I'll Be Right There

by Kyung-Sook Shin

  “And you’re both persistent,” he added. “You look for each other. It’s been a long time since Miru showed an interest in someone else. I should be happy about it, but instead I’m worried.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  His laugh sounded hollow.

  “I guess we meet who we’re supposed to meet. After all, look at how you and I met.”

  “Why are you being so serious?”

  He laughed and asked if he really sounded serious.

  While we waited for Miru, we sat against the closed shutters like scattered members of some enemy troop and talked.

  “The three of us lived in a house on a hill in Dongsung-dong. We grew up together. Mirae was a year older, but the three of us were almost inseparable. She left for college first and lived in a boardinghouse, but when Miru and I joined her in the city, their parents got us the house. We lived together, but we were just friends.”

  “I understand.”

  “You do? Everyone else thought it was weird.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a guy and I’m not related to them.”

  “But you said you grew up together?”

  He stared at me. I was thinking about Dahn. Dahn may have said I didn’t love him, but I loved the time I spent with him. He and I could spend time together without having to talk. Even when we ran out of things to say and were both silent, it never felt awkward. We could sit across from each other for hours without saying anything at all. I would read, and Dahn would draw in his sketchbook. It felt completely natural to us. When one of us said something, the other understood ten times as much. That’s not something that happens right away. It builds over time while you’re growing up together.

  “You’re different from the others,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “I thought I would have to explain why I lived with two girls, and I even had a speech prepared, but when you said you understood, you took the wind right out of me.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything, then.”

  He laughed weakly.

  “Why don’t you live together now?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  He, too, was different from the others. The things he said could seem cold, but he said them so gently.

  “Who is Miru looking for?” I asked.

  “Someone who disappeared.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t have to say, right?”

  “No, you’re not obligated.”

  “Obligated?” His voice got quieter. “Even if I don’t tell you, you’ll find out if you keep spending time with us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Miru is almost here.”

  Something was fluttering in the dark across the street. I took a closer look. It was Miru’s skirt. I remembered the day I saw them on the way to Professor Yoon’s office. The two of them were walking beneath the zelkova tree, and Miru’s floral-print skirt had billowed up in the breeze. It clashed with everything around it and filled me with a strange sense of anxiety. Miru was stepping off the sidewalk and into the street, as if to jaywalk instead of taking the crosswalk. We watched her. She still had her shoulders hunched and her head hanging down. It was strange. Though Myungsuh was right next to me, and though he was the one who had called her, I felt like she was heading for me alone. I unconsciously scooted away from him. Just before she reached us, a white cat leapt down from her arms and walked toward Myungsuh.

  He reached out his arms and picked up the cat. They seemed to know each other well. The flowers on Miru’s skirt flickered before my eyes, and then there she was sitting between us, before I could get a look at her face. She unzipped her bag, took out a pair of sneakers wrapped in newspaper, and set them down next to me. Myungsuh must have told her everything on the phone, because she did not ask why I was barefoot or why we were sitting there. She didn’t even offer the usual greetings. I slipped on the sneakers and began to tie the laces, but she reached out her hands toward my feet. I couldn’t take my eyes off her scars. She started to tie the shoes herself but then stood up as if the position was uncomfortable and moved so she was sitting directly in front of me. Then she redid the loose knots, retying them one by one and tugging on the bows to make sure they were tight. She did it so naturally that I didn’t have the chance to tell her I would do it myself. I was surprised I didn’t pull my feet away. I felt comfortable letting her touch my feet. Her scarred fingers moved between the white laces. Even Myungsuh was watching quietly. Her hands, which had always remained hidden in her pockets or under her desk, were moving freely in front of us.

  “These were my sister’s shoes,” she said.

