Our Happy Time (15 page)

“The very least you could do is teach those kids that they can’t just beat someone up in broad daylight, at least not out in the open like that right in the middle of the day in a residential area. That’s your duty. We’re the grown-ups, so we at least have to tell them that it’s not okay. When those kids grow up, they’ll commit even bigger crimes and wind up on death row!”

“Who do you think you are? I guess you think that every time someone does something wrong it’s the police’s fault? You really don’t get it.”

This time, he was the one to slam down the phone. To him, the only thing that had come of this incident was that I just didn’t get it. I wondered if I had gone too far, but then just as quickly I wondered why I had gotten so upset in the first place. I never used to care about anyone, except for our dog Shimshimi when I was in middle school.
The comment about death row was definitely going too far. I sat down at my desk. This was not at all like me. The first thing I had noticed after returning from seven years abroad was the coarse way in which Koreans talked to each other. The words they used had become harsher, and people walked faster on the street. If someone stepped on your foot in the subway, or slammed into your shoulder as they were passing by, they would stare straight ahead and not apologize. I used to get angry because I thought they were being rude, but later I realized that I had stopped noticing anymore when someone bumped into me or stepped on my foot. Everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere. But to where? Neither they nor I had any idea. In the movies, every other word was a cuss word, and though they were well made, they were filled with such cruel scenes that I had to turn my eyes away. I couldn’t look, even when the actors were so attractive that I wouldn’t have minded dating them. Nevertheless, the newspapers crowed about the fact that Korean movies were drawing international attention.

I missed Aunt Monica. I also thought about buying some kind of potted spring plant and taking it to the detention center to give to Yunsu. I didn’t know why he was on my mind. I wanted to ask him how someone who was so moved by the story of Orestes, who ached at the thought of his first and last spring, could have done something so cruel. I felt confused. What did it mean to be human anyway, and to what extent were we capable of being good, and to what extent were we capable of evil? It bothered me to be having these thoughts. The phone rang again. I thought it was the police and worried about what they might say to me. I couldn’t call my older brother for help this time, and even if I did, what difference would it make? I answered the phone. It was my older brother. For a brief moment, I
stupidly pictured an imaginary line going from the police to the prosecutor’s office, and I thought,
The emergency line goes all the way to my brother?
But then Yusik spoke. His voice was heavy.

“Come to the hospital. Mom’s had a relapse.”

After Eunsu was gone, I felt like a burden had been lifted. Physically, at least, I felt lighter. I started hanging around with a bad crowd. Well, not a bad crowd, exactly. When I was hungry, they gave me food to eat, and when my clothes were ragged, they gave me clothes to wear, and when I was thirsty, they gave me alcohol to drink, and when I was in jail, they came to see me. I was in and out of jail all of the time and slowly slipping into darkness. Never having made it through elementary school, jail provided me with a comprehensive education. There, I majored in the criminal arts with a double minor in hatred and revenge. Inside were thousands of people giving lectures on how to rid yourself of things like guilt and increase your brazenness and underhandedness. Whenever I was on lookout while the others were stealing, the moment I felt a tug of fear and nervousness, I would sing the
national anthem quietly to myself. When I did that, I didn’t feel like a good person, the way Eunsu did, but I didn’t feel afraid either.

T
here were only three of us in the room: Yunsu, the guard, and me. Yunsu kept glancing up at me while eating the pizza I’d brought. I still had not said anything. I couldn’t stop asking myself whether I was doing the right thing. I was so quiet that Officer Yi pushed his glasses up then pulled them back down several times. I had not even brought the Bible that Aunt Monica always had with her. All I had in my bag were cigarettes, lipstick, a wallet, and a small compact. Yunsu stared at me as if to get me to say something, anything. So did Officer Yi. But I still couldn’t bring myself to start talking. Outside the window it was spring, but all I saw inside were gray cement walls. The bright green sprouts I had seen from the car on the way here, the river rippling and flowing under the bridge like freshly washed hair now that the weather had finally warmed, and the tiny scattered flowers blooming like stars in a green field—none of that mattered here. Spring could arrive, but there wasn’t really anything to awaken. Oscar Wilde had said about prison, “With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.” In a six-by-six meter room, seven or eight healthy young men sat face to face all day. If a young couple in love
were put into that tiny room for just a month, even they would probably call off their love at once and start to hate each other instead. As Aunt Monica said, it was a miracle that people who had not always been good could sit face to face all day long and not want to kill each other.

“The weather’s really warmed up. I guess the frostbite must be wearing off, because my ears are itching me to death,” Yunsu said.

He sounded as if he had no choice but to say something. He lifted his cuffed hands and stroked one ear. His words were no longer barbed but were as mild as the changing seasons, as mild as the breeze that fluttered the hem of my skirt without aggression now that spring was here. Since I had started meeting him, he had been changing day by day, like a willow tree in spring. His growth was as rapid as a baby’s after its first birthday. Later, I came to
understand
that, unlike babies, feelings grow without regard for the rules of time.

