You Really Are Happy
Whirr—clack, clack, clack. The sound of the sewing machine under Sunrye's hands filled the yard of Ki-jo's house.
She worked hard at the treadle machine he had bought her. It was mounted on its own table; she sat in the chair, set both feet on the treadle underneath, and rocked it back and forth so the wheel turned and the needle ran.
"There. Finished."
Sunrye spread out Yeong-eun's dress, the seams all done, and smiled with satisfaction.
Out in the yard the youngest, Yeong-jun, was playing in the dirt, and Yeong-eun hovered beside him, fussing.
"That's dirt. Don't touch it. You'll put your hands in your mouth again."
They were both still little more than toddlers, but Yeong-eun, born a few years earlier, was already taking her duties as older sister very seriously. From the wooden veranda Sunrye watched them and smiled.
Not a trace remained of Chairman Park and Hausman's visit a few days before. The room next door, which Yeong-su used as a study, was exactly as it had always been—his low floor desk, the lamp with its bare incandescent bulb, the certificates hanging on the wall. Nothing had changed. The cigarette smoke that had filled the room while Chairman Park and Hausman smoked had aired away to nothing, and the footprints of the man who had paced the yard with a pistol at his hip were gone as well.
Did the Chairman really come to this house...?
Sunrye could hardly believe it. The master of the nation had come and gone, and not a single thing was different.
She set Yeong-eun's dress neatly to one side and began on Yeong-jun's clothes. Just as she set her foot to the treadle, a voice came from the gate.
"Sunrye. Sunrye, are you in there?"
She sprang from the chair and hurried to the gate. She lifted the wooden latch and opened it, and there stood Yuk Young-soo, wife of the Acting President.
"Good afternoon, ma'am."
Sunrye bent low in a slow, deep bow.
"Have you been well?"
Yuk Young-soo looked at her and smiled. Once she had stepped inside the gate, she turned to her guards.
"Please don't come in. Wait outside."
"Yes, ma'am."
The men in suits held their places and did not cross the threshold. As Yuk Young-soo shut the gate, Sunrye caught a glimpse of two broad backs. They seemed intent on standing watch so that no one else could enter.
"Shall we go in?"
At that gentle word Sunrye collected herself and led the First Lady inside.
Yeong-eun and Yeong-jun, playing in the yard, turned to stare at the stranger who had come into the house. Yeong-eun moved first. She had been taught by her mother and father that when a grown-up came to the house, you greeted them before anything else.
"Hello. I'm Yeong-eun. I'm the eldest daughter of this house, and I'm seven years old."
She delivered the introduction no one had asked for, neat as you please. Yuk Young-soo broke into a wide, delighted smile.
"Oh my. Just as an eldest daughter should. What a proper greeting."
At the praise Yeong-eun flushed red and smiled shyly. Sunrye looked on with quiet satisfaction at the daughter who had greeted them and introduced herself all on her own.
Yeong-jun followed his sister's lead.
"Hello. Lee Yeong-jun. Five."
He was clumsy about it, but he bowed and introduced himself, and when he gave his age he spread his dirt-caked right hand wide to show the number.
"Auntie..."
The greeting done, he suddenly threw his arms around Yuk Young-soo's skirt. Seeing those dirty hands on the cloth, Sunrye snatched him away in horror.
"I'm so sorry, ma'am."
She set down the child she had scooped up and moved to brush the dirt from the skirt.
"It's all right, Sunrye."
Yuk Young-soo shook the dirt off herself and laughed.
"Boys are all like that. Yeong-jun is five?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"The same age as our youngest, Ji-man. Yeong-jun is your youngest too?"
"Yes..."
Sunrye's pounding heart would not settle. The Yuk Young-soo she had met before, at Park Young-ok's house, and the woman standing here now were not the same. Seeing how stiff she had gone, Yuk Young-soo slipped an arm through hers, as if to ease the tension.
"Let's sit a while. Child, why are you so nervous? Treat me the way you used to. Comfortably."
Seated on the edge of the veranda, she glanced back at the machine and the clothes.
"Were you making clothes?"
"Yes. I was sewing the children's things."
