Wan-suh Park - Lonesome You

TITLES IN THE LIBRARY OF KOREAN LITERATURE
AVAILABLE FROM DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS

1. Stingray
Kim Joo-young

2. One Spoon on This Earth
Hyun Ki Young

3. When Adam Opens His Eyes
Jang Jung-il

4. My Sons Girlfriend
Jung Mi-kyung

5. A Most Ambiguous Sunday, and Other Stories
Jung Young Moon

6. The House with a Sunken Courtyard
Kim Won-il

7. At Least We Can Apologize
Lee Ki-ho

8. The Soil
Yi Kwang-su

9. Lonesome You
Park Wan-suh

10. No One Writes Back
Jang Eun-jin

The only thing I saw of him at first was his hand. A hand with a ring on its finger. Right away, I recognized the deep navy stone lodged in the platinum band as an aquamarine. It isnt an expensive stone, but it isnt all that common either. I dont particularly have an eye for gemstones. Far from it. A friend of mine used to own a jewelry shop in the basement of a five-star hotel. Drawn in by her uncanny knack for telling stories, I frequented her shop, but what I learned about precious stones from these visits had nothing to do with the pragmatic business of discerning the faux from the real stuff.

Was the gist of her stories that beauty has a price? Like a beautiful woman who keeps a man under her thumb, a gemstone can meddle with the fate of those who fall under its spell. My friend knew so many fascinating and tragic tales about gems and the insatiable human greed for precious things in life. And she unraveled these stories with such finesse that I lost all sense of time and reality when listening to her. It seemed to me that she was in the business of selling precious stones not because of money or passion but because she was captivated by these stories herself.

How she told the story of the aquamarine differed somewhat from the elaborate manner in which she narrated the romantic legends surrounding other stones. High quality aquamarines ones displaying the rich hues of the deep, deep seaare very rare. The reason for their rarity was explained to me in the following tale. There once was a young man who lost the love of his life to the sea. For the rest of his life, he spent all of his earnings buying up the best aquamarines his money could afford. In his old age, he had enough to fill a huge burlap sack. Instead of plunging into the ocean after his beloved, he exchanged his life and soul for those ocean-hued crystals. For some reason, my friend told this story plainly and indifferently. But now that I think about it, what better tactic was there to maximize dramatic effect? Although I listened to the story with only a passing interest at the time, a second look at the aquamarines intense navy blue color pierced my heart like a sharp and cold razor, giving me goose bumps all over.

Having missed the last train, I arrived at the bus terminal huffing and puffing, only to be told that all of the seats were sold out. No tickets, with Seoul-bound busses leaving every ten minutes and still two hours left until the last departure! It was a Saturday afternoon. Even at the train station just moments before, what I had lacked was not the time to catch the train, but the time to buy a ticket at the crowded ticket counter.

I was on my way home from attending my nephews wedding. As a so-called family elder, I was outraged by my nephews thoughtlessness in not preparing for my safe return home. Perhaps it was my own fault for not having bought a round-trip ticket, but the truth of the matter is that I wasnt expecting to return on the same day. My oldest nephew, who relocated to that city for work five years ago, always extended an invitation to visit him whenever I talked to him on the phone. I naturally assumed that he would have his aunt stay for a night or two after attending his brothers wedding. My family is originally from Seoul, but after my older brother and his wife passed away one after the other, their four children went their separate ways, finding jobs in different cities. The youngest was the only one working in Seoul, but he met a girl from Daegu and was getting married there among all of his brides clan. If it werent for my oldest nephew and his wife, I would have felt even more like a fish out of water on the brides home turf. Actually, its no accident that the bride is from there. My youngest nephew wasnt overly choosy, but he didnt meet a suitable girl for marriage until his older brothers wife set him up on numerous dates with girls from Daegu.

The reception hall was noisy with everyone speaking in the thick Daegu dialect. That upset me even more, when I was already feeling down after being treated like a second-class citizen by my oldest niece-in-law. I was wearing a traditional hanbok for the pyebaek ceremony, where the newly wedded couple bows to the elders in the grooms family. But my oldest niece-in-law had told the brides family not to bother. We dont really have any elders to disappoint was her justification for passing over this tradition. What, no elders? So an old aunt on the males side of the family is not an elder? I was rendered speechless by her audacity to insult me to my face, and I instinctively looked around for an ally.

My, my! If theyre going to skip pyebaek, then why bother with a marriage ceremony? They can just live together. Never in my life have I seen anything like this, especially from such a respectable family. Nope, this is pure madness. What will others say about this family? And what about the brides family who agreed to this preposterous idea? This is not just a bad reflection on individual families. This is a terrible infraction of our sacred cultural traditions.

Someone my age, just as offended as I was at my niece-in-laws bogus good intentions, might have been eager to bash her in this manner. But everyone around me was a stranger. Who is a paternal aunt-in-law? I suppose someone who has married out of the family, according to the letter of tradition. It occurred to me that the proper treatment of an elder denied me by my niece-in-law was a calculated move to deal with an outsider. I suddenly lost my nerve. Without the parents around, should pyebaek still be performed, or is it okay to omit it? I wasnt sure anymore. What am I sure of? For someone turning sixty the following year, it was depressing as well as baffling to be disregarded as a family elder.

With an ice sculpture of a phoenix hovering over them and artificial fog misting their feet, the happy couple cut their cake and popped open a bottle of champagne amidst much clapping and cheering. From the guest tables all I could hear were the excited, celebratory voices in the regional dialect. After the brush off I got from my nephew and his wife, the accented voices ganging up on me and mocking my isolation added insult to injury. The pink hanbok I wore at my daughters wedding, made of God knows how many yards of fabric, sprawled out uncontrollably, trailing behind me in all its pathetic tackiness. How unbearable it is to be an unimportant person in an ostentatious dress, to suffer so many looks from judgmental people! Aware of every painstaking second that ticked by, I hardly tasted my food.

By the way, Auntie, what time is your ticket for? My second niece-in-law, who had been too busy fussing over her kids to mind me, suddenly turned to me, wide-eyed and innocent.

Ticket, what ticket?

Your return ticket. Oh, no, you didnt reserve it? But its Saturday...

Instead of answering, my eyes searched for my eldest niece-in-law, who was busy making rounds among the guests. But my second niece-in-law, who was quicker to find her, made a big fuss to her about how I was still working idly on my slab of steak without a clue as to how I was going to return home.