We Do Not Part, page 8
That August, after returning from her trip, Inseon had holed up at home to edit. I dropped by one day and she showed me the rain scene for the first time. We sat next to each other in front of the monitor and, as we watched, claps of thunder and the sudden rat-a-tat of a cloudburst could be heard outside, until I couldn’t tell where the rainstorm over the jungle in Việt Nam ended and the heavy shower over the streets of Seoul began. Exotic, unfamiliar flowers and thick tropical leaves shook and deflected the teeming rain. A muddy ditch appeared and wound its way across the village center like a river. Women with trousers rolled up to their thighs hurried across the yard to scoop the drowning chicks and chickens into bamboo baskets. The shot lasted a good ten minutes and affected me profoundly. As I sat in silence, Inseon began to describe the tropical heat she’d experienced.
Forty degrees Celsius seemed to be the tipping point, she said. I’d walk outside the hostel and see hundreds of dark moths packed over mud walls, trying to evade the heat. The temperature on those days always rose into the forties. And all sorts of unusual insects would appear. The kind you don’t usually see, and they looked different too—big and dazzling as they crawled out and scuttled over the scorching ground—and you just knew, instinctively, that they were deadly. On those days, when it rained, it came down in gallons, just endless buckets of water. But the day I shot this, the rain was even heavier than usual. It didn’t let up for two days and two nights.
Once she had a rough cut, Inseon invited a few close acquaintances to a pre-release screening. In this version the rainstorm scene followed shots of the woman’s daily life, the woman who had looked at the camera and answered, All right. I’ll tell you. We saw her walk to the yard to wash her kettle at the water pump. She pumped the handle a few times to get the water flowing, then rinsed the kettle inside and out. On the fourth rinse, we heard her low voice say as subtitles appeared on screen, That night the soldiers came. Before her account was over, the long-take scene of falling rain began. The grass-thatched roofs were drenched. The brass water pump gleamed as it deflected the pelting raindrops. The overgrown hedge of wild jasmine shook. The chicken coop was awash with muddy water and flapping wings. Women appeared in dripping, rolled-up cotton trousers, bamboo baskets over their heads. The yard, choppy with rainwater. The round heads of chicks, wobbling like wet balls of wool.
* * *
The single flake that settled and melted over my glove just now was as close to a pristine six-armed snow crystal as one is likely to find. The one that settles next to it is partly crumbled, but the remaining four branches retain their delicate shape. These soft, deteriorating dendrites are the first to melt away. The tiny white center, the part that resembles a grain of salt, lingers for a breath before dissolving.
People say “light as snow.” But snow has its own heft, which is the weight of this drop of water.
People say “light as a bird.” But birds too have their weight.
The feeling of Ama’s two feet on my right shoulder, rough against the weft of my pullover. The warm softness of Ami’s chest as he perched on my left index finger. Strange, the sensation of contact with a living thing, how it can remain imprinted on the skin. As if touch alone can singe and break flesh. The delicate press of those birds against my skin remains unmatched.
How are they this light? I had asked, but Inseon shook her head. She told me bird bones were hollow and that this might be what made them lighter. Their largest organs are their air sacs, she added, which resemble balloons.
Birds eat so little because their tiny stomachs really can’t hold much, she continued. Plus they’ve only got small quantities of blood and body fluids, so losing just a few drops of blood or not having water to drink for a short while can be fatal. Even the trace amount of toxicity in a gas flame can pollute their blood, which is why I changed to an electric stove.
Inseon lowered her voice as if she thought the birds might actually understand her. Honestly I’ve sometimes regretted taking them in, she said. You don’t have to be as cautious with cats or dogs.
The birds flew up from my hand and shoulder. There was a brief beating of wings, then they settled again, Ama on Inseon’s shoulder and Ami on the windowsill overlooking the yard. I felt a lingering buoyant sensation where Ama and Ami had each pushed off as they’d leaped into the air. A sensation similar to soap suds or foam on skin.
How much do they weigh? I asked.
Inseon turned to look Ama in the eyes.
I’m not sure. Maybe twenty grams?
For some reason, a human fetus came to mind. I’d heard a long while ago that a fetus weighs about twenty grams around the time you can hear the beating of its still-developing heart. At that stage, the curled-up fetus is almost indistinguishable from a bird embryo in its egg.
The next morning, the ever-hospitable Inseon drove me to the airport in her truck. Back in Seoul, on nights when I had trouble sleeping, I went online to read about birds. I came across an article in a popular science magazine that described birds as extant dinosaurs. While the Earth’s surface burned and boiled in the aftermath of an asteroid collision and the volcanic ash that covered the atmosphere decimated animals and plants alike, the article said that feathered dinosaurs, or birds, were one organism that managed to survive the devastation by flying for months on end. Later I found a website where most currently living birds were catalogued with photos and nomenclature. I read the taxonomic names out loud, names I was unlikely to remember, but this helped to pass the time. On another night, I happened across an anatomical diagram of a bird done in clear lines, which I found especially beautiful and was moved to save on my computer. I saw the balloon-like air sacs Inseon had described, saw how the bones were full of oval holes and resembled wind instruments. So that’s what made them so light, I murmured to myself in the dark, recalling the roughness of Ama’s feet against the fabric of my pullover.
