The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (59 page)

I was returning to the city on the 6:40 train. Mom peeled the sweet potato sprouts, one by one. Insisting they wouldn’t taste as good if she seasoned them in advance, she made kimchi with the sprouts right before I set out, stuffing them into a container for me to carry in my bag. Father pulled out his motorcycle, started the engine and gave me a ride to the station. On the country road that led us out of the village, he picked up speed. I tightened my grip around his waist to keep from rocking. Father would soon build a new house. If he discreetly seeks our opinion, I will offer support. I will persuade other family members who are hesitant. The new house in Father’s vision for the future contains six keys. The keys will tie us together, keep us from separating. Father got a ticket for me and carried by bag to the platform. “Call home when you arrive.” When the train arrived, Father loaded the bag on the overhead rack above my seat. In the seat next to mine, a boy sat sound asleep. His hands grasped the armrest to keep from rocking. He had dirty fingernails. They looked like they were stained with oil, or were unwashed, filled with scum. His profile gave off a cold impression, his forehead covered by his locks. The boy slept and slept until the train pulled into Suwon. When they announced that next stop was Yeongdeungpo Station, I stirred him awake.

“Have we passed Yeongdeungpo?” Only then the boy opened his eyes, startled. His body was frail but his eyes were big and bright. I told the flustered boy that we’d made a stop at Suwon Station a while back and would be arriving soon at Yeongdeungpo,
and the boy folded himself into his seat again, saying, “Oh,” sounding relieved.

If I get off at Yeongdeungpo Station, I can go there by subway.

Once again I ignored the surging inside my heart. Go there, carrying that heavy bag? My large bag, with the container of sweet potato sprout kimchi. I got up to pull down my heavy bag, gazing down at me from the rack; the boy offered to get it. He effortlessly fetched the bag and placed it on the floor. His body giving off the scent of a skilled steel worker.

“Thanks.”

The boy smiled shyly. Revealing a row of teeth, white like pomegranate seeds. He didn’t sit back down but headed straight to the door. He carried nothing, not a single bag, and I noticed from behind that he had a sturdy build. While I oscillated between hesitation, anticipation, and resignation, the train arrived at Yeongdeungpo Station. I shifted seats to where the boy had been sitting. How nimble. He had already made it to the far end of the platform. When he was asleep, crumpled up in his seat, he had seemed pitiful, but now, striding down the platform, he was full of vigor. It occurred to me that perhaps he was no longer a boy. With his mop of hair lifted off his forehead, his long profile, which had seemed cold somehow, reminded me of a giraffe. The train started and he began to run, as if he were racing the train.

Ah! My eyes opened wide. Was this a mirage? They were a beautiful pair of legs. Faster than the steel wheels on the train. They were perfectly toned and tempered, ready to run at the speed of seventy miles an hour. The boy’s beautiful legs left the platform before the train got out of Yeongdeungpo Station. A sigh of relief escaped from my mouth. I placed my hand down on the window of the speeding train car, its wheels clanking,
clickety clack.
My
gesture, small and natural, brought back, albeit faintly, a promise from the past, a promise about to fade into oblivion.

On its way to its final destination, Seoul Station, the train would pass through Garibong Subway Station.

During my solitary days lived inside the industrial labor genre painting, the image I often made an effort to bring to mind was that of the birds in the photography book that Cousin showed me that night we arrived in the city—the birds sleeping under the vast night sky, facing the stars, sitting high and beautiful. I endured those days inside the genre painting by promising myself that there would come a day when I would go see these birds with my own eyes. In the years that followed, even when I got lonely in the midst of life’s fatigues and the absence of human ties, I never abandoned my wish that I would go see them one day, those egrets in the book in Cousin’s arms, the flock of egrets in the forest where night had fallen, leaning close to one another, tight and round, blanketing the trees with their beautiful sleep, as if they had forgiven all the goings-on in this world. One day, I shall set out, beyond the ridge that blocked my view, my arms rocking as they rested on the window of the train car. I told myself this on the days of grief or solitude, and never let anyone else know. Seventeen years had passed since I made that promise and I had yet to travel to see the birds.

Was I here?

Where Oldest Brother had waited, wearing his wig, for the subway train to Anyang; where Cousin set out for Jonggak, instead of coming to school, in hope of becoming a telephone operator; where Third Brother stood and waited before he headed to the farm, carrying on his back his luggage filled with nothing but books. Does left-handed An Hyang-suk still write with her left hand?

I looked out the window, my eyes glowering.

In the distance factory chimneys stood tall and impetuous. How I wished the train would slow down. Shine some light on that place. I looked at my arm resting on the windowsill. It rocked
this way and that, to the tremors of the train. The moment it occurred to me, that I was here, in that place, an egret flapped its wings inside my heart.

Fly away now, no need to hesitate, fly to the forest. Soar beyond the ridge blocking your vision. Go on, sleep, under the vast night sky, facing the stars, sitting high and beautiful.

For I shall never forget you, year after year, come on back some day, come back as a new sentence. Come back to deliver the truth that arose then vanished in places where my breath cannot reach. Let us say good-bye now. We didn’t get to do so back then. I lifted my arm from the windowsill and got up. I headed for the door, as if I were following the boy. It was as if he were racing across the plain. I stood where they boy’s toned and tempered legs had lingered before dashing down the platform, and pushed open the door with all my might. I stuck out my hand, grabbed a fistful of air, then released it.

