Skip to main content
Read page text
page 164
GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA “. . . Hello?” My grip on the handset relaxed at the sound of Chae-geum’s voice. At least, it wasn’t a foreign tongue. She stammered and groped for the right Korean words to tell me that she had got her visa and would leave the following week. She offered to deliver a message to my mother in Korea. Chae-geum’s question sounded blunt in her poor Korean: “Do you, uh, would you have something to say to your mother?” Her kindness left me at a loss. All I could do was listen and say: “Yeah, yeah.” And as I said yes I realized that I really had nothing to say to my mother. Chae-geum probably thought I was overcome with emotion as she waited politely for my silence to turn into words. In fact it wasn’t the thought of my mother back in Seoul that gripped my heart, but that of Chae-geum, who was bound for the same place. In time I mustered up a few phrases. “No, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s all right, really.” My words weren’t intended for my mother, but were more in anticipation of what it would be like once Chae-geum had gone. I had only known the girl for a month and she had nothing to do with me. Why wouldn’t it be all right? That afternoon I found my gaze drawn to the plant I had bought at the florist.The plant is known as jinzhiyuye in China, while in Korea, where I had never seen it, it is called gumjiokyeop, which means someone raised like royalty. It blooms a tiny rainbow of colours – yellow, red, deep pink and dark green florets dangling precariously from slender stalks. I had stopped at the flower shop because I wanted to bring something alive into the apartment, and ended up having to buy this fragile-looking plant, passing over lush pots of flowers, not because I was struck by its splendid beauty but rather due to my need to satisfy my curiosity as to whether the florets had been glued to an ordinary stalk as an adornment. I wanted to ask the shopkeeper, but I had no idea how to say it in Chinese and I couldn’t convey what I had in mind simply through sign language. So while the florist dealt with other customers I had reached out to touch a petal with the tip of my tentative finger. My hand was shaking with tension as it approached the floret. Had the tremor stirred that petal, tiny as a grain of rice, causing it to fall? The shopkeeper, who I had thought was busy with other customers, was now standing beside me, watching. The moment our 162 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
page 165
KIM IN-SOOK eyes met, he shouted “Sikuaiqian”, which, given the way he was fluttering his palm open and shut, I had to assume was the price of the plant I clearly now owned. I gingerly retrieved the dark green petal the size of a grain of boiled rice from where it had landed in the pot. Neither soft nor stiff, it dissolved on contact without leaving even a trace of green on my fingers, as though it had been waiting for my touch. I seized the flimsy pot with both hands, fighting the urge to hurl it out of the porch window. The soil shifted, sending tremors up the stems, while the flowers seemed to cling desperately to the plant as if by a fine thread. They seemed to be reprimanding me, as though saying that life is not meant to be examined. There was something familiar in those tiny petals, as though I had been looking at them all my life. A sense of familiarity in strangeness washed over me like a recurring cold. Maybe I hadn’t run far enough. Chae-geum was the first person I met in China, a mere three hours after my plane landed at the airport, and less than an hour after I had unpacked at the hotel, to be exact. “Hello, my name is Lee Chae-geum,” she’d said. My first thought was that the phone call couldn’t be for me. After all I was in a hotel in a foreign city of a foreign country.Then I wondered if it might be the front desk, forgetting how unlikely it was that the staff of a Chinese hotel would speak Korean. And even if they did, would a member of the hotel staff be in the habit of giving her full name when communicating with a guest? Then I considered how I should respond – say “hello” and offer my name in kind? I didn’t have to hesitate for long because just then, Chae-geum said she wanted to collect the money her mother had entrusted to me and it finally dawned on me who she was. Since I had made arrangements to stay at the hotel while still in Korea, she must have got word of my itinerary from her mother and waited nearby for me to check in, because she was knocking on my door less than 10 minutes after I’d hung up the phone. I was still a little taken aback by the call, in part because I didn’t know how bad her Korean was, but also because I didn’t understand the urgency. Her mother’s money wasn’t a large enough sum for me to be tempted to make off with it – not large enough for someone to rush in and claim it within an hour of my arrival in a foreign hotel in a BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 163

Page Text

View plaintext

GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA

“. . . Hello?” My grip on the handset relaxed at the sound of Chae-geum’s voice. At least, it wasn’t a foreign tongue.

She stammered and groped for the right Korean words to tell me that she had got her visa and would leave the following week. She offered to deliver a message to my mother in Korea. Chae-geum’s question sounded blunt in her poor Korean: “Do you, uh, would you have something to say to your mother?” Her kindness left me at a loss. All I could do was listen and say: “Yeah, yeah.” And as I said yes I realized that I really had nothing to say to my mother. Chae-geum probably thought I was overcome with emotion as she waited politely for my silence to turn into words. In fact it wasn’t the thought of my mother back in Seoul that gripped my heart, but that of Chae-geum, who was bound for the same place. In time I mustered up a few phrases. “No, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s all right, really.” My words weren’t intended for my mother, but were more in anticipation of what it would be like once Chae-geum had gone. I had only known the girl for a month and she had nothing to do with me. Why wouldn’t it be all right?

That afternoon I found my gaze drawn to the plant I had bought at the florist.The plant is known as jinzhiyuye in China, while in Korea, where I had never seen it, it is called gumjiokyeop, which means someone raised like royalty. It blooms a tiny rainbow of colours – yellow, red, deep pink and dark green florets dangling precariously from slender stalks. I had stopped at the flower shop because I wanted to bring something alive into the apartment, and ended up having to buy this fragile-looking plant, passing over lush pots of flowers, not because I was struck by its splendid beauty but rather due to my need to satisfy my curiosity as to whether the florets had been glued to an ordinary stalk as an adornment. I wanted to ask the shopkeeper, but I had no idea how to say it in Chinese and I couldn’t convey what I had in mind simply through sign language.

So while the florist dealt with other customers I had reached out to touch a petal with the tip of my tentative finger. My hand was shaking with tension as it approached the floret. Had the tremor stirred that petal, tiny as a grain of rice, causing it to fall?

The shopkeeper, who I had thought was busy with other customers, was now standing beside me, watching. The moment our

162 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content