  She sat down between us again. Her voice was clear and subdued. It was as if she had been with us the whole time, rather than having just met us, or even as if we had been traveling together for days and had only stopped for a short rest. I would never have guessed that I could feel so comfortable with them. The tension Myungsuh and I felt each time her name came up had gone away and left me feeling weak. I realized I had been acting silly when I scooted away from him the moment she showed up. Miru’s sister’s shoes fit like they were my own. It was as if I were a different person from the one who had been talking to Myungsuh just moments earlier. My mother died without knowing this about me, but when I first came to live here, I avoided forming a deep relationship with anyone or anything. Whenever she asked if I had made any friends, I told her I hadn’t yet. I felt abandoned. She had sent me away as soon as she learned she was dying, peeled me off of her despite my not wanting to leave her side, so the last thing I wanted was to feel close to anyone. I couldn’t bear the thought of telling someone about myself or of spending time with someone. I chose to be alone in order to keep things uncomplicated, to avoid perplexing emotions. My cousin used to say to me, “You don’t really believe you can survive in this world alone, do you? No one makes it on their own.” Sitting there in the street, I realized that Myungsuh and Miru had succeeded in getting through to me.

  “What happened when you went to the island?” Myungsuh asked Miru.

  “I didn’t find anything,” she said.

  “Please stop looking.”

  They both got very quiet all of a sudden. To dispel the awkwardness, I asked if they were hungry. Myungsuh said he was, but Miru did not answer.

  “Shall we go to my place?”

  They turned to look at me.

  “All I have is perilla kimchi,” I said, “but I’ll make rice. I have plenty of rice. Let’s go.”

  I grabbed the bag with the table palm and stood up. They followed me. Miru picked up the cat. Its snow-white fur moved gently in the dark. Miru ran her scarred fingers through the cat’s fur and stroked its neck. The cat stared at me with eyes as blue as the sky at dawn. When we reached the main street, Myungsuh said he was too hungry to walk and flagged down a taxi. The buses were still not running, but taxis had begun to appear. Had the protest finally died down? The streets were deserted; few people were out at night. Myungsuh sat in the front, and Miru and I sat in the back. When she saw me staring at the cat, Miru offered to let me hold it. It was the first time since bringing the shoes that she had looked directly at me. Her dark eyes studied me. I set the plant down on the floor of the cab and took the cat. Its tail stiffened at first but soon relaxed. The soft fur brushed against my cheek. The cat sat in my arms and stared idly out the car window at the darkness and at the trees that lined the road.

  “She likes you,” Miru said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “She’s sitting still.”

  I was not fond of cats. A very long time ago, when I had gone to visit my mother and was taking a nap with her, a cat had come along and sat down beside us. The first to awake, I was startled and threw a book at the cat and yelled at it. But it just strolled away coolly. The next day, the cat appeared again, urinated on the floor in front of me, and walked away.

  I slipped on its urine. My mother said, “See, you threw a
book at it, so it left its pee for you.” That memory kept me away from any more cats. When I first moved to the city, there was a cat in my cousin’s building as well. I don’t know what happened, but the landlord filled the building with tenants and moved out, leaving the gray cat behind. My cousin would often feed it. I asked her once why the landlord left it behind, and she said that cats are more attached to places than to people. And that was why cats are so often found in abandoned houses.

  That story of Saint Christopher has been stuck in my head ever since the first day of class. I wanted to know more about him, so I searched through book after book in the library.

  1. Because he carried the Christ child across the river, Saint Christopher is still regarded as the patron saint of travelers. Some taxi drivers and truck drivers even keep medals of Saint Christopher on their dashboards like talismans. At the same time that he was an ascetic who sought to realize the will of God through hard work, he was also a messenger with something very important to transport and deliver.

  2. In that sense, Saint Christopher is also a Christ figure. The name Christopher is derived from “Christ”; the “ph” comes from a Greek word meaning “bearer.” Christ, who carried all of man’s sins and agonies with him onto the cross in order to save humanity, was both an ascetic who carried the world on his back and a messenger sent to earth to deliver God’s will. When we look at it that way, then the Christian Christopher can also be seen as a combination of Atlas and Hermes of Greek mythology.