Yuk Young-soo had occasion to meet the wives of the heads of the great companies. Mostly it was at charity gatherings, or at government functions that preached thrift—the rice-saving campaign and the like—and sometimes she had to receive the ladies of rich houses when they called at the Blue House. Those women tried their utmost to look frugal, and came wearing the calmest of the expensive clothes they owned. Even so, it was immediately plain that these were garments no ordinary person could put on. They offered her Italian dresses and French ones as gifts. Each time, she refused, telling them she wore only Korean-made clothes—a roundabout warning that they ought to stop wearing imports.
She looked over what Sunrye had on. As at their first meeting, the clothes made it impossible to imagine her as the wife of a major company president.
She even took the skirt up properly...
Sunrye's hem did not cover her ankles; it fell at the calf. To save cloth, the government was recommending that women's skirts be no longer than just that. Yuk Young-soo found her admirable, and lovely.
"Have you finished the youngest boy's clothes?"
"No. I was just about to start."
"It reminds me of the clothes they sent from America. When my husband visited, President Kennedy gave him a cowboy outfit for Ji-man to wear. And how my face burned when we received it..."
"Why...?"
Sunrye asked, worry in her face.
"It was the wrapping. I had sent mother-of-pearl boxes and lacquerware as gifts to America. You can't just send a thing as it is; it has to be wrapped. And there wasn't any proper wrapping paper to be had. It was a gift from the nation—I could hardly wrap it in Japanese paper..."
Yuk Young-soo let out a shallow sigh. Korean wrapping paper in those days amounted to recycled sheets striped in gaudy bands of color, and the heavy paper used for cement sacks.
"I hunted for something to wrap with and tried floral wallpaper, and wouldn't you know it, the dye came off on my hands."
"Oh my..."
"In the end I was fretting over it when I saw the foil inside my husband's cigarette pack and thought, that's it. I'll use that."
"The foil from a cigarette pack?"
"Yes. I asked the Monopoly Bureau for the foil, and when I wrapped the gifts in it, anyone could see it looked like a cigarette wrapper. I was so disappointed that the man who'd brought it told me we could print a pattern on the foil. So we had a pattern printed, wrapped them again, and it looked respectable enough. That's what we sent."
"That's a relief."
Sunrye smiled in relief. Even so, something about Yuk Young-soo going on and on about wrapping paper felt a little strange. It wasn't like her. For all the words, Sunrye had the sense that her mind was somewhere else.
Yuk Young-soo let out a deep sigh.
"Sunrye. That's what our country is like right now. We can't even make wrapping paper properly..."
Having said that, she gestured quietly toward the house next door.
"Is that where Young-ok and her husband used to live?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"May I look around?"
"Of course."
Sunrye took her next door. Yuk Young-soo looked here and there. Studying Yeong-su's study with particular care, she asked:
"Sunrye. My husband came here, didn't he?"
At the question Sunrye froze. Ki-jo had told her never to speak of it to anyone, and here it was being asked outright. But Chairman Park was Yuk Young-soo's husband. Surely it was all right to tell her.
"Yes, ma'am."
"What time did he leave?"
"Well..."
Sunrye explained that she herself had taken the children to her younger brother's house.
"I see..."
For a moment Yuk Young-soo's face darkened.
"Ah..."
She sat down on the edge of the veranda and sighed. Sunrye grew restless, as if she herself had done something wrong.
"Come sit beside me, Sunrye."
Yuk Young-soo patted the place next to her. When Sunrye sat, she spoke.
"Sunrye, do you trust your husband a great deal?"
The question came out of nowhere, and Sunrye answered before she had time to think. The more flustered she was, the more honest she became.
"Yes..."
"No matter how much you trust him, you mustn't let him stay out carousing until dawn."
"Pardon?"
Sunrye stared at her, startled. She didn't understand a word of it.
"Your husband came home at dawn too, didn't he? From the look of this place, he didn't spend the night amusing himself here. He must have gone somewhere..."
Yuk Young-soo kept a close watch on her husband, and she had found out that he had gone to Ki-jo's. But seeing it for herself only made her feel worse. That cramped little study was no place to linger until dawn. Certain he had taken President Lee off to a gisaeng house, she bit her lower lip without realizing it.
"No, ma'am. My husband came to my younger brother's house at eight in the evening."
The answer threw Yuk Young-soo.
"Eight in the evening? Not eight in the morning?"
"Yes, ma'am."
