This Burns My Heart (25 page)

Yul’s character hadn’t changed much over the years; Soo-Ja had realized this during their check-in, the day before. In front of Eun-Mee, and much to her smiling approval, Yul had signed a guest bill featuring a substantial discount. But when she hadn’t been looking, Yul added 1,000
won
to the sum, which was more than Soo-Ja normally charged for the rooms.

Soo-Ja kept the extra money in an envelope and set it aside. She planned on returning it to Yul on the day he checked out. Of course, she couldn’t simply hand it back to him, or he’d refuse; she figured she might need to perform a delicate sleight of hand, using distraction and trickery to slip it into the pocket of his trenchcoat on his way out.

Occasionally, guests called the front desk, and Soo-Ja sent Miss Hong to attend to them. But when she heard a buzz come from room 311, Soo-Ja decided to go herself. She took a deep breath and dried her damp hands by pressing them against the front of her dress. The door to the room had been left ajar, and Soo-Ja came in, her steps tentative. Yul stood with his back to her, and he did not meet her eyes right away. The room, like all the others, had no windows, only wallpaper featuring brown half squares meant to suggest traditional wood lattices. A small straw basket, weighed down by cotton blankets, sat against a corner; it was the only piece of furniture there.

“Did you call for me? Everything all right with the room?” asked Soo-Ja.

“Yes. I like the room very much. I wasn’t sure if I should ask you here
or not. It seems a little demeaning to ring a buzzer, but I couldn’t think of another way to be alone with you.”

“Don’t worry. You’re not only a guest, but a friend, too. I want you to enjoy your stay.”

“I’ve been thinking about what I said to you yesterday. I didn’t mean for it to come out quite that way. It’s just that—the last ten years have been difficult, and I don’t want the next ten to be like that.”

Soo-Ja heard the sound of voices vibrating through the walls from the room next door. For a moment, she worried that others might hear them, too, and she found herself walking farther into the room, standing closer to Yul. “Are you ill?”

Yul let out a rueful laugh. “Soo-Ja, there’s nobody listening in. You’re with me now. And I know you.” Yul walked past her, to the door, and closed it, bringing silence into the room. He then returned and stood in front of Soo-Ja. “Do you remember the first time we met? The long ride in the bus? Do you remember when I came to your art class, and we drew those paintings together? Why don’t you talk to me the way you talked to me back then?”

“That might as well have happened to somebody else. It’s not my life now.” Soo-Ja produced a stained dishrag from her pocket, the way a gentleman might produce a silk handkerchief. “Look at this. Can you imagine me scrubbing floors back then? My body seems to have a lower center of gravity now.”

To her surprise, Yul took the rag from her hands and pressed it against the back of his own hand. The gesture felt warm, tender, and she imagined how gently he’d hold her, if only he could. “Why do you think Fate keeps putting us in the same room?”

“It’s not Fate.
I
came to you in Pusan, and now
you’ve
come to me. It’s definitely not Fate. It’s will.”

“I’ve never given up hope that I could be with you.”

“I love my husband,” said Soo-Ja, reaching back for the rag. Yul did not return it to her immediately, and Soo-Ja had to pry it out of his hands using her own weight. In that second, their bodies felt connected, as the pressure from one pulled against the other.

“You’re lying. You only stay with him because you’re afraid he’ll take Hana away from you. I know the divorce laws.”

Soo-Ja avoided his eyes, pulling harder for the rag. “Things around here are not perfect, but I’m trying to make do with them,” said Soo-Ja. She had been getting better and better over the years at keeping up a stoic facade.

“I’ll leave you alone, but only if you say to me that you no longer have feelings for me.”

“I no longer have feelings for you,” said Soo-Ja, and she immediately felt the tears welling in her eyes. Right at that moment, Yul’s fingers finally let go of the rag, and Soo-Ja found herself wrapping the harsh cotton against her knuckles. Why had he let go of it, and of her? Why had he not held on to it in the palm of his hand?

“Does this mean you forgot about me? I remember the last time we saw each other. I could swear, from the look on your face that night, you would have run away with me.”

