The fragile union between Sonju and her husband was unraveling, and she didn’t care. He pretended nothing was wrong between them, uttering endearments and going about his usual routine. When he entered a room, she left that room or grabbed whatever book that was nearby and sat as far as possible from him to read.
On a late October day, Mother-in-Law handed her a letter from her sister, and Sonju immediately thought something bad must have happened to her family. Why else would she receive a letter all of a sudden? She opened it. Her sister wrote that she was with child again, and their mother had taken ill. She relayed that their father requested Sonju to come to care for their mother.
Just in case her mother’s illness was contagious, Sonju left Jinju in the care of Second Sister. On the train, she felt unsettled, this being her first separation from Jinju, and her first trip back to Seoul since her marriage. She sat staring out the window and considered what had become of her, crushed by the behavior of one ordinary man. During the nearly five years of their marriage, all the exchanges between them—disappointments that squandered occasional glimpses of happiness, his careless remarks and her bitter words—all deposited layer upon layer deep within her. What now? And what in the future?
Submerged in her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed the train stops along the way, only coming to herself when all the passengers rose from their seats and pulled down their luggage. She took hers, and when the train stopped with the final squeal and sigh, she stepped off and looked up at the station’s familiar dome. After the long steps up and onto the stone floor of the Seoul Train Station, then out onto the cobblestone plaza, she stood a moment to take in the city. She was not surprised to find the city decimated. It was the hub of South Korea after all, where the major government agencies, transportation, mass communication, schools, and commerce were located. On one of the major streets near the plaza, a few tall buildings remained untouched, but some stood with their windows blown out, only a shell of the building remaining, others were flattened to rubble. On the street that ran along the plaza, tree trunks stood burnt black, their branches dark metal spikes. Amid the ruins, however, there were reminders of the city she used to know—pedestrians, street vendors, black smoke from old buses, hissing wires overhead from the streetcar.
She waited for a taxi for almost ten minutes, and finally climbed into a Jeep that used to be an American military vehicle. On the way to her parents’ house, she recognized the buildings only by the barely standing columns and parts of the walls that jutted up, which appeared haunted by their own devastated forms. Some familiar storefronts remained intact, but they looked shabby and meagre. Interspersed, new construction was underway with bags of concrete piled up on the sidewalks.
Along the streets men carried huge piles of unfamiliar American refuse on A-frame carriers strapped to their backs; men old and young, some maimed, begged for money on the sidewalks; merchants and customers haggled over prices; a young American soldier looking lost in a foreign city turned his head left and right in the midst of pedestrians walking briskly in every direction.
The taxi approached her quiet neighborhood, leaving behind the dust and fumes, and arrived at her parents’ house. As soon as the maid opened the gate, the smell of brewed Chinese medicine wafted from the kitchen. The maid bowed, led Sonju to her mother’s room and announced, “She is here.”
Sonju found her mother sitting on her yo, propped up by pillows. Her face was haggard but her countenance was still imperious. Her mother looked at her husband sitting near her and smiled, then turned her face to Sonju. “I was fine until ten days ago when we finished rebuilding the damaged parts of the house. That’s when I got sick for the first time, and your father felt the need to have you take care of me. I am much better now. You did not have to come.”
Just then, her brother, no longer a boy, strode into the room. The last time Sonju had seen him, he had been a chatty, senseless youth with an uneven high-pitched voice. She looked at him with a wide grin. “You have grown into a man. Which school and what are you studying?”
Her brother ran his hand across his shaved cheek as though all his manhood rested on that narrow patch of his face and said in a deep voice, “I am a freshman at Korea University studying law.”
She asked him why he chose that major, and he said he was aiming for Supreme Court. She didn’t bother to ask him why he wanted to be on the supreme court because she already knew the answer—the highest glory for himself and nothing else. He reminded her of her husband. “You will raise our family’s esteem, and Mother will be very pleased,” she said turning to her mother. She and her mother exchanged a quick intense stare. Sonju was pleased with herself to say those loaded words. She then proceeded to tell her family about Jinju and her life in the village. Perfunctory conversations followed with long interspersed pauses. Sonju didn’t expect her family to ask about her marriage, and they didn’t.