Good-bye . . . I will hold dearly in my heart how you cherished and cared for me.

In any situation, in any relationship, I was never able to speak or behave as I intended. By the time I lifted my head, determined to say something, he would already be far away. What was left unsaid and undone to him has become a novel. Which is to say, he has never heard me speak. I am now utterly baffled, though. I long to go back to the time when all that was left unsaid and undone had yet to become a novel and remained as a future. Back to a time when revision and addition and the questions to myself had all remained intact . . . August 8, 1995.

I am on Jeju Island. I have returned to the place where I first began writing this. August 26, 1995.

I remember writing a year ago, at this same place, Here I am on an island, Jeju-do . . . It is my first time writing away from home. Yes, it’s already been a year. This past year has
gone by while I wrote this book. This past year I was unable to work on any other fiction except for this. I had an impulse, from time to time, to start a short story, but never went ahead with it. During the writing of this book, I’ve suppressed so many of my heart’s desires, again and again, that now I’m starting to worry whether I can go back to the way I used to be. I am hoping that while I am here, spending my days going over and polishing the book, the submerged layers of my heart will recover. It has also occurred to me that my habit, of stopping myself midway, wherever it is I am going, and trying to return to the beginning, might be a vanity that lies outside the realm of life. It is August 26, 1995.

I went swimming at Hyeopjae Beach at night. It was my first time swimming in the sea. I suffer from an unbearable headache from time to time. It’s less frequent now, but there was a time when I battled the pain every single day. When it attacked, I lost all will, and my knees would buckle, wherever I happened to be. When it got to a point where I felt so shaken inside my head I had difficulty getting out of bed and out the door, the doctor recommended that I take up swimming. I followed his orders. That was how it was for me.

There was nothing I wouldn’t do if only my head would stop aching. So I went to the pool and learned to swim. Freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke. When I was in the water, I was able to forget everything. The water caressed my headaches with its warmth. Doing the backstroke relaxed me so much I’d get sleepy. Ever since, I’ve considered swimming a cure-all, heading to the pool for back pain, for a sore in my shoulder. But I never expected that I’d be swimming for fun in the middle of the night, in the sea. Neither did I expect that my first swim in the sea would take place at night. I floated on my back and head out as far as my arms would take me. The sensation of the water on my back warmed my heart. Floating on top of the water, I felt that the city I left only ten hours ago was now a distant place. My empty apartment,
my busy life in the city, all seemed unreal. My desk cleaned up, the gas range quiet. The phone would ring and the answering machine would pick it up instead of me. The stars in the night sky poured into my eyes. The moment I took notice of the twinkling of the stars, I lost my balance, floundering. I got salty seawater in my mouth, in my eyes. Who was it that said the seawater was the closest fluid to amniotic fluid. August 26, 1995.

All morning long I sat facing the sea. August 28, 1995.

I took the bus to the town in Hallym. I bought a sewing kit from a street vendor, made up of spools of thread in different colors and needles of different sizes. I had been looking all over for one but all I had found in the city were disposable kits, and here, they were just selling them on the street. When I was young I used to play with my mother’s sewing kit.

There were all sorts of things in there. Colored threads, broken buttons, thumbtacks, scraps of cloth, thimble, scissors, pins, big needle, small needle . . . When I am asked this question about my writing method, whether I have the novel’s complete structure worked out before writing or not, I think of Mom’s sewing kit. I don’t have to work out the novel’s structure. I don’t take notes, either. If I had notes to work from, my thoughts would lose fluidity and refuse to move ahead. Often, it was whatever popped up in my subconscious or unconscious that formed into sentences. They were sometimes explosive, emerging, without my knowing, as I followed the preceding sentence. This is why at times I don’t know how my writing will turn out until I am done with it. All I do is simply open the sewing kit and gaze into the colored threads, scissors, needles, and broken buttons. As I follow the preceding sentence, making my way through the sewing kit, sometimes there are certain threads or buttons that hide deeper in the layers of my mind. Like a terrapin pulling its neck deep into its shell, I was not able to pull out by force what kept itself hidden until the end. But that was what I was attached to. I believe that the truth in what hides away, refusing to be pulled out, would come back
to me someday as a certain aesthetic sensibility that would allow me to view life from a different perspective. That wherever you are, whatever life you live, not even literature will overlook the nobility of his truth.

I went deeper into the market and bought a large towel. I also got a camping stove, a fuel canister for the stove, a kettle, and a box of Maxwell House instant coffee. At another store, I got two bowls of instant noodles and a box of biscuits, and turned back on my way out after paying for them and bought two cans of Hite beer. August 29, 1995.

In the middle of the night I went out with all the coins I had and called up people in the city. P said I had it too easy, and J asked, “Did you have dinner?” H said she was going to visit her father’s grave, since it had been three years. Younger Sister asked if I was here alone. When I said I was, she asked, in a melancholy voice, “Do you want me to come,
Eonni
?” I too felt a rush of melancholy and asked, “You want to come?” Beyond the phone booth, the night sea was swelling and slopping. August 30, 1995.