While Her Husband Was Away
For the three weeks Ki-jo was away, Sunrye kept herself busy with the housework. In the mornings she put up jang, the household's fermented sauces, with Yeong-ja's parents, who came by the house, and she polished the brass bowls, doing whatever she could to leave herself less time to think. She hauled out the winter quilts and washed them, and carried the old cotton batting to the fluffing shop to have it brought back to life.
However busily the days passed in such work, night brought her worry for her husband creeping up again. Where was he now? Whom was he meeting, and how were they treating him? Was he eating unfamiliar food and sick to his stomach? She tried to close each day on a gentler thought, but the worry filled Sunrye's heart like weeds that sprang up new every morning.
The guests who came to call were a great comfort to her. Her younger sister Soon-young and Hae-mi dropped by from time to time, and Park Young-ok, whom she had only recently befriended, came most often of all. That day too, her own chores finished, Young-ok had come over to ease Sunrye's worries. The two of them sat on the veranda, eating the strawberries Young-ok had brought, and talked. The berries were fresh and sweet, but Sunrye's stomach sat heavy, and after a few she could not bring herself to touch another.
"Your face gets more drawn by the day, little sister. You that worried about your husband?"
"No..."
"Don't give me that. Looks to me like you're wasting away because you miss him."
Park Young-ok looked at Sunrye with a knowing light in her eyes and smiled, and in that moment it occurred to Sunrye that what weighed on her might not be worry at all, but simply how badly she missed Ki-jo.
"Your husband's a lucky man. Having someone who misses him and frets over him every day like this. My father was that sort of person..."
At Young-ok's words, Sunrye said, "Your father must have doted on you."
"He did. My father, see — when I was in high school, he came all the way to the station every day and waited for me. I took the train to a school in Daegu."
Sunrye nodded.
"I asked him once. Father, isn't it hard, coming to fetch me every single day?"
Young-ok squinted a little and smiled, as if she could see him.
"And he said he couldn't bear to sit quietly at home waiting, for fear some rascal would come and carry me off. I laughed so hard."
Young-ok's eyes reddened.
"He told me he'd wait for me at the station every day until I finished high school..."
Saying it, she wiped at the corners of her eyes.
"But he couldn't keep the promise. He died when I was seventeen... so senselessly..."
Sunrye held out a handkerchief. Young-ok buried her face in it and wept without a sound. After a long while she said she was sorry.
"It's all right, Sister. How could you help crying..."
Sunrye, who cried easily, was already in tears herself. Seeing it, Young-ok managed a smile.
"Why are you crying, little sister?"
"Because it hurts me too."
"Thank you, little sister."
Young-ok took Sunrye's hand and smiled. A single tear slid down her smiling cheek. She let the hand go, drew one long breath, and said, "My father was a leftist. A member of the Workers' Party of South Korea — and his standing was quite high, I think..."
Sunrye did not really know what a leftist was, or what the Workers' Party was. But she had heard that the state made life miserable for leftists, and she thought Young-ok's father must have had a hard life of it.
"But right after Liberation, people didn't call leftists bad the way they do now. When I was in school, a teacher who knew who my father was told me he was a fine man, and that he respected him."
"I see..."
"The neighbors were in awe of him too. Plenty of people came from far off just wanting to talk with him. When I think back on when I was little, the house always seemed full of people."
Young-ok's eyes grew distant as she looked back.
"Then one day word came that a riot had broken out in Daegu, and Father went there to stop the fighting. That was the last I ever saw of him."
Her face crumpled again. She bit her lip and held the tears in.
"When I heard that day that Father had died..."
She could not finish. The tears broke through once more, and she spoke from behind the handkerchief.
"They said he died in the middle of a rice paddy. Police come from Seoul shot him..."
She gasped for breath, furious that he had taken a bullet in the back and died with his face buried in the mud of the paddy. She cried a long time, and when she had barely composed herself, she went on.
"Later the chief of the Daegu police told us. He'd been talking with Father when police arrived from Seoul. He told Father, I'll protect you, so don't run — and he told the police from Seoul not to shoot. But neither side listened to him, and that's how the whole disaster happened..."
Young-ok, who had been looking up at the sky, sighed once.
"Later I overheard Father's friends telling Mother that if he hadn't run that day, he would have been taken to Seoul and executed. Either way he was going to die, they said, so she shouldn't grieve that he'd died trying to flee... Was that supposed to be comfort? It wasn't any comfort at all. What kind of comfort is that..."
As if she had begun to set a little distance between herself and her grief, Young-ok cried no more. But Sunrye, listening, could not stop.
"Stop crying! Little sister! I've still got more to tell you about Father."
Young-ok wiped Sunrye's face with the handkerchief.
"You listen so well that I just want to keep talking about him..."
"Please go on, Sister. I'm all right."
"All right. I will."
Young-ok drew in a deep breath and went on.
"I couldn't believe he was dead. So for a while, when school let out and I came back from Daegu, I waited for him in front of the station. It felt as if he'd appear if I only waited a little longer. Thinking of him, I simply couldn't make myself go home..."
At that, Sunrye burst into tears again. Young-ok soothed her as she sobbed.
"You have such a clear, tender heart. That's why you take it so hard just because your husband's gone on a trip. I ought to stop this dreary story. You're such a crybaby I can't say another word."
Young-ok felt as if Sunrye were her own little sister. She held the girl lightly while she wiped her tears, and patted her back.
