I'll Be Right There

by Kyung-Sook Shin

  Myungsuh stepped away from the bookshelf.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “And go where?”

  “To see Professor Yoon.”

  “Now?”

  “He asked us to come see him.”

  When he started to walk away, I grabbed his arm. He leaned against the bookshelf again. Miru’s diary was right behind us. Someone came up the stairs in the hallway outside and walked quickly past the office. We listened to the sound of the person’s shoes retreating. Whoever it was would have no idea that he and I were standing in Professor Yoon’s closed office. Nor that Miru’s diary was shelved there.

  “Move in with me,” I said again.

  He looked down at my hand on his arm.

  “We have to live together,” I said forcefully. “We have to.”

  He held his breath.

  “Let’s live together. Emily, too. Eat together, brush our teeth together, wake up in the morning together, read together, go to sleep at night together …”

  I trailed off. As I listed the things we should do together, memories of days past flashed before my eyes. I lost all strength in my hand, and he caught it as it dropped. Those days had happened to us by chance, with no warning or expectation. He, too, seemed to be thinking about the days we had spent in that empty house with Dahn and Miru. Dahn had written that the memory would stay with him forever, and that he would always be able to find his way back without getting lost. That must mean it wasn’t a dream. He also said he and Miru had agreed that he would illustrate her diary. Sometimes I think about that promise she and I made to each other.

  That day will come. Someday, I mean. Someday, when we meet again, I’ll illustrate the stories the three of you wrote.

  We left the school and walked to Jongno 3-ga to catch a bus to Professor Yoon’s house. We walked in silence. When a cold breeze hit us, he took his hand out of his pocket and readjusted my scarf. Then he rubbed his hands together to warm them up and placed them on my cheeks. By the time we got to Cheongnyangni Station, transferred to a bus headed for Deokso, and found seats in the very back, a light snow was starting to come down.

  “I can’t wait for the years to pass, Jung Yoon,” he said in a hollow voice. “Can’t wait to be older, when I will understand, even if I can’t forgive. Can’t wait to become strong.”

  The village where Professor Yoon lived was white with snow like something on a Christmas card. The snow must have been falling the whole time Yoon and I were on the bus. It had stopped by the time we got off and started walking to the village, but then it started again. There were no footprints on the snow. Yoon held on to my arm and asked if I knew where the professor lived. I had gotten directions over the phone from both Nak Sujang and the professor, but it was my first time going there. Yoon fretted over whether we would find it in all that snow. The snow crunched underfoot with each step. I promised her we would, and she smiled.

  “The snow really does crunch,” she said, and stomped on it to hear the sound it made, as if she had never walked on snow before. “Listen! Crunch, crunch, crunch!”

  She walked ahead so I could hear it, her tracks following her in the snow, then she stopped and waited for me to catch up.

  “Look at that,” she said.

  She was pointing at the footprints we had just left. Mine were big, and hers were small. I liked walking in the snow and leaving footprints with her. I would happily walk anywhere in the world with her. With the snow crunching in our ears, we made our way along the winding path. The snow was piled high on top of an old tree that had fallen during the last typhoon. Birds alighted on the snow-laden branches and took off with a flutter at our approach.

  “It feels like we’re just going deeper into the mountains,” Yoon said.

  I had just been thinking the same thing, but I reassured her, saying, “It’s just a little farther.”

  As we went around yet another bend, I started to worry, too. But just then, the village unfurled below us. The rest of the path looked like someone had just swept it clean.

  The village was surrounded by mountains and completely blanketed in snow. There were only a few houses. The whole world had turned white. The path continued on like a line on a map. We traced it with our eyes. It meandered down the mountain and into the village, widening and then narrowing again. The swept path stood out clearly against the snowy landscape. It came to a stop in front of a house.

  “That’s it,” Yoon said. “That must be where he lives.”

  We followed the path down to the village. Just as Yoon had predicted, the house at the end was the professor’s. The front gate was open, and the professor was standing in the courtyard. The snow was piled high and white inside the courtyard as well. Leafless, snow-covered trees towered overhead. Inside the gate stood a sturdy-looking bamboo broom, the same one that must have been used to sweep the path we had just walked down. The professor watched silently as we approached. When we were standing in front of him, a dog came flying out of a doghouse on the other side of the yard. It was a big yellow dog. Before even greeting the professor, Yoon was scratching the dog’s back as it wagged its tail. The dog lowered its ears and went to the professor’s side. “It’s big,” the professor said,” but very friendly.”

  Professor Yoon reached out his hand to pat Yoon on the shoulder, but she suddenly plopped down on the snow. I thought at first that she had tripped on something. Her shoulders were moving up and down, and then she burst into tears. Startled, I tried to help her up, but the professor said, “Leave her be.” Once, long ago (now that I write those words, “long ago,” it feels like something ancient) in Ilyeong, I had watched Yoon cry. She had looked as if she’d just dunked her face in the river. Once her tears started, she always had a hard time stopping, to the extent that I wondered how she was able to hold them in in the first place. Her eyes swelled up at once.

