Sad Peninsula (18 page)

Po seemed to think hard about this. “It's so strange.”

“What is?”

“I always thought you were delivered to me from the sea, not over land. Like you should be from somewhere on the water — Jeju Island or somewhere even farther. I perceive a great … a great sense of the sea in you.”

Delivered to you? I have been delivered to you?
She turned her face away a little, moved a piece of crab into her mouth with her chopsticks. On the opposite side of the restaurant, a noisy group of fishermen sat at a table in the corner over a huge feast. They were already drinking despite the early hour, the green bottles of
soju
lining up around their dishes. The alcohol was making them bombastic. A few of the fishermen looked over at the young couple. They eyed Eun-young with what she thought was disapproving curiosity — at the scar on her face, at her cracked teeth, at the awkward way she sat to keep her weight off her pelvis, which still ached on cold mornings such as this. She flashed an angry stare at the men:
What are you looking at?
And she read their gazes back:
We're looking at you — and wondering why your boyfriend can't see what we see.

She turned back to Po but looked at the table. “No, I am from Seoul. I always lived in Seoul.”

He smiled at the way she wouldn't look at him. “You're very shy,” he said.

She just let her hair fall in her face and thought:
Don't stare through me, Po. See what's there, not what you wish to see. Or else you'll know nothing.

After their meal, they walked north from the waterfront and up the steep climb rising over Pusan's lower districts to find a park in which to sit. Behind them, the jagged jaws of Pusan's mountain range gaped out of the mist above them. Down the hill from the park, they could see the inchoate structures of newer neighbourhoods bursting into existence. All around them, seniors were out in the park, shuffling along the stone paths or performing
tai chi
on the grass in the late morning sun. Not far from where Po and Eun-young sat, a tall metal pole carried South Korea's new flag, proud and defiant against the sea's winds.

“I never thought I'd live to see all this,” Po said. “During the worst days of the war, I came to believe that I'd die before I could ever do anything as simple as this.”

He stopped like he was waiting for her to say something, to contribute the same thought. He turned and for the first time acknowledged the scar on her face. “
You
know what I'm saying,” he said. “You understand, don't you, the marks that war can leave on a person.”

She refused to follow along. “Po, tell me — what makes you think that I've been, as you said,
delivered
to you? I haven't been delivered. You must know this. I'm not some gift that fell out of the sky just for you.”

“Not out of the sky,” he said, almost child-like, “and not over the sea, like I imagined. But over land. You were brought to me over land.”

“Po, please be serious.”

He fell silent for a moment, training his eyes over the city. “I don't want to be part of the past anymore, Eun-young. Can you understand this?” He took a breath. “My father was a sea captain. He was killed on a run to Shimonoseki, ten years ago. I was twelve. For years I thought I could go on without his guidance and live a life of honour, no matter what happened to our country. But then the war broke out with the North, and I was proven wrong. I did not live with honour, Eun-young.
You
must know
this.
I was told to murder our own people. People who wanted nothing more than to enjoy the kind of simplicity we're enjoying
right now
. And I did it — I murdered, over and over. You would never believe that someone like me could do such terrible things. But I did them because I was ordered to. I did them because I was a soldier and that's what I thought honour
meant
.”

Eun-young wanted to weep, but couldn't.

“So now, I want nothing more to do with the past. I am done with it. And you ask me why my eyes have fallen onto you? Because I knew, Eun-young, right from the moment I saw you, that you carry the same kind of wounds from the war. I don't know what the North did to you before you managed to flee, but whatever it was you carry your wounds as deep in your heart as I carry mine.” His eyes rose to the neighbourhood that unfolded below the park. “Look at what's happening here, Eun-young. Not six months after the armistice and we're already rebuilding ourselves.
Renewing
ourselves. We will be a great country one day. And that's what I want to be a part of. I want to
renew
this country. I want to help build it.”

He shocked her by taking her hand in his. She quavered, nearly pulled away.

