The Starlet and the Spy Page 10

  He turns his head. Only half of his face is visible. It crumples, partly ravaged by the darkness. “Alice.” He pauses. Is his voice trembling?

  I can tell something has happened. “Did you find her? Did you find Chong-nim?”

  Joseph comes closer and lets out a sigh. He smells like cigarettes. “Alice, you’re going to be shocked by this. I wanted to tell you yesterday, but he hadn’t made his mind up yet.”

  My nervous face is reflected in his eyes.

  “But I think it’s time.” He steps back and opens the rear door of the car. He beckons for me to get in. His forehead is red, tense.

  I go toward the car, my heart pounding. I’m overpowered by the smell of cigarettes coming from inside. Something dark is in the back seat. It’s not a child or a woman. He leans toward me, dipping his face into the light.

  A short scream pierces my eardrums. Mine. I fall. Joseph grabs me before I faint. I see the man get out of the car.

  Yo Min-hwan.

  I close my eyes.

  THIS HAS TO BE A DREAM, ALTHOUGH DREAMS YOU RECOGNIZE as such are almost always nightmares. A girl walks through Seoul before its destruction, arm in arm with two men who laugh at her jokes and sugar her coffee and discuss her drawings. This is love, she thinks. She goes to palaces and cafés and art exhibitions with them. But one of them is already feeling disillusioned. The girl is bored with the affair and desires the secret she shares with the other man. Their secret is discovered by the disillusioned man in a dramatic, vulgar way, enabling him to treat her with scorn. But he refuses to do that, making her even lonelier and eternally guilty. One day, he disappears like the wind, and war creeps toward the city he’s left behind.

  I OPEN MY EYES. WHAT IS GOING ON? I CLOSE THEM AGAIN. I can’t believe what is happening. Joseph and Min-hwan are watching over me and I am lying on a bed.

  “Ae-sun, can you sit up?”

  Am I really hearing that low, kind voice? I open my eyes to look at him. He has attempted to disguise himself with horn-rimmed glasses and his hair combed forward, but his cold, clear eyes, reminiscent of stones in a creek, can’t be covered up.

  “He’s not a ghost, Alice,” Joseph says.

  Of course. He can’t be a ghost. A ghost wouldn’t smell like an ashtray. How am I supposed to accept what is going on? He was dead. But now he’s here, right before my eyes.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Even though I know the world operates according to secret agreements beyond my understanding, this is absurd.

  “I’m sorry. We had to be careful.” Joseph hands me a cup of water, contrite.

  I push their hands away and sit up. I must be in a guesthouse at the camp. The room has a bed, desk, and coat hook, and it smells musty. The fire in the fireplace was so hastily made that the flames are wild; even the inside of my mouth feels hot. The window is black, as if covered by dark paper. It’s like the stage set of a one-act play by an amateur theater group. Even the ink bottle on the desk looks like a prop; if I bow I might hear a smattering of applause.

  I look at Min-hwan. “I heard you died up north. That’s what we all thought.”

  “That’s no rumor. I am dead. I’ll be a dead man until I’m really dead for good.” Min-hwan spouts nonsense calmly.

  I turn to Joseph for help. “If this isn’t a dream, I need you two to be honest with me. This is cruel. Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Speak!”

  “Calm down, Alice,” Joseph says in hesitant Korean. “He was in Tokyo with me.”

  I turn to Min-hwan angrily. “Didn’t I ruin your friendship with Joseph? Since when are you best friends again? Did you know about Joseph from the beginning? Am I the only one who was fooled?”

  An awkward silence. I am now suspicious of everything. How did an American intelligence officer become friends with an official of the Workers’ Party of South Korea?

  “Were you—are you an American spy?” I ask Min-hwan, my voice trembling.

  He looks at me, frowning, neither confirming nor denying.

  I pick out the confused questions swimming in my head, one by one. “Both of you disappeared without any explanation. So why don’t you explain yourselves now?”

