I'll Be Right There (6 page)

One student hesitantly raised her hand. She stammered, “I don’t know, but …”

“Then tell us what you do know,” Professor Yoon quipped.

Everyone giggled. The girl stood up and said that she had heard the story from her Sunday school teacher when she was young and therefore did not remember it clearly, but was he talking about the man who was saved because he carried Jesus across a river? It was more of a question than an answer. Professor Yoon nodded. When the girl sat back down, Professor Yoon cleared his throat, glanced around the classroom, and said in a low voice that there was indeed such a
legend. The students who thought class was almost over and had begun clearing their desks stared at Professor Yoon. He gripped the podium and began his lecture.

“This is the story of Saint Christopher.

“According to legend, Christopher was a Canaanite. A giant, some say. A man of great strength who was afraid of nothing. He made up his mind to serve only the greatest, strongest man in the world. But no matter where he looked, he could find none worth devoting his life to. Everyone disappointed him. He grew weary of ever finding someone worth serving and became despondent. But here, I’ll spare you the boring details and get straight to the most important part. Christopher built a house for himself on the banks of a river and made a living carrying travelers across the water. He was very strong. He owned only a single pole, but he used it to pick his way through even the roughest current and carry people safely to the other side. It was just a pastime to him. He was a boatman with no boat, a man who ferried people with his body.”

The world seemed to have come to a stop. In a classroom filled with thirty, maybe forty, students, no one so much as cleared their throat.

“One night, Christopher was fast asleep when he heard a faint voice calling his name. Wondering whom it could be at that time of night, he opened the door. But there was no one there. Only darkness. He closed the door and went back to bed, but the voice returned.
Christopher!
He opened the door again, but just as before, there was only darkness. The third time he heard the voice, it sounded like it was right beside him. He looked all around but saw no one. Thinking this odd,
Christopher took up his pole and headed down to the river. There in the darkness beside the river was a small child. The child told him he had to get to the other side before the night ended, and he asked Christopher to carry him across. The child was so young and his plea so earnest that Christopher agreed to help, despite the late hour. He put the child on his shoulders and entered the river. But the moment he stepped into the river, the water began to rise. In an instant, it nearly reached over the tall Christopher’s head. And that was not all. The child, so light at first, grew heavier the higher the waters rose. The weight, like a massive piece of iron, so unbelievable for such a small child, pressed down on Christopher’s shoulders. The waters rose inch by inch, and the child pressed down on him with its enormous weight. The once overly confident Christopher began to tremble with fear for the first time at the thought that he might drown. Barely able to keep his balance with the pole, Christopher plowed his way through the water with the child on his shoulders and just made it to the other side. As he set the child down, he said, ‘I thought I was going to die because of you. Though you are so small, you were so heavy that it felt as if I was carrying the weight of the world. I have carried many across this river, but I have never carried one so heavy as you.’ At that moment, the child vanished and Jesus appeared before him, surrounded by a dazzling light. He said, ‘Christopher! What you just carried was no child. It was I, Christ. When you crossed that river, you
were
carrying the world on your shoulders.’ ”

Professor Yoon paused and looked around the room. I thought at first that he was trying to tell whether we
understood the story. But then I thought maybe he had discovered something anew, something he had forgotten, about Saint Christopher. He held his silence for a moment and then resumed.

“So let me ask you this. Are those of you here today Christopher? Or are you the child he carries on his back?”

Professor Yoon’s story had started out like a single drop of rain amid the hustle and bustle of students preparing for class to end but turned into a sudden midday shower beating down on us. A clear ray of light from the last of the summer sun slipped in through a classroom window that someone had shut tight.

Professor Yoon studied us expectantly, but nobody offered an answer to his question. The slogans of student demonstrators outside followed the ray of sunlight through the window and pushed their way again into our midst. Over his glasses, Professor Yoon’s keen and gentle eyes stopped on each of us in turn before moving on.