“It's time to renew,” he said. “Eun-young, listen to me. The past, it cannot touch us. If we are strong and proud, we cannot be driven down by the marks that others have left on us. Do you understand? I want to renew myself — with you. Do you understand? The time has come to
renew
.”

She did weep then. Not because she had to say no, but because she knew she could not say no. Every pore in her skin thirsted for something as simple as this. The love of a decent man.

Eun-young leaned her head low, and Po took it as a sign of her chastity.

S
o
here is me in my classroom. After a year and a half of this teach-by-colours curriculum, I've pretty much gotten a handle on it. I've become a conscientious teacher, tacking student essays and drawings to the wall by the door, using the white board and coloured markers to great effect, standing more often than sitting, making grammar come to life with silly stories from my past, performing magic tricks and telling jokes that leave the kids giggling or groaning. All of this has helped put me in Ms Kim's good books, which is why she offered me a second contract. She sees me as a “senior teacher” now, and as a result assigns me more than my fair share of upper-level courses. I love it. The big purple textbook I teach from has Hemingway short stories and excerpts from
The Joy Luck Club
and
Roots
. The kids in these classes are not necessarily older, but their English and critical-thinking skills are as strong as they come at a
hagwon
. I'm required to be tough on them, cruel even, but in my heart I admire each of these children so much. There's one boy in particular, his English name is “Joe,” who brings to my Senior 5 class an unwavering meticulousness and a genuine joy for learning. Twelve years old and cursed with fish-bowl glasses, he is nonetheless imbued with confidence, an assuredness about what he wants to be when he grows up — an international diplomat. He happily puts himself through English grammar drills each night, and his essays teem with his unique interpretation of the world.

He's also insatiably curious about
everything
.

“So as we can see in this paragraph,” I say, pacing in front of the kids with the textbook open on my arm, “Roland and Barbara are married, but do they love each other?”

“No!” the class chimes in unison.

“Exactly. They don't love each other. So then why are they married?”

The kids ruminate on this for a bit. Joe raises his hand. “MichaelTeacher, I have a question.”

“Go ahead, Joe.”

“Are
you
marry?”

Am I merry? Oh wait, he's confused by the adjective, that revealing mix of present and past tense in a single clause:
Are
you
married
.

“No, I'm not married,” I sigh.

“Do you have girlfriend?”

A few snickers chase their way around the class. I hesitate, chew on my smile. Big mistake.

“MichaelTeacher,” pipes up ten-year-old Tony, “are you a
player
?”

“RobTeacher was a player,” points out thirteen-year-old Jinny, as if she'd know.

“Alright, back to the story!” I say.

Nine-year-old Susan looks confused. “‘Player'? What's mean? What's mean ‘player'?”

One of the older, dimmer boys in the back, Dylan, begins answering her question in a litany of forbidden syllables.

“No Korean, please!”
I bark, and the class snaps silent. I give Dylan the evil eye, then march over to the tray at my whiteboard, seize a marker, uncap it, and write Dylan's name in the far right-hand corner of the board. There it sits for the whole class, and the closed circuit camera hanging in the corner (and thus possibly, eventually, his mother, whom he would fear worse than God) to see.

I turn to Susan. “A player is a guy with many, many girlfriends.”

Jinny hikes up a dainty elbow. “MichaelTeacher, can a girl be a player?”

“No. There's a different word in English for a girl with many, many boyfriends.”

“What is it?”

“I can't say in front of children. It's a bad word.”

“Ugh! Bad word for girls, but not for guys? Ohhh,
sa'ghee
!” she says, using the Korean word for
unfair
.

“Jinny, no Korean!” I march over and write her name under Dylan's, just to prove that I believe in equal wrongs as much as equal rights.

We finish examining the story and then I assign an essay topic and grammar exercises for homework. The kids fall over their notebooks to get it down, scribbling and scribbling. When they finish, there are still a few seconds left to the class.

“MichaelTeacher, do magic! Do magic!” the kids demand as they pack up.

