voice was clear and distinct.

  “Hot water?”

  “No, gasoline.”

  “That must have been very painful,” Professor Yoon whispered under his breath. He did not ask how it happened. Miru turned her hands over, looked at her palms, and said yes.

  “But surely you don’t regard them as a symbol of who you are?”

  My stomach sank when he said that, but Miru looked composed. Beside her, Myungsuh raised his eyebrows and sat up straighter on the couch. He seemed to want to stop their conversation before it went any further.

  “Well, Professor, I guess we will take that as a yes,” Myungsuh said.

  Professor Yoon raised his head but looked at Miru instead.

  “Everywhere you go, you stand out.”

  There was another awkward silence.

  “I noticed you, even before I saw your hands. I’ve never met you before, but you stand out from the others.”

  An odd tension filled the room.

  “Free yourself from your hands.” Professor Yoon spoke calmly. “If you want to be free of your hands, then audit my class. If not, then don’t waste your time.”

  Miru’s dark eyes seemed to scowl at Professor Yoon. I realized then that the strange energy she gave off was also anxiety. Her eyes flared with nervous energy, and she looked like she might attack Professor Yoon. But almost immediately, they wavered. Her eyes turned to rest on me. Full of questions and pleas, her eyes seemed to be asking for rescue. I reached my hand out to her. Her dark eyes locked on my fingers. Myungsuh stood and gently took her hand. Her wrinkled hand was caught in his big, strong one. Her burned hand disappeared into his, as if that were the most suitable place in the world for it.

  “We’ll be going now,” he said.

  Miru stood up. Myungsuh guided her before him to the door and was about to leave when he turned and looked back at me.

  “Jung Yoon.” He enunciated my full name precisely. “It’s been a year.”

  I didn’t think it was strange of him to say my full name that way. Since I had found out his name only during attendance, he had probably learned my name the same way. Nevertheless, when he spoke to me, I felt a sudden premonition that I would soon be walking around the city with the two of them.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He stood there without leaving, as if waiting for me to respond. I didn’t know what he was thanking me for, but I nodded. Finally, he gave a slight bow to Professor Yoon. Miru seemed to be looking at me as well, her scarred hand still enveloped by his large one.

  After the two of them left, Professor Yoon and I were quiet for a moment. He had seemed so cold to Miru for some reason, but he let out a deep sigh and turned back into the same person who had told the story of Saint Christopher during class.

  “Are you a fast typist?” he asked.

  I grinned nervously instead of answering.

  “Are you?”

  I smiled again.

  “You should answer clearly, not just smile, when a teacher asks you a question.”

  I thought of how his voice sounded when he said then tell us what you do know to the girl in class. I had long been in the habit of smiling when I wasn’t sure how to answer someone. No one had ever pointed it out to me before.

  “I’m sort of fast,” I said.

  “How fast?”

  “Fast enough that I can compose as I type.”

  “I see. I envy people who can type with all ten fingers. I’ve tried to learn, but it’s too hard for me. I’m what you call a hunt and peck typist. Unlike you, my hands can’t keep up with my thoughts. When I try to type, my thoughts keep stopping and looking back as my hands try to catch up.”

  The professor had a unique way of speaking that was unfamiliar to me, but I sort of understood what he meant.

  Maybe what Professor Yoon felt when he was unable to get ahead of or catch up to the thoughts in his head when he typed and instead watched his fingers slowly lagging behind the sentences that had already come into the world was similar to how I felt the night I walked to my mother’s grave with Dahn, when I realized I had to break through the lethargy I felt at my parents’ house and return to the city. That night, when I nearly asked Dahn if he loved me, after he had told me about the mess he was in after beating up a classmate, I knew I had to come back to the city. That was what stopped me from asking Dahn that question. You should only ask someone if they love you if you love them, regardless of what their answer might be. My decision that night, when I grabbed a handful of dirt from my mother’s grave, had brought me back to the city, but my heart had not yet returned and seemed to be roaming around out there somewhere.

  I thought, too, about my cousin’s husband, who had once said something like Professor Yoon. Each time my cousin’s husband returned from a week of flying, the dinner table would be set with his favorite foods. Rice, seaweed soup, grilled dried corvina, steamed egg, toasted dried laver, seasoned spinach, mung bean sprouts, and radish—all of the things he liked. The three of us ate tog
ether sometimes. One night, he was too exhausted to eat. My cousin set the grilled corvina on the table and asked if he needed to see a doctor, but he told her not to worry. He said the plane was too fast, his body had arrived first. That he felt ill because his soul could not keep pace with the speed of the plane and was still on its way home, and he would feel better once it had caught up to the rest of him.

  Professor Yoon handed me the sheaf of papers.

  “It’s a collection of works by Korean writers, dating back to the 1950s. There are a lot of pages. Won’t it be too much for you?”

  “I can handle it.”