Sad Peninsula (26 page)

E
un
-young rode the subway across Seoul, heading east. Today was not the tomorrow that she had promised to Ji-young. It had been more than a week since her sister's late-night call — time that Eun-young had taken to perform this inner alchemy, to turn the dull metal of her fear into a golden bravery. But now, sitting in the toss and pitch of her subway seat next to a teenager reading a violent comic book, Eun-young didn't feel brave. Cowardice slumped her shoulders and one thought kept caroming through her mind:
Have I waited too long to come? Have I just waited too long?
It wasn't simply that Ji-young might be hurt or even angry that Eun-young had taken a week to keep her promise. Eun-young was worried that the tides of her sister's grief might have receded since her call and this visit would be all for nothing, another opportunity squandered.

Have I waited too long to come?
This reoccurring mantra reminded Eun-young of something else — a single, disastrous return she had made to Pusan so long ago. The memory of it seeped into her mind then. It may have taken her a week to face Ji-young, but it had taken twenty-three years to face what she had done to Po. This act felt exactly like that one — the same sense that she had allowed her fear to fritter away a chance to set something right. That she had let her cowardice get the better of her.

T
he year had been 1988. Seoul's great coming-out party, the eyes of the world beaming onto the culture of Korea. Eun-young had been dreading the Olympics. She'd grown accustomed to her country's global irrelevance, to its placidly controlled society and closed doors, intended (as every Korean knew) to give the wounds of the past time to heal. And heal they had. The country had changed so much in the years leading up to the Games — the collapse of the police state, the rise of real democracy, a freer press, more liberties, more
growth
. And now, in hosting the XXIV Olympiad, Koreans were saying to the world: “Come to us. Line up at our door. We have spread ourselves open for you.”

It all made Eun-young nervous.

She was working as a cleaner in a downtown hotel at the time, long days of pushing her cart of disinfectants and toilet paper rolls anonymously through the hotel halls. Foreigners had begun descending in swarms; she had never seen so many unfamiliar skin tones, had never heard so many strange tongues. The dark Africans with their colourful flags embroidered on their luggage; the brash Americans in their nylon track suits; the icy Scandinavians with their earnest attempts at the language. And, of course, the ever-polite Japanese — so many Japanese journalists with their notepads and cameras and microphones. Fascinated, they were, by all the quaint minutiae of her country's customs, everything their parents and grandparents had tried to wipe out.

It was two days before the opening ceremonies. She was dusting coffee tables with a feathered wand in the little lounge off the hotel lobby. On the couch just beyond where she worked, a radio journalist from Japan, no more than thirty years old, was interviewing an Olympic organizer. Another young Japanese man, a translator, sat next to them, converting the journalist's questions into Korean as he asked them. Eun-young discreetly feathered her way over, catching snippets of their banter. When the interview finished, the organizer got up to leave; and when he was out of earshot, the two Japanese boys leaned in and exchanged a callous, sarcastic quip about the man's answers. Eun-young missed most of it, but she caught one word that ripped her stomach clean out of her body. The word flew from the journalist's lips in a spray of cruel laughter.

Chosunjin
.

Chosunjin!

It had been nearly forty-five years since that racial slur, the embodiment of old Japanese bigotry against Koreans, had scorched her ears. But the journalist, born after the occupation, born even after the Korean War, had uttered it with such nonchalance. Eun-young stopped and stared at them, but they didn't even see her. She slapped her duster down on an end table and marched over to a vase of orange roses standing on a pillar by the doors. Yanked the flowers out and smacked them to the floor, then carried the vase over to where the men were sitting, winding her way around the couch. Eun-young didn't hesitate as she decanted the perfumed water over the journalist's head. She slammed the empty vase at his feet, and it broke on the thin carpet. “Your grandfather probably
raped
me!” she said in perfect Japanese, shocking the young man as rivers ran down his sport coat. Then she spat in his face.

