Sonju, page 16
On Monday, Sonju was at the market picking a fresh bundle of wild vegetables when a young woman’s voice called out, “Sonju!” A thud in her chest. She turned.
Okja, an old classmate, approached her with a wide smile. “What a surprise to see you. Are you visiting?”
Sonju hesitated. “No, I live here.”
“Then we are neighbors. We need to visit. I’ll bring my children to meet your daughter.”
Her friend Misu must have told their classmates about Jinju. Sonju said calmly, “I don’t have my daughter with me. I’m divorced.”
“Divor …” The classmate shifted her purse from one hand to the other, looking flustered. “I need to go.” She turned and walked off.
Sonju clutched her empty shopping bag. Now all her classmates would know about her divorce and her daughter. Her girl cousin would find out and tell all her relatives. Their whispers will turn into questions, and her proud mother would dip her head in shame. It broke her heart. She ran, and upon arriving at Kungu’s house, went straight to her room and wrote a letter to Jinju asking for her forgiveness.
The next day, Kungu presented her with a box of fancy stationery and said, “You had a tough time yesterday.”
One late morning in May, after passing about two dozen stores lined up on both sides along the street, she stopped near the entrance of a small bank where a middle-aged woman set up buckets of fresh flowers. In one of the buckets, pink peony petals were about to burst out of their crowded layers.
She was walking home holding three stems of peonies when she noticed the same classmate she had encountered before coming straight at her. Two meters away from her, the classmate said, “I hear you’re living with a lover. People talk.”
Sonju stared at the accuser and didn’t drop her eyes.
“An adulteress, that’s what you are. Leaving a child for a lover,” the classmate said, her voice rising. “Don’t you have any shame? You tainted the good name of our school.”
While being harangued, Sonju tried to figure out a way to leave the scene. She didn’t want to go around the classmate. Doing so seemed cowardly. “Think what you will. Move out of the way,” Sonju said, and clutching the peonies to her chest, walked right ahead as Okja, her mouth gaped open, stepped aside.
Back home, she placed the flowers in a vase on the bureau and wrote another letter to Jinju.
Someone knocked at the gate. Sonju opened the glass door of the living room as the maid went to the gate. Lately the maid had been talking more to her with softer gestures and at times even smiling.
“Who is it?” The maid asked.
“We are her family.”
Sonju’s heart jumped. She took a deep breath. At her nodding, the maid opened the gate cautiously.
Her mother, with her mouth pinched shut, walked toward Sonju a few steps ahead of her younger daughter. This wouldn’t be a sit-down-and-have-tea visit. Standing in the living room facing her mother, Sonju met her mother’s fiery eyes and waited for the downpour of accusatory words.
And it poured. “Your father is in poor health from the shock of your shameful act. He doesn’t receive guests. He hardly talks,” her mother said with force in her words and heavy breathing between sentences.
Why did they come? Sonju wondered. They had disowned her.
Her mother pulled out an envelope from her purse. “Your divorce papers came. I don’t want them in my house.” She slapped it down on the bureau. Sonju glanced at it, then watched her mother become more agitated. Her mother’s contorted face hardened, and her lips trembled. Her mother at that moment was almost unrecognizable. She walked a step closer to Sonju. “Many women smarter than you follow the conventions.” Her mother’s voice quavered, becoming louder. “What you have done, what you are doing is worse than death!”
“Mother! Mother!” Sonju’s sister called.
Her mother’s nostrils flared as she expelled air. This was the woman who used to tell her daughters to always restrain. Her mother’s words provoked bitterness in her afresh. She felt her anger rising. Her mother had no right to force that marriage on her and drop her off to strangers like an unwanted baggage and not take any responsibility for her action. Sonju said, “You shouldn’t have forced me into that marriage. I paid for your mistake.” Before her words turned harsher, she turned around, entered her bedroom, and closed the door behind her. She heard them leave. Her hands shook.
After collecting herself, she wrote to her friend Misu, explaining everything—her affair, divorce, and life with Kungu. She asked Misu to meet her at White Crane near Kungu’s house.
A week later, Misu walked into the dimly lit tearoom dressed in a well-tailored pink suit.
“I’m glad you came,” Sonju said.
“My husband doesn’t know about you,” Misu said. “If he did, he would have forbidden me from seeing you.”
Forbid her? Was Misu trying to tell her what sacrifice it was to show up for a fallen friend? She wanted to throw a sarcastic retort to Misu, she really did, but instead she said, “Thank you for coming.”
“I feel somehow guilty. I’m partly responsible for your situation. When I told you where Kungu works, I didn’t know it would lead to an affair.”
Did Misu come to relieve her own guilt? And that scolding tone. Sonju said, “I’m not holding you responsible for my divorce. It was my choice to have an affair. If you decide not to see me, I’ll understand.”
After fixing her eyes on Sonju’s for a moment, Misu rose and walked out into the sunlight.
In the smoke-filled room, Sonju remained in her seat, looking at the empty chair when a young waitress came for her order.
Several days later, she received a letter from Misu.
