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GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA woman her age the first time you meet her, and Chae-geum was still too young to understand that a woman like me had asked out of loneliness and yearning for the past, not nosiness or lust. “Twenty-five,” she’d answered hesitantly, giving me a sudden pang. I, like everyone else, felt it too precious an age for a girl to be marrying a man over 40. But was it that which pierced my heart? In fact it didn’t concern me one way or the other whom this Korean Chinese girl named Chae-geum married.What struck me was how clearly she’d articulated “twenty-five”. Twenty-five . . . what a brilliant age! Hearing it from her lips, I completely forgot the despair and gloom I had sunk into at that age. I’d met my husband at the age of 25 and what I’d desired most at that splendid age was to marry him. As this memory surfaced, the age suddenly lost its lustre. “Honey, how do you think people look when they die? I mean what is the expression on their face?” I asked this of my husband shortly before I left for China. As usual, he looked right at me as if he wasn't drunk at all though he reeked of alcohol. But maybe he wasn’t seeing me, but simply turning his head towards the sound of a voice. “Devoid of thought,” I continued. “In other words, they look dazed. The wailing, shivering with fear and tears are only for the living, the ones who are left behind.” My husband still didn’t say anything so I felt compelled to fill the void. “Yes, that’s what I’ve heard. But it’s not the story you usually hear.That’s why I brought it up.The person who told me said she’d heard it from someone else, too, but it seemed so vivid, as though I had seen it with my own eyes. Isn’t that profound? I wonder what you think. Do you think so, too?” The person who had told me about the look on the face of the dying was Chae-geum’s mother, who had begun by saying that she had had a dream the night before. “Actually,” she’d said, “I didn’t see it myself – my husband did. But my dream was so vivid that I thought I saw it with my own eyes. He watched a man die by firing squad. He said it over and over again, repeating it all his life.That execution happened when he was small and you’d expect him to have a vague memory of it now, but he sounded as if it had happened just a moment ago. Perhaps that is why bad luck follows him – because he saw something he wasn’t meant to see. If bad luck is dealt to you, it tends to stay with you. So, you see, coming to Korea is not in his stars. 166 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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KIM IN-SOOK Even if he did come, what good would it do? He keeps going back to that story. I think he is carrying the dead man’s soul, not his own. No, he’s better off staying put.” Then, pausing as though she had just returned from a distant place, she asked me why I was going to China. “For my child. So she can study and become a global citizen.” I can’t believe I had the nerve to say that face to face with Chae-geum’s mother. But as I did the words instantly lost their meaning. In retelling the story to my husband, I’d wanted to relay everything she’d told me. And I’d wanted to hear him ask the same question: “Why are you going?” But he didn’t speak. He just kept looking in my direction as he might look at anyone talking to him or me, for that matter. “Now you . . . ” – I couldn’t stop talking in the face of his silence – “seem . . . to have . . .” – I enunciated each word as clearly as I could to make him understand – “a stranger’s soul.” My Chinese tutor arrived about an hour after Chae-geum called to tell me that she was preparing to leave for Korea. Rather than teaching me the language, her real job had become taking care of me in China.That day, most days really, we didn’t have the time to open a book. Instead, we would do the shopping that I regularly postponed due to my inability to communicate.We’d fetch the apartment janitor, who had banged on my door while I was home alone then gave up on me and returned to his office, unable to communicate. My tutor and I would call a plumber to unclog the bathroom drain, then drop by the post office and the bank. Like Chae-geum, she was Korean Chinese. She’d once wanted to become an elementary school teacher but now dreamed of going to Korea. I’d hired my Chinese tutor about two weeks after I signed a lease on the apartment.As the agent back in Korea who had recommended a Chinese school for my daughter and my guide here assured me, I was able to rent a place within three days. A few days more and my daughter was admitted to the school we’d chosen. In fact, my housing search was over almost before it began. My guide was efficient and knew exactly what to do. He started by showing me one place that was nothing more than a few doors, a floor, a sink and a washbasin set against cement walls. I had been so appalled that I practically begged him for a contract as soon as I saw that the next apartment BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 167

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GUEST LITERATURE – KOREA

woman her age the first time you meet her, and Chae-geum was still too young to understand that a woman like me had asked out of loneliness and yearning for the past, not nosiness or lust. “Twenty-five,” she’d answered hesitantly, giving me a sudden pang. I, like everyone else, felt it too precious an age for a girl to be marrying a man over 40. But was it that which pierced my heart? In fact it didn’t concern me one way or the other whom this Korean Chinese girl named Chae-geum married.What struck me was how clearly she’d articulated “twenty-five”. Twenty-five . . . what a brilliant age! Hearing it from her lips, I completely forgot the despair and gloom I had sunk into at that age. I’d met my husband at the age of 25 and what I’d desired most at that splendid age was to marry him. As this memory surfaced, the age suddenly lost its lustre.

“Honey, how do you think people look when they die? I mean what is the expression on their face?” I asked this of my husband shortly before I left for China. As usual, he looked right at me as if he wasn't drunk at all though he reeked of alcohol. But maybe he wasn’t seeing me, but simply turning his head towards the sound of a voice.

“Devoid of thought,” I continued. “In other words, they look dazed. The wailing, shivering with fear and tears are only for the living, the ones who are left behind.” My husband still didn’t say anything so I felt compelled to fill the void. “Yes, that’s what I’ve heard. But it’s not the story you usually hear.That’s why I brought it up.The person who told me said she’d heard it from someone else, too, but it seemed so vivid, as though I had seen it with my own eyes. Isn’t that profound? I wonder what you think. Do you think so, too?”

The person who had told me about the look on the face of the dying was Chae-geum’s mother, who had begun by saying that she had had a dream the night before. “Actually,” she’d said, “I didn’t see it myself – my husband did. But my dream was so vivid that I thought I saw it with my own eyes. He watched a man die by firing squad. He said it over and over again, repeating it all his life.That execution happened when he was small and you’d expect him to have a vague memory of it now, but he sounded as if it had happened just a moment ago. Perhaps that is why bad luck follows him – because he saw something he wasn’t meant to see. If bad luck is dealt to you, it tends to stay with you. So, you see, coming to Korea is not in his stars.

166 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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