This is a thing I've started: Based on my digital watch, I know the precise second when the bell is going to ring. Smiling, I float my right arm upward while keeping an eye on my watch, splay out my hand, twiddle my fingers, make a low, mysterious groan in my throat, and then, at exactly the right moment, I thrust my arm at the speaker in the ceiling and yell out “Pow!”
Mary Had a Little Lamb
chimes just then, and the kids cheer as they bolt for the door.

I pack up their workbooks and essays from the previous night and slip them into the plastic tray on my windowsill, glancing at Seoul's nightly traffic as it moves through the street four storeys below. I wipe down my board and then go around the empty room, straightening chairs and looking for rogue pencil cases. Then, throwing my satchel over my shoulder, I saunter out to the school's lobby where I find Jin already waiting for me.

“Hello there, Mr. Teacher Man,” she beams. We share the slightest of hugs, just a brief placing of a hand on a hip. But unfortunately there are a number of my students, including Joe, loitering together in the lobby. “Ohhhhh MichealTeee-chorrre!” they sing, and scrape one index finger over the other:
tsk tsk
…

Joe walks up to us. “MichaelTeacher, I have a question.”

I brace myself. “Go ahead, Joe.”

“Can I write you
two
essays this weekend?”

“Of course you can. But that's a lot of extra work.”

“I know. But I want to write about my trip one month ago to Pusan to visit my grandmother. Can I? I will write your assignment, too, of course.” He looks up then at Jin. “Who is this?”

“This is Park Jin-su.”

“Anyeong,”
she addresses him, but then cuts him off before he can pose his next obvious question. “So tell me, do you like attending this
hagwon
?”

Joe nods vigorously, his eyes undulating in their lenses like poached eggs.

“And what do you think of
him
?” she asks, tilting a chin at me.

Joe begins answering her in Korean, but she cuts him off. “No, say it in English.”

He squishes up his face in mock-annoyance. “Ohh, MichaelTeacher is very crazy — but also …
super genius
!”

She bursts out laughing. “Really?”

“Yes. He knows all about America, and Canada, and Michael Jackson! And he tells very good jokes about President Bush.”

She gives me an approving look.

“All right Joe,” I say, “I'll see you on Monday. Have a good weekend.”

“You, too!” he croons at us. He starts to leave, but then hurries back and addresses Jin, measuring each word methodically. “By the way — What. Are. You. Eating. Under.
There
?”

“Under where?”

“You're eating
underwear
?” Joe explodes into laughter, and jabs a finger at me. “He taught me that!” Jin and I watch him hustle out the glass doors with his backpack pulled tight on his shoulders, a little Sherpa ready to scale another mountain of weekend homework.

We just sort of grin at each other for a moment after he's gone. “So what should we do now?” I ask.

Her eyes fall briefly to my mouth. “Let's go back to your place …
super genius
.”

W
e need to have a discussion about what's going to happen tomorrow night. I am to show up at the Park apartment at seven o'clock. I am to bring a gift — something small and inexpensive, but it must be wrapped. I am not to take offence when her parents set the gift aside rather than open it in front of me — it's not the Korean way. I am to keep in mind that her parents speak very limited English, and that Jin will translate when necessary. And I must also remember that they're still coming to terms with their daughter dating a
waegookin
. It was difficult for them to hear the news, and more difficult to agree to have me over. Her father will be okay with it. He will be fine. Her mother's a different story. The Korean term for what we're doing is
mool heurinda
: “muddying the waters.”

Saturday night, and I sit with a book on the subway en route to Jin's neighbourhood of Mangwon, listening to stop after stop go by, and hold the gift I'm bringing in my lap. It's a small crystal bowl, good for candy or spare change, wrapped in rice paper and tucked inside a glittery gift bag with strings. When I arrive at Mangwon Station, I find Jin waiting for me outside the turnstiles. Her hug is cool, disinterested. I get the message loud and clear: we must suppress any and all signs of physical affection in front of her parents.

“My father is still at work,” she grumbles as we head outside.

“It's seven o'clock on a Saturday night.”

“I know. Mother is not pleased with him. And neither am I.”

