The Process Still Matters
Song Suhee didn't answer. She only looked at me, quiet and steady.
Perhaps she was thinking of the books heaped in my room the night before. Rather than hide what she felt, she had already laid the situation out simply enough for me to follow.
So this is about pushing goods on Chairman Park the way a lobbyist would. That's what she means.
I stared straight at her.
"You don't want to just buy something and go? Whatever the reason, you got it cheap. They might even praise you for it."
Song Suhee shook her head.
"Jihoon. Listen to Mom."
"......?"
"No matter how fine a thing you bring back, and even if Grandfather praises you for it, it isn't all right if the way you got it was wrong."
"Grandfather won't know how you got it, though."
"The process still matters."
Idealistic words. If you mean to raise a child, that is exactly how you ought to speak. But would they land on a son of thirty-five, already worn smooth by the world?
"Businessmen only trust numbers, don't they? And numbers are nothing but the product of results. However good the process is, if the result turns out poor... won't Grandfather be angry?"
"Being afraid of his anger is no reason to choose a dishonest method."
"You're all right even if he scolds you?"
"Of course."
"Because Mom is strong?"
"...What?"
"Because Mom is the strongest person in the world? Is that why it's all right?"
Maybe because I had remembered yesterday's words so clearly, a little smile found the corner of Song Suhee's mouth.
In the years to come, Hyeon-gang would grow into a company of the very first rank. And in the reach of that company across the world, Song Suhee's share would surely be there.
"Mom, then what about this?"
"......?"
"Tell Grandfather honestly what happened today. Tell him that once you came as a daughter-in-law of Hyeon-gang, an ordinary transaction was impossible."
Even so, going back empty-handed would be a problem of its own.
"So instead of an antique, buy one piece of modern painting. Western painting is your field, isn't it?"
It was only an opinion from an eleven-year-old. She could have let it pass without a second thought.
"......"
Song Suhee rested her chin on her hand, sunk in serious thought. Of course she didn't find an answer easily. The weight of it was obvious. To bring back a modern painting would mean, in the end, disobeying the chairman's order.
Even so, Western painting will pull at her.
It was the field she trusted most. Obey her father-in-law and stay safe, or take a risk in order to put her own eye forward.
Had she decided? Song Suhee turned toward the secretary waiting behind her.
"Please contact Korea Auction and see if any works have come up."
The secretary was just about to bow.
"Mom."
I cut in.
"Wouldn't a university be better than an auction house?"
"A university?"
"Works by established artists are expensive. And it hardly feels as if you've unearthed a rough diamond. If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to look among students instead?"
"......"
"You could use it as an excuse to look around Seoul National University's College of Fine Arts, too."
An auction house... SNU Fine Arts... a rough diamond. She turned my words over, then clutched her handbag as if gathering her resolve.
Thirty minutes later, the permanent exhibition hall of Seoul National University's College of Fine Arts.
With her face hidden behind a mask, Song Suhee quietly studied the paintings of the students who had come after her. What was she thinking, in this moment? Art, which she had loved past all telling. Had it not been for the promise between two families, she would without question have chosen her own dream over becoming a daughter-in-law of Hyeon-gang. And now that same Song Suhee stood before her juniors' work.
"......"
Her eleven-year-old son's hand was closed in hers. She might ache for the road she had never taken. Her fingers tightened. But at having become the mother of two children, she seemed to feel not the slightest regret.
"Jihoon, you're not bored?"
"No. Looking at paintings is fun."
"They're abstract. They must be a little difficult."
"Even just the colors are amazing. I like them."
"You're not only saying that for Mom?"
"No. It's really fun."
In my previous life I had liked art a great deal. Invitation exhibitions of famous foreign artists went without saying; I had been to more solo shows by Korean painters than I could count. Why had a man who lived by literature paid painting so much attention? The reason was simple. In that both of them deal in images, painting has a great deal in common with poetry. To put it another way, looking at a good picture is much the same as reading a fine poem.
Anyway.
I took in the works in my own way, genuinely pleased. We walked for a full hour and looked through some hundred paintings, and of those, about two shook something in me. I was on my way back for another look when it happened.
Of course.
Song Suhee, too, was staring intently at one of the works I had marked. I looked at the plaque set beneath it.
Fourth Year, Lee Yoonki
Salvation
...Lee Yoonki?
Could this be the Lee Yoonki who would one day teach at Seoul National University's College of Fine Arts? A painter the world would watch. Lee Yoonki, counted the greatest talent since Nam June Paik? I couldn't be sure. But the name was the same, and the painting had caught my eye and Song Suhee's at once. That was enough to guess by.
This is no ordinary picture.
As if to prove the thought, Song Suhee didn't move. She gazed at the work for a long time. Was she determined not to let even a single touch go unexamined? While she gave herself over to looking, I quietly stepped away.
There was another piece that had taken hold of me.
First Year
A freshman's painting. Nothing less.
