The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (36 page)

“If you don’t start looking after yourselves, they’ll just keep imposing on you to make sacrifices,” Miss Lee said.

A writer friend called me up.

“You been doing good?”

“Yes.”

“So good you’re all smiles?”

“Should I cry instead?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m answering the phone.”

He laughed out loud. I laughed along. It seemed like he had something to say, but was hesitating, which was unlike him.

“So let me have it.”

“About what?”

“Seems like you have something to say to me.”

“I’ll talk if you promise me you won’t get upset.”

“What is it about? If it’s something upsetting, I’ll get upset.”

“Then I won’t.”

“Hey, that’s not fair, after getting me all curious.”

“Then promise you won’t get upset.”

“Do I get upset that easily? . . . Do I?”

“Whenever I discuss your work, you get all upset and sullen.”

“My work?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not getting upset. I just get embarrassed.”

“Whichever!”

“Go on, I’ll hold it all in. No getting upset or sullen.”

“I just read the second chapter of your book.”

My heart went into a sulk. Already I had turned sullen. What did you read that for, I wanted to say, but my words sank deep down my throat and once again I was flustered.

“Try to remember now. The movie you saw that day, was it really
Jeux Interdits
?”

The movie we saw that day was not
Jeux Interdits
. It was
Comme un Boomerang
, with Alain Delon. Boomerang. I had forgotten how the story went exactly. It was about a father and a son. About the father rescuing his son, imprisoned for a criminal offense, and taking him across the border. Alain Delon played the father and he rescued his son on a plane.

“It was
Comme un Boomerang
.”

“Then why did you write that it was
Jeux Interdits
?”

“It’s a novel!”

At my insistent voice, he was silent for a while. Of course he knew. How could he not. That the sentences that make up a work of fiction can never move further ahead of the flashes that come and go throughout life. The limitations of the sentence, which can only exaggerate, lock out, and expose without universality.

The movie that I saw with Oldest Brother and Cousin that day was
Comme un Boomerang
, but I did not like it. Perhaps that itself functions as a problem for my current self. The way I refuse to even sit in the same spot with something that is not of my disposition. The way I refused to even discuss why it is not of my disposition or to be persuaded by it. Perhaps this closedness was blocking me from viewing life from a different perspective. The sole reason I had inserted the film
Jeux Interdits
in the anecdote where
Comme un Boomerang
should have been was because the latter did not suit my taste in film. My friend, now aware that I was upset, tried to make amends, and became even more flustered than I was.

“Yes, I know, I didn’t mean anything by what I said. It’s just that I know
Jeux Interdits
was in theaters for only a single run back around 1960. Which was before you were even born. So when I read that the movie you saw that day was
Jeux Interdits
, it kind of threw me off, personally. That wouldn’t have been the case if a similar thing came up in another novel. It’s hard to explain, but in this novel that you’re writing now, I thought it would be better if you didn’t do that, so . . . just write about things as you saw them . . . but think that I’m asking you for reality. You know what I mean, right?”

He was pointing out my quick resignation, that no matter how I obsessive I was, fiction merely follows the trails of life. One cannot move ahead of life, no, one cannot even move side by side with life, through writing. The decorations and the directions and the exaggerations just fill up the place that is occupied by my resignation.

After hanging up, I boiled some spinach for dinner. Fresh, crisp spinach. To keep its color from fading while the spinach cooked, I put a pinch of salt in the boiling water. I rinsed the cooked spinach twice in cold water. I placed the leaves in my hand and wrung out the water. Yes, this was all I could write. That I placed the leaves in my hand and squeezed out the water. There was no way I could express, through my sentences, the texture, the smell, of
the spinach in my hand before it was squeezed. Despite the fact that its truth was perhaps buried inside that which I was incapable of expressing. The spinach’s crisp green color calmed my prickly heart. In a bowl I often served cold noodles in, I spread out the spinach leaves in light, fluffy layers. I minced two cloves of fresh garlic. I took out a bottle of sesame oil and one of sesame salt, and then chopped some scallions, on the slant.

. . . On the slant?

Third Brother’s wife was a Seoul native. Having worked for quite a number of years as a flight attendant after graduating from the same university as my brother as a fashion design major, she was an optimistic soul and laughed a lot. She was so friendly, so much so that at first I thought her attitude was a remnant of her former profession that she had not quite shed yet. But six years after the birth of her child, she had not changed at all. While still a new bride, she was assisting Mother for the first time in the kitchen one day while they prepared for a memorial service.

Mother had told her, “Chop them on the slant now,” pushing a basket full of scallions her way. She approached me, skewering together taro stems to fry them in egg batter, and asked quietly. “What does ‘on the slant’ mean?”

I wouldn’t know myself what it meant but I did know what it looked like so I placed one of the scallions on a cutting board and chopped it diagonally for her to use as a model, pushing the cutting board toward her.