“And why didn’t we, then?” asked Soo-Ja, and she felt her yearning break through the surface and gasp for air. “All right, you want me to tell you if I still—
love
—you? Is that the word you think I’m so afraid of saying? Love? I could do that. I could tell you that. But what does it do? Nothing except make us feel bad. It doesn’t change anything.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“I’m a married woman. I’m not free to tell you how I feel.” It was true, but only because she feared that once she started, she would not be able to stop. “Your wife is just across the hall.”

“I know. But I thought I’d forget you with time, and I haven’t. When I was younger, I thought there was only room for one person at a time in your heart. And each time you met someone new, you evicted the one who was there before. But now I realize that there are multiple rooms, and your old love doesn’t leave. It sits there, waiting.”

It occurred to Soo-Ja that if she gave him permission, he’d kiss her right then and there. But she realized that all along, what she really wanted wasn’t to have him in the present—how could she, married woman that she was, married man that he was—but to rewrite the past,
have him go back in time and create a version that allowed them to kiss. To be able to kiss him did not seem to take much—a step forward, the angling of her face. But, in fact, it required rearranging the molecules of every interaction they had ever had, from the very first day that they met.

“Forget me, Yul. As long as you’re here, you’re just a guest.”

How could I have chosen Min over you? Soo-Ja asked herself, facing the past in the cold light of the present.
I made a terrible mistake.

When Soo-Ja could no longer remain steady, she left the room. As she emerged, she was thankful that no one was out in the hallway. Otherwise, they would have seen her burst into tears, her breathing sharp and difficult, and they might have wondered what had just happened to her.

O
ver the next few days, Soo-Ja began to pick up more and more details about Eun-Mee. She learned that in the course of her life, Eun-Mee had had several brushes with fame. The first time, when Eun-Mee was ten years old, she had participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the reopening of the Namdaemun Market after the war. The dress she wore—a pink velvet one-piece with puffed-up shoulders and ruffled hemming—became something of a sensation once it appeared on a photo on the front page of the
Chosun Ilbo
, with little girls from as far away as Pyongyang copying that style.

Happy with the publicity, the organizers of the market offered Eun-Mee a gift—a glass duck. Eun-Mee, however, turned it down and asked for something else instead. They bated their breaths, hoping it wouldn’t be cash. Instead, Eun-Mee asked that she be given free rein to come in and out of every single one of the shops and stalls in the market, and to let it be known that she was “Queen of Namdaemun Market.” For a year, after school, Eun-Mee wandered around the maze of open-air alleyways. She’d go into stores to chat with the owners and play board games, knowing they could not kick her out. However busy they were, they had to stop what they were doing and entertain her.

In high school, Soo-Ja also learned, Eun-Mee had participated in several beauty-pageant contests and had tried out for Miss Seoul. At one
of the early rounds, during a photo session—a rather modest one, Eun-Mee complained, taken with an old, antiquated Brownie box camera—one of the contestants had accidentally tripped and stepped forward in one of the shots. When the photo was later released, Eun-Mee had expected the woman to look disastrous and clumsy, but instead she had managed to look beautiful and to stand out, being a foot or so in front of the group.

At the next photo shoot, for a promotion connected to the renaming of the Shinsegae Department Store, Eun-Mee decided to “accidentally” trip and step forward in every one of the shots. When Eun-Mee saw that the photographer’s flash was about to come on, she’d propel herself forward, as if she were so excited, she couldn’t just wait for the film to come capture her—she had to meet it halfway.

In the final competition, Eun-Mee came in seventh. The disappointment over that ranking, however, did not last very long. After all, Eun-Mee was the kind of person who’d win even when she lost, and what she had won was something precious indeed—the interest of her future husband.

Because Eun-Mee spent so much time in the hallway, it was probably no accident that she spotted Soo-Ja one evening as Soo-Ja came out of her room wearing a dress and makeup. Soo-Ja and Hana were going to a
gye
meeting. When Eun-Mee found out about this, she invited herself to come along.

“I love gye! I was wondering how I could join one in Seoul, and I suppose I have the answer right in front of my face!” said Eun-Mee.