The next morning, she stayed with her mother for a while, then after lunch, walked toward the used bookstore where she used to meet Kungu. She didn’t have to get close to see that the whole area had been flattened. Did the bookstore owner survive? She had known him all through her high school years and two more years after that. She felt as though she had lost a friend.
She turned and walked to the church garden, her childhood refuge where she felt a sense of belonging with Kungu and Misu by her side. Even though the church front was destroyed, the bench still stubbornly claimed its old place. She saw scattered little stones on the ground and she could almost see and hear the three young friends lost in play. Her heart had been so light then and her ideas about her future boundless.
After a sweeping glance around the enclosed garden, she left and went to her sister’s house.
Her graceful sister in her haste to rush toward her almost fell. They grabbed each other’s hands smiling and tittering. Sonju caressed her sister’s bump and asked, “Where is my nephew?”
Sonju quietly went to the room her sister pointed to and opened the door to peek at the sleeping boy. She wished she had brought Jinju with her.
Her sister led her to a room with tatami floors, and they sat down when a maid brought a tray of tea.
Sonju lifted the cup and said, “Your child must take after his father.”
“And yours?”
“Jinju looks like me except for her nose, chin and hair. She has straight hair. I would have brought her if I had known Mother was better,” Sonju said and looked around. “You have a nice house.”
“It was built for a Japanese family. This used to be some mid-level government official’s home. It has built-in closets and an indoor bathroom.” Rubbing her round middle, she said, “You have to tell me about your farm life. I still can’t imagine you living in the country.”
“My farm life … Let’s see. It’s different. I don’t work in the fields if that’s what you are thinking. It’s a big household with the clan people coming and going all the time. People there are very warm. They take care of each other. When someone is sick, the whole village knows. When someone has a baby, they all know. When a stranger comes, they all know.” Sonju laughed a little. “They cry, they laugh. They are real and natural.”
With a knowing smile, her sister said, “Unlike our family.”
It was an enlightening moment for Sonju. She stared at her sister in her tasteful Western-style knit dress in muted brown holding her cup with both hands and bringing it slowly to her mouth. Her sister looked so much like their father with the same oval-shaped face with features that were ordinary but pleasant. Her compliant sister, kind-hearted and patient, but not known to have her own opinions, had her own thoughts about their stringent upbringing that stifled any spontaneous expression.
Her sister asked, “How is Jinju, my niece I haven’t met yet?”
Sonju smiled at the thought of her daughter. “She makes me smile. She gives me these tight satisfying hugs with that small body of hers. She is not yet three, yet she has such deep affection.”
“And your husband?”
At the mention of her husband, Sonju felt her jaw stiffen and hands fold. Her sister was watching her. After a long exhale, she said, “He still works in Pusan.”
“Is there some trouble in your marriage?” her sister asked cautiously.
Sonju sighed and replied, “It happens to many women.”
“Another woman?” Her sister asked with some hesitation.
“More than one.”
“Oh.” Her sister uttered and looked down.
There was a short silence before her sister talked about her mundane domestic life, an easier and safer topic. Sonju was disappointed that her sister returned to her family’s reticence about personal matters.
The following day, she found Misu in the living room surrounded by her three children. Upon seeing Sonju, she grabbed Sonju’s hand and almost jumped up and down laughing before she saw her brood watching. She turned and told them, “Children, bow to my best friend and then go to the park with the maid.” She pointed at each child as they bent their little heads in a bow and said, “Four, three, two years old.”
Watching the children toddle out, Sonju said, “Very obedient like you.”
“Yes, I’m lucky. When did you come to Seoul? You should’ve written me.” Misu pulled Sonju down to the floor as she sat.
“I came two days ago,” Sonju said. “My mother has been ill. She is much better now. How are you?”
“I missed you. How long has it been? Almost five years?” Misu got up to get the tea tray and poured a cup for Sonju and one for herself. “My mid-morning tea. It’s still hot.” Sonju nodded and took a cup.
Misu said, “I want to hear all about your country life.”