“So…”

He and the guard looked at me in unison. I felt like I was standing in front of my students. Or before a priest who was ready to take my confession.

“I’m not here because I want to be here. My coming to see you all this time hasn’t been because I wanted to.”

He and the guard looked surprised, and I saw his face instantly darken. He lowered his head. He looked like he wanted to say,
So, you’re a hypocrite, too.
If I were to
exaggerate
, I would say he looked like he was thinking,
I’m tired of being hurt by hypocrites like you,
or perhaps even,
I figured as much.

“I don’t want to lie to you. I really hate predictable conversations. I hate clichés more than anything.”

I struggled to keep talking. Yunsu kept his eyes down and did not say a word. Then something seemed to occur
to him, and he raised his head.

“It’s okay. I’m only here today because I thought Sister Monica was coming. I heard she couldn’t make it because she had to visit a cancer patient in the hospital. That person is probably going to die soon. So if you forced yourself to come here in her place, you can go ahead and go. You must have other things to do. Thank you for being honest with me, Professor.”

When he finished, he stood up and looked at me coldly. A sneer crossed his face. The moment was brief, but the look of regret at having expected anything of me was clear to see. When he spat out the word
Professor
, there was a dark shadow over him that made me think,
That’s
probably
what he was like in the streets.
But it was followed by a pained expression. He looked hurt. Being accustomed to betrayal didn’t mean that betrayal didn’t hurt, and just because someone was used to falling didn’t mean it was easy to pick themselves up again the next time. I did not know until later that because he was locked up, he could not see anyone unless they came to see him, and if it did not take place in the Catholic meeting room, he could only talk for ten minutes from behind a sheet of acrylic with holes drilled in it, even if it were his own mother, and therefore he looked forward excitedly to every Thursday.

But at the time, I felt a little angry and thought,
He’s so impatient.
I looked up at him and said, “I didn’t mean that I was going to leave. I’m here today in Aunt Monica’s place because I asked her to let me come. The cancer patient she went to see, the one who’s about to die, is my mother. I told her that since she was going to see my mother, I would come to see you. So she’s there, and I’m here.”

He gave me the same look of surprise that I had given him. He started to get nervous, unsure of what I was going to say next.

“I hate my mother. I know that if I go see her, I’ll want to kill myself again. That’s why I’m here instead. It’s not that I like you, but I don’t hate you either. You and I haven’t wanted anything from each other or cared about each other enough to hate each other yet. So, since we can’t hate each other, this is comfortable for me. Or maybe I should just say it’s better. Please don’t misunderstand. That’s not the whole reason.”

I paused. I could tell he had no idea what I was talking about. Officer Yi looked confused, too.

“This might sound weird, but the first time I met you, I thought you and I were very similar. It’s hard to explain why that is, but the first thing that came to mind was that maybe you hated your mother, too, and maybe you’d hated her for a long time.”

Yunsu looked at me strangely and sat back down.

“Why did you think… Did you read about me in the newspaper?” he asked.

“I did read about you, but not until after I met you. What I mean is that for people who hate their mothers—let me rephrase that—for people who grow up without knowing a mother’s love, the part of us that can grow only when it receives the love that we are entitled to as children remains stunted somewhere deep inside of us. It’s like a premature baby that doesn’t get to grow up. I think it shows in our faces. And I think that’s what I saw in you.”

It bothered me that Officer Yi could hear what I was about to say, but I decided to push on. Now he too would know that I was not a good person. It hurt a little. I figured he would go home to his wife again and tell her,
Turns out, her reasons for visiting the prison aren’t so great after all.
For a moment, I thought I could understand the fear and sadness that hypocrites must feel.

“I’ve never told anyone this before. My uncle is a
psychiatrist, but I’ve never even told him. On the way here, I kept wondering why I wanted to come, and I thought it was because I wanted to tell you. It’s not easy for me to talk about it. But if my mother winds up being in hospital for a while, then I’ll probably be coming to see you for the time being. If you don’t want to see me… then I’ll stop coming.”

Officer Yi, who was quick to catch on, seemed to be doing his best not to listen in on the conversation. Yunsu’s eyes were boring into mine; in them, I could see some emotion arising that I had never seen in him before. I could also tell that he was trying to keep his doubts about me. He was staring at me with his neck craned forward, like a deer alert to every sound, trying to identify whatever was moving. But the doubt in his eyes also told me that he wanted to believe me.

I swallowed hard and looked him in the eye.

“In your letter, you said this could be your last spring… Because of you, I realized for the first time that spring only comes once a year, and that I will have to wait another year to see spring again. So I, too, feel like this is the first and last spring I’ll ever have. I never knew that a season, something that comes around at the same time every year, could feel that way. That it could be someone’s last. And that therefore every day for that person passes in yearning, like a kind of thirst. For you, it’s like you’re seeing
everything
for the first time—from the sap rising in the trees to the yellow forsythias that grow everywhere—and yet the moment you see them, you already have to say goodbye. Things the rest of us take for granted are probably stamped in your heart as both the first and last of their kind. I
realized
that because of you. I also realized because of you that though I have wanted to kill someone, that someone isn’t me. So I don’t want to have the kind of obvious,
predictable
conversation that religious types have on what could
be our last spring day together. We don’t have time. Since we’re already here, I want to have a real conversation.”