“Each of you is both Christopher and the child he carries on his back. You are all forging your way through adversity in this difficult world on your way to the other side of the river. I did not tell you this story in order to talk about religion. We are all travelers crossing from this bank to that bank, from this world to nirvana. But the waters are rough. We must rely on something in order to make it over. That something could be the art or literature that you aspire to create. You will think that the thing you choose will serve as your boat or raft to carry you to that other bank. But if you think deeply about it, you may find that it does not carry you but rather
you carry it. Perhaps only the student who truly savors this paradox will make it safely across. Literature and art are not simply what will carry you; they are also what you must lay down your life for, what you must labor over and shoulder for the rest of your life.”

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Professor Yoon. Nobody looked out the window. Even the boy in the back row had stopped twirling his pencil. The girl, too, had lifted her head and was listening intently.

“You are Saint Christopher. You are the ones who will ferry the child across the river. It is your fate to brave the swollen waters. Though the waters may rise, you must not stop before the child reaches the other side. So, how do we cross this river?”

It both was and was not a question. Professor Yoon’s voice dropped even lower and grew stronger.

“We cross by becoming Saint Christopher to one another. By carrying the child across together. There is no difference between the person who crosses and the person who helps another across. You are not just Saint Christopher, carrying your pole into the rising waters. You are the world and its creators, each one of you. Sometimes you are the Christopher and other times you are the child—you carry each other across the river. So you must treasure yourselves and hold one another dear.”

The trust that had been budding inside each of us spread throughout the classroom. Had one of the windows broken at that moment, not even the sound of breaking glass could have disturbed the gentle stillness.

“So, my young Christophers! That is all for today. But before you go, I need a volunteer. Someone to type up the course reader for me.”

No one said anything.

“Anyone?”

Saint Christopher, the child, the river, fate, us
 … I had started off taking notes but quickly became too absorbed in his story. I raised my hand to volunteer. I didn’t even think about it as I did so. Professor Yoon looked at me for a moment.

“Your name?”

“It’s Jung Yoon.”

“Jung Yoon.” He said my name aloud once. “Thank you. Come to my office after class.”

Even after the professor left, everyone remained seated. Finally, I got up to follow him to his office. When I pushed my seat back, the scraping of the chair across the floor echoed in the silent room. On that cue, the others also started to gather up their things and leave. Professor Yoon’s office was in the opposite direction of my next class. I glanced behind me. Myungsuh and the girl were walking under a large green zelkova tree that I had just passed.

The girl had a distinctive walk. Anyone who saw it would not easily forget it. With the early-autumn sunlight pouring down on me, I stopped to watch her. There were many students by the tree. They gathered there in pairs or small groups before heading off in separate directions or staying behind to wait for someone. Yet even amid all those people moving at the same time, she caught my eye. She was the one I noticed first, not the boy walking beside her. But as she walked
toward me with her bag hanging from her shoulder and a book in her hand, I still could not see her face. She kept her head down and shoulders rolled in as she walked, as if staring at her own heart. Nevertheless, she was beautiful. It was the skirt she wore, a flared skirt with white flowers on a dark blue background, with a white cotton jacket. The brightness of the tiny flowers blooming across her skirt clashed with the rest of her and made her stand out. When she passed the tree, the hem of her skirt floated up in the breeze. Whatever it was that made her different from the others seemed to emanate from that skirt. It was not a popular style for our age group; most wore pants or blue jeans. Even the students who did wear skirts never wore that kind of billowy style.

The boy’s walk was just as distinct as hers. He looked like someone who walked on air, rather than someone who lived with his feet on the ground. One foot seemed already aloft before the other had touched down. If she looked like she was sinking into the earth, he looked like he might be whisked away by the wind at any moment. I watched them walk toward me and then turned around.

I reached Professor Yoon’s office and was about to knock, but the door was already ajar. I pushed it open. The professor looked up at me. It looked at first like there was a partition between his desk and a sofa, but it turned out to be stacks and stacks of books serving as a room divider. Professor Yoon’s desk sat behind the books.

