Chapter 7
During an intermission, while others were leaving, the stranger got up and left with his dog. Sang Huin, on impulse, followed. Without yearning for a cigarette, he lit one in the lobby and waited at the entry of the bathroom. If he were troubled by the peculiarity of his actions, he was only marginally reassured by the fact that they were not witnessed. His actions seemed that of a stalker although this seeming, this appearance, was only ruminated on by himself. His motives, however, were nebulous in this desire; and this inability to understand why he was seeking this individual was a troubling factor. It was the impulsiveness of one lacking social skills who suddenly drives up to a school playground to form intimacies, discards the body in abhorrence and disbelief over being the perpetrator of the crime, and in a half hour finds himself to be a pedophile and a murderer. And yet he wasn't stalking a child but a man and he wasn't running on the energy of sexual conquest and hate, but just running away from loneliness. If this innocuous action were stalking, all humans, he told himself, were stalkers. Without question, he was so desperate to disrupt his isolation like the pensive ruminations of a mute circus gypsy alone in the back of his tent. He was so anxious to escape his incommunicable thoughts through friendship, or the hope of it, that he was ready to shoot it out randomly to whomever caught his eye. Many selfish whims constituted an attraction, but he told himself that this was not the making of a stalker. Then the stranger and his dog came out.
"Anyong hashimnika," greeted Sang Huin as he touched the man's arm so that he would know he was addressing him.
"Anyong haseyo" (informal: peace, you do). They spoke loudly because of the noise of the crowds loitering and coming and going from the restrooms.
"Yongo mal ha su isumnika?"
"Yes, I can speak English. Can I help you?"
It was interesting for him to be thought of as an American instantaneously. Sang Huin found it refreshing to not have someone give him that surprise and grimace for being a Korean without a language.
"No. Good symphony. Do you like Rimsky?"
"Rimsky-Korsakov. Yes, not all of the music is Rimsky's but they were playing music from that composer earlier. He is Russian, one of the best, I think." Sang Huin smiled at the acquaintance and then realized that his smile wouldn't pierce through the sunglasses. Unable to let his benign nature penetrate through the plastic, he again thought of himself as somewhat equivalent to a stalker. He felt nervous.
""Would you like a cigarette? We've got ten minutes." He thought of the words and instruments which human beings employed to break from their innate states of emptiness; and the connections sought from attractions that would be forsaken if the experiences seemed shallow and there was an assumption that no major connections would evolve from them.
Sang Huin crunched the pack for a bit of noise and the stranger took one of the cigarettes which he then aimed toward the hiss of the emerging flame that Sang Huin provided with the click of his lighter. The blind man inhaled a couple times but then coughed in perpetual rhythms like the beats of a drum. The seeing-eye dog gnarled its mouth the best it was able to do and growled importunely. "He doesn't like," said the blind man barely able to get out his idea from his stanched breath. Sang Huin thought of Sungki's syntax which also lacked object pronouns in "You must all eat."
"Is there an ashtray? I'll put this out. I'm sorry I wasted it," said the blind man.
"No problem," said Sang Huin as he took the cigarette and smashed it into an ashtray a few feet away and then walked back to where he was. "I feel a bit foolish." He chortled for a couple of seconds nervously. "I was seated alone, really, not liking that feeling as much as I thought I would; and then I noticed you. I've seen you before on a subway: you and your dog. It was a few days ago. You got out shortly after I did in Tonggyo-dong."
"Do you stay in a hotel in that area?"
"No, but a few times when there were demonstrations at Yongsei University I went there and watched the police and the tear gas from the fourth floor of a building that has a pastry shop. I guess that is a bit strange, huh?" The stranger filled air and space with a feigned smile and a nod, not knowing what to say. "No; I live in Chongju," continued Sang Huin, "but I come to Seoul as often as I can. I'm American. At least I say I am. My friends call me Shawn in America but my friends here call me by my real name, Beck Sang Huin." He knew that he didn't really have friends in either place.