  Min-hwan is chillingly calm. “I went back home to my parents’ village. I was there when the war began. War becomes mixed up with personal resentments in a small rural community—kids wearing armbands were running around. It makes you wonder if humans have really evolved. My parents, my siblings, and their families were all killed because of my brother’s job as police chief. I survived because one of the servants hid me in a cave in the hills. His wife secretly brought me leftover rice, and I lived like a wild rat. I came back to Seoul, but I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find anyone. I floated around like a ghost. Joseph brought me to Tokyo, and I vowed never to return. But then I heard that you were alive, so I had to come back.”

  I look at his delicate, dignified lips, those lips that used to read Ibsen plays to me. Now his mouth seems desiccated, nothing more than a breathing hole. His lips hardly move as he stoically conveys the bare minimum of information. Perhaps he is afraid of reawakening the sorrow and pain he’s managed to quiet. Perhaps he fears he will end up banging his head against the wall in order to drown out those emotions, before cynically accepting that his small share of sadness and pain does not merit such a dramatic reaction. From the wide viewpoint of the universe, the fate of a man is no different from the fate of an ant. That’s something everyone needs to be mindful of. I look sympathetically at his lips as though to reverently kiss his hardships away. I want to hold and soothe him, but I don’t forget that we are in a truce. If I want to, I can drop a bomb and burn him to a crisp.

  “You don’t seem happy to see me again,” Min-hwan says, disappointed.

  “No, I am happy. No matter what, being alive is a blessing.” I can’t wait any longer. I finally loosen my hold on the dangerous question that has been strangling me. “And your wife and daughter?” I turn nonchalantly and look at Min-hwan’s reflection in the glass.

  His lips tremble.

  “They’re missing,” Joseph cuts in. “By the time he went home his wife and daughter had gone to her family’s home in Hongsong. He went there right away, but they never arrived. He thought they must have crossed paths, so he went back home again, but they weren’t there. As he went from relative’s house to relative’s house, the war began.”

  I try to figure out what kind of expression I should be wearing. Joseph catches my eye. He is studying me with his sharp investigator’s gaze. I become flustered.

  “Oh, I see . . .” I sound suspicious even to myself.

  “My in-laws’ house was bombed,” Min-hwan explains. “I don’t think anyone was able to escape. I’m just one of the many people who lost their family during the war.”

  My heart begins to pound. I turn my back and head to the fireplace. “I’m jealous you were able to leave this place.” I try to tame my shaky voice.

  “Come with me.” Min-hwan stands behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Let’s forget about what happened and start over somewhere new. Whether it’s Japan or America or Berlin. We can go wherever you want.” His glasses reflect the flames in the fireplace. It’s as if red tears were pooling in his eyes.

  “You must have forgotten how we parted,” I remind him. “You didn’t forgive me then and you never will.”

  Joseph looks away, embarrassed.

  Min-hwan comes closer to me, his expression resolutely blank. “I’ve forgotten everything. You should, too. That’s the only way we can go on. You don’t need my forgiveness, since I don’t even remember what happened.”

  He embraces me, his impatience twining around me. I’m paralyzed by his desperate hope.

  “And there’s good news,” he continues, barely able to contain his excitement. “I might be able to find Song-ha.”

  “What? Your daughter?” Stunned, I lean back to look at him.

  “I’ve been searching for her for years, and I hav
e finally heard about a girl who fits her description. We’re going to an orphanage near Suyuri, in Seoul, to see her. Come with us.”

  I back away slowly, watching this poor man, hanging all the happiness of the rest of his life on this one impossible hope. What can I do for him? All I can do is help him maintain this hope for one more night. “All right. Let’s.” I turn to Joseph. “Can Min-hwan and I stay here tonight, together?”

  Joseph searches my face, instantly suspicious of my intentions.

  I disarm him with an arch joke. “It would be scandalous if the three of us were to spend the night together, wouldn’t it?”

  His face momentarily betrays his embarrassment, but then Joseph reassumes his kind expression and spreads his arms to indicate that he will step aside for my original lover to take his place by my side. “Alice, walk me to the door, won’t you?”

  When I approach, he whispers, “I went to the orphanage today, but I couldn’t find Chong-nim. I’m sorry.”

  Disappointment blooms in my chest. That orphanage had been my last hope.