"Shall we go see a fortune-teller?"
"A fortune-teller...?"
"Yes. My husband does nothing but heave great sighs these days — things at his post must not be going well. All his classmates are getting promoted, and he seems to get passed over in every review. I'm curious when his life is finally going to turn."
Young-ok laughed.
"We'll leave the children with Yeong-ja's parents and just step out for a bit."
"All right, Sister. I'll come with you."
Sunrye rose to wash her face, as if to settle her reddened eyes. Washed and smiling, she looked so lovely to Young-ok.
How can a face be that fair without a touch of makeup...?
Young-ok got to her feet and said, "We're going to a physiognomist people say is uncanny. Bring a photograph of your husband."
"Yes."
The two left the house and went looking for the physiognomist's home in Jongno. They waited a long while, and at last they met the gifted reader of faces, Baek Un-hak.
When he looked at the photographs of Kim Jong-pil and Lee Ki-jo that the women had handed him, Baek Un-hak gave a start and glanced from Sunrye to Young-ok and back again.
"Oh my..."
At the man's sigh, both their hearts dropped. He looked from one photograph to the other, and though it was May and the heat had not yet come, his face flushed red. He fanned himself again and again, frowning.
After staring through the photographs in silence for a long time, he called the young man who served him like an attendant.
"Gyeong-san. Come in here."
"You called, Elder?"
The youth named Gyeong-san stood before Baek Un-hak with his hands neatly together.
"How many guests are waiting outside?"
"Twelve, sir."
"Then go and tell them I won't take a fee tomorrow, so they should go home for today. And you stand at the gate and turn away anyone who tries to come in."
"Yes, Elder."
Young Gyeong-san went out, sent the guests away, and stepped outside the gate himself.
"The two of you, come a little closer."
Faintly uneasy, Sunrye and Young-ok drew near.
"May I ask one thing of you?"
"Ask...?"
Young-ok looked at Sunrye, puzzled, and Sunrye looked back just as bewildered.
"Your husbands will do well. They will do well, so let us not worry."
At the word that their husbands would do well, both faces brightened.
"Oh, what a relief. The moment we got here I thought I should have come alone — I was sorry I'd brought you, little sister. I was afraid he might say one of us was all right and the other wasn't..."
Young-ok said it as she took Sunrye's hand. Sunrye had been thinking the same.
"Sir, then... may both of us set our minds at ease?"
"Set them at ease. You may."
Sunrye and Young-ok pressed hands to their chests and smiled brightly.
"So please hear what I ask."
At that, the two women gave him their attention again.
"Please, speak."
Young-ok said it.
"From now on, both your husbands will do great things. But there will be times when they do not see eye to eye."
"They won't see eye to eye?"
Young-ok asked it, startled, and looked at Sunrye. Sunrye was startled too. One was a soldier and the other a businessman; she could not quite understand how their purposes would fail to align.
At the words about keeping their husbands alive, Sunrye and Young-ok were so startled they could not close their mouths.
"That is all I am able to tell you. You understand?"
"Yes, sir..."
Young-ok reached out and gripped Sunrye's hand tight. Sunrye's hand was as cold as her own, and damp with sweat. Both of them seemed strung tight. Seeing how close they were, Baek Un-hak laughed, low and broad.
"Do not tell your husbands that you came here. If word gets about, through one person and another, that the two of you must stay on good terms, your fates will tangle. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
Sunrye and Young-ok answered at the same time.
"You must guard your tongues very carefully. With your husbands."
"Yes..."
They looked at each other and nodded.
When Young-ok moved to take the fee from her purse, Baek Un-hak said, "Tell your husband to stop fretting so."
At the sudden rebuke, Young-ok started and snapped the purse shut.
"F-fretting?"
"Yes. What is meant to happen will happen, and what is not meant to happen will not. Tell him to set his heart at ease."
"Ah — yes. Thank you, sir..."
Young-ok bowed her head.
"And you, madam — live quietly, trusting in your husband alone. He will see to it that you live well."
"Yes, sir..."
Baek Un-hak looked at Sunrye's face and smiled, satisfied. The air he felt about her was clear and clean, and he sensed it was a strength that held her husband up.
"Neither of you is to pay a fee. Just go."
He rose first.
Leaving the physiognomist's house, the two women talked as they walked to the bus stop. In front of it, Young-ok said, "Little sister, let's stay as close as we are now."
"Yes, Sister."
Sunrye smiled and answered her in kind.
When the bus arrived, Young-ok climbed aboard. Sunrye watched the bus for Noryangjin pull away, then walked the crooked alleys until she stood before her own gate.
The gate stood wide open.
She hurried through and found Ki-jo home — Ki-jo, who had gone off to West Germany. He was laughing, Yeong-jun in his arms, looking down at Yeong-su and Yeong-eun, who clung to his legs like cicadas.
"Yeobo."
At her call he looked at her and broke into a wide smile. Sunrye put her arms around him, Yeong-jun and all.
"Have you all been well? No one sick?"
Sunrye answered, holding back tears.
"Yes."
There was nothing she wanted to ask him. She was only glad, and grateful, that he had come home again.
The three plastered against him did not want to be parted from him. And Ki-jo, feeling his family's warmth and hearing the children's laughter, felt that to be alive was a joy and a happiness. For a long while the family stood in the yard, taking in one another's warmth.