"Saeng Sob," said the acquaintance. They shook hands although both were doubtful that they could concatenate a conversation. When the man said his name, Saeng Seob, Sang Huin thought of the boy in Kwang Sook's school who also had this name. He was in his class; but Kwang Sook said that the last year he had to drop out of her school completely after going through more surgeries from being hit by a truck. That accident had happened a year earlier. Even during the brief months Sang Huin was familiar with him there was yet another surgery for his legs and feet. Sang Huin brought him toys every few days. During this time he hated having the poor boy languish in the bed—skin from his buttocks used to supplement the thin blackish skin of his legs and the pins in his toes. It was the least he could do.
Hadn't there been a time when he and his sister were driven to the home of their Grandma Vera and rather than connecting to her chose to run across the street to a nearby park and feel alive with the swing against the winds as their parents socialized? Hadn't there been a time when he knew the brilliance of grass poking through the crevices of his bare feet? Then puberty came and there was an aching need for other people. The aching was incessant.
"I guess you are here with friends and family. I should let you get back to them and the performance."
"We're here alone," said Saeng Sob, " but I guess we should go back in before the second part begins." Sang Huin did not know if he was included in the conceptualization of "we."
"Do you live in Tonggyo-dong?," asked Sang Huin creating a mental barricade to stop the closure.
" No, but I work and study at the university." He paused and then filled in the silence. "My cousin is a dean in the mathematics department. I work part-time at Yongsei as his receptionist so that is probably why you saw us there," said the man speaking of himself in plurality.
"And you take classes?" asked Sang Huin.
"Sometimes," said Saeng Sob.
"Maybe we can get something to eat after the performance if you aren't busy," said Sang Huin.
"Maybe. They're probably ready to start." Sang Huin and the blind Saeng Seob returned to their seats.
Then, after the performance, he cornered him in the ambiguity of a "maybe" which a strong will could distort to affirmation. Such enthusiasm could not easily be negated especially if it came from an American and soon he was with the blind Seong Seob answering questions about his life in the US and eating some cold noodles in soup that was as flavorless as water. The meal tasted like a cold and bland version of Ramen noodles ("Ramyen" in Korean) but he was told that it was not Ramyen. He didn't like the food and yet his closed lips twitched up smilingly as if the opposite were true. Deferential deception seemed the most cordial solution. Through children observing it in his society in various forms it was passed down through the generations by imitation. And as humans had and in interactions proliferated these tactics of coexistence to the young that were successful enough to keep the species, so far, from self-destruction, what did he in his short life know that was a better substitute? In reinventing etiquette, it was hard to know if the new behavior was better or worse than the old one in the abstract. The only measurement would be the reaction of others. To eat and smile while hating what was being eaten and to succeed at it pleased him. It made him feel that he was a decent person. In that minute it picked him up on a wave of optimism that distracted the lonely, mundane, and stunted life that he chartered for himself. Sang Huin spoke frankly about why he had come to Korea. He had been so lost after his sister's death, his father's suicide, and the exacerbated disconnection from the robotic and perfunctory movements and rambling of his mother month after month. He had to break away and become acquainted with his heritage the way Seong Seob, as much as he was capable of, had to flee from the cousin and then him, as perverted as he was, to end those 20+ years of disparaged containment. Both had to chart independent lives exempt of family and without the possibility of ever having one; but really was that so bad - to be ungrounded and to float on winds of circumstance. In the right perspective it was liberation.
Sang Huin wondered what this name, Seng Seob, meant (not that he knew the meaning of his own) and why he was so excited to be with him. They agreed that they would just be together for an hour. That hour became two and then it was the rest of the evening. They drank soju, a mild equivalent of sake. Late into the evening Sang Huin had the waiter calculate the tab and then suggested that they continue drinking elsewhere. Both were drunk at this time and drunkenness was making them thirsty. He and Saeng Sob returned to the yogwam with a case of beer they purchased at a convenience store.
They slept together. Naked and awakening from sleep, Sang Huin listened to the breathing of his friend. For the first time since his sister's death he did not feel alone. Later on in the morning when the light began to shine into the room he continued his prose, every now and then looking at the presence that slept there as well as the imposition of his dog.