“You would envy its clean air. In a way, though, it’s easier to breathe in Seoul.”
Misu crinkled her nose. “Easier? You might not have said that after the city was bombarded by the artillery fire. Even now, my maid has to wipe the grey powder from all the pulverized concrete and stones twice a day. But I shouldn’t complain. So many died during the battle.” Misu tugged Sonju’s skirt. “You are far away. What are you thinking?”
Sonju took a deep breath and looked at her friend. “My husband has strayed. We’re no longer intimate. My choice.”
Misu’s lips parted and closed, not quite forming a word.
Sonju closed her eyes briefly. “I think about Kungu a lot. Sometimes the thought that I mattered to someone sustains me.”
“You loved him so much.”
“I still do.”
Misu gulped. “Your husband doesn’t know that, does he?”
“He doesn’t care to know what I think.”
Misu looked down, then glancing up, said, “I … I don’t know what …”
“How does your marriage work?” Sonju asked.
Misu smiled. “My husband is very good to me. I feel fortunate. I’m not all that particular like you. You’re the dreamy one.” She paused, her smile gone. “I don’t know what I would do if my husband were unfaithful to me. I’m so sorry.”
“My husband’s indiscretions might be bearable if he were willing to stop, if there was something in him that I could respect, or if he had ideas, some thoughtful concerns about the world around him. Kungu had those.”
“He did.” Misu took a sip and set her cup down. She tapped her hand on Sonju’s arm with a sudden twinkle in her eyes, and said, “I just remembered. About two months ago, I came across him on the street.”
He survived the war! Sonju’s heart leapt. “And?”
“We didn’t talk long. He asked about you. He works at the Chungmu-ro branch of the People’s Bank.”
While Misu talked about her children, Sonju waited with all the patience she could muster for the proper time to leave.
On the way back, giddy with excitement, she almost took a wrong turn. She wanted to shout, “He’s alive! I’ll be able to see him.”
That night, Sonju went over the words she would say to Kungu: How did you survive the war? How has your life been? Your mother? I missed you so much.
When morning came, Sonju walked into the large light-filled bank with its grey marble floors and white plastered walls. At the sight of Kungu, her heart stopped for a second or two, then began to pulsate madly. He was looking at the papers on his desk. His colleague was standing next to his desk with a stack of papers in his hand. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Kungu, off of that face that was so well-known to her.
He was saying something, and as he lifted his face toward his colleague, his head made a quick turn. His face froze. Staring, he rose slowly as if unaware of his confused colleague and walked toward her, still holding her gaze.
She smelled that familiar, endearing scent of him when he stood in front of her. “Hi.” Her voice barely audible. “Hi.” His nod barely visible. They stood staring at each other. A man walked by them toward the back and broke their locked eyes. They moved to stand by the wall.
Kungu asked, “How are you? How did you find me?”
“Misu told me yesterday that you work here. My mother was sick, and I came to take care of her.”
“How long are you staying?”
“I leave the day after tomorrow.”
“Can I see you before you leave?”
“Tomorrow, not today. My parents are expecting me home soon.”
“I get off at noon tomorrow. Ducksu Palace at 12:30?”
“12:30 at the gate.”
She didn’t recall how she returned to her parent’s house. All she remembered was her heart lurching with happiness as she walked out of the bank building.
Her mother was drinking the brewed Chinese medicine when Sonju entered the room. Now that his wife was gaining strength, her father had returned to his routine of having his meals at the men’s quarters and spending most of his day there receiving friends, associates, and his overseers. There wasn’t much for Sonju to do to care for her mother other than to help her mother lie down on the yo or sit back up. They didn’t need her for that. Sonju began to think that her father must have wanted to see her. Even though she didn’t see or talk to him much when she was growing up, he was the gentler of her parents, although his word was always the final one.
Her mother presently wanted to lie down again, and after she saw her mother close her eyes, she returned to her room without seeing her brother. The maid told her he was studying.
The evening passed slowly, but Sonju needed it to pass quickly. Come night, come.
In the morning, she looked in on her mother and watched her finish the last drop of Chinese brew. Back in her room again, she wished the time would leap forward.