  The professor already knew about Miru. I didn’t bother asking how he knew. I wish the only things that ever happened to us were ones where you could ask how and why. He said he had received a letter from Miru’s mother. Her mother had refused to see me. She took Yoon to Miru’s grandmother’s house and wrote a letter to the professor, but she wouldn’t even call me. When I called him to get the key to his office, he must have already known about Miru. That must have been why he asked me to come see him and to bring Yoon. By the time Yoon stopped crying and we went inside, it was growing dark. The professor’s house was furnished very simply: a chair and coffee table in the living room, a table and four chairs in the kitchen, and a desk and a chair in the bedroom. I sat on a long bench set beneath the living room window and looked out at our footprints in the snowy courtyard. The professor went to the kitchen, brought out a thermos, and poured a big mug of quince tea for Yoon and another for me. He looked out the window and asked Yoon if she was done crying. Yoon wrapped her hands around the mug and nodded.

  “She brought me that tree,” the professor said. I assumed he was talking about Miru. “We planted it together. She said it’s crab apple.”

  It occurred to me that he might have been the last person Miru saw before going to her grandmother’s house.

  “The flowers bud in the spring,” he said, “and after the leaves fall off, the apples come in. If the tree is still alive by the end of summer, we’ll get to see some bright red crab apples before autumn.”

  Yoon and I sat next to each other and looked out at the tree. Snow glittered on the branches.

  “Back in my twenties, when I was your age,” the professor said. “I received a letter …” He leaned back against the sofa, his eyes fixed on the snowflakes dangling from the crab apple tree outside the window. “It was from a woman I used to know.”

  He turned to look at us. His steely eyes wavered for a second. Yoon set her mug down.

  “There was a key in the envelope. I hadn’t seen her in several years, so I was quite puzzled. There was a piece of paper wrapped around the key. I unrolled it to find a date and a hand-drawn m
ap. It was the middle of winter, just like now. I didn’t recognize the location on the map. At the time, I had completed my army service then went to the United States for several months to take a writing program at a university, after which I was spending the winter at my parents’ house in the country. Not everyone had telephones back then. I had no idea what the key or the date meant, and I stewed over it for several days. I think I even wrote her a reply, filled with questions, but the snow was too heavy for me to get to the post office. In the meantime, the date in the letter came and went. It wasn’t until several days after the snow had stopped that I realized I was supposed to have gone to see her by then. I came to my senses, shoveled my way out of the snow, and caught a train to the city. The map led me to Oksu-dong—I had never been to that part of the city before. I wandered around for a while, trying to find the house on the map. The ground was frozen, and the air was cold. I don’t know how many times I slipped on those steep streets. At one point, my feet went out from under me and I fell on my back. My heart sank. What was she doing living in such a poor neighborhood? When I first met her, she lived in the wealthy neighborhood of Hannam-dong. She invited me over to her place once, and afterward we started to lose interest in each other. Or rather, she still liked me, but I lost interest. I can’t explain what it was exactly. I guess I thought we were from two different worlds. When I started my army service, I didn’t bother to tell her. I also didn’t respond to any of the letters she sent me. She tried to visit me once when I was in the service, but I was gone on leave. After a few missed meetings, I stopped hearing from her. It was heartbreaking to see that she was living in one of those steep hillside slums. I started to hurry. Finally, I managed to find the house on the map. It was a small tenement building crowded with families at the end of a tiny alley on top of the hill. I rang the doorbell and knocked on the door, but no one answered. I took the key out of the envelope and put in the lock—it fit. I opened the door and peeked in. Shoes were lined up neatly beside the door and everything was in order, but no one seemed to be home. No one answered when I called out, so I took off my shoes and went inside. I called out again.

  My voice echoed through the empty house. I tried opening each of the doors, one after the other. There were two rooms, one bigger and one smaller. I even opened the door to the bathroom, which looked like it had not been used in a while. No one was there. It was empty except for the chill in the air. I couldn’t just hang around in a stranger’s house, so I left. I locked the door behind me and went down the stairs. But something was tugging at me, and I kept glancing back as I walked down the alley. Then it hit me. The weather was freezing, but I broke into a cold sweat. I thought, It can’t be, and I ran back up the alley, slipping and sliding the whole way, all the while praying I was wrong.”

  The professor paused. His eyes were red and swollen. He looked like he didn’t want to finish the story. He glanced up at the two of us, nodded, and began again.

  “I went back to the house and unlocked the door, but all I wanted to do was leave. I stood in the entrance for a moment and stared at the door to the bigger of the two rooms. When I had opened it before, it felt different from the other doors. It had only opened partway, like there was something behind it. I had poked my head into the rooms but didn’t go all the way inside. I wasn’t sure if it was even her house, and just because the key she’d sent me fit in the lock didn’t mean I could go barging into someone else’s bedroom. I wondered again whether I should leave. I was afraid. I cleared my throat and clomped over to the bedroom without taking off my shoes. I kept hesitating, and finally, because I thought I might back down, I pushed the door open fast and looked behind it. I was right that the door had bumped into something. I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but it was her. On the wall behind the door. Hanging by her neck.”

