Marilyn and Me

“Did you read Mrs. Freedom yesterday?” Yu-ja asks, heating steel chopsticks in the flame of the stove. “What do you think will happen next? Don’t you think Professor Chang’s wife will sleep with her next-door neighbor? I’m positive she will. Isn’t the very term ‘next-door neighbor’ so seductive? I’d say it straddles the line between melodrama and erotica.”

Yu-ja works as a receptionist at Myong-dong Clinic, which is set back from the bustling main thoroughfare. That may be why it’s never too busy when I stop by to see her. It’s a dull place for a vivacious girl like Yu-ja, who seems always to be moving to the music of a dance hall band.

“That’s all anyone talks about these days,” I say. “As if they don’t know how contradictory the two words are together—Mrs. and Freedom.”

Seoul Sinmun, which is publishing Mrs. Freedom as a serial, is open on Yu-ja’s desk. It’s the talk of the town. Yu-ja reads each installment passionately. In fact, she rereads it several times a day.

“That old-maid intellectual sarcasm of yours! You know men hate that, right?” Yu-ja counts slowly to twenty, twirling her bangs around the heated chopstick. When she takes the chopstick out, her hair emerges not as Jean Harlow’s Hollywood wave but as a sad, limp curl like a strand of partially rehydrated seaweed. To make up for her failed attempt at a wave, Yu-ja pats another layer of Coty powder on her face. She tugs on a new skirt, struggling on the examination table. She’s quite alluring. When I look at her round, peach-like face, I can’t believe she signed up to be a cadet nurse in the war.

In order to secure a place on an evacuation train during the Third Battle of Seoul, Yu-ja had run to the recruiting district headquarters inside the Tonhwamun Gate at Changdokgung Palace, having seen a recruitment ad for nurse officers in the paper. She was ordered to assemble at Yongdungpo Station that same day, and she dashed across the frozen Han River just as the last train evacuating the war wounded was about to leave. As soon as she boarded, Yu-ja was tasked with helping soldiers to go to the bathroom and spent the next few days working incessantly on that train, which traveled only at night. One early morning, as the train pulled into some countryside station, Yu-ja was using the dawn light coming through the window to search for and eat the bits of rice the patients had dropped, and in that moment she truly knew despair. Once in Pusan, Yu-ja put on a US Army work uniform and even went through basic training, but, worried about her family, gave up her dream of becoming a cadet nurse. Yu-ja experienced her own hardships during those years; not until fairly recently has she been able to powder her face so liberally. I understand why she’s rushing around with her womanhood in full bloom. A flower’s lifespan is ten days but a woman’s spring is even shorter. Many a spring died during the war. The mere fact that she survived has given Yu-ja the right to bloom fully.

“Are you going back to the officers’ club tonight? Your dance steps aren’t up to standard,” I tease.

Yu-ja smiles confidently. “You’re going to want to buy me a beer when you hear what I have to tell you. Ready for this? Remember I told you that one of our patients is married to the chairman of the Taegu School Foundation? Her family operates several orphanages and daycare centers. I mentioned Chong-nim and she said she would ask around. I think she has some news for us!”

Chong-nim. My mouth falls open and my breathing grows shallow.

“Go ahead and close your mouth,” Yu-ja says teasingly. “How do you earn a living when you act like this?” Yu-ja is hard on me and at the same time worries about me. I wouldn’t let anyone else do that but I humbly allow her. Mrs. Chang saved me from death while Yu-ja took me in when I went crazy. All of that happened in Pusan—goddamn Pusan, that hellish temporary wartime capital of South Korea. Each time Yongdo Bridge drew open, stabbing at the sky like the gates to hell, I believed that an enraged Earth had finally churned itself upside down to proclaim complete disaster. The streets were lined with shacks built out of ration boxes and the smell of burning fuel mixed with the stench of shit. I spent days lying like a corpse in a tiny room as rain dripped through the roof reinforced with military-issue raincoats. I want to eat Japanese buckwheat noodles, I told anyone who would listen. Yu-ja would empty my chamber pot when she got home from work and snap, Please get a grip on yourself. Why are you acting like this? Why? I could understand Yu-ja’s frustration. To her, it was unimaginable that I could have a tragic future. I knew Yu-ja, who was a few years younger, from the church I attended for a bit after liberation. We were never close but she always showed an interest in me. When I was transported to a hospital in Pusan, Yu-ja was working there as a nursing assistant. I didn’t recognize her; I was at my worst, unable to utter my own name, but Yu-ja remembered even my most trivial habits. I had been the object of envy to young Yu-ja, having studied art in Ueno, Tokyo, and worked for the American military government. She remembered me as quite the mysterious and alluring role model. It might have been because I was harboring the most daring yet ordinary secret a young woman could have—being in love with a married man. That was a long time ago, when I was still called Kim Ae-sun.