Sonju walked side by side with Kungu on the palace grounds. She had so much to say to him, yet no words came. It must have been the same with him too. They walked and came to a quiet place where naked trees lined the narrow passage along a wall of tall evergreen hedges.
“I have thought about you often,” he said.
She didn’t know what to say first in spite of all the words she was going to remember to tell him. She merely nodded, staring at him through blurry eyes. How could she release all the words at once, to say how often she thought of him, how much she missed him, how much she loved him still? But then, he knew. She didn’t have to say them. She managed to ask, “How have you been?”
He smiled. “I need more than a day to tell you.”
“You had wanted to buy a house of your own. How did it work out?”
“My mother and I bought a little house near my work. She passed away rather suddenly of pneumonia shortly after we moved in, right before the war.” He turned and rested his eyes on hers. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes conveyed more than words could say.
“I went to the church garden,” Sonju said.
“I go there sometimes,” he said.
They walked slowly, following the path.
Sonju said, “I often wished your mother were mine. I’m sorry not to have met her.”
They occasionally stopped walking to look at each other. She told him about her life—her daughter, her parents-in-law, the school built by Big House Master. He spoke of his mother’s dedication to his father when he became ill, and after his father’s death, to his education. He was recently promoted at the bank. He was able to help about a dozen people to become business owners so far. He then looked where the tips of the bare branches pointed up to the sky and said, “I missed you so much.”
The train screeched and stopped at Maari. As she stepped out of the train, Sonju briefly saw her husband getting on two cars down. He didn’t see her. She didn’t call to him. She wasn’t bothered by her own indifference.
When she approached the inner courtyard, Jinju came running, shrieking in delight. She squeezed her daughter until Jinju peered up at her and said, “Mommy, you can let go now.” Her daughter seemed grown all of a sudden in her five-day absence.
For days afterwards, during her quiet moments alone, Sonju thought of Kungu and smiled and cried. Their time together was so brief and the moment of their parting so hard. They both turned their backs and wept. She had thought all she wanted was to hold him in her eyes to know he was alive. But that wasn’t enough. She was desperate to see him again one more time. The following Saturday she sent a letter to Kungu and told her husband she would go to Seoul again. He didn’t object. It didn’t matter anyway whether he did or not. He probably knew that too. As far as she was concerned, he no longer had a hold on her, and there wasn’t much he could do about it without losing face.
A week later on Saturday, she faced a stern-looking woman in her mid-forties at the gate of Kungu’s modest traditional house with a tile roof. The maid took one look at Sonju and averted her eyes, then carried Sonju’s luggage to the living room. She then walked out of the gate with an angry clink of the lock. The maid must have been upset at having to wait for her before she could leave, Sonju mused.
The first thing Sonju noticed in the living room was a bookcase filled with European and Russian novels. Kungu had always liked Russian novels. She took one out and had read the first 21 pages of The Idiot by Dostoevsky when Kungu came in through the gate.
When he saw Sonju, he said, “I could get used to you being in my home.”
After he changed, he brought a lunch table from the kitchen, saying his maid always prepared a meal before going home. During their first meal together, he talked about the books he had collected, which books he was moved by and impressed with. She told him about the reading group she had started with the village women. They talked on about many things the way they used to.
After lunch, they moved to his room and sat leaning against the wall. He held her hand and smiled. Their first touch—there was something shocking and magical about it. She had longed for it since she was fifteen. She told him about her imagination of him embracing her under the moonlight. He laughed and enfolded her in his arms and asked, “Like this?” She put her arms around him and leaned on his shoulder. She said, “During the war, I thought you might have died. I died thousands of times thinking I failed you. When I pleaded with my mother to let me wait until you graduated, I should have told her I bedded with you already. It was too late when I thought of it.”
He tightened his arm around her waist and said, “We are together now.”
She lifted her face to look him in the eye and pleaded, “Kungu, I want this. Just once. To have no regrets.”
He was quiet for a moment, and said, “We may regret.”
“I won’t. Would you?”