The hotel manager rushed over from behind the front desk. He began apologizing frantically to the boys, bowing and bowing and bowing again. Then he turned to Eun-young, to where she stood quavering before them, and fired her on the spot.

Days later in her basement apartment, freshly terminated and navigating the rapids of her rage, she could barely bring herself to watch the opening ceremonies on her little TV. What a grotesque pantomime of harmony and peace, she thought: thousands of Korean dancers undulating on the stadium floor with great synchronized rotations; the parade of drums; the jets streaking a rainbow across the sky; the mass displays of taekwondo. It sickened her. It looked whorish. And for the first time since returning to Seoul in 1965, since uttering the truth about her past to Ji-young and Chung Hee in a cloud of disgrace, she felt an overwhelming compulsion to speak her history to the greater world. She imagined herself storming into the stadium, seizing the microphones, turning to the cameras of the world and screaming,
Stop this! They raped us! Don't you know? They raped us and raped us and raped us again!
But who would listen to her, this embittered sixty-year-old woman, divorced and poor and living on the margins of this colourful culture now mincing around in front of everyone? Five billion people in the world and who would want to face such an ugly truth at a time like this? Who among them would look past what she was and see the person she could have been, the person that the Japanese had so heartlessly stolen?

The answer came to her like a knife in the back. Five billion people didn't need to know the truth, but one did. One man could learn about everything that happened, and
understand
. Understand, and still love.

The next morning, she packed a small bag and rode the subway to Express Bus Terminal. Bought her ticket and climbed aboard the shuttle that would take her to Pusan. The bus was nearly empty; hardly anyone was
leaving
Seoul. Eun-young felt a flush of excitement course through her as the shuttle weaved its way out of the city through rugged mountains and flat rice fields of green. She could hardly believe what she was doing. For years she had fantasized about breaking down and visiting Po. What would he look like now, after twenty-three years? Old and withered, like her — or distinguished and handsome? She always assumed that he had remarried after she left him, and now wondered what his wife would be like. Younger than he, most likely, and pretty. How many children would they have? They'd be almost adults themselves by now, if they existed. How would his family react to her presence on their doorstep? What was the plan, anyway? She decided on it in an instant. If she found him, Eun-young would insist that they go down to the seaside park where he had asked her to marry him. There they would sit on a bench to talk, and she would tell him
everything
— the complete, undistorted truth about what her life had been, all that she should've told him when he confessed his desire to marry her.

The shuttle rolled into a Pusan she hardly recognized. How the city had changed in the intervening decades, growing wide and expansive around the mountains in an insane array of highways and skyscrapers. At the bus terminal, trying to get her bearings, Eun-young had no choice but approach a tourism kiosk and ask for help reaching the neighbourhood where she had once lived. The city's network of buses confounded her, but she eventually worked out the right line to take. She sat up front near the driver as the bus lumbered through main drags and side streets, many of which Eun-young could not place. Out the windows, she saw that Pusan was not immune to Olympic mania: banners and five-ringed flags were strung up on every light pole; the sidewalks were full of young people with their faces painted thickly in the national colours; every storefront displayed large TVs that aired the Games on endless loops. Every now and then the bus passed a locale that Eun-young
was
familiar with — a street market she had shopped in as a young wife, or a cinema that she and Po had attended as a childless couple. Her heart burst at the sight of them, a fast rush of nostalgia injected into her veins like a drug.

The bus finally deposited her onto a corner outside her old neighbourhood. After a moment's hesitation, she shuffled down Po's street and was pleased to see their little house still standing. Pleased even more that it was in good shape, its iron roof gleaming, its walls brightly painted, even a couple of flowerboxes beneath its shuttered windows. A woman's touch. Eun-young nearly smiled, but then grew sombre. She mounted the stoop and knocked on the door. Heard the faint whir of bodies moving through rooms and halls that she had known so intimately. The door opened and a young woman appeared at the threshold. She was maybe in her late twenties. Pretty, but with her hair already cut short, to the length of a housewife's. Her face was neutral as her eyes fell on Eun-young, flickered a little when they passed over the scar that ran beneath her nose.