I'm not sure what I'm expecting from the Park apartment before we arrive. I imagine it huge, sprawling, glimmering hardwood floors and giant windows overlooking the busy Seoul skyline. When Jin welcomes me in after a twenty-two-storey ride in the elevator, I find something different. Her family home is not that dissimilar to the cramped apartment that Justin and I share: it's a bit bigger, a bit nicer, and more lived-in, but still very Korean with its faux-wood flooring, wallpapered cement, and LG air conditioner hanging like a barge over the living room. There is a venerable forest of potted plants on the marble ledge overlooking their balcony. Off to the side, in an alcove, I see the glowing green digits of the washing machine that Jin has spoken so derisively about. The beast is enormous, and far more elaborate than the oversized bread maker that Justin and I do
our
laundry in. Jin and I take our shoes off in the entry and she calls to her mother: “
Umma! Umma!
Come meet Michael.”

Jin's mom comes out of the kitchen in a cloud of delicious smells. She wipes her hands on her apron and bows once to me.

“An'yon
hashimnigga
,
”
I say carefully, addressing her in the more formal tongue, and hand her the gift. She barely looks at it before setting it down on a small table by the door. “Well come, well come,” she says, measuring her own words. She says something to Jin in Korean. Jin turns to me. “Dinner won't be ready for nearly an hour. Father's running very behind. Come. Let me give you the tour.”

Jin shows me the bathroom (they have a
tub
, I notice jealously), the kitchen (countertops lined with an armada of expensive appliances), her brother's empty bedroom, and finally her own bedroom. She pops on the light as we step inside. “We won't be able to stay in here long,” she says. “Mother will get nervous.”

“Of course.”

This space is still very much a teenager's bedroom. The single bed against the wall has a bright purple duvet with a golden sun star embroidered on top. Her bureau and nightstand are littered with books and jewellery boxes. There is splay of girlish magazines on the floor —
Cindy the Perky
and
Korean Vogue
. On the walls, she's hung an assortment of paintings. I walk over and take a look at the garishly colourful pictures. There's one of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and another of a Korean rural scene — jagged mountains in fog, a Buddhist temple with its dragon-backed roof off in the distance. The compositions are a bit jumbled — the warped perspectives of Van Gogh mixed with the vagueness of Impressionism. The colours are so bright they practically hurt my eyes.

“You did these?” I ask.

“Yes. I told you I like to paint.”

Jin sits on the edge of the bed and I'm about to join her when I spot another picture. It's hanging in the corner over her nightstand and is smaller than the others — no bigger than the size of a magazine cover. Unlike the others, it's in black and white, a charcoal sketch. I walk over to it.

It's of an old Korean woman.

“Michael —”

Jin comes up behind me as I take the drawing in. The old woman is dressed in traditional
hanbok
and hunched a little at the waist, a Quasimodo stance. Her hands are collected on the butt of a cane and her eyes are downcast in an incomparable sadness. I take a closer look and sense anger there, too — a tightness to her shoulders and the stare in her eyes that hides something so deep it frightens me a little. Jin has caught that hybrid essence of sorrow and fury with just a few hand strokes.

There is also what looks to be a scar running under the old woman's nose.

“Your grandmother,” I say.

“No. That's my
eemo halmoney
. My great-aunt. She's my grandmother's sister.”

I point at the line running above her lip. “How did she get that scar?”

“She got it in the war.”

I turn to her. “What, she was a soldier?”

“No, Michael, she wasn't a
soldier
.” Jin's looking at the floor. “She was a
wianbu
, a comfort woman.” She turns back up at me. “Michael, do you know what this means?”

I can do nothing but blink. It's like a flower has opened up inside my mind.

“It means she was a sex slave for the Japanese during the w —”

“I know exactly what it means,” I say. I point at the sketch. “A member of your family?”

“Yes.”

“You
wanted
me to see this. It's the real reason you brought me here, isn't it.”

She hesitates, but then nods. “Yes.”

And suddenly I understand so many things that I didn't before — things that happened, or didn't, at the beginning of whatever it is that we have now, between us.