  3. Christ shouldered the cross, and Saint Christopher shouldered Christ. If we invert the sentence, then the cross carried Jesus, and Jesus delivered Saint Christopher to the path of salvation. They both had a calling to which they devoted their whole lives, and they both experienced fateful meetings that enabled them to fulfill those callings. In that case, do I also have a calling? A task that I am destined to carry out for the rest of my life? When will the chance to fulfill that calling find its way to me? Though I’m in my twenties now, I feel like I am still fumbling in the dark, trying to make my way forward.

  I stole a book from the bookstore. I didn’t need it. I don’t even want to read it. Yet when I pulled it off the shelf, this unnamable urge shot through me. I walked out of the store with the book in my hand, but no one stopped me. It was anticlimactic. On the title page, I wrote the date and a note: “Yi Myungsuh’s first stolen book.” It looked incomplete, so I added: “You’re not a grown-up until you’ve stolen a book.” But then I felt like I was making a childish excuse, so I erased everything except for the date.

  —Brown Notebook 3

  CHAPTER 4

  To The Salt Lake

  I asked Myungsuh and Miru to wait outside before I let them in. The list of promises I’d made to myself when I returned to the city was taped to the wall above my desk, and I thought I should take it down first. The cat came in and started exploring, as if looking for a spot of her own in this new place. She leaped onto the windowsill and curled up in a ball. Myungsuh transferred the table palm from the plastic container to the clay flowerpot and placed it on my desk. Then he sat down in the chair and tapped on the typewriter. Miru stood near the kitchen. I call it a kitchen, but it was really just a sink and a stove at one end of the room, along with a refrigerator. I washed the rice and put it in the pot. Then I pulled out the retractable tabletop that was hidden in the side of the kitchen counter and set it with containers of side dishes from the refrigerator. The pullout table was short and narrow. I kept it folded away when I was not using it. The three of us would have been knee-to-knee if we all tried to sit there. My cousin had made the side dishes for me; the containers were filled with stir-fried anchovies, brisket marinated in soy sauce, seasoned perilla. The perilla that my cousin had brought was different from the perilla kimchi my mother used to send me: my cousin had simply steamed the leaves and seasoned them with soy sauce. Each time I opened a container, Miru murmured the names of the dishes like she was reciting the titles of books: radish kimchi, braised lotus root, sauteed burdock root … She marveled at how much food I had and asked if I had made it all myself.

  “I have an older cousin who lives nearby,” I explained. “She brought it over.”

  “You said all you had was perilla kimchi.”

  “I didn’t realize how much was in there.” I pointed at the burdock and lotus root. “It’s the first time I’ve opened these.”

  “Why haven’t you had any yet?”

  “I guess I just don’t take it all out when I’m eating alone.”

  I ate because I was hungry, not for the flavor. My cousin made all kinds of things and left them in my refrigerator, but whenever I ate, I just reached in and grabbed the first three containers I saw. Myungsuh stopped tapping at the typewriter and came over. He transferred the food into smaller serving dishes.

  “I have some curled mallow,” I said. “Shall I make some soup?”

  “Don’t bother,” Miru said. “This is already too much food.”

  It was true. The small table was crowded with dishes.

  “But we’re eating together for the first time,” I said. “We ought to have soup.”

  I grabbed a pot, filled it with water, and placed it on the stove. Then I took the mallow out of the refrigerator. Even the mallow had been brought over by my cousin.

  “I can’t believe you have mallow,” Miru said. “Here, I’ll do it.”

  She took the big mallow leaves from me. She had the stems peeled in no time. Her scarred hands moved fluidly from stem to stem. I was surprised to see her work. From the way she handled the leaves, stripping off the thin outer layer of the plant and picking out the tougher pieces without hesitation, it seemed she had made this soup often. She added salt to the boiling water to blanch the leaves and then wrung them out hard under a running tap.

  “You blanch it first?” I asked.

  “That gets rid of the bitterness.”

