The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (53 page)

“But I don’t want to get an upset stomach.”

“That’s nonsense! That’s the sweetest part.” Even as we’re getting ready to sleep, Oldest Brother once again asks me to stay away from the woman downstairs.

“She’s not a bad person.”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

“I mean it, she’s not!”

“Don’t want to hear it, I said!”

In the middleof listening to Rostropovich playing the
Bach Suite for Unaccompanied Cello
, I unplugged my telephone.

I cannot put it off any longer. I must finish writing this. Everything is set. I have made arrangements so that I have no one to meet, no other writing I need to work on except this. My desk is neat and I’ve finished cleaning the bathroom sink. I have no laundry to do; I have filled my fridge with groceries; and I have nothing to work out with anyone. Yet I cannot bring myself to sit at the desk, doing nothing but listening to Rostropovich’s cello all day long. In the liner sheets of the record, the elderly cellist states that for a long time Bach had been a sacred name for him. He says that ever since encountering Bach when he was sixteen he had worshipped the composer, which kept him from recording the complete unaccompanied cello suites, and all I can do is gaze blankly into his face on the liner sheet.

I have made two recordings of the Bach suites. Forty years in Moscow, I recorded the
Suite No.
2
, and in 1960 in New York, the
No. 5.
I cannot forgive myself when I think about these two recordings. But anyone who looks back at the past would be self-critical and there would be things that he wishes he would not have done. What can you do about something that’s already been done, life will continue to flow on, proud and imperious. So now I must work up the courage to record the complete cycle of Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites, a body of work deeply connected to my life. There is nothing I treasure more than these suites. I discover something new each time I listen to them. Each hour, each second you spend thinking about these compositions, you will reach a deeper understanding about them. You might one day think that you know everything about
these suites, but then discover something new the next day.

He continued on with the same expression. That Bach was never vulgar, temperamental, or caught up in rage, that even when close acquaintances grew distant, he never spoke ill of them.

Was I in awe of Rostropovich’s cello playing, or was I enchanted by Rostropovich’s interpretation of Bach, this man who himself was enchanted by Bach? I’m not sure what it is I feel. When he discusses Bach, Rostropovich’s face wears the majesty of the sound of cello. At times it even takes on an air of solemnity.

He says, “Now I must work up the courage to record the complete cycle of Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites.”

Rostropovich seems like someone who recognizes life’s passion, grief, and intensity. He searched and searched for the right place to perform the suites, and found a cathedral that was built nine hundred years ago.

The cycle includes an amazing sarabande . . . It possesses a special kind of honesty and seriousness, and also a musical vulnerability. This piece cannot be played for the audience by for oneself only. The audience simply gets to glimpse at an artist deeply focused in his music, at an intense solitude that is cold and at the same time hot. Many times, I have played this sarabande for those lost in grief.

I adjusted the CD player to
Suite No. 2.

For those lost in grief? Immediately I examined Rostropovich’s face again. He’s been playing for those lost in grief?

Hui-jae sits in front of the dead rooster. She wears a cold expression. It was Hui-jae and the man who loved the chicken most dearly, but the man cannot be seen. When I say it looks like
someone fed the chicken poison, Hui-jae’s profile turns even chillier.

Even during the rainy season, construction continues in the lot. An excavator digs up the cabbage growing in a nearby patch. Steel beams are raised and bricks are carried in. Now we can no longer see the subway station outside the window. What we see are workers walking up and down the ramps of the construction site, and men wearing scarlet plastic hardhats the shape of gourds. I remember one Sunday, by this time we could no longer see passengers pour out of the subway station like the rising tide, and one day the pile of briquettes collapsed in the cellar, in the house with the thirty-seven rooms. If it hadn’t been for the collapse, I would never have known that the house had a basement.

Hui-jae is in the basement scooping up the crumbled black briquettes, her face streaked with charcoal.

“Where can everyone be, the water is rising.”

“Where’s Uncle?” Hui-jae streaked face turns even darker. She descends into the basement again. Then she emerges with a pail brimming with black water.

“You can’t take care of this by yourself. Get out of there.”

“Half of the briquettes in the basement are ours.”

“Where’s Uncle?”

“He’s gone.” Hui-jae enters the basement again. Gone? Where? At a loss, I follow her downstairs. The water in the basement reaches my ankles. The broken briquettes have turned the water black.

“Where did he go?”

Hui-jae stops to brush her hair away from her face behind her ears. The charcoal stains her face. “Don’t bring him up again.”

“How come?”

“He’s not coming back, ever.”

I clamp my mouth shut. Hui-jae keeps quiet as she bails the black water from the basement. I cannot leave her side. She tells me to stop and go study but I can’t. At one point Hui-jae squats down in the basement and starts to vomit.