* * *
A giant snowflake settles on the back of my hand. It has traveled more than a thousand meters from the clouds. How many times it must have fused and combined as it descended to have grown to this size. And yet how light it is. I try to picture a twenty-gram snowflake, its vastness.
I look over at the woman. She remains as still as a stone figure, hands folded on her cane. How long has she been waiting like this? How are her bare hands not freezing? Time, it seems, is barely passing. It feels like we are the last living, breathing beings in this silent town with its shuttered and empty shops. I repress a sudden urge to lean across and wipe the snow from her grey lashes. A strange fear grips me. A fear that the instant I touch her, not only her face but her entire body might scatter and vanish into the snowy landscape.
* * *
You have to keep an eye on them even when they look fine.
Birds will pretend like nothing’s wrong, no matter how much pain they’re in. They instinctively endure and hide pain to avoid being targeted by predators. By the time they fall off their perch, it’s too late.
While Inseon spoke with deep concern, Ama had remained on her shoulder. Her white face was turned toward me, but I knew she was probably looking back at Inseon with one eye and following her own shadow on the wall with the other. That shadow was part of Inseon’s shadow, which was twice as big as Inseon herself. Amused, I found a pencil from a case in my bag and walked over to the wall.
I’ll erase it later if you don’t like it.
Inseon sat still for me while I traced a faint outline of her giant shadow from the head to the shoulder, and of the equally large black contour of the bird. Ami fluttered up from the windowsill and settled on the shade of the lamp above the dining table. As the light swayed, the shadows swayed with it. When the lampshade stopped moving, the shadows settled right back inside the line I’d drawn.
No, no.
Ami sighed from the lampshade. He must have picked up the word from his unwitting human companion. I wondered when and in what circumstances Inseon would have uttered that word.
Petting Ama’s head, Inseon said, It’s bedtime for you both.
She started singing, as if this were the signal between them. I didn’t know the song, but the melody was familiar enough. A lullaby, though I couldn’t follow the words as they were in dialect. Before Inseon reached the end of the first bar, Ama started humming along in an offbeat round. An extraordinarily serene if subtly dissonant harmony threaded the air. Ami remained quiet, as if he were listening to the song. Though his face was toward me, he was probably following Inseon and Ama’s swaying shadow with one eye, and the tree out in the yard shivering in the evening light with the other. What was it like to live with two fields of vision? I wondered. Maybe it was like this out-of-time round for two voices. Or like living a dream and reality at once.
* * *
I feel the line of pain reactivate, starting in the eyes and extending past the nape of the neck and stiff shoulders to my stomach. I’d spat out the chewing gum earlier on the bus when it lost its sweetness. I doubt gum would help now.
I remove my gloves. Rub my palms together until they feel warm and press them to my lids and around my eyes. I squat a few times, bending my knees. Rotate my shoulders and neck. Straighten my back. Take deep breaths. Walk three steps forward and three steps back, returning to my place beside the woman each time. If I’m able to run a hot bath in time, I could still ward off the spasms. If I get some warm juk in my stomach and find a snug place to relax and stretch my body.
If only Inseon were at home now and not in that hospital in Seoul. If only she were here to answer my call in surprise and come pick me up in her truck. If only she were here to say to me, as I sit in the passenger seat massaging my eyes, Remember how my bean juk made you feel all better? Let’s go and make some. Her eyes smiling in that assured way she has.
* * *
The glow of the traffic light brightens. The snow takes on deeper hues of red, yellow, and green as it falls past the signal. Evening is settling in.
It seems the bus isn’t coming after all.
Even if one were to pull up now, once we got to Inseon’s village it would be too dark for me to find my way.
It’s time to get on a coastal-route bus and head to Seogwipo to find a bed for the night. If there’s a pharmacy that opens on Sundays, I can get some Tylenol at least and hope it will tide me over. If that doesn’t work, I can find a hospital tomorrow morning, and if I’m lucky I might even get a prescription for the one migraine medication that works for me.
But first I have to call her, I mutter out loud. My breath wafts into the falling snow. I reconsider. No, I should text. She can’t really answer her phone. The moment it vibrates, she might be having her fingers pierced with needles again.
The lacerating pain in my eyes grows acute. Knowing it won’t make a difference, I reach into my pocket for some gum. I pop two from the blister pack and start chewing. Nausea hits me immediately and I spit them back out, into the paper napkin I received on the plane along with a cup of water. A sticky liquid oozes out as I wrap the gum in the beige paper.
I change my mind again. It’s best to call. It would be harder for her to reposition herself to tap out a message. If she can’t handle the phone herself, her carer can hold it up for her. And I should be able to make out every staticky word Inseon whispers into the phone in the quiet of this place.
I have to tell her I’m giving up. That there’s a snowstorm, that I’m ill. Inseon knows how abruptly my migraines can come on. And how the abdominal spasms that inevitably follow knock me out for several days. As for the severity of the snow and its impact on transport here, I hardly need to tell her.
