The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (24 page)

Hui-jae answers, “Yes,” looking at me as if to ask who this is.

“This is my cousin. She lives with us.”

We walk out of the night campus, feeling awkward. Cousin, who on other nights offered me her arm, walks next to me at a distance. I am about to take Cousin’s arm when it occurs to me that Hui-jae might feel left out, so I pull back my hand and I, with Cousin in front of me and Hui-jae behind, walk between them in an awkward stance.

Cousin sits at the conveyor belt looking sullen. She is frustrated about something. She doesn’t answer even when I ask something. Cousin leaves me behind and goes to lunch by herself. I trot along and line up behind her but Cousin, who on other days would hand
me a tray and a pair of chopsticks, picks up only hers. I try to guess what’s bothering her. Have I done something wrong? I search in my mind but can’t figure it out. Being a slow eater, I haven’t even put down my spoon when Cousin stands up and leaves the cafeteria with a chill. I quickly put down my spoon and follow her. Cousin is alone at the tap, washing her hands. I approach and poke her on the side, as if to ask what’s bothering her, but Cousin doesn’t even acknowledge that I’m there.

Afternoon arrives and still Cousin doesn’t acknowledge me. She pulls down the air driver and attaches the screws, her lips pressed tight. Resenting her now, I also look away. I feel nauseated and dizzy for no reason. At five o’clock, Cousin once again walks out of the assembly line by herself and heads to the locker room. I, having chased behind her all day, now give up and leave the assembly line much later, wash my hands at the tap, and head to the lockers. As I walk into the locker room, Cousin, already changed into her school uniform, is on her way out. When Cousin looks away, putting on a prim air, I look away as well. When I find Cousin having dinner in the cafeteria, I, seventeen years old, walk past her and head down the stairs. Only then Cousin calls to me.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

The first thing Cousin’s said to me all day. At least she hasn’t turned mute. I throw my schoolbag on the floor and yell, “Why are you acting this way? What have I done?” Overwhelmed by the frustration of having been ignored all day by Cousin, I break into tears.

“What are you crying for, you’re causing a scene.”

“Why are you acting like this?”

The students arriving for dinner glance our way, wondering what is going on. “You’re causing a scene,” Cousin says as she comes over to lift me up but I push her away.

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Why do you call her
Eonni
?”

“Her?”

“Hui-jae or whatever her name is.”

I still don’t quite understand.

“You never call me
Eonni
, but you’re following around this woman, who you barely know, calling her
Eonni
,
Eonni
.”

“You refused to talk to me all day because of that?”

Cousin lets out a laugh, as if she’s embarrassed.

On the bus to school, Cousin stammers and offers me a confession, which is not at all like her usual self.

“I don’t like your being friends with that woman.”

“. . . ”

“I don’t like it when you smile and hold hands and walk arm in arm with that woman.”

“You stopped talking to me for a whole day because of that?”

“What am I to do, I was so angry.”

“I was dying from frustration all day.”

“So are you going to keep it up with her?”

“Keep what up?”

“Keep calling her
Eonni
?”

“I could call you
Eonni
, too, then.”

Cousin lets out a slight laugh. Perhaps she’s forgotten our squabble earlier in the day, or perhaps she’s embarrassed about how she behaved, because when classes are over, Cousin is the first one to greet Hui-jae, who arrived at my classroom ahead of her. My cousin, she talks to Hui-jae more than I do and walks closer to Hui-jae than I do.

After that, I call Cousin
eonni
. Anywhere we go, any time, I call out to her,
Eonni
—
Eonni
—.

Today I received a letter. It would be more accurate to say I found it rather than received it. On my apartment door hangs a sack to receive milk deliveries, which was left behind by the previous owner. This afternoon, as I was leaving for the supermarket, I turned the key and put it in my pocket, but worried I might lose
it, I put it inside the milk delivery sack. Walking down the stairs, I considered retrieving it, thinking perhaps I’m being too careless with my key, but in the end, I kept going, telling myself I would be back in thirty minutes. An hour at the longest.

When I returned and put my hand inside the sack to get the key, I pulled out an envelope along with the key. It was a letter with 840-won worth of stamps attached, posted via express mail. The mailman had probably come in my absence and when nobody came to the door, he must have left it in the milk sack, since the mailman knows that I live here. The sender had posted the letter via express mail, but if I had not put my key in the sack, I still would not know that there was a letter inside. But who was it that had news so urgent they had to deliver it via express mail?