And now she is talking about Chong-nim. Her name makes me alert. I’ve been looking for that girl for the last three years, that child with whom I don’t share even a drop of blood, the five-year-old who grabbed my hand trustingly as we escaped Hungnam amid ten thousand screaming refugees, where we would have died if we hadn’t managed to slip onto the ship. If I were to write about my escape I would dedicate the story to her. To the girl who would be nine by now, her nose cute and flat and her teeth bucked, from Huichon of Chagang Province. Her hopes were small and hot, like the still-beating heart of a bird. Her will to survive roused me from Hungnam and miraculously got us on the Ocean Odyssey headed to Pusan. It was December 24, 1950. The night of Christmas Eve was more miraculous and longer than any night in Bethlehem. I wouldn’t have lost her if I hadn’t acted like a stupid idiot. She disappeared as I lay in the refugee camp infirmary, conversing with ghosts. She became one of many war orphans, their bellies distended and their hair cut short, buried in the heartless world.

“The orphanage is somewhere in Pohang,” continues Yu-ja. “There’s a nine-year-old girl, and she came from Hungnam around the time you did. I heard she has the watch you talked about. What other orphan would own an engraved Citizen pocket watch?”

My—no, his—watch that I gave to her, which she tucked in the innermost pocket of her clothes. It had been our only keepsake. That small watch is probably ticking away with difficulty just like me, cherishing time that can’t be turned back.

“Where is it? Where do we need to go?” I spring to my feet.

Yu-ja tries to calm me down. “I don’t know all the details. I’m supposed to meet her this evening at the dance hall. Why don’t you come with me? There are too many orphans, and the records are so spotty it’s hard to find them. The lady managed to get in touch with a nun who saw a girl that fits her description somewhere in Pohang.”

But Yu-ja is unable to convince me to wait and has to run after me without putting the finishing touches to her makeup. Next to fresh, fashionable Yu-ja I look even more grotesque. Yu-ja is a young female cat who’s just learned to twirl her tail, and I’m an old, molting feline who can barely remember the last time she was in heat. I’m not yet thirty but I feel like an old hag who has forgotten everything.

We go down the stairs. Yu-ja tugs my arm at the entrance to the obstetrics clinic; a young girl is squatting in the cold hallway, wearing a quilted skirt, a man’s maroon sweater, and a black woolen scarf wound around her face. Her gaze is feral, sad, and cold, a dizzy tangle of defensiveness and aggression. Yu-ja pulls me along. “She’s a maid for some rich family in Namsan,” she whispers. “Did you hear what happened? The master of the house raped her and now she’s pregnant. Then he and his wife accused her of seducing him, beat her, and threw her out. Apparently she has eight younger siblings back home. She was here yesterday too, asking for help to get rid of it. So many maids are in her situation. I feel bad for them. They try to get rid of it by taking quinine pills—it’s so dangerous.”

We step into the street and the wind delivers a hard slap. The maid’s rage and despair scatter in the wind. This city poisons girls and women, young and old. Girls with tragic fates are merely a small segment of the people who make up the city. The light they emit in order to hide their shame turns the city even more dazzling at night. The streetlights go on and the light seeps into my heart. It has taken in yet another unforgettable gaze.

It’s still early but the dance hall is crowded.

The dancers are gyrating enthusiastically, as though it’s the last dance of the night. This is a sacred place for the wild women of these postwar times, these women who rightfully intimidate men. Of course, men dance too, but women own this place. A rainbow of velour skirts and nylon dresses twirl like flower petals. There are café madams, owners of downtown boutiques, restaurateurs, dollar exchangers, rich war widows, wives of high-level officials, teachers, concubines, college students—I am taken aback that these are all women who have lived through the war. Maybe they hung their grief and pain on the heavy, sparkling chandelier. I’m jealous of these women whose desire to dance is so intense, who look as if they would keep dancing no matter what. Having learned the futility of life, they move lightly without any regrets. I can’t do that. My breath catches in my throat as I watch them dance, skin to skin. The sight calls to mind images of the masses, moving with a single purpose. As I stand there, dazed, Yu-ja pushes me towards a table in the middle of the room. The chairman’s wife and the wives of business and political leaders, all in fox stoles, greet us.

