“This painting is in a museum there.”
“That island doesn’t look like it’s a part of this world.”
“They say there’s an island cemetery in Venice that resembles it. We should go there, too.”
I wasn’t sure why, but when Miru said we should go to Basel and Venice, I had the feeling that she was not really saying it to me. As the black seawater seemed to spill out of the painting and rise around our ankles, I grabbed Miru’s hand. I heard Emily rustle in her box, and then her face poked out and she looked over at us. She jumped out of the box and arched her back, pushing her haunches high to stretch her spine, belly nearly grazing the floor. She tapped me with her tail as she sauntered past.
Though Miru had said there was nothing to eat, she managed to find an apple. She peeled it with a fruit knife and arranged the slices on a plate. My hunger made the apple taste even sweeter. Miru took out her notebook and wrote: Apple, four slices. I stole a peek at her notebook. She had even made a note for the day the three of us had gone to eat ramen noodles together.
“Too bad you don’t have a camera,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“If you took a photo, you could see what you’d eaten without having to write it all down.”
“I prefer writing,” Miru said.
Miru filled a mug with water and poured it into Emily’s stainless steel bowl. Beside it was another bowl filled with cat food. I took a closer look and saw that next to the food bowl was a flowerpot planted with sprouts. Miru saw me looking and explained that they were rye sprouts. I had never seen anyone grow rye sprouts in their room before.
“Cats swallow a little hair each time they groom themselves. It collects in their stomach and blocks their intestines. The rye sprouts help them cough up the hairballs. That over there is her scratching post.”
Emily was clawing at a small upright post wound with rope. Miru picked up something next to it that looked like a fishing pole and dangled it over Emily’s head. The cat stopped scratching and leapt at it. Miru’s face brightened. Each time Emily got close, Miru held the pole a little higher and shook it.
“It’s fun for her, but it also gives her exercise,” she said.
After a while, she set the pole down and returned to the table. The cat followed. I reached down to scratch the cat’s ear. Emily stretched leisurely and licked her paw, then tucked her feet together and lay flat. She looked like a pile of melting snow.
“Would you like to spend the night?” Miru asked me.
The look in her eyes made it hard to say no. I swallowed, the taste of apple still on my tongue, and said okay.
We did not go to bed until after midnight. I fell asleep while reading a book on the floor. Suddenly she was shaking me awake. She sounded worried. I opened my eyes to find her looking anxiously at me. As soon as our eyes met, she looked relieved.
“Do you want to come up to the bed?” she asked.
Miru climbed the ladder first, as if to show me how, and looked down at me. I stood up and climbed the ladder just as she had. Books were scattered all over the mattress. It looked like she fell asleep reading every night. She pushed aside the books to make room for me. One of the books was turned facedown, as if she had been reading it the night before.
“Do you want the inside?” she asked.
Attached to the ladder was a railing that ran around the outside of the bed. I moved closer to the wall. Miru turned on the desk lamp and turned off the fluorescent ceiling light. The green lily stalks outside the window cast their shadows on the glass. I reached my hand up and touched the ceiling.
“Are you uncomfortable?” she asked.
“No.”
It was not so much uncomfortable as unfamiliar. It was the first time I had ever climbed a ladder to go to bed. I imagined Miru climbing the ladder every night, and I felt a little sorry for her. If she wasn’t careful, she could knock her head against the ceiling. Miru lay beside me and closed her eyes.
“When I was little,” she said, “I always thought it was weird to see people sleeping. It scared me to see them with their eyes closed. Like they might never wake up again. I used to watch my parents or sister when they were asleep and fret over when they would wake up. Even now, sometimes, when I’m about to fall asleep, I think, ‘What if I don’t wake up this time?’ How can people sleep so fearlessly and so bravely?”
“Is that why you woke me up earlier?”
“You looked like you weren’t going to wake up.”
“Yoon Miru …” I turned her face toward me. “My mother used to say if I was angry at someone, I should look at them when they’re asleep. She said that a person’s face when they’re asleep is their true face and that if you look at someone when they’re sleeping, you can’t stay angry at them. Whenever I feel angry or stressed, I take a nap. Don’t you feel more relaxed when you wake up? Try thinking of sleep as a kind of rebirth.”
She didn’t say anything. I assumed she disagreed with me. Emily hopped up the ladder and curled up next to us. Miru reached out to stroke the cat’s neck.
“I just thought of the title of that book,” she said.
“Which book?”
“The book about the cat that goes to the salt lake.”
“What was it?”
“When Your Journey Ends, Tell It to a Stranger.”
I thought about the story she had told me of people who bathed in a salt lake and told their final words to a cat. Was the cat their “stranger”? I wanted to read that book.
“Do you have a copy?” I asked her.
“My sister took it with her when she left. She wanted to give it to her boyfriend.”
Miru sat up, lit a candle at the head of the bed, and turned off the lamp. The candle flickered and sent our shadows drifting across the walls and ceiling.
“The world is too quiet, isn’t it?”
