Sad Peninsula (28 page)

Her sister's words left Eun-young shaking. A spasm she struggled to contain, to hide. She set her teacup down on the table but it upended with a rattle from her quavering. The spilt tea rushed to the raised edge of the cherry wood and spread like fingers. Reflexively, Ji-young reached out for the mess but Eun-young seized her by the hand. Her grip was fierce, the fist it made convulsing.

“Say it again.”

“What?”

“Your wisdom — your wisdom to Tae. Say it again.”

Ji-young rolled her eyes upward, as if trying to remember exactly what she had said. “How did it go? Oh yes. The source of our unhappiness stops being about the terrible things that happened to us and starts being about our failures to deal with them. The wrong choices we make to get beyond our traumas —
that
is what really makes us sad.” She chuckled a little. “I should put it in a fortune cookie.”

“Say it again.”

“Eun-young, please. I should go get a cloth to clean this up.”

Eun-young let her go and Ji-young climbed to her feet to go to the kitchen. While she was gone, Eun-young pulled herself completely inside her own mind. A mind that was suddenly hemorrhaging. She thought of Po, rotting away in that house in Pusan for nineteen years, pining for the wife who abandoned him. She thought of herself, living in stubborn solitude in her basement apartment with mould growing on the walls. And then she thought of Kim Hak Soon, the very first comfort woman to come forward, and the bravery she showed to tell her story in the hopes that it would change everything.

Ji-young came back with a cloth and began dabbing away at the spilt tea until it was gone. Just as she finished, they heard the apartment door open and Chung Hee come in. He set his keys down noisily on the chest of drawers in the living room and then called out for his wife.

“We're in here,” Ji-young yelled back.

“We?” he asked as he came in to the sunroom, and saw Eun-young sitting on his floor. He stared at her blandly, his cheeks sinking a little.

“Hello, Chung Hee,” she said.

“So you finally decided to pay us a visit, did you?”

“Yes, finally.” She looked up at him in his tweed cap and collared shirt, his Confucius beard gray with age. Very much the Korean gentleman.

Ji-young, sensing this brief tension, tugged at her husband's pant leg. “How was the park?” she asked.

And then Chung Hee did a strange thing. He laughed a little, his shoulders heaving.

“What's so funny?” Ji-young asked.

“Oh, I really do need to tell you this,” he said, sitting himself down next to them. “Ji-young, do you remember that young guy I was telling you about, the one the boys and I met at the park that time? Ho Su is his name.” He turned to Eun-young. “He's maybe forty years old. A decent enough man. He works for government, and I must tell you he speaks and reads English
perfectly
. Anyway, he was there again today. And he told us all the most hilarious story. He got it from an American novel he had just finished reading. He's always reading American novels.”

“What's the story?” Ji-young asked, curious.

“It was about this young couple on their wedding night,” he replied. He turned to Eun-young again. “I hope you won't mind me telling this. It's a bit racy. Stop me if you think I'm going to offend you. But it was about these young newlyweds, very much in love, who both came to their wedding night as virgins. After their wedding, which was in New York City, they got a room in one of the best hotels in town. A honeymoon suite way up on the thirtieth floor or something, with a great view of Manhattan. It was a stifling summer night, so they opened the room's big windows to let some cool air in. After they did, the young bride went into the bathroom and closed the door to prepare herself for, you know …” He chuckled. “Oh, it
is
rather morbid. I don't know if I should tell you.”

“Go on.” Ji-young smiled.

“So while his new wife is in the bathroom, the young man gets very excited, dancing around the room and throwing his arms in the air. He is, after all, about to lose his virginity to the woman he loves. In his enthusiasm, he climbs onto the hotel bed and begins jumping up and down on it. Imagine this: a young guy, maybe twenty-three, and he knows he's about to make love for the first time. He's so excited, and he's jumping up and down on the bed, higher and higher, as if it were a trampoline — so excited, so
excited
! He's jumping higher and higher, like a little boy. And then he jumps so high that he loses control of his jumping, and he leaps clean out of the open windows and falls —” Chung Hee's eyes were watering now. “— and falls thirty stories to his
death
!”