“I understand you’re fluent in English and you studied in Tokyo,” the chairman’s wife says. “My son is preparing to study in America. I would ask you to tutor him if you weren’t a woman.” She laughs. The other wives look askance at my whorish hair and my tattered black lace gloves. By the time their eyes settle on my worn stockings, they are concluding I am not who I purport to be.

I cut to the chase. “When can I see Chong-nim?”

The chairman’s wife gestures at me to be patient and pours me a beer. “The nun I met at the single mothers’ home told me about a girl who fits that description. Something about a pocket watch? I put in a special request to find her. You can go to this address and ask for Sister Chong Sophia.” She smiles as she hands me a card.

I bow in gratitude. She takes my hand. She’s drunk. Her eyes betray a hollow elegance unique to a woman of leisure.

Meanwhile, Yu-ja is craning to find someone. “Look who’s here!” she says, clapping and springing to her feet.

The band is now playing a waltz. Perfume ripples and crests against the wall. Beyond the couples moving off the dance floor is Park Ku-yong, who scans the room until he spots Yu-ja. He waves and comes towards us. Alarmed, I try to duck under the table as Yu-ja grabs me and pulls me up. Ku-yong is wearing a black, faded university uniform and an embarrassed expression, as if he is fully aware that he doesn’t quite belong. His footsteps, however, are as assured as ever, obliterating the rhythm of the waltz as he walks towards us. I glare at Yu-ja and pinch her hand.

At our table, Ku-yong bows and the women welcome the opportunity to tease me. “Oh, you must be Miss Alice’s boyfriend!”

Ku-yong smiles in embarrassment. I can’t in good conscience make him stand there like this so I quickly say my goodbyes and take my leave. Yu-ja laughs and wishes me luck. She’s certain that this man has feelings for me. She might be right, but I haven’t confirmed it. I want to avoid the chronic mistake of a lonely woman, confusing a man’s kindness for love. Any special feelings he might have for me are more likely sympathy.

“You came all this way but you’re not even going to dance?” This is Ku-yong’s attempt at a joke, but I look away.

I can’t dance with him. You don’t dance with a man who regards you with sympathy. You can drink with him and even sleep with him, but you can’t dance with him. That would be insulting to the beautiful music and the sparkling chandelier.

Ku-yong and I walk apart from each other like an old-fashioned couple who keep a decorous distance in public.

Worried that his gaze might land on my body somewhere, I shiver for no reason at all. “What are you doing here?”

“I was at Yu-ja’s clinic last week with an unwell coworker. She told me I would see you today if I came by. I’m glad I did.”

I look down at his shadow stretched out next to me. He’s probably not eating well either but his shadow is sturdy. His interior is likely hollow, though. What once filled his soul has probably leaked away. I know because that’s what happened to me. We were artists once, but now we barely remember how to hold a pencil. I make a living with my clumsy English skills while he is stuck doing manual labor at the US military ammunition depot in Taepyongno.

The silence makes me uneasy. “Marilyn Monroe is coming to Korea,” I blurt out. It’s never advantageous to talk about a prettier woman than oneself but I am curious about his reaction.

Ku-yong widens his already big eyes and raises his arms in a silent cheer. That’s the power of Marilyn. “Can you believe she’s married? You’ll have to find someone yourself, don’t you think?” He glances at me.

I’m charmed by his effort to link Marilyn’s life to mine. I let out a laugh. “Gentlemen prefer blondes, which you know I’m not.” No gentleman likes prematurely gray hair washed with beer. But I also can’t stand gentlemen. The two men I loved were gentlemen and they both disguised their true selves with well-tailored suits and nice manners. The man who ruins a young lady’s reputation is often a gentleman who walks her home at night.

“Alice, have you been drawing?” Ku-yong asks suddenly.