  “Alice,” Joseph says suspiciously, “are you hiding something from me?”

  I step backward, away from his probing gaze. “That’s a question I should ask you, isn’t it? Who else are you going to bring back from the dead?”

  “I’m sorry. But, Alice—”

  “Look, I’m still recovering from seeing Min-hwan again. I need some time.” I smile tightly and push him along.

  “Did you put an ad in the paper, trying to trace a child? Last year? What’s this about a watch? You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Thanks for checking the orphanage,” I say. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  He studies me suspiciously as the door closes. I turn away. I don’t know what he thinks I’m up to, but I don’t want to tell him everything just yet. At least not tonight.

  The two of us are alone at last. We look at each other with resignation and despair. Together we are like an old pine tree, standing alone, surrounded by a forest fire, waiting for its ultimate demise.

  “Are you a ghost?” I ask, and it’s not in jest. There is so much I do not know about this man, who has survived by adopting the life of a stranger. In some ways his existence is more outlandish and more cowardly than mine.

  “I’m a ghost floating around the back alleys of Tokyo. It hasn’t been that hard, actually. Nobody has looked for me as hard as I thought they might.”

  “You really hated this place that much?”

  “In the end I didn’t even have the energy to feel sympathy.”

  With a slightly bewildered air, he approaches and strokes my hair. To me, everything about him is sad, but he seems to be bothered only by my hair.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  “I grew old. I guess I couldn’t wait until I was actually old.” I take his hand from the top of my head and lead him to the bed. I lay him down. He curls up like a baby bird in its egg. I lie down, my back against his chest. We listen to each other’s breathing with nervousness, as if we were siblings about to commit incest. I reach back and place his hand on my stomach. His scent, which had perfumed his pillow years ago, tickles my nose. It’s been a long time. He keeps touching my hair, stroking my parting with the experienced hand of an old lover. His thin finger traces the path on my head before pausing. It feels the way it used to; his touch and smell yank me back to the past. Are we in the past or in the present? Is it possible for us to pretend that war hasn’t penetrated and damaged our souls? That the corpses we saw in the streets could have been pieces of wood that had fallen from the sky? That the horrible rumor about a female partisan caught and raped on Chiri Mountain—her breasts, tongue, and reproductive organs cut out before being discarded—might just be a horrible fairy tale from a country far away? We can enjoy the romance of this dramatic reunion if we tell ourselves that we are the same as we were before.

  “How has life been in Tokyo?” I ask.

  His damp sigh tickles my earlobe. “Pathetic.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Making flyers.”

  I laugh.

  “It’s true. After 1951 the Americans didn’t make flyers, the UN forces did. They would be printed in Tokyo and flown over here in a B-29 to be distributed. I translated them into Korean. They were about how the UN forces are working hard to achieve peace for the Korean people, how many young men from the North are being shot because the armistice is being delayed, that kind of thing. You probably saw a few I edited myself.”

  “I shouldn’t have thrown them out, then,” I tease. “I have strong opinions on propaganda. When you came back to Seoul, did you see any People’s Army posters? Some of them were mine. Nobody drew Stalin as well as I did.”

  “I must have seen your work, then,” he says.

  We laugh. When you face a brutal reality, all you can do is make jokes. I smile bitterly, glad that we can’t see each other’s expression right now.

  He strokes my hand. “What’s this? Did you get hurt?” He pokes through a hole in my glove to touch the scar on my palm. “Your hand—and you’re an artist.”

  “I’m fine now.” I don’t shake him off. Instead, I take off my gloves and put my hand in his. “Do you remember the last time we saw each other?”

  He lets out a heavy sigh.

  “You said that I should be ashamed.”

  “Please don’t dwell on the pain I caused you.”

  “No, you were right. I had to learn how to feel shame. It was arrogant to think I was born with it.” I want him to say he can’t forgive me and to push me away, but he keeps holding me silently, embracing the cause of his most humiliating moment. His effort to forget how I rolled around naked with another man scares me. It makes me sad. I can’t accept who he’s become. He’s just one of many people for whom oblivion has become the criterion for survival. And I’m the one who pushed him into his dark loneliness.