1952 May 22
Dear Sonju,
I thought about our conversation and felt bad about leaving you abruptly. You once asked me what I would do if I were not happy in my marriage. I thought about that question but don’t have an answer. I guess I would have talked to you, and you would have listened.
You were always different from me, but we were friends then, we are friends now.
Misu
Sonju wanted a friendship gladly given, not obligated. She sensed that a fracture had run across their friendship. In spite of that, she immediately sat down and wrote:
1952 May 26
Dear Misu,
I was moved by your letter. Thank you. I want us to be friends for a long time regardless of where our lives take us.
Sonju
She hadn’t heard from Misu in reply and wasn’t sure if there was anything left to their friendship. She didn’t know whether to cry or get angry. She felt lost and didn’t know what to do with her unsettled mind. Her thoughts turned to her daughter, and she ached in the flesh. She missed her so. Then one day during tea, Kungu asked if she regretted their affair. She told him, “I bedded with you because I didn’t want to live with a regret. As far as Jinju goes, she was to come with me. Until the letter.” Who wrote that letter? she asked herself again.
In early June, Sonju’s mother and sister appeared at the gate again. They sat for tea. Her mother started weeping. Her sister sighed and gazed at their mother with such sadness and pity that Sonju couldn’t bear to look at either of them. It unsettled her deeply to witness her mother weeping. This was the same mother who had always seemed impervious even when she was sick.
Her mother stopped weeping and said to Sonju, “Your father is not improving.”
Exasperated, Sonju asked, “What do you want from me? If I plead for your forgiveness and give you an assurance that I will repent, would that change anything between the family and me? I will still be the divorced daughter who shamed the family, still won’t be invited to the home, and you will not accept Kungu.”
Her mother stared at her for a long time without words and left with her younger daughter before finishing the tea. Why did their visit always end in the same way with nothing resolved? Would her father’s health improve if she said the words they wanted to hear? She knew she was hard and cold for not asking forgiveness, which made her feel worse.
A few days after her mother’s visit, Kungu said, “I think a change of scenery would be good for both of us. Let’s go to the countryside.”
On Sunday when the sun was high, they took a bus to a remote country place south of Seoul and walked where cosmos bloomed along the edges of a narrow dirt path, their colors varying from white to magenta. She studied those simple, open-faced flowers, the lacy leaves, and tall thin stems swaying gently in the breeze. She said, “Look at these frail plants, attended to by no one. Yet, they manage to stand tall and bloom fully in their own sense of glory. There’s a lesson in this.”
He smiled and squeezed her hand, the other hand shielding his eyes from the sun. “Life seems perfect at this moment,” he said.
Under the shadow of his hand, Sonju saw happiness in his eyes and felt deeply contented for the first time in her life.
Three days later, Kungu returned from a visit with his uncle’s family. Sonju never accompanied him. He had said they hadn’t asked about her. She knew he wasn’t happy about it, but he was grateful to them for taking him and his mother in after his father had passed away.
“I don’t like visiting them.” He squeezed his temple between his thumb and the forefinger, and said, “Every time my aunt sees me, she talks about her second son. She says he was either captured by North Korean soldiers or was brainwashed by the communists and chose to go to the North.”
Sonju remembered how she worried about Kungu not knowing whether he died or lived. “It must be hard on them not knowing.”
“I feel bad for them. I came home but their son didn’t. My stomach reacts violently when my aunt talks about her missing son. I don’t want to be reminded of it. After each visit, it takes me a while to get the fog out of my head.”
“Fog? What do you mean?” This was the first time he mentioned it.
“I cannot think clearly. I’m forgetful at times. There are things I don’t remember about the war.”
He had headaches too. She said, “It’s only been a little over a year since you came home. You were forced to fight with the enemy. You almost starved. Your aunt could be right. He might have gone to the North. It’s not unheard of.” She held him until his muscles relaxed.
Kungu visited his uncle less and less often. Sonju worried that his uncle’s family might blame her for it. She worried about his fog too, but after a while, those worries dissipated, and she forgot about them.
On the first day of monsoon rain, Kungu was sitting in front of old newspapers that he had spread on the floor, applying a coat of polish to his shoes.
Sonju said, “Remember we talked about how we can bring changes to this country? I have always wanted to teach, but what school will hire a divorced woman? I want to study but no university will accept a twenty-five-year-old woman.”
Kungu picked up his shined shoes and gathered the shoe polish and brush in the paper. “You can still study on your own. There are textbooks,” he said.
At that suggestion, Sonju started frequenting bookstores and bought books on art, architecture, and philosophy in either Korean or Japanese translation. She devoured them. She bought used college textbooks. She realized that she missed out a great deal by not going to a university. There were things in the textbooks that she couldn’t comprehend. She would look for a book that explained the way she could understand.
1952 November
The air was crisp on that ordinary November day. At dusk, a loud banging came from the gate. Kungu and Sonju were drinking tea in the living room. They set their cups down. The banging continued, rattling the metal lock. Kungu went to the gate while Sonju watched through the half-open glass door.
“Who is it?” he asked, his hand on the lock.
“Taegil,” a man’s voice yelled out.