Yunsu looked nervous again.

“What do you mean by a real conversation?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet. If you keep talking, it must turn real eventually. I can’t tell you only nice things, the way Aunt Monica does. She talked to the warden about making me a so-called member of the Catholic ministry, so for now I get to walk around wearing this badge. I don’t know the Bible, I haven’t prayed in fifteen years and, in that time, the only time I’ve gone into a church was to buy postcards when I was traveling in Europe. Of course, I’ve never repented for that. I’m supposedly a painter, but aside from a few
paintings
I did after returning to Korea and a single solo
exhibition
, I haven’t painted anything. And I’m called a professor, but the school I went to in France was worthless, the kind of place that anyone with money could get into. At work, the other professors look at me like they’re thinking,
How did she get to be a professor?
The students are more clever that that. They look at me like, ‘Her dad’s the chairman of the board. When you come from money, you get money and connections. That’s how it is.’ And when I think about my life, I agree with them. I was arrested for drunk driving recently. The cops said I was crazy. But I’m not crazy. I’m an idiot.”

Yunsu had been sitting there nervously but he laughed out loud at the word
idiot
. His laugh sounded like air escaping from a balloon. Even Officer Yi looked down and snickered. I didn’t know if it was because of their laughter, but the room suddenly seemed to fill with the yellow glow of spring. Having said the words out loud, it did seem kind of funny. They both looked amused.

“I tried to kill myself three times. The last time was this past winter. I promised Aunt Monica that I would come
here with her, in exchange for not having to go through therapy. In other words, I had no choice about coming here. But I’m not crazy. I just hated myself and wanted to die. The reason is that when I was fifteen…”

Why I decided to bring that up, I still have no idea. But at least I was calm and not agitated. I could tell from his attitude that he was listening to me with his whole being. That was because that day could have been both the first and the last day of his life, and therefore I could have been the last person he ever saw. Had anyone in my life ever listened to me with their entire being before?

“An older cousin of mine on my father’s side…”

My throat closed up. I stopped talking for a moment so I could control my emotions. A pain, like my heart was
splitting
in two, ran through me. I waited for the pain to pass.

“…raped me. My mother sent me on an errand to the head family’s house, where my cousin lived. He lived there with his wife and kid.”

It was the first time I had ever said the words out loud. It was also the first time I had ever used the objective term for it—rape. But if I had to tell someone, I wanted it to be him, the man who was facing his final spring. I don’t know. There were so many ways in which I identified with him. It had been that way from the start. The most important thing we had in common, though, was the fact that, whether pushed or voluntarily, we had both longed to board the train of death. Everything had changed the moment I decided I wanted to board that train. Things I’d thought were
important
no longer were, and things I’d thought were
unimportant
became important. The desire to die distorted many things for me, but other things became very clear. Death contradicts ownership, which people hold above all other values. In this world, where everyone is crazy about money, money,
money
, death may be the only thing that enables
us to laugh at it, and everyone has to face death at least once. I was sure that Yunsu would understand me.

The room was so quiet that it may as well have been empty. Officer Yi and Yunsu were barely even breathing as they listened to me. I didn’t think about it until later, but Yunsu was probably more nervous than when the judge sentenced him to death. I had not given any prior thought to how he might react to hearing the word
rape
. It wasn’t until after I said it that I remembered he had raped and murdered a seventeen-year-old girl. But to my surprise, he was looking at me calmly, and in his face was a mixture of boundless compassion and sympathy along with the painful regret of being forced to look back on the past. I glimpsed a trace of terrible remorse in his eyes. It seemed that by exposing my wound, I had triggered his own. But I decided to push forward.

“After that, I couldn’t have a normal relationship with a man. It was okay if I didn’t love him, but I couldn’t be with someone if I did. Once I fell in love with someone, I had to let him go. That’s why they all left me.”

My eyes stung as I told him that. It was the first time I had ever tried to explain myself so concisely. I wondered why I had brought up relationships. My ears flushed red with shame. I thought of myself as someone who was cool and unaffected. When the break-ups happened, I acted like I didn’t care in the slightest. I thought that was what I was supposed to do. But it wasn’t until that moment that I
realized
it had hurt each and every time. It was true. I could tell that Yunsu was soaking my words up like a sponge—the truth about me and even the shame that I felt. I could tell because I was used to people not believing me, so I was sensitive to it. When I mentioned relationships, his eyes wavered, and my own heart wavered in response. We were like two people standing at either side of a ravine with a
rope stretched between the two of us. If one of us
trembled
, the other person’s hand trembled, too. When I look back on it now, I think I wanted to console him. I wanted to tell him,
You’re not the only one who has it hard, so stop acting like you’re already dead.
It was true.