  “You must really like mallow soup.”

  “My sister did. We used to grow mallow in our garden when we were little. First thing in the morning, I would take my basket to go pick mallow with my sister. I was always amazed by how fast the mallow grew back after it was cut. But mostly I liked going out to the garden because I had fun shaking the dew off the leaves. My pants would be soaked with dew by the time we were done.”

  She had told me not to bother making soup and then wound up making it herself.

  “There’s some dried shrimp in the refrigerator, too.”

  Miru found the plastic bag, peeked inside, and rejoiced: “We have shrimp!” She washed the dried shrimp and added it to the pot. When my mother made this soup, she used to just wring the leaves out until the water ran green and then rinse them and add them to the soup. I had never made it myself. It was strange to see Miru so adept at it. Myungsuh must have been hungry, because he grabbed a perilla leaf with his fingers and ate it. Miru gave him a look and handed him a pair of chopsticks. He took them and ate another. They looked so natural together that I stood still and watched them for a moment.

  When the soup came to a boil, the cat stood up and arched her back into a deep stretch. Her supple belly grazed the windowsill. She leapt down lightly from the sill and strolled over to Miru, wrapped her tail around Miru’s skirt, and gave it a tap. The whole time, the cat kept her face turned away, as if feigning indifference.

  “That’s how they communicate,” Miru said. “This means she likes me. She’ll do it to you, too, once she gets to know you.”

  The cat sat quietly at Miru’s feet and looked up at me. The blue eyes seemed to say, “And who are you?” I filled three bowls with rice. It was the first time I had ever eaten with other people in my rooftop apartment. Every single plate and bowl in my cabinet was put to use. Once the table was set, Miru took a blank piece of paper and a pencil from my desk and wrote down the date and the names of every dish on the table: curled mallow soup, rice, perilla kimchi …

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Writing it all d
own so I can transfer it to my diary later.”

  “What?”

  “Miru writes down everything she eats.” Myungsuh answered for her.

  Everything? Miru ignored my stares and continued writing it all down.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked.

  “Because then it feels real,” she said.

  “What does?”

  “Being alive.”

  “Have you written down everything you’ve ever eaten since you were born?” I asked.

  “Of course not!” Miru chuckled.

  “Then why? What’s the motivation?” I couldn’t help but laugh, too. With all of my questions, I felt like I was interviewing her.

  We picked up our spoons and began our first meal together.

  The cat curled up at Miru’s feet. Myungsuh stuck a huge spoonful of rice in his mouth and slurped down the soup. Miru did not touch her rice but ate small spoonfuls of the soup. I mixed half of my rice into my soup. She had seasoned it well. The green mallow leaves were tender. The pink of the shrimp complemented the green of the mallow. I still couldn’t believe we were eating together. I picked up a perilla leaf and placed it on Miru’s rice. It was something my mother used to do for me. When did my mother get to eat? I had more memories of her feeding us than of her eating. She used to beam with pride over how heartily my father ate, and she encouraged me to eat like him. The way he ate, it was almost as if he were eating something different and tastier. Seeing him eat made me want to hurry up and eat, too. He really was a hearty eater, before she became sick. After my mother died and it was just the two of us, we could still feel her sitting between us at the table, though neither of us ever talked about it. Those may have been my loneliest moments while living back at home. My mother loved to watch my father eat, and she was forever pushing the side dishes closer to us and placing bites of meat and vegetables on top of our rice: Eat it while it’s still warm, while it’s still flavorful, while the seasoning’s just right … Did I ever return the gesture? I would think about her and find myself unconsciously reaching over to push the side dishes closer to my father. He in turn would unconsciously place pieces of dried seaweed on the spoonful of rice I was raising to my mouth. Maybe that was why we still felt her there. After she passed away, my father no longer feasted on squash, or picked a fish clean of meat, or slurped down soup like it was water, or asked for sesame oil to drizzle on his bibimbap. Half of his rice was always left untouched.