When she said that, I realized that I had forgotten all about the world outside her room. Where was Myungsuh, and what was he doing? He used to call me on Saturday mornings to ask if he could come over. We would meet in the morning and hang out well into the evening. But since I had started going to the public bath with Miru every weekend, he and I had stopped spending our Saturdays together. Suddenly I wondered what he did without me on those days. Miru sat up, reached over, and turned on a small radio.
“Eight minutes and one second,” she said.
“What?”
“The second movement of the Emperor Concerto is eight minutes and one second long.”
“Beethoven?”
“Yes.”
The piano concerto wrapped around us and seemed to lead us to some far-off place.
“Whenever I can’t sleep, I put this on and tell myself I have to fall asleep in eight minutes and one second … It’s like a spell.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes. Other times I think about the fact that no one knows I’m sleeping here. No one would know if I didn’t wake up. Listening to this makes me feel better. And sometimes I fall asleep without trying.”
Her words shook me. I’d had the same thought sometimes while going to sleep in my rooftop room. On those nights, I would open the window and look down at the darkened city. I would stare for a long time at the tower on Namsan Mountain. On rainy nights, I enjoyed watching the lights of the tower slowly reemerge from its thick shroud of fog. Other times, I would go out onto the roof and play hopscotch by myself. I suppose while I was doing that, Miru was listening to music underground. Some of those moments probably overlapped. Spending the night with someone in their room made it easier to imagine what he or she was doing when you were not around. After that night, I would be able to picture Miru’s nights in this city.
“Miru.” I think it was the first time I had ever called her by just her first name. “The next time you can’t sleep, call me. And I’ll do the same.”
“Why?”
“We live close to each other. We could meet in the middle. Or you could go to my place and sleep, or I
could come here. What do you think?”
“Yoon,” she whispered. “What if we moved into that house together instead?”
Emily climbed onto Miru’s stomach. Her shadow grew large and wavered in the candlelight. I was caught off guard by Miru’s proposal. I reached out to stroke Emily’s fur. I could hear Miru breathing as she waited anxiously for me to answer. The shadows of the lilies outside that had seemed ready to barge in at any moment were now leaning back like sentries at rest. What was on Myungsuh’s mind as he planted them beneath the window? The fragrance of lilies must have filled her room for nights on end. The stalks would wilt with the first frost; only the bulbs buried underground could survive the winter. The minutes kept passing as I thought about the lilies. I knew I had to give Miru an answer, but I kept getting distracted. I pictured the white rain lilies in front of the abandoned house, the overgrown weeds in the yard. What were their lives like when they were living there? I could not begin to imagine it.
“If you don’t mind, Myungsuh, too.”
She spoke as if we didn’t need to ask him for his opinion. I wondered if he was the type of person to do something just because Miru suggested it. I was speechless. Was she trying to re-create what she’d had with her sister? The minutes ticked by. I felt like our friendship might sour if I didn’t answer right away. But it was also as if Miru’s older sister, whom I had never met, had suddenly dropped in.
“I need more time,” I said.
“Don’t overthink it,” she said. “The house is sitting empty. And right now, we’re each paying rent on separate places. Myungsuh is living at a relative’s house. We could combine our resources.”
If living together were that simple, I would never have moved out of my cousin’s apartment. Emily came over to me. Miru tried to call her back, but the cat ignored her and pressed her paws against my stomach, shifting her weight from one paw to the other.
“See,” Miru said. “Emily wants to live with you, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When a cat kneads you like that, it’s a kind of gift. It means she loves you. Myungsuh has always been sweet to her, but she’s never done that to him. I think he feels like she’s snubbing him. Emily must like you.”
I stroked the back of Emily’s neck, and she purred.
“She makes that sound when she’s really happy. I bet if we lived together, Emily would be closest to you.”
Our shadows wavered over the bed. The piano concerto had already played three times in a row. The melody was beautiful, haunting, and as soft as Emily’s fur.
“Jung Yoon.” She called me by my full name again. “I surprised you, didn’t I?”
“Yes, to be honest.”
“Of course. It’s one thing to be friends and another thing to live together. You don’t know that much about me, and I’m just starting to get to know you. So it’s not fair of me to ask you that yet. I understand. Take your time. But will you promise me you won’t take too long to decide?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
“When I moved into this place, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life here. I never imagined I would want to move out … I want to go back to school.”
Emily stopped kneading me and hopped back down the ladder. I watched her leap onto the windowsill. She sat and watched the lilies swaying in the wind, occasionally lifting a paw to swat at their shadows. The room was still except for the piano music and the flickering candlelight. I could hear Miru’s quiet breathing. I felt mean for not giving her the answer she wanted.
“Miru.” I could not take the silence any longer. “I wanted to get to know you better, too.”
“You did?”
“I don’t know if this will make sense to you, but ever since I moved out of my parents’ house, I’ve preferred being alone to being with other people. I got used to it. I’ll think some more about your offer. But it’s not because of you. It’s because of me.”
“I guess we were thinking the same thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I prefer being alone, too. I tried not to get close to you because I was afraid of hurting you. If I ever do anything to hurt you, please don’t hate me for it.”
I didn’t say anything.
Then to my surprise, she said, “If I do ever hurt you, forget all about me. Erase me from your memory.”
