Marilyn and Me

He gazes sadly down at my pale hand, covered in my ripped black lace glove like a discarded fish in a dead fisherman’s net.

“Sometimes it’s hard for me to hold someone’s hand, even when they’re right in front of me. I’m still—people are still hard for me.”

Before he can take it, I withdraw my hand. I am treating this man who has feelings for me with the bare minimum of politeness. But he doesn’t realize that he’s the first person I’ve ever told any of this.

Ku-yong gazes quietly at the space vacated by my hand. He takes something out of his pocket. It’s a smudged fountain pen and a yellowed postcard. He begins to draw as if he’s alone, his pen scratching like a broom. I haven’t seen him like this in a long time, hunched forward, head down, concentrating. I stare at him, mouth agape, content to watch. He’s looking at his old pen with affection, like he’s Jesus looking at a child.

When he’s done he hands me the postcard with a smile. Fine slashes fill the paper, pouring down like shooting stars in the night sky. I laugh despite myself. He’s drawn a propaganda leaflet. And it’s me he’s drawn in it. I look funny and pitiful and cute, all at the same time. I’m wearing a dotted scarf on my head and shaking my fist, chanting slogans, and behind me is the sentence, “Alice! Build up your battle experience to rescue your compatriots!” The propaganda posters and leaflets we were forced to make during the war were fierce, coarse, and foolish. This is different. This is special. I’m intrigued, though I am hardly the type to get provoked by these things. It contains irony and pathos. This is a superlative drawing.

“Are you still—do you still care for him?” Ku-yong lobs the question he’s been wondering about. He remembers how restless and resentful I was that summer, pining by the window.

“Not him. Them,” I cruelly correct Ku-yong.

It’s a low blow to mention men I can barely remember anymore to a man who desperately wants to comfort me. The cheap, artificially carbonated liquor served by the surly barmaid burns, turning my mind blank and clear. Ku-yong’s eyes are as dark as ink as he forlornly twists the cap of his fountain pen. I feel torn and a little sorry.

Adequately tipsy like the youth we are, we head back into the night. The dark night of this city, which doesn’t yet have electricity fully restored, makes the streetcar stop seem even more desolate. Ku-yong insists he will see me home. He’s gallant for a man who’s been refused. Maybe he’s reliving the sorrow of being turned down.

“When will you get back?” he asks with concern, as though I’m going somewhere far away, although I’m just accompanying Marilyn Monroe to perform for the troops.

“It’s a four-day trip, so I should be back at the end of next week.”

Ku-yong seems so distressed that I find myself wondering if I will indeed return safely in one piece.

The streetcar barrels towards us, its headlights slicing through the darkness.

Ku-yong puts a hand on my arm. “I’d like to see you when you’re back, Ae-sun.” His gaze arrests me for a moment.

“Would you like me to say something to Marilyn for you?” I smile, but he doesn’t. The streetcar is nearing the stop but his hand is growing heavier on my arm.

He finally lets go and flashes a smile when I try to get on the streetcar. “Please convey my congratulations. And tell her that we are hoping for her happiness, for her to always be happy.”

The streetcar takes off and he waves. His wet eyes sparkle as they are swallowed by the black street.

I quickly find a seat so I don’t have to see him. But his form follows me, pasted to the window. I turn back and he’s still standing there, watching me, growing smaller. What a night. A strange night filled with memories creeping and advancing like fog. I’m not afraid of the regret and disdain settling wetly on my cheeks. I leave behind the man who is perhaps the last person to understand me. I desperately hope he won’t remember tonight as remarkable, as a night to be remembered. I hope we can all fall asleep peacefully—all of us, the beggar girl carrying her sibling on her back, the maid seeking abortion funds, lovelorn Yu-ja standing sentry at the dance hall, lonely Mrs. Chang who has to show her husband pictures of naked American women. Seoul adroitly hides its ruins in the darkness and I too disappear into it. I enter the deep blackness of the city, which has chewed and swallowed all of humanity’s beauty—the past, the tears, the blood, the lovers, the diaries, the ribbons, the book pages—in equal measure.

Colonial-Style Romance at the Bando Hotel

July 1947

I got off the streetcar and walked self-consciously in the brown lambskin shoes I had received from my uncle for my twentieth birthday. My gait reflected who I was—light, carefree, and coquettish. Only the heel of my right shoe was worn, and from that you could deduce that I was stubborn and didn’t have a great sense of balance. My pale, goosebump-covered calves were revealed all too easily each time the hem of my skirt fluttered. Even if you didn’t have an acute sixth sense you would guess that I was on my way to see my lover. That was how carelessly I displayed my passion. I was firmly deluded in believing that the entire world was envious of my romance. I was still a young girl trying my best to look sophisticated. What I didn’t realize was that the world had no morals and wasn’t interested in one individual. And so, with a truly innocent smile on my face, I walked the streets of Seoul that were brimming with memories of colonization. To my eyes, the streets lined with ginkgo trees—an emblem of Tokyo planted here by the Japanese—were just a splendid sight.

I was in Tokyo when Korea was liberated from Japan. On September 2, 1945, as Japan was signing the Instrument of Surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, I was staring at a parcel that had just arrived. I had been planning to go look at the Missouri, which was supposed to be unfathomably vast, but the parcel distracted me. A few years later, I had a chance to see the Missouri as we were escaping Hungnam; the loud booms of the ship’s sixteen-inch artillery made me wet myself several times. Anyway, one of my father’s black frockcoats was inside that parcel. It looked like a large dead black bird. Upon receiving the news of my father’s death, I’d written home, asking for an item from his closet. Father, a sad, elegant man much like a black bird, left eight frockcoats behind. I stood in front of the mirror to try the coat on. Only then did his death sink in.

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