“I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea, I don’t think my gye is accepting any new members,” said Soo-Ja, trying to make her way past her.

“If they’re not, I’m sure they’d make an exception for a doctor’s wife,” said Eun-Mee, smiling. “Just give me one second and I’ll put a dress on. Don’t you dare leave without me!”

“What about your husband?” Soo-Ja asked, making another attempt at discouraging her.

“Oh, he’s working late. We’ll probably be back before he is,” said Eun-Mee, disappearing into her room.

Once a month, the women members of Soo-Ja’s gye gathered for an informal dinner at a restaurant. While they ate the
sundubu
and
japchae
and
seolleongtang
in the banquet-hall-style room, at long, continuous tables set up like picnic benches, lit by white and red Chinese lamps, a volunteer went around each table and collected dues from all of them. By the evening’s end, one of the members of the gye would go home with all the money collected. The next month, somebody else took home the money.

Everyone contributed to the pot religiously, and you did not dare miss a payment, otherwise you’d never be eligible to be a recipient. There was, of course, the risk that somebody who’d been a receiver in an earlier round might disappear, or refuse to continue contributing (in which case they’d say the gye was “broken”), but those cases were rare, and people did in fact pay back their loans. For that’s what they were—loans. You couldn’t rely on banks, with their excessive collateral requirements and high interest rates, but you could rely on your friends and other members of the gye.

It was a more formal extension of a common practice in extended families—Soo-Ja’s own relatives were always giving money to one another, to help cousins start businesses, to finance a niece’s education, to pay for weddings and funerals. You gave, yes, but you always got back, and some of Soo-Ja’s aunts even kept notebooks, recording how much they had received and from whom, so they’d know who deserved their loyalty and help later on. The gye simply expanded this spirit of helping one another on a larger scale, following the notion that money should always be flowing, and friends should help other friends.

When they arrived at the restaurant, Eun-Mee had Soo-Ja introduce her to everyone she knew, and Soo-Ja discovered the first of Eun-Mee’s many magical charms: the ability to make strangers instantaneously fond of her. In a matter of seconds, Eun-Mee became closer friends with some of these women than Soo-Ja had been for years. Initially, Soo-Ja was a bit annoyed by this. But then the feeling was replaced by a sense
of relief, as she realized she would not have to spend the entire evening by her side. She was sure Eun-Mee did not know about the history between her and Yul, but Soo-Ja still felt awkward on her end.

So Soo-Ja ate her
bibimbap
, a medley of beef and vegetables mixed with hot chili paste, still cooking in the pot it was served in, while attentively watching the volunteer, an old woman whose face never shifted expressions as she collected one white envelope after another. If Soo-Ja were chosen as the gye recipient, she could take home all the money, and she’d be able to buy the land she wanted. She hoped that the members of the gye would choose her. (This was one way their gye differed from others—instead of randomly selecting winners through a random drawing, they were able to vote for someone each month, until no one was left. This meant if you were well liked and considered trustworthy, you’d probably get selected early on. If you rubbed others the wrong way, you might be dead last. At the end of the day, they chose character over chance, though Soo-Ja wasn’t sure what that said about them, that they put so little stock in luck.)

Soo-Ja was waiting for the evening’s business to start when she heard a roar of laughter coming from the front of the restaurant, followed by smaller chortles, like a wave’s ripples. She thought she heard Eun-Mee’s voice, and she turned around to see a group of women gathered in a circle. Soo-Ja could not see the source of the activity, since their backs were to her. Curious, she rose from her seat and walked in their direction, the laughter drawing her in like a siren’s song.

When she reached the group, Soo-Ja peeked in among them in almost childlike excitement, as if about to enjoy a street performer. Soo-Ja smiled. These were peers; she liked them; she longed to share a laugh with friends. The circle broadened slightly, to let her in.

Indeed, it was Eun-Mee, standing near the area where everyone took their shoes off before coming into the restaurant. Eun-Mee stood there alone, as if on a stage, and held in her hands an old pair of women’s shoes. She had them as far from her as possible, her arms stretched out, her fingers becoming imaginary forceps.