Kungu hesitated a moment before opening the gate.
A rough-looking fellow in a brown sweater stepped in, strands of his overgrown hair almost touching his eyes. “Hey buddy!” His voice was loud. “A promising banker, I hear.”
Kungu pushed the gate halfway, turned slightly and hesitated again, then turned back to the man. “Why are you here?”
“What kind of greeting is that to a war buddy? Have you forgotten me?” He nudged Kungu with his forearm with a toothy grin. “It’s me, Taegil. We fought together.” He strutted into the courtyard.
Kungu walked alongside the man, keeping a distance between them. “How did you find me?”
Halfway to the living room, the man stopped when he noticed Sonju watching him. Kungu stopped too. The man sharply pivoted and lifted his arms in a shooting stance. “Pow!” He jerked his head backward as if he were shot.
Kungu froze, his face suddenly pale, gaze blank. Sonju immediately sensed something ominous. Her heart stopped.
The man cocked his head, thrusting his face into Kungu’s. “Aren’t you well?”
Kungu stood still as if he didn’t hear the man. Sonju rushed to the man and pointed to the gate. “You should leave.”
“But I’m his war buddy,” the man protested as he backed away and out of the gate. She slammed the gate shut and locked it.
Kungu was still standing in the same spot. Her chest hammering, she put her arm around his waist and led him to the bedroom. He sank to the floor and stared straight ahead. Even when she sat in front of him studying his face, his blank eyes still stared through her at the same spot as if she were invisible.
“What is it?” She asked. “Kungu, look at me.”
“Ohhh …” He closed his eyes and moaned. “Forgive me.”
“What is it? Tell me.” She grabbed his shoulders and shook them. “Look at me!”
His eyelids lifted slowly, and hardly moving his lips, he talked to himself, “I see it. Why didn’t I before?”
Sonju shook him again. “What do you see?”
“Something happened during the war … I did something.”
“What did you do?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes were far away.
She shook him. “Tell me. What did you do?”
He took a deep breath and looked at Sonju. He started talking but sounded more like talking to himself. “Taegil and I fought side by side near Waegwan all day. It was getting dark. I couldn’t see well. Explosions like lightning, then dark again. Gunshots from everywhere, artillery fire, grenades. A bullet passed by my ear. I didn’t expect the enemy so close. Right then, another explosion bright as daylight. I saw a figure. He saw me, too. I pulled the trigger. It happened so fast, yet it seemed like hours, everything moving slowly, and him falling backward.”
“That’s war. You were almost shot. Kill your enemy, that’s what soldiers do in time of war.”
“I recognized him. Why did I shoot him? Why?”
Hiding her fright, she searched his eyes. “Who did you recognize?”
“It … it was my cousin I killed. I see it clearly now.”
For a moment, all she saw was darkness. She heard him mumble, “Taegil must have known. He said I talked in my sleep.”
“Did he tell you what you said?”
“No, he just gave me an odd smile. It stuck with me,” Kungu choked down a cough a few times. “I must have blocked …”
Her heart was drumming. She tried to keep her voice calm. “We’ll sort this out together.”
Remain calm, carry on a normal routine, she told herself. “Do you want more tea?”
His nod barely showed.
She brought tea to the room, and they sipped slowly staring into space. Must say something ordinary to break the silence, she told herself again, but when their eyes met, she only managed a faint smile and a squeeze of his hand.
He patted her hand and put it aside. “I feel a headache coming. We’re out of aspirin. I’ll get some. Do you need anything from the drug store?” He said, sounding casual.
“No, but I’ll go,” she said, still worried.
“No, you stay here. Fresh night air would be good for me.”
The drug store was only a ten-minute walk. Half an hour passed, but Kungu didn’t come. Sonju washed the cups in the kitchen, returned to the living room, and listened for the gate opening. At nine-thirty, Sonju went to the bedroom, laid the yo on the floor, and paced. He was all right, wasn’t he? Nine-fifty. It seemed an eternity.
He finally came home at ten-twelve with aspirin and a paper bag.
“I bought the aspirin and took it at the drug store. On the way home, I stopped by the roasted chestnut stand and waited for a fresh batch.” He handed her a brown bag. “Your favorite.” He smiled.
“Thank you. It’s still hot. How is your headache?”
“It’s going away.”
“I’m glad. Let me get a bowl for the chestnuts.”
When she returned with a bowl, he seemed fine. He had bought chestnuts for her.
Sitting next to her with a small paring knife, he peeled the charred shells. Black soot and brown fuzz collected under his fingernails.
She ate the naked yellow nuts Kungu handed her. “They’re so good. Thank you.”
He kept shelling and she kept eating. He ate one and teased her. “You ate all but one.”
He was all right, she thought. Back to his normal self. He even joked and smiled. “You kept giving them to me.” Sonju returned the smile. Things were well again.
Sonju woke up to the subdued early light coming through the windows. She nudged Kungu. “Wake up. You’ll be late for work.”
There was no response. She sat up and shook him. “Kungu, wake up.” He was still. She shook him again. Her heart dropped.