They sought each other unhurriedly as though they had unending time. She felt something new. She closed her eyes and her body trembled at the intense, almost unbearable pleasure. Body and mind, they were as good as married, and she would have no regrets. They embraced and rolled, laughing and laughing. They pulled each other up and leaned side by side on the pillow against the wall, his arm around her. Combing her hair with his long, lean fingers, he said, “During the war, the thought that I may never see you again occurred to me.”
She listened to the steady beating of his heart and drank his scent. “Did you fight in the war?”
Kungu paused a while. He was never one to speak in haste. He always took his time. “It’s a long story,” he said. “My uncle was an anti-communist activist, so he reported the leftists and communist sympathizers to the authorities. When the North occupied Seoul, his family went into hiding.”
“You didn’t?” She stroked his face, feeling on her finger tips his smooth forehead, the rise of his nose, the curve of his lips, the angle of his jaw.
“I should have. One day, three North Korean soldiers came to my house and forced me into their army. One man from each family, they said. And they knew about my uncle.”
She sat up and looked at him, puzzled. “You fought for the North?” She had never heard of such a thing, not even from the hunchback or her brother-in-law in Daejon.
“Many did. During training, the North Korean soldiers said they would take the conscripts to North Korea after the war. That was scarier to me than the fighting, because that meant I would never see you again.”
“Where did you fight?” her voice rang out.
“There was a battle against the American troops at Osan on July 5th. After winning there, the North kept moving south to Daejon.”
“I was in Daejon. I thought you might be there. I never imagined you fighting for the enemy side though. The battle was intense there.” She was scared all over again at the mere thought of Kungu in the thick of that relentless fighting.
“It was more intense and longer further south around Pusan.” He held her waist tighter as though he needed an anchor. “When the North lost the battle, we the conscripts discussed deserting. The situation was chaotic. Not only were there the isolated North Korean soldiers—some of them in civilian clothes—roaming around the area trying to rejoin their forces but also in the mix were communist sympathizers, deserters, and refugees.
“You didn’t always know who was who. The North Korean soldiers set buildings and houses on fire, tortured and killed civilians. The South Korean soldiers hunted down the North Koreans and their sympathizers and tortured and killed them in revenge. There were bodies on the streets, their hands bound and shot in the head.”
She was still haunted by the sight of gruesome corpses on the way to the train station on her last day in Daejon in September only a year before. She could still smell the blood at the oddest moments when she wasn’t even thinking about the war.
Kungu seemed submerged in his memory. He loosened his arm and spoke in his measured calm voice, “One night, four of us stole peasant clothes hanging on a line. We changed into them and took a rural road to the east. We burned our uniforms for heat. At dawn, we drew suspicion, young men traveling as a group, so we parted ways. I took country roads and told people along the way that I was a refugee from Seoul trying to return home. They probably knew I was a deserter because of my age, but they didn’t question me. I carried other refugees’ bags or carried their young children on my back. Some of them shared their food with me. One night, when I couldn’t stand the hunger any longer, I went to an empty field and dug up a lopped off turnip. I didn’t care if my fingers froze. Sometimes, I drank boiled tree bark for sustenance.
“I don’t remember reaching my house. The way my aunt tells it, one day a skeletal ghost with huge sunken eyes and cheeks appeared at the gate. When she let him in, he collapsed on the floor. She took a closer look and recognized me. I remember eating and lying down. When I woke up, my uncle said that I had slept for twenty-seven hours. My aunt had a bath ready. I took a long one.”
“Why was your uncle’s family in your house?”
“Their entire house was destroyed during the war. They stayed here while rebuilding their house and moved out shortly after my return. My aunt hired a maid for me, the same one you met. She thought I needed one.”
His gaze fell on the floor a moment before he said, “In the middle of the fierce fighting, I thought that might be the day I die. Then I saw you in my mind and I wanted to see you again even if it were just for a second.” He turned his face and smiled at her. “Now here you are. I am glad I’m alive.”
“Fighting with the enemies against your own countrymen,” Sonju said. “How conflicted you must have been! You really could have died. Just the thought of it scares me all over again.” She clasped his hand and stared at his long fingers. She would miss him ever so much, but no regrets.