Eun-young watched her sister. Ji-young had placed a hand over her mouth.

“So of course,” Chung Hee said, barely able to continue, “a few minutes later the blushing bride comes out of the bathroom, wearing some kind of gaudy lingerie, looks around the empty room, and thinks,
Where
the hell
did my husband go?
” Chung Hee had nearly keeled over now.

Eun-young was still staring at her sister, waiting for her to move her hand away, waiting to see the reaction underneath. Her eyes gave away no clues. When Ji-young did lower her hand, Eun-young saw a mouth shaped into a little
O
of joy. The way her brow had loosened, the way her shoulders moved, she could tell that Ji-young had, for just that instant, forgotten her grief. Had allowed herself to partake in this brief moment of silliness.

“Oh Chung Hee, that's a
terrible
story,” Ji-young laughed. “It's a terribly hilarious story.”

They both turned to look at Eun-young. A little worried that this talk of sex and death and a ruined opportunity had upset her.

She surprised them both. She surprised herself. “That
is
an amusing story,” she said, feeling her lips curl upward into a smile.

T
his
is how I'm dealing with the past. By putting one word in front of the other, this thing I once tried so hard to do, this act of aggression against the page, vandalizing it with my thoughts, my voice, my words, my
perspective
. It's indecent, it's arrogant, it's an act of thievery and narcissism. That's why I was so terrible at it. I couldn't muster enough egotism to do it properly. I balked under the responsibility of stealing stories and claiming them as my own. I did not inherit my mother's pristine self-absorption the way my sister did. I was always the quiet, rumpled guy in the corner who spoke little and was afraid to ask the tough questions. It all seemed like robbery to me. I failed at it; I failed spectacularly. But now, here, on the other side of the world, I'm putting one word in front of the other. I'm crafting a story that doesn't belong to me. I'm taking these horrific leaps of faith, extrapolating on things I barely understand, filling in the blanks with my imagination, everything I was taught not to do.

And I'm loving every minute of it.

Paul sees me in the grip of my little project and thoroughly approves. He's convinced that this book, or whatever it is, has been given to me by divine intervention. He lives vicariously through my enthusiasm. I get up and work in my room with the door closed in those slow morning hours before we need to report to the
hagwon
in the early afternoon. Paul's role, which he embraces happily, is to pass by my room at that precise moment when, if I don't stop I'll make us both late, and knock on my door, once, a single thump of his knuckle that yanks me out of my head and tells me it's time to go. I sign off and go shower, get dressed and gather up my lesson plans and half-marked essays, and then we're off, out into the grey winter streets of Daechi with its Hangul signage and red crosses. On those walks to the school, Paul puts me at ease to share with him what I'm working on, and I do, telling him things that I don't even tell Jin. The reason I'm so open with Paul is because he's so open with me. I learn it's been five years since he was “saved” and he hasn't looked back. Every thought, every plan, everything he does now is varnished in the gleam of Christ, and he sees his new life, everything that he's been given, as “awesome” — awesome in the truest sense of the word. He is struck with awe. “God's love and purpose is so
awesome
,” he says. He's not trying to evangelize my soul, at least not intentionally. He's just so excited by his life's new course. And I find that, on our walks to school, I can tell him about myself and my project: what I'm learning about the Korean identity, the rape camps in China, what Eun-young would have gone through, all the things that the Japanese did. Paul can relate to how a newfound obsession can bring desperately needed focus.

Christmas comes and goes, New Years comes and goes, and on a smoggy-grey day in late January, a package arrives from Canada. The University of Ottawa. I am
in
! I had no doubts at all. With this news, my days of slinging English at the
hagwon
already begin to feel like the past, like they belong to somebody else. I talk to Ms. Kim about my contract. She asks if I'll stay on until May. I agree. I email Justin in Halifax and tell him the good news. He emails me back, excited for me, and offers what I had hoped he'd offer: to put Jin and me up for the summer until we move to Ottawa. Justin has some news of his own: he has resumed his full-time teaching job at his old high school, and he has also begun dating somebody. Has fallen in love for the first time in forever. His emails radiate a kind of excitement and hope that I didn't think possible of him. He's turned a corner. He writes and says as much. “Life isn't perfect, but it's good,” he writes.