“This is on the slant.”

As she tried to chop them into the same shape as my model, she would break into a smile when our eyes met. Her eyes red and teary from the stinging scent of the scallions.

We are on an overtime shift. In the middle of pulling the air driver toward herself, Cousin hangs her head low.

“What is it?”

“My eyesight has grown dim.”

She says that the tiny holes for the screws seem to be flickering. I walk over to her, sitting on her workstation chair with her head hanging low.

“I’ll take over for a while. Go to the bathroom and sleep for just a minute.”

Cousin gets up, saying she would.

It’s time to get off work.

At the security office, the guard carries out a body search. The search is to check for anyone trying to sneak out parts from the assembly line. Seo-seon, from the packaging section, tears the guard’s hand away as he lifts the pocket on her chest to search it. We are “Grade 1 Staff.” The administrative staff are called “Official Staff.” Official Staff do not have to go through a body search. They punch in their time on their cards and walk leisurely past the security office. Those who have to endure the bag and body search are the Grade 1 Staff. After refusing the body search, Seo-seon is pushed to the side without a chance to punch in her time. The Grade 1 Staff next in line all follow suit, handing over their bags but refusing the body search.

Section Chief Ha comes running from the administration office. “What are you hiding under your clothes? You know how the saying goes—a thief is bound to feel a prick in his foot!”

We have greeted the Seoul Spring, however, and Seo-seon shouts with confidence that she refuses to have not just her bag but her body searched by a male guard!

The might of the Seoul Spring makes one of the cafeteria women come down to the security office every day when we get off work. Now the Grade 1 Staff no longer have to endure a body search by a male guard. Seo-seon wears a bright expression. So do
the other female Grade 1 Staff who now get their bodies searched by a cafeteria woman, a fellow female, thanks to Seo-seon.

Increasingly often, Third Brother sleeps out. He does not come home for two, three days in a row, sometimes for an entire week. This is something Oldest Brother cannot stand. He says a person might take their meals in various places but should sleep in one place. And that a family is made of people who sleep together under the same roof. But Third Brother does not comply. His back has not recovered, Cousin says. She is concerned about Third Brother’s injury. One Sunday, Oldest Brother questions at Third Brother, who has returned all haggard after several days away.

“Where did you sleep?” A whiff of chilly air circles the room.

“At Changgyeong Gardens.”

The campus at Third Brother’s school is adjacent to Changgyeong Gardens, with only a wall in between.
Down with dictatorship! Abolish the Yusin Constitution!
Chased by riot police, Third Brother probably climbs over the wall and infiltrates the flower beds at the Changgyeong Gardens.

Oldest Brother jumps to his feet from his chair.

“Do you have to do this! How can I make you understand! This is no time for you to be going around staging protests!”

Third Brother, who has never rebelled against Oldest Brother, abruptly shouts out loud, “It’s time to be doing what, then?”

“You’re a law student!”

“So you’re telling me I should be a coward like you, running and hiding in order to study.”

Oldest Brother pushes Third Brother against the wall, screaming like a beast.

“Bastard!”

Third Brother’s head bumps against the wall with a loud thump. “Beat me up, go on and kill me!”

Third Brother lashes out, his eyes ablaze. His voice and movements are full of fury. It seems that he wants to be beaten up, by Oldest Brother or anyone else, for that matter. Oldest Brother has
his chair in his hands. The chair is thrown against the window. Books are thrown at Third Brother,
The Complete Compilation of Six Major Laws, Civil Law, Criminal Law
, all of them.

“Why must I live like this!” The anger and frustration that Oldest Brother has kept suppressed for so long finally explodes. Why in the world must he live like this? At the height of his youth, his shoulders bear the responsibilities as the eldest son as if it were a divine punishment. His pent-up anger—as the eldest son obliged to take care of his younger siblings on behalf of his parents in the remote country, to work for money while serving his military duty and to sleep in discomfort in a tiny room with a sister and a cousin—sets off a bloody eruption on Third Brother’s nose. Oldest Brother shouts at Cousin and me, trembling in the kitchen.

“Get lost, right now! All of you!”

Oldest Brother’s threat sends Cousin off to the roof. But my feet will not budge.

“You get out of here as well! . . . Get out, I said!”

Third Brother, his nose bleeding, shouts at Oldest Brother. “Leave her alone!”

Oldest Brother throws his fist at Third Brother and hits him under his ear.

“You bastard, you get out of my sight! Get out!” Just as Third Brother’s anger was not really targeted at Oldest Brother, Oldest Brother’s anger is not targeted at Third Brother, either. It was just that they happened to vent their anger on each other at that moment. Things get out of hand if all that anger and frustration is held in for too long. The vinyl wardrobe collapses. The attic door is about to come unhinged. I grab Oldest Brother’s legs as he lifts the desk, this time to strike down at Third Brother.