“Yes?” the woman asked, wiping her hands on the apron tied across her hips.

“I'm sorry, I'm —” Eun-young stammered. “I'm sorry, do you live here?”

“Yes,” the woman replied, a little alarmed now.

“I'm sorry,” Eun-young repeated. “I'm looking for someone. Does, does Po still live here?”

“Who?”

“Po. Kim Po Hun. Does he still live here?”

The woman shrugged. “No. There's no one by that name here.”

“I'm looking for someone,” Eun-young repeated aimlessly. “His name is Kim Po Hun. He used to live in this house. Can you help me?”

Just then a young boy, about five years old, scurried up behind the woman and poked around her side. He had a small South Korean flag tied bandana-style around his head and his face was painted in Olympic rings. His eyes were huge as he stared up at Eun-young. Behind him, a TV blared the Games somewhere deep in the house; Eun-young could hear the warning whistle of a boxing match.

“You say he used to live here?” the woman asked, hoisting the child onto her hip. “Perhaps he was the previous owner.”

“Yes, maybe. When did you buy this house?”

“Four years ago.” The girl marvelled at her own words. “We bought this house, oh my, four years ago now.”

“And you know nothing of the previous owner?”

“We didn't learn his name, but we knew …” and the woman half smiled, half frowned. “We knew he was a
noh chong gak
who had lived here for many years. Sadly, he died in this house. His family was anxious to sell. It was how we got the place so cheaply.”

The muscles of Eun-young's face slackened and her heart sank a thousand miles. A
noh chong gak
? It couldn't have been Po. It made no sense. He would have remarried. Another woman would have scooped him up in no time at all. There was no way he would have lived out his days as a confirmed bachelor. And he would not have died in this house, alone.

The woman could see that Eun-young was distressed. “Did you want to come in? I've just finished making some walnut cakes.”

Eun-young ignored her. It
could not have been Po
. She was convinced of it. He would have sold this house after she had left him — sold it because it was full of too many memories, memories of her, of them together, and sold it so he could move on with his life. And the man that this woman spoke of was somebody else, another man who had owned this house in the years in between.
He
would have been the
no chong gak
, not Po.

“I've upset you,” the woman said. “Did you want to come in?”

Eun-young waved her hand. “No.” She couldn't bear the thought of stepping inside to see the home she had shared with her husband, to see its recognizable nooks and alcoves, and also how much it would have changed. “I've disturbed you enough as it is. Thank you.”

“Are we talking about the same man?” the woman asked, concerned.

“No,” Eun-young replied, stepping down off the stoop. “The man I'm talking about is married. He is
married
.”

“Well, I hope you find him.”

Eun-young nodded weakly, then turned away from the house and began walking back up the street, leaving the woman and her son to stare at her in mild confusion before closing the door.

Her subsequent wander was not directionless. The pathways of familiarity were reborn in her brain, the streets no longer foreign but tapping into a disquieting muscle memory. She knew exactly how to find her way to the neighbourhood where Po's family had lived. It was within walking distance, if she felt strong. There was no guarantee that any of them were still living there, but she had to see for herself. Eun-young began to choke up again as she made the trek, her head full of so many rancid anxieties. It was as if they aged her a decade as she walked.

She arrived in their neighbourhood half an hour later — and discovered that the cluster of small Korean homes where Po's parents and siblings had lived were gone, torn down and replaced by an office building that housed a Department of Motor Vehicles and an English
hagwon
. Eun-young's heart sank. Po's family had most likely scattered and moved to other districts in the growing metropolis of Pusan. She stood on the corner in front of the office building, shaking her head. She now had to find her way to the bus terminal to catch the late afternoon shuttle back to Seoul. Why had she even bothered to come? What had she hoped to —