I couldn't agree more. I imagine my life nine months from now and grow lightheaded. I will be a student for the first time in ten years, studying to be a proper teacher. I will also be spending my free time working on a book about the comfort women of Korea. And I will be living with Jin, and we'll begin planning our lives together. Of course she will be lonely at times and long for Seoul. We will squabble. There will be days when I'm frustrated with being a student again — studying, being
theoretical
about everything, not earning money, surrounded by people younger and less experienced than me. And there will be days when I doubt that I can even write a book, when putting one word after the other seems so hard, so impossible, the most impossible thing in the world to do. Life will not be perfect. But it will be good. It will be better than good. It will be — what's the word?

It will be
awesome
.

“
May seems a bit early,” Jin says when I tell her about my contract talks with Ms. Kim. We're having lunch together at a diner near the school. I was late arriving to meet her, couldn't yank myself out of the book in time, and she stood out in the February cold waiting for me. Now, even with our food here, she still seems cold. She shivers each time the diner door opens as another group of patrons come in.

“What do you mean?” I ask, chopsticking some bean sprout into my mouth.

“Michael, my father's birthday is in June,” she replies. “I'd really like to be around for that.” She's barely touched her own lunch, a dish of kimchi
bokembop
. It sits on its oval plate in a greasy mass of orange that she moves listlessly around with her spoon.

“I don't have to go in May,” I say. “I mean, my job will wrap up then, but I could stick around Seoul for a month or two after that.”

“And do
what
? Michael, where would you live?”

“I don't know,” I say honestly. “Maybe a love motel. I could —”

“For two months?” She shakes her head. “You're crazy. Every day you stay in Seoul without work will cost you thousands of won that you should be saving for school. No, you should definitely go home in May. Especially if Justin has offered to put you up for the summer.”

He's offered to put
us
up for the summer
. “All right,” I sigh. “So what, then? Tell me how it's going to work, Jin.”

Her bottom lip comes out and I watch her downcast eyes. She's thinking hard. “Maybe I'll fly to Canada later, by myself. I could come in July.”

“So we'd be apart for two months.”

“I don't know what else to do. Michael, you have to understand how big this is for me. I talked to my managers about working remotely from Canada. They said absolutely not. And now that I've brought up the idea of quitting on them, they've put me in their — how you say —
bad radar
.”

“What difference does it make?” I ask. “Jin, if five months from now you're going to be living with me in Canada, who cares what they think of you now?”

“You don't understand. You've been through this before, but I haven't. I don't know what it's like to let go of one life and completely embrace another. My future has
never
been open-ended, Michael. Not once. You have to know how hard it'll be for me to buy a one-way plane ticket to some place called
Halifax
.”

“Look, if this is about work, don't worry. I have savings, you have savings. We're going to be fine.”

“It's not about work,” she mumbles.

“And it's not about your father's birthday, is it?”

“No.”

“Then what is it, Jin?”

She says nothing. Scoops a little
bokembop
into her mouth. Shivers again as the diner door opens for another group of hungry Koreans.

“Jin, do you
want
to come to Canada?” I ask for the thousandth time.

“I'm scared to come to Canada.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

She glances over to another table, where two middle-aged Korean women are sitting by the window overlooking the street. Their faces are old and harsh-looking. They're leaning in to each other.

“You see those two
a'jumah
over there?” Jin says
sotto voce
. “They've been staring at us since we sat down.”

“Really?” I say, turning.

“Don't
look
.” She licks her lips. “They're talking about us under their breath. They don't like us. They don't like me sitting here having lunch with a foreign man.”

“That's ridiculous,” I say. “Jin, this is Daechi. There are English
hagwons
on every corner. They probably see mixed couples sitting together all the time.”

“Doesn't mean they
like
it,” she says.

“Can we stay on topic, please?”

“No. They're making me uncomfortable. Can we leave?”

“Fine.”