Yoo Seonho, Spiral
Yoo Seonho. Honestly, it wasn't a name I knew. And yet—how to put it. A dynamism born of bold color. A vitality that seemed ready to break through the canvas. Even a doubleness that held deep melancholy and violent joy at once. A style you could never forget after a single look...
I'm sure I've seen something like this.
Where? The memory wasn't solid, so it probably hadn't been a solo show. I must only have glimpsed it in passing at some group exhibition. Even so, in this moment I had fallen completely under the painting's spell. Yes. That one thing, at least, was certain.
What would a work like this cost? In my previous life I couldn't even have dreamed of it. But in this life... couldn't I keep a few paintings I wanted right there in my room?
No.
If I only made the effort, I could have the works themselves, and a museum of my own besides. The thought had barely formed before my heart began to pound, hard, against the left side of my chest. A pleasant trembling.
That was when it came.
"Jihoon, where are you?"
At the voice from across the hall, I hurried back toward Song Suhee.
"Are you finished looking?"
"Yes. You were bored, weren't you?"
"Not at all. Did you choose a piece?"
She pointed to Lee Yoonki's Salvation and slowly nodded.
With a teaching assistant's help, we were able to meet Lee Yoonki, a fourth-year in the Department of Western Painting.
Tall, with clear, well-defined features. Yes. This was unmistakably Professor Lee Yoonki of Seoul National University's College of Fine Arts, the man I knew. Even in this season of his life he must already have been a talent people noticed. And yet, even so, his face just now was blank with disbelief.
In a way it was only natural. The daughter-in-law of Hyeon-gang had come saying she meant to buy a painting. Lee Yoonki was still a student; of course he was stunned. The one thing that might steady him was that Song Suhee was his direct senior from the college.
"Have you ever sold a work?"
"Uh—no. I haven't."
"Is there a price you particularly want?"
"No. I've never... thought about it."
"How would about one semester's tuition do?"
"Pardon?"
Lee Yoonki's eyes went wide, as if the sum were past imagining. His was a face that would have handed the painting over for half as much. We could certainly have bought the work for less, and yet there wasn't a trace of regret on Song Suhee's face. Well. What reason did a chaebol daughter-in-law have to squeeze a junior?
The secretary held out an envelope of cash on the spot.
"Thank you."
Lee Yoonki bowed to Song Suhee again and again. As with so many young artists, the Lee Yoonki of this time seemed to have been ground down by a harsh poverty.
"Thank you. Really—thank you."
The thanks sounded all the more forlorn for it, and Song Suhee stopped.
"Mr. Lee Yoonki."
"Yes?"
She hoped he would carry pride instead of gratitude. That was probably what she meant.
"Th-thank you."
This time, too, Lee Yoonki only bowed.
Perhaps because the workday was ending, the roads were jammed. A stop-and-go crawl like that ought to bring on carsickness as a matter of course.
"......"
And yet, true to its place as the flagship of Schultz, Germany's celebrated marque, the car rode with remarkable ease.
It really is nice.
In the era I had lived through, an S-Class was a common sight. But this was the 1980s, a time when a single Schultz could buy you an apartment. Maybe that was why. There was no avoiding the way eyes gathered on us.
At least the windows are tinted. Small mercy.
Even setting aside the hush peculiar to a luxury sedan, the cabin was quieter than it needed to be. I stole a glance at Song Suhee. Her face was drawn tight with nerves.
She had managed, somehow, to find a work she liked.
In the end, she disobeyed Chairman Park's order.
The anxiety she had pressed down was only now beginning to lift its head. Her eyes looked unusually rigid, and the way she forced the corners of her mouth up so her young son wouldn't catch what she felt only made her harder to bear.
If she had been my real mother, how would I have answered her then? I didn't know. Imagining the existence of a mother was too difficult for me. What else could I do? At a time like this, you simply follow where your heart goes.
"Mom, at school today they asked us about our dreams."
"...Dreams?"
Song Suhee answered a beat late. But she soon met my eyes and asked again.
"So what did you say?"
"I couldn't answer."
"Why?"
"Nothing that felt like the right answer came to mind."
Song Suhee didn't offer an immediate reply. She seemed, instead, to be choosing her words with care.
"Mom, what was your dream?"
"Mm. Mom wanted to be a painter. You know that college student from earlier?"
"Yes."
"Yes. I wanted to paint, like him."
Was it because talking with her son pleased her? The face that had been locked tight seemed to loosen, just a little. Riding the moment, I asked again.
"If being a painter was your dream back then... what's your dream these days?"
"These days?"
"Yes. Right now."
"Well... that Yugeon and Jihoon grow up healthy."
"Come on, not that."
"......?"
"Take off a label like somebody's mother. I mean a real dream, the way you had one in college."
Not the daughter-in-law of Hyeon-gang. The dream of Song Suhee herself.
She was like someone opening a long-weathered diary far too late. For her, the word dream seemed to lie at an impossible distance, and for a long while she could not bring herself to open her firmly closed mouth.