“
Eonni
, you need to take a break, go back upstairs.” She doesn’t seem to have heard me, as she’s continuing to scoop out the wet pile of briquettes. It’s already afternoon when we’re finally done. She bends down in her kitchen and vomits terribly. I get scared that she’s about to die and I boil water on the kerosene stove and wash her. I wipe and wipe but her body still smells of rotting food. Then I think I must have fallen asleep. I feel someone clipping my fingernails. I open my eyes to find Hui-jae clipping my nails, sitting crouched with my hand on her knee.

“Your nails are black with charcoal.” Feeling warm and peaceful, I sit still for her to finish.

“How’s your tummy?”

“Better.” She’s almost done with both of my hands when her face turns cold again as she brings up the dead rooster.

“Remember the chicken?”

I can understand how disheartened she is and respond, “Who could have done something do terrible?”

“It was me.” My mind goes blank. I must have heard wrong. “I gave him poison.”

My body jerks with startlement, and the nail clipper in her hand tears a tip of my finger. She stays calm. At that moment she is not the same person I know. She is firm and cold.

“Why did you do something like that?”

“Because that was what he loved most dearly!”

He? I retrieve my hand from her knee. What he loved most dearly? The wet stench from the basement has seeped into every corner of her body and mine.

The sun comes out in the afternoon. There’s me, nineteen years old, washing my clothes and after hanging them on the roof, opening her door to check inside. She is asleep with her face down. There’s me closing the door gently, taking care not to wake her. There’s me opening her door again, thinking, She’d be awake now. There’s me opening her door three, four more times. She sleeps without even stirring. The sun goes down. I bring in
the laundry from the roof. I make dinner and take some food to her on a tray but she still hasn’t moved. I leave the tray there and am about to close the door behind me when I suddenly get scared. There’s me flinging the door back open and turning on the fluorescent light. The fear that I sense in her body on the floor, appearing and disappearing in the flicker of the light. It occurs to me that the flesh under her birdlike shoulders might have turned cold. There’s me sinking to the floor, lifting her blanket. She is curled up in a ball, her fists clenched tight. Her black hair hides her profile, her skin pale and yellow.

I shake her awake. “
Eonni, Eonni
?”

There’s me shaking her, gently at first, then harder. She turns over, whimpering. I’m still not relieved and before I realize it I am slapping her cheeks, screaming.

“Wake up!” She opens her eyes. Pupils blurred. She sits up.

“What is it . . . ?” She gazes into my frightened eyes. She doesn’t look like she’s been sleeping all this time.

“. . . What is it? Tell me.”

“No, it’s just . . .”

I, nineteen years old, cannot bring myself to say, You looked like you were dead.

“Come on, you’re being silly.”

She opens her door and says, surprised, “Goodness, it’s night already.” She seems unaware that she’s slept all afternoon, her fists clenched, that I shook her, all frightened, that I slapped her cheeks . . . all she does is bring her palms to her waist, as if the only thing she’s surprised and embarrassed about is that it’s night already. She is back to her blurred self.

It seems that Hui-jae no longer goes to work at the tailor shop.

She no longer keeps two jobs. While school’s out for the summer, when I return at dusk after sitting through the day at the school library, Hui-jae is already home from work, asleep in her room.

From this point on, she is always asleep whenever I see her. Her fists clenched tight.

Chang is in Seoul for a visit. I am hanging laundry on the roof, shaking water off, when I see someone waving at me from below. It’s Chang. He’s not alone. A cute girl stands by his side, her black hair bouncing on her shoulders. I shout at Chang to wait down there. I do not want to show him our lone, remote room. I hurry and change, then run out to Chang. I’m not wearing my uniform and Chang is a college student, so we head for the Green Meadow Tearoom near Garibong Market.

“I’m entering military service.”

I spill the coffee on my skirt.

“What’s there to be so surprised about?”

“Who’s surprised?”

Chang asks me for a tour of Seoul. Tour? The only part of Seoul I’m familiar with is Yeongdeungpo. Outside of Yeongdeungpo, the only places I’ve been to are the Myeongdong Cathedral and Korea Theater, where Oldest Brother took us at Christmas; Jongno Bookstore, which is just outside the Jonggak Subway Station; and the alley where Cousin lives in Yongsan. But I want Chang to have a good time. Sit here for a bit, I tell him and call Cousin to ask where I should take Chang, who’s visiting, to give him a tour of Seoul. Cousin tells me to take him to Mount Namsan. I get the bus route from Cousin. At Mount Namsan, we rent rackets and play badminton. The girl that Chang brought has never played badminton. Chang and I have played since elementary school so the two of us end up playing. The girl sits at a distance. Chang says from time to time, “You must be bored,” and she waves her hand, saying, “No.” She seems nice. As dusk falls, Chang asks if I should be getting to school, and I tell him that I’m not going. After dinner we go to another tearoom. One on the foot of Mount Namsan this time. Chang takes out from his bag a notebook and photographs. It’s the notebook that I sent him, where I copied down
The Dwarf Launches
His Tiny Ball
. He hands the notebook to me, and the photos to the girl. I open the notebook and the margins of the pages inscribed with my handwriting he has filled with his drawings.