I pay our bill and then we get up to go, leaving our half-finished lunches behind. On the way, Jin halts at the women's table. They stop talking and look at her, a little bashful, unaware that she had caught snippets of their conversation. I double back and take her by the wrist.

“C'mon, Jin.”

But before I can pull her away, she manages to snarl one sentence at them. The only word I catch that I know for sure is
Hangukin
. Meaning: a Korean person. As opposed to
Hangul
: the Korean language. So she said something like: I am a Korean. Or: I am still a Korean, you know.

Out on the chilly February sidewalk, Jin and I stand staring at each other. Eventually, I glance at my watch. “I should get to the school,” I say.

“Yeah, I need to go, too.” She sees the worry that has suddenly slumped my shoulders. She touches my fingers with her own, gives them a jiggle, in reassurance. “Michael, I'll look into a plane ticket for July. We can fly to Canada separately. I know it's not ideal, but it's the best I can offer.”

“Jin, I won't make you do anything you don't want to do.”

“Yes, you will. Either way, Michael, you will.”

Either way? What the hell does
that
mean?

I move in to kiss her goodbye, but she pulls away from me — exactly like she did on our first date.

Her eyes flicker to the women in the window. I turn. They
are
staring at us.

“Jin, we've been dating for
two years
.”

“I have to go.”

“Jin —”

“No. I have to go. I'll call you later.”

And she leaves me there on the sidewalk.

T
he traffic of Seoul is no longer alien to me. This pulse, this pound, this rush of streets and buildings, these buses and subways, these
soju
tents and street markets, the road-side bins of rotten kimchi, the iron gates, the palaces, the pagodas, the bland government buildings, the litter, the convenience stores, the lugubrious Han River holding its ancient secrets to its breast — I know it all. How far I have come in these two short years. There are 11 million people here, spread out in this breathtaking megalopolis, and yet I feel in complete command of its geography. There is no neighbourhood I couldn't find. No moment when I feel that expat's fear of being lost and in free fall. I sense that gravitational pull that ensnares so many of my fellow teachers — to stay, to stay indefinitely no matter what your plans were when you came, no matter the status of your student loans or who is waiting for you on the other side of the world. To stay. To live this life of zero expectation, zero pressure to do anything more, to
be
anything more. I wonder if other expats feel this way in the last couple of months before they leave. This sense of a great interregnum. This time in between, the accomplishment of living in Seoul and knowing you could thrive there, but knowing also that you'll leave it behind. I feel a sense of privilege knowing that I get to leave.

And in these last couple of months, I want to soak up as much as I can. I head off one night to Myeung-dong to meet up with Jon Hung at an upscale cocktail bar. He has given up his corporate gig at the KOSPI and returned to teaching — this time at one of the universities. Like Rob Cruise before him, he finds it doesn't pay enough, and so he's constantly on the hustle for privates on the side, commuting around the city like a madman to sling English at Korean housewives. He looks worn down by this grind, unable to see much beyond the tip of his nose. He also moved in with a new girl a couple months ago — trying this “monogamy thing,” as he calls it — but is considering breaking it off, hates the way she “bosses him.” He asks less about my plans for the spring and more about my life right now. He is baffled, but oddly envious that I have stayed at ABC English Planet this entire time, and that I'm still with Jin. He wants to know what it's like, that
constancy
. I tell him how it's helped me find my focus, locate my place back in the world, and my way out of Korea. He doesn't quite believe me. “I can't ever see leaving. I think I'm going to be here forever.” He says this in a neutral way, like it's neither good nor bad. “And you'll be back,” he sniffs. “If you're staying with Jin, you'll be back.”

I shrug. “Of course, to visit.”

And here he grumbles about there being nothing for guys like us back in North America. Nothing this good, nothing this
easy
. “I think you'll come back here to work. I've seen it a thousand times. Guys like us say we'll leave Korea, but we always come back. After a while, you realize there's nothing left for you anywhere else.”

I smile at how wrong he is. And I feel sorry for him. He asks about Justin. I tell him he's back in Halifax, and that Jin and I will be staying with him for the summer.

“What's he doing?” Jon asks.

“He's teaching,” I reply.

“You mean
teaching
teaching?”