However she looked at her, Sunrye did not seem to be lying. Her own husband had staggered in at dawn dead drunk, and Sunrye's had been home long before that. She grasped the situation at once. As the rumors said, President Lee Ki-jo kept well clear of drink and women. She had spoken carelessly to Sunrye, and she moved quickly to mend it.
"They told me the meeting ran all night. Your husband must not have taken part."
"No. It ended early, and he came straight home."
Yuk Young-soo looked at Sunrye and thought, Sunrye, you are a happy woman.
To take back what she had already said, she went on.
"When my husband finishes a meeting, he always comes home having drunk far too much, and it grieves me so. Sunrye, I know the work of the nation is hard and stifling, and that's why he does it—but if a man drinks in the hours when he ought to be sleeping, it ruins his health, doesn't it?"
"Yes... You must have so many worries, ma'am. About the Chairman's health..."
At those words a deep sigh broke from Yuk Young-soo.
"Ah... The trouble is, he's far too healthy for all that carousing."
"Pardon?"
"He's healthy, so he goes on living that way."
She managed a smile for Sunrye's sake.
She turned the talk elsewhere, chatted of this and that, and when the conversation had run its course she rose.
"Don't come out. Stay as you are."
When she opened the gate, the guards cleared a path. Sunrye bowed to her as she stepped through. Yuk Young-soo waved a few times to her and climbed into the car.
Even after she was seated, her thoughts were only of her husband. Heading for the Blue House, she did not know how she was ever to quiet a wandering eye that would not be stilled. Men with money and power all kept women at their side and drank, people said it was only to be expected—but weren't there men in the world like Sunrye's husband?
She remembered the day he had come to her house to ask permission to marry. Sitting on the veranda, untying the laces of his boots, his back had looked utterly dependable. Small in frame, taciturn, with a bright light in his eyes, he had been, just as she had hoped, a steady husband at home and a gentle father. The moment he stepped outside he was a scamp who might bolt off in any direction. If only he would keep clear of drink and women, he would be a fine man—and that he could not do left her heartsore.
Reaching the Blue House, she composed her darkened mood and asked the driver:
"Your wife is well, I hope?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"And your parents—no one unwell?"
"They're all in good health."
"Your eldest starts middle school next year, doesn't he?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"So many places for the money to go. You must have a great deal on your mind."
"Not at all, ma'am."
Yuk Young-soo looked after the people around her. She never forgot a thing she had heard once, and she always remembered their families as well.
When they arrived at the Blue House and she stepped down from the car, she handed the driver an envelope.
"A little gift of money. You must be sure to give it to your wife."
"No, ma'am. You don't need to."
The driver looked awkward as he declined. She pressed the envelope into his hand and smiled.
"I'll be sure to ask your wife about it later."
"Thank you, ma'am."
He bent nearly double in a bow. She treated him so well he hardly knew what to do with himself. He had driven for generals—division commanders and the like—for quite some time, and never once had a commander's wife worked him with such respect.
After he got off he would hand his wife the envelope with the money in it, and she, her household funds supplemented, would be overjoyed. The wives of the men who worked at the Blue House often received the First Lady's letters and her inquiries after them through their husbands. From time to time those women passed back, by the same route, what they had learned, and that information became the means by which Yuk Young-soo kept track of her husband's stray doings.
She always had the loyalty of the wives of the men who worked around him. It had been the same during his years in the army. When he was posted to the provinces and lived alone in the official residence, she had been able to learn in every particular whom he met, what he did, and how he amused himself—and all of it thanks to the wives of his subordinates.
When she truly could not bear it any longer, she used to go to his post and have it out with him in a blazing row. She could not do that now. His station had risen so high that she feared a raised voice might carry beyond the residence; even at home, she could not easily raise her tone.
She gathered the laundry in the house and began to wash. Laundry was what she often turned to when her mind was in turmoil. As she beat the clothes with the washing paddle, her heart gradually grew calm, and her husband's face rose before her.
Lately he had often looked so haggard it hurt to see him. After his nephew by marriage caused that great trouble, he had sat alone in the living room for nights on end until dawn, drinking and smoking one cigarette hard upon another. But the matter seemed to have been settled of late, and he had brightened again. She supposed it was because he had cleanly given up running for president. She wanted him free of the hard, grinding world of politics, and back in the army as soon as might be, living a simple life.
She was weary too. She had not known that living as a president's wife would be so difficult a thing. If they went on like this, she thought, neither he nor she would live out their allotted years.