I glance up at him. Mediocre people like us don’t dare talk about war or art, the great subjects of humanity. If there is anything we learned, it’s that you avoid war and art to the best of your ability if you want to live your life to its natural end. “No. And you?”

“I’ve started to. On postcards this big.” He shows me with his hands. “I draw the stream I can see from my room. I don’t have interesting ideas like before; I just draw what I see—reality.”

His answer lands like a punch. I was certain he wouldn’t be drawing either. I turn to look at him. He rubs his peanut-shaped face with his wool gloves, his white breath hanging in the air. He resembles his own cartoon character. As I was familiar with his cartoons that ran in newspapers and magazines, I recognized him instantly when I met him for the first time. Ku-yong, who studied art in Japan, wasn’t famous, but he enjoyed a quiet fan base of passionately devoted readers—I was one of them. Truth Seeker, the main character of his editorial cartoons, was a sly and honest thinker, just like him, and Dandy Boy, the main character of the adventure cartoon serialized in a youth magazine, was a stubborn dreamer whose future seemed precarious, just like his. He was the rare artist who loved his work without being taken over by it. It’s entirely because of the war that someone like him now does odd jobs wearing cotton work gloves instead of handling sharp pen nibs.

The war broke out during a brutal, broiling summer. Every day until I crawled home, exhausted, in the evening, I was shut inside a small room, drawing dozens of Stalin portraits for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, while downstairs Ku-yong drew propaganda posters exhorting the North Korean People’s Army to launch a full-scale offensive. We were two loyal dogs with a talent for drawing; I was the female on the verge of starving to death, repenting my consorting with American imperialists, and he was the quiet male bringing me balls of rice and water. I didn’t feel well and spilled as many tears as I shed drops of sweat. People think Communism was what treated me poorly, but in reality it was myself. I would drink from the cup of water I washed my brushes in as I willed the awful summer to pass. At that point I didn’t know the half of it. When the recapture of Seoul by the southern forces was imminent, Ku-yong was taken north before I was, but managed to make a dramatic escape and reach safety. Eventually, the South determined that he had collaborated with the enemy and took him into custody. His talents were highly valued, however, and he was thus assigned to the psychology unit of the army headquarters and began to draw cartoons for the Ministry of National Defense. Whereas he once conveyed the grand news of victory for the People’s Army, he now began to depict women being violated by the Chinese Communists in a new, realistic, graphic style, broadcasting the tragedy of war. Ku-yong told me later that he could smell ink even in his sleep; even fermented soybeans would smell like paint. He returned to Seoul after the South retook the capital and decided he was done with art. This decision was as logical as the laws of nature in which spring followed winter. It also revealed his respect towards his newly recovered freedom.

Last year, when I bumped into him in Chong-dong, he explained bluntly why he had stopped drawing: “You see, it’s a waste of time for me to sit inside a room all day.”

Oddly enough that comment made me feel at ease. At first, even acknowledging his existence reminded me of that demonic summer, which made me want to avoid him, but his loneliness and his reclusive tendencies pulled me in. After all he was a colleague from a wretched phase in our lives. We had both exhausted our God-given talents in this godforsaken land.

“Ae-sun—I mean, Alice—I think I’m going to make art again.”

I have nothing to say to that. I should be applauding him for starting over, for overcoming his wounds and his helplessness, but I turn away, my hands laced together. It shouldn’t be a surprise to him that I’m this ungenerous; I’m dismayed that my friend is no longer defeated or despairing. I feel instantly alone. I’m disappointed with myself.

“Shall we walk towards Chonggyechon?” he asks. “We can get something to eat on the way.”

That’s such a long, dirty walk, especially in these worn shoes. But I don’t voice my feelings. What made him change his mind? I feel as if I’ve been punched twice today: Hammett’s words to me in the office are still buzzing in my ears and now even Ku-yong is irritating me. I could make excuses and tell myself I wasn’t such a great artist anyway, but I’m enveloped by a strange guilt.

We pass Supyo Bridge and the shacks balanced on either side of Chonggyechon. Built from rough pieces of wood, the shacks appear to have been made with the remnants of Noah’s Ark. It’s as if Noah and his descendants managed to survive by eating the animals they saved. The evening is filled with the smell of food and filth, along with the sounds of clean laundry being ironed, beaten with sticks, and of babies crying. A worker cleaning his tools at a hardware store spots us and smiles slyly. We must look like pathetically destitute lovers out on a date.