“Why are you saying that?” I asked, surprised.
“Never mind … Yoon, you have to remember me. Don’t forget me.”
Her voice shook. I rolled over to face her and reached out for her hand. Her scar-covered hand felt warm. If only we could have met each other sooner. We had led such poor and fragile lives, each alone. Maybe I did know what was going on in Myungsuh’s mind when he planted the lilies beneath her window. I squeezed her hand a little tighter.
“Let’s remember this forever,” I said.
I was surprised to realize I was echoing Myungsuh. Is this what he felt when he said it to me? Was the grief that I was feeling for Miru, who seemed so inscrutable and enigmatic, what he felt toward me? Maybe that was all there was to say when no words could offer solace, when there seemed to be no way forward.
“My sister used to say that,” Miru said.
“Oh?”
“She used to say it all the time when the three of us were living together: ‘Let’s remember this day forever …”
Between the notes of the second movement of the Emperor Concerto, I heard the faint ringing of a telephone. It was coming from the desk beneath the bed. Miru made no move to answer it. She seemed to know who was calling.
“That summer …” She took a long pause. “If it weren’t for that summer, my sister could be a prima ballerina right now, just like she wanted.”
“What happened?”
“My sister and I went to our grandmother’s house. Back then, our parents were fighting all the time, so our mother told us to go spend a few days at her mother’s house in the country. It was a last-minute decision. She tried calling her, but there was no answer. Our mother said she would call again after we’d left to tell her we were on the way. Our grandmother lived down south in Sancheong. When the Korean War started, she fled to the south on her own with our infant mother on her back. She moved to a remote part of Sancheong and built a house just like the one she had lived in as a child. My sister and I loved that house. She had all kinds of interesting things there. Our mother told the driver to take us all the way to our grandmother’s house, but my sister sent the driver away instead. She suggested we take the bus by ourselves. She thought it would be fun. We took an intercity bus and walked from the stop to our grandmother’s house. It felt like we were going on a picnic. I remember how my sister’s hair flew around in the wind that blew in the bus window and tickled my face. And the way she kept whispering, ‘Look at that!’ while pointing out trees and flowers and the sky as we walked down the back roads.
“It was late afternoon by the time we got to our grandmother’s house. We called out for her as we went in the gate, but the house was empty. The trees, which were like family to my grandmother, stood in a friendly congregation, casting shadows over the wall, and colorful summer flowers planted near the front door were in full bloom. The only way in was through the front door, but it was padlocked. My sister and I sat on the veranda in the shade of the trees and waited for her to come home. Since our mother said she would call her, we assumed she would be there already. We had gone to visit her before without calling first, but she had always been home. She was usually working in the courtyard or the vegetable garden, wearing a hat and baggy pants and carrying a hoe, but the moment we would step in through the gate and call out to her, she would drop what she was doing and rush to welcome us. She called us her ‘puppies.’ I would always run to her and give her a big hug. I loved the smell of her sweat.
“It was strange and a little frightening to see the house without her in it. I kept praying for her to appear. I have no idea how long we waited. I
kept thinking, ‘She’ll be here any minute.’ But the shadows of the sunflowers planted along the wall were getting longer and longer and still she hadn’t come. We were getting hungry, too. One of our stomachs grumbled loudly. Since I was the younger one, I kept whining that I was hungry, even though there was nothing my sister could have done about it. She tried to make me feel better by saying our grandmother would be home soon, but her stomach was also growling. She must have been more anxious than I was for our grandmother to appear. She stopped staring at the front gate and got up and went to the locked front door. Even though we knew no one was inside, she banged on the door and yelled, ‘Grandma!’ I went to her side and yelled with her. When we got tired of that, we leaned against the door and started ticking off the things we would ask our grandmother to do when she finally showed up. Our grandmother had a lot of expensive brass dishes. She told us that in the village in the North where she grew up, whenever important guests came to visit, food was served in brass bowls with brass spoons and chopsticks. It was a sign of respect. Our favorite food was the pyeonsu she would make for us.”
“What’s pyeonsu?”
“That’s what they call dumplings where she grew up. They cook them in beef broth. My sister and I sat there and listed all the things we wanted her to cook for us. Not just pyeonsu but also steamed pork with kimchi, soup made with gourd-shaped rice cakes, stew made with bean paste and dumplings—all of the things she usually made when we visited her over winter vacation. We must have listed fifty different foods and still she hadn’t come. I could not stop whining about how hungry I was. The more I whined, the hungrier I got. There was nothing my sister could do but keep reassuring me that she would be there any minute. I said, ‘What if she never comes home?’ My sister said, ‘Why wouldn’t she come home? It’ll just be a little longer.’ Then I really got worried and said, ‘She could have gone on a trip,’ and I listed all the reasons our grandmother might not return that day. My sister kept knocking on the door. I kept thinking that if only we could get inside, we would have plenty to eat, and that thought made me even more eager to get in. The longer the door stayed closed, the more convinced I was that our grandmother was never coming back. I had never seen it padlocked like that before. Finally I asked, ‘What if she went somewhere far away and won’t be back for several days?’ My sister stood up.
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