* * *
After the fifth ring, I end the call. I wait a full minute before pressing the call button again. My phone is long overdue for a replacement and this is all it takes for the battery to drop to one bar.
Finally, a connection. Inseon, I call out, my ear straining to hear her whispering voice. Instead, I hear a woman’s urgent voice say, Later, call back later.
The line goes dead. I stare at the screen. It must be the carer. I could hear a general commotion surrounding her voice, a bustle of noise that didn’t seem to belong to a patient room.
I can’t figure out what’s happening. The battery’s charge is down to ten percent. I’ll have to recharge it before I can make another call. I need to get to Seogwipo.
Loosening my tight grip on the phone, I slip it into my pocket and glance at the woman beside me. If the buses have stopped running, shouldn’t I tell her before I go? Won’t she need my help given that she’s hard of hearing and uses a cane?
The woman goes on staring at the intersection, seemingly oblivious. To get her attention, I’ll have to touch her. I’m about to tap her on the shoulder when her face changes. Her eyes glint even as they remain steady. I follow her gaze and, unbelievably, a small bus is turning into the intersection, its roof buried under a thick layer of snow.
* * *
I hear the engine as the bus approaches, though the snow soon absorbs the dull reverberations. The bus grinds to a stop with a sound that reminds me of chalk on a blackboard. That ringing too is muffled by the placid snow.
The front door opens. Damp heated air rushes out and reaches my nose. The driver, who has one cotton-gloved hand on the gear lever, addresses the woman.
Were you waiting long?
He is wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a dark navy uniform and looks to be in his early forties.
Two buses got stuck uphill in the snow. You’ve been waiting all this time in the freezing cold, have you?
As earlier, the woman points to her ear and nods without answering. Using her cane, she slowly climbs onto the bus, and I follow behind as if in a trance. The bus is carrying no one else.
Are you going to Secheon-ri? I ask before tapping my transit card on the reader.
Yes, that’s right, the driver says politely in Seoul-mal, and I sense a distancing in his changed tone.
Could you let me know when we’re in Secheon-ri?
Where exactly? he asks. We stop four times in Secheon-ri alone. It’s a big village.
I can’t recall the name of the bus stop nearest Inseon’s place. I only remember that it was an unfamiliar sounding Jeju word.
The driver stares at me as I hesitate. I can hear the squeak and swish of the wipers as they clear the snow off the windshield.
This bus usually runs until nine, but there won’t be another one today, he says.
I still can’t answer.
I’m telling you this is the last bus going into Secheon today, the driver explains, seeing that I don’t speak Jeju-mal and he has misgivings about my general attire and appearance given the weather. I thank him.
I don’t know the name of the stop, but I’ll recognize it when we get there. I’ll let you know.
Unconvinced by my own words, I sit behind the woman, who leans on her short cane for support. The snow on her hat has already melted into droplets beading the napped wool.
* * *
What I said to the driver isn’t entirely a lie.
At the bus stop nearest Inseon’s place—which is still a thirty-minute hike away—there’s a large hackberry tree that must be about five hundred years old. I remember too the location of a tiny front-room shop that sells beverages and cigarettes. As long as it isn’t pitch-black by the time we get there, as long as there’s a hint of twilight left, surely I can’t miss such a big tree.
No matter what’s happening to Inseon right now, my best course of action is to head to her place. To charge my phone once I get there and then to call her. Of course this is what she would most want from me too.
I feel I’ve lucked out. I managed to fly in on the last flight to Jeju, and I just caught the last bus to Inseon’s village. I think about the couple on the plane. You call this lucky? Are you seeing this weather?
Could good luck be carrying me headlong into danger?
I lean my head against the cold window and bear the pain of my eyes being gouged by a dull blade. As ever, pain isolates me. I am trapped in the torturous moments my own body generates second by second. I am dislodged from the time prior to pain, from the world of the not-ill.
If only I could lie down somewhere warm.
I picture the large bedroom at Inseon’s, which she let me use last autumn. The bedding was folded to one side as if the owner meant to return shortly. The scent of fabric softener suggested she had washed the blankets for me, and they felt crisp and dry and cozy against my skin. That first day I slept unusually soundly in my warm cocoon before waking up around midnight. On a sudden whim I looked under the floor mattress and found the rusted coping saw, which I imagined had lain dormant there for a very long time.
* * *
Dusk is rapidly setting in. The bus passes through the bank of grey-white snow clouds and mist I’d seen all the way from the coastal road. The houses dotted along the road are now gone. Snowy deciduous trees stretch out on either side in a seemingly vast woodland.
The bus slows to a stop. The woman gets up from her seat. She hasn’t indicated or told the driver where she’s headed, but the driver seems to know where to let her off. Perhaps he’s familiar with the residents here from driving the same route every day. The woman walks to the rear door, cane tapping as she goes. She tilts her tremulous head to glance back at me with an expression I can’t make out—is it a faint smile, a parting salute, or simply a vacant look?—before turning away.