The envelope read: Han Gyeong-sin, Faculty, Yeongdeungpo Girls’ High School, Singil-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul.

How do you do? I teach at the Special Night Program for Industrial Workers at Yeongdeungpo Girls’ High School. I am writing this letter after reading an article about you in the paper. I wanted to extend an invitation for you to come for a talk with my students, as a writer and as a graduate of our school. From what I read in the paper, I did get the impression that perhaps you are not yet ready for such an occasion. But at the same time, I also thought that you might not be aware that night programs still continue to be offered, and that perhaps if you knew, you might gladly accept our invitation.

When I mentioned that you are a graduate of the same program, my students showed great interest and said they want to read your autobiographical novel when it is published. My students
are your future alumni and at the same time readers of your work. If you decide to come, my colleagues and I, also your readers, will be just as thrilled as the students.

This past February, after attending my students’ commencement, I contributed an article to
The JoongAng Ilbo
newspaper. When I read the published piece to students, they were so happy. Recently one of the students asked, “Aren’t you going to writing something else for the newspaper? It will be nice if you wrote about us.”

I stood frozen for a while, as if I under a sudden siege.

Special programs are still being run for industrial workers. I had not known. Ever since I left, I had never again been in the area. Perhaps my subconscious preferred to get far away from that time and from that space. Perhaps I had attempted to brush off every trace of factory smell that I was smeared with.

But all of a sudden, halfway through the 1990s, the sounds of the conveyor belt moving is suddenly in my ear.

There is a girl who reads Hegel. She is Mi-seo, class president and my desk partner to my right. She opens the Hegel when she gets to school in the morning and during breaks, pulls out the Hegel that she has pushed under her desk and reads it. While Mi-seo is gone to the teachers’ office, I, seventeen years old, open the book to the page Mi-seo was reading. I read the part that she has underlined in pencil. I can’t understand what it means, so I read it out loud. But I still can’t understand it. Mi-seo, upon her return, snatches the Hegel from me and shows her anger as she pushes it under the desk.

“It’s my book.”

I stare into her face. Why is she getting so mad—it’s not like I stole her book, I just took a peek. When it’s almost time to go home, I put a question to Mi-seo.

“You know, about that book, do you understand everything it says?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because it looks like a difficult book.”

“I don’t get it, either.”

I look at her blankly.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“How can you keep reading the book so intently when you don’t understand it?”

Mi-seo takes out the Hegel from under the desk and puts it in her bag. “It’s none of your business.”

She picks up her bag and abruptly leaves, as if I’m being ridiculous.

Much later, when she and I have become close, Mi-seo brings up the Hegel. “Only when I am reading this book do I feel different from all of you. I don’t like you people.”

It is now the 1990s. Is someone still reading Hegel in that classroom today?

We have music classes. When we are arriving at school around dusk, our music teacher is washing his car. His car is visible even from a distance, glittering in the setting sun. It seems he once aspired to be a classical singer. When someone says to him that his voice sounds like that of Eom Jeong Hang, the famous tenor, he laughs with jovial delight. The song that he had us sing, after our school anthem, which went, Heirs to a tradition of cultural splendor, gazing out at the dignified flow of the blue Han River, was the song “Nostalgia.”

When flowering April comes around again, my heart fills up, my beautiful beloved waiting around the mountain path, beyond the bright green hills . . . We are required to sing “Nostalgia” to
his piano accompaniment for music test, so when we are walking back from one of our music classes, the sound of singing relays between the front and back of our throng. Where is my home of the old days, its mountains covered with azaleas, owls hooting in the distance. Where is my beloved . . . The music room is on the first floor of the annex, past the main building.

In the main building, nightly cram sessions are underway for senior-year students from the daytime program to prepare for college entrance exams. We have to pass the lilac tree by the main building to get to our classroom. Tell me you love me, my dear beloved in my heart. If not for you spring will never come . . . Suddenly a window opens with a screech in one of the classrooms in the main building and the daytime students, in the middle of a cram session, shout.

“Hey, keep it quiet.”

One of those who were singing retorts. “Do I hear anything? I don’t hear anyone making noise.”