  “Thank you for being alive,” he whispers. “Maybe I’ll get to see Song-ha tomorrow.” His voice breaks my heart. I carefully file it away in my memories. I’ll take it out tomorrow as I meet my death.

  A Letter

  May 1950

  I STOMPED AROUND THE ROOM, UNABLE TO TAME MY RAGE. My hair was tangled and soaked in tears; I looked like a tsunami survivor wearing seaweed on my head. I banged my head on the wall and bit my fingernails and wailed. But inside I felt numb. I knew that this paltry show of emotion wouldn’t draw out his sympathy.

  “You should have some shame.” That was all Min-hwan said when I dragged myself to his house to apologize, before he slammed the door behind me.

  I waited all day long outside his boardinghouse, anticipating his hatred and scorn, but I couldn’t hear anything from inside. His stony silence set fire to my instincts. With my gambler’s disposition, courtesy of my father, I staked everything on this hand, even though I could sense I would lose. All of my emotions—my love, my hate, my sympathy, my reverence—all of it gushed out. Knowing I wouldn’t be forgiven for this transgression, I acted in desperation.

  Min-hwan refused to even look at me. To him I was merely a stone or a wall or smoke. It wasn’t our demise I couldn’t stand; it was his demeanor. I was the one who betrayed him, but somehow it was as if he had been waiting for this particular ending all along.

  Joseph came to see me a few times in my uncle’s house, surprisingly calm and detached, as if nothing had changed. “It might be this way because this is the only way it can be,” he said. He didn’t seem to be in love with me, but he didn’t seem regretful, either.

  “Stop coming by! We can’t see each other anymore!” I shuddered, not out of dislike but because I had to stop myself from hanging on to him.

  Because that was what I wanted to do—lean on him. Of course I imagined fleeing with him; I had an active imagination. But I was afraid. I was scared that I would learn his true feelings for me. Maybe I was the object of his desire only while he was stuck in a foreign land. My fragile, foolish heart was longing
for love. We had shared something, hadn’t we? We had to be partners in crime; otherwise what was the point of it all? But was it even possible to have a relationship when you were always listening for footsteps outside the door and having to ignore your feelings of guilt? What kind of man loves a mistress who can betray her married lover? Even if he did, I would have rejected him as an idiot.

  Joseph came to see me one spring night. I had been avoiding him in a petty spirit of revenge and to protect my self-respect. He was different that night; he wasn’t anxious, trying to soothe my despair. He stared at me coolly, but his tone was heartfelt. “Alice, if I hold out my hand will you accept it?”

  I felt a pang of relief but shook my head.

  “Do you think Min-hwan deserves to be pined over like this?” His words clawed at me. He looked at me with a suddenly unfamiliar expression.

  “Just leave,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to you. Stop getting involved.”

  “He’s your past. You can only be free when he’s not around. I’m going to ask one last time. Are you still waiting for him, despite all of this?”

  The heady smell of locust flowers floated in through the open window. I wanted to surrender to that suffocating sweetness. Instead, I stood and turned my back on him.

  “That’s too bad,” Joseph said. “He isn’t worth it.”

  He turned and left, slamming the door. The flowery scent followed him out. I wanted to run after him but I couldn’t move. Joseph didn’t come by after that night. Alone, I shriveled in Min-hwan’s silence. I thought I would go mad. I was still young and naive. So I plotted a crude act of vengeance, typical of someone who was no longer rational. It was something only a rejected mistress could possibly think of. I wrote a letter and sent it to his family home.

  Dear Mrs. Chong Ha-ryon,

  I apologize for introducing myself like this. My name is Kim Ae-sun, your husband’s longtime live-in lover. We’ve never met, but I presume you have known about me. I’m sure you suspected something or heard rumors. I won’t go into our situation here. In short, we would like to officially wed. Since this is impossible without your cooperation and understanding, I am writing to ask you for your assent before we ask for permission from his parents. I know this letter must be shocking and unpleasant, but I cannot continue to sit on the side with such patience and understanding. Please free him from your hypocritical marriage.