  No one said anything for a moment. We watched the snow-covered courtyard grow dark. Then Professor Yoon continued.

  “I’ll never forget what I saw that day. I think that’s why I never married. The memory has faded, but it never goes away. That’s why I am not going to tell you two to get over the things you have gone through. You should think about them and then think about them some more. Think about them until you can’t think anymore. Don’t stop questioning the unjust and puzzling. Maybe if I had gotten there by the date written in her letter, I could have saved her. But then again, maybe her death was already planned, and all she wanted was for me to find her. Human beings are imperfect. We are complicated, indefinable by any wise saying or moral. The guilt, wondering what I’d done wrong, will follow me my whole life like my own shadow. The more you love someone, the stronger that feeling is. But if we cannot despair over the things we’ve lost, then what does it all mean? But … I don’t want that despair to damage your souls.”

  The dog went out to the courtyard and sat in the snow beneath the window. The professor opened the window and stuck out his hand to stroke the dog’s neck. His touch was gentle. Then he sat up straight, as if something had occurred to him, and he said, “Get up. Let’s go into the mountains.”

  Dusk was falling. Why the mountains at this late hour? Yoon gave me a look. She seemed to be wondering the same thing. The professor grabbed some long poles that were propped up next to the front gate and handed us each one. He took one for himself as well and led the way. As we walked out the front gate carrying poles, we looked both ridiculous and resolute. The small village was completely blanketed. A few of the houses sat empty. On the way out of the village and into the mountains, we saw no sign of anyone else out and about. Our legs sank deep into the snow as we followed the professor. The professor stopped in a part of the woods filled with old pines. I had never seen anything like it. The snow-covered trees stood in the darkness like people gazing down at us. It was so beautiful that I felt like kneeling before it. The professor brushed the snow off a branch that was touching the ground. Yoon stood below an old tree that measured more than two arm spans around and tipped her head back to look up.

  “Help me dislodge the snow,” Professor Yoon said. “Since spending the winter here, I’ve learned that if it snows again when the trees are already covered, the branches can’t bear the weight and will snap right off. Let’s work together to clear the branches before it snows again.”

  Some of the branches were already broken. He raised his pole and used it to lift a branch. Though he barely nudged it, the snow poured down; flakes fell on our heads. Yoon and I followed suit and raised our poles into the branches to knock the snow loose. We moved hesitantly at first but soon became absorbed in the task. Though it was after dark, the snow reflected enough light for us to see. Each time we cleared one of the younger pines, the flexible branches snapped upward. Some of them knocked the snow off higher branches when they sprang up like that. Despite the cold, sweat broke out on my forehead and slid down the sides of my face. The professor collected the broken branches that were buried in the snow. One by one, I made my way forward until I lost sight of Yoon. When I looked back, she was hard at work shaking the branches, oblivious to me as well. The professor worked behind us for a while but then stopped and watched us in the dark. My whole body was wet with sweat. I had no idea how long we had been at it. The trees that had bowed under the weight of the snow rose up into the night sky. Even though she was out of breath, Yoon kept moving to the next tree. The mountains filled with the sound of our labor. I paused to look up. The stars glimmered in the frozen night sky. How long had it been since I lifted my eyes to look at the stars? It must have been past midnight. I didn’t see the professor. I looked around but did not see him. Worried, I stopped and ran downhill. My spine was slick with sweat. The professor was sitting beneath an old pine cleared of snow. I asked him if he was okay. He smiled faintly. I sat beside him and listened to Yoon breathing hard as she shook the snow-laden branches. The sound of her pole knocking against the trees echoed through the mountains. I started to call out to her, but the professor stopped me.

  “Leave her be,�
� he said. “She’ll stop when she’s ready.”

  —Brown Notebook 10

  Epilogue

  I’ll Be Right There

  What is the furthest I shall reach

  in life, and who can tell me? Whether

  I’ll still be a wanderer of the storm

  and living as a wave in the pool,

  and whether even I’ll still be the pale,

  spring-cold, spring-wind-trembling birch?

  —Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours

  “I would like to tell you about a man named Christopher.”

  I pushed my glasses up and looked around the classroom. Their bright eyes were all fixed on me. I had been invited to speak at a women’s university as part of the chapel service. I took my glasses off and set them on the table. Their bright eyes blurred. The students in the back row were reduced to silhouettes. I could tell they were wondering who this Christopher was, just as we all had back when Professor Yoon told us the story. I looked at their puzzled faces and smiled to myself. I can tell I am getting old whenever young people strike me as endearing. But getting old isn’t a bad thing. Getting old means that the subtle envy I feel for those passing through youth, and the waves of loss that wash over me when I see the way they seem to glow, will abate and leave only the hope that they will make their way forward freely, unimpeded by anything.

  “Have any of you heard of Saint Christopher?”