Ku-yong takes me to his favorite bar. A Homecoming poster is stuck to the greasy wood-paneled wall. Clark Gable’s and Lana Turner’s nice smiles are incongruous with this place. The barmaid’s son, playing marbles in front of the furnace, greets us spiritedly and shows us to a fairly clean table. The barmaid, who was serving liquor up in the loft, quickly slips down the ladder. I must be hungrier than I realized; before the mungbean pancakes arrive at our table, I empty half a kettle of makgolli. Ku-yong keeps pouring me more. By the time he starts to irritate me, I realize I’m drunk. I loosen my grip on my cup.

“I hope great things happen for you this year,” he says, smiling and tearing a piece of pancake for me. Affection lingers in his eyes.

I’m confused. I hope he’ll stop at sympathy. Affection disarms you. I don’t want any of it. I prefer to be honestly misunderstood than insincerely understood. “You’ve somehow managed to find hope for yourself so you’re all set,” I say tartly.

He doesn’t deflate. That alone makes me feel trapped. “Ae-sun—I mean, Alice,” he begins. I can tell from his voice that he’s been considering what to say for a long time. “I hope you’ll find peace. I’ve been living the last few years like an idiot. I don’t regret it, of course, but I want to have a different life. I hope you’ll be able to forget the past, too. This isn’t you. We both know it.”

I stare resolutely at the table, refusing to meet his eye.

“Be with me. In whatever way that may be. Ae-sun—I mean, Alice …” Ku-yong isn’t even embarrassed. He’s as earnest and frank as his cartoon characters.

I must have sensed that something like this would happen. That must be why I came along. I decide to save him by putting a firm end to this ridiculous melodrama. “You can’t be with me, Ku-yong. You can’t understand my pain. Do you know why? I’ve killed. I’ve killed a child. And then I went insane and tried to kill myself. I failed at doing that so I went crazy. I’m fine now, but you never know when I’ll lose my mind again.”

The boy, who was eavesdropping, scampers off in shock. Ku-yong stares down at the floor uneasily. He doesn’t even attempt to take in what I’m saying. “Stop with the bitterness and mockery. That’s not you.”

For some reason this makes me sad. “Let go of your expectations. Don’t waste whatever remaining love you have for humanity on me.”

“You’re so frustrating, Ae-sun! Look around. People are living, they’re being strong, they’re as good as new. Why do you keep insisting on staying in the past?”

I lose my confidence for a moment. “Why do you want to take on my nightmares I don’t want to remember?” I ask. “What do you know about me, anyway? Do you remember the state I was in when we bumped into each other last year? You looked at me like you’d lost all hope for me.”

In fact, Ku-yong regarded me with shock, like a burn victim seeing himself in the mirror for the first time. Anyone else making that expression would have infuriated me, but oddly enough I stared at him with the same expression on my face.

“Don’t you remember?” I ask him. “I looked just like Seoul—hopeless, though nobody wanted to say that out loud. I was at my worst in Pusan, but I wasn’t much better back here. I tried, though. I tried to be ordinary and be one of those people. But it didn’t work for long. One day I was walking downtown and I passed the bombed-out fire station. All the windows were gone and you could see the darkness inside. It was like an enormous skull with two eye sockets. It began to laugh, its jaw juddering. I jumped onto the first streetcar that came. But it started to fill up and I was stuck among people and I couldn’t breathe and I was sweating and my ribs felt like they were breaking and I could hear a horrible noise and everything turned dark. I started to smell blood, and every time people brushed against me I felt like I was being torn to pieces. I sank down, below people’s legs. I was curled up like that on the floor, screaming for help. Do you know what they did? In order to gawk at me properly, they managed to move around in an orderly way in that overcrowded car. Watching a crazy woman is more entertaining than a fire, isn’t it? As soon as I felt people’s eyes on me, I turned mute. The heel of my shoe broke off and I was foaming at the mouth and it got all over me and nobody came to help. Finally a woman with a child on her back elbowed her way through from the end and took off the cloth that was holding her child to cover my thighs. Menstrual blood was streaming down them. I saw relief in people’s eyes, glad that they weren’t me. A few men leered, peering overtly between my legs. I accepted it then, that I always was and still am someone who makes people uncomfortable. Look at this, Ku-yong.” I show him my right hand.