“Come in,” he said, the upper half of his body materializing from above the stacks. I saw that he was holding a sheaf of paper. “Have a seat over there for a moment.”

Professor Yoon seemed to have been in the middle of something or was busy straightening up his desk; when he sat back down, I heard papers being shuffled. I remained standing and looked around his office. It was drab. There were no plants or picture frames—just books, crammed into industrial shelves designed to hold as many books as possible, and not so much as a calendar or a mirror hanging on the wall. Old books, which looked as if they would crumble to pieces if I touched them, were shelved backward so the titles were not visible. I had never seen books shelved that way before. I reached for one out of curiosity but was stopped by a knock at the door. Professor Yoon and I looked up at the same time. The door opened and in walked the boy and girl I had just seen walking toward me beneath the zelkova tree. They had also been heading to Professor Yoon’s office. The professor looked at the two of them and stood and walked over to the sofa, the sheaf of papers still in his hands.

“Aren’t you bored of me yet?” Professor Yoon said to the boy. “Seems time we went our separate ways.”

He was smiling warmly. Myungsuh scratched his head and grinned, as he had back in the classroom.

“I wanted to introduce my friend to you,” Myungsuh said.

“You weren’t enough, so you brought a friend? Have a seat. You, too.”

Professor Yoon looked at me as I stood in front of the bookshelf. I felt I was experiencing this moment over again, even though it was happening for the first time. When we all sat down, Professor Yoon and I were next to each other, and the boy and girl were across from us. It felt awkward to sit
next to Professor Yoon, but it would have been just as awkward to sit next to the girl. She and Myungsuh were like each other’s shadow, making the thought of sitting between them inconceivable. It was strange. As we sat there, the feeling of déjà vu persisted, as if we had sat that way before. The boy and I looked each other in the eyes for the first time. His eyebrows were jet black, as if they had been rubbed on with charcoal—the kind of black that made you feel as if you were being sucked into it. Each time his face changed expression, his eyebrows moved first. His friends could probably tell what mood he was in just by looking at them. Below his brows, his thoughtful-looking eyes seemed to smile for a moment before skipping over mine and settling on the girl. The girl kept her hands in her pockets and did not look at me.

“We’ve been friends our whole lives,” the boy named Myungsuh said. “She goes to another university. She’s on a leave of absence right now and would like to audit your class. We came to ask your permission.”

When I heard him say how long they had been friends, I pictured Dahn’s face.

“She’s on a leave of absence from her regular school?” the professor asked.

“Yes,” Myungsuh said.

“What’s your name?”

“Yoon Miru.” Myungsuh answered for her, but Professor Yoon kept directing his questions to her.

“Mireu?”

“No, sir. Not Mireu. Miru, as in the poplar tree,” Myungsuh said again.

Yoon Miru
. I whispered her name to myself, quietly, so no one else could hear.
Yoon Miru. Yoon Miru
.

“Why do you keep answering for her?” Professor Yoon asked. “Are you her lawyer?”

Myungsuh smiled bashfully.

“Why do you want to sit in on my class?” the professor asked.

Miru raised her head. Finally I could see her face. She blinked and lowered her head again. Her eyes were dark, so dark that they seemed to be all pupils. Though she was looking down, I could see her smooth forehead. The bridge of her nose was high and narrow. She had full, bee-stung lips, which gave the contours of her face a graceful beauty. If that were all, she would have been memorable enough for just her pretty face and fair skin. But then she took her hands out of her pockets. I flinched. It was an instantaneous reaction. Her hands. Despite her smooth face, the backs of her hands were withered and wrinkled. They looked like they had been soaking in water for too long. Miru, so pretty with her dark eyes and fair skin, had the hands of an old person. That was the answer to the curiosity I had felt, why I had wondered who she was ever since trying to get a glimpse of her face in the classroom, and the key to the incongruity that could not be explained by her flared floral-print skirt alone. She must have felt my eyes on her hands because she slipped them back into her pockets. Professor Yoon seemed to have noticed them as well. He looked as surprised as I was. An awkward silence opened up between us.