The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness

THE GIRL
WHO WROTE
LONELINESS

KYUNG-SOOK SHIN

TRANSLATED FROM THE KOREAN BY HA-YUN JUNG

PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON

For my oldest brother; my cousin; all those who attended the Special Program for Industrial Workers at Yeongdeungpo Girls’ High School from 1979 to 1981; my language arts teacher, Choe Hong-i; and for Hui-jae eonni, who, for as long as I remain in this world, will never become a part of the past.

THE GIRL
WHO WROTE
LONELINESS

ONE

There exists in every life and particularly at its dawn an instant that determines everything.

—Jean Grenier

T
his book, I believe, will turn out to be not quite fact and not quite fiction, but something in between. I wonder if it can be called literature. I ponder the act of writing. What does writing mean to me?

Here I am on an island.

It is night and light from the fishing boats, afloat on the night sea, pours in through the open window. Out of the blue, I find myself here, in this
place where I have never been before, contemplating myself at sixteen. There I am, sixteen years old. A girl with a plump face, as indistinct as any other anywhere in Korea. It is 1978, toward the end of the Yusin regime, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who had been in office only a year, has announced plans for a gradual withdrawal of ground troops from Korea, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher has publicly acknowledged America’s keen interest in establishing diplomatic ties with North Korea and other nations, all creating quite a bit of distress for President Park Chung-hee.

And I, sixteen years old, sit on the wooden veranda of a farmhouse, as indistinct as any other around the country, and listen to the radio, waiting for the mail. What can I do, if you leave, just like that . . . The radio is playing the grand prize–winning song from the National College Song Contest, the lead singer’s voice desolate as wasteland. This cannot be, no, no, don’t go.

While a new wind is sweeping across the city in hope to change the world, somewhere out there, in our countryside home, a sixteen-year-old girl, unable to afford high school, is listening to “What Can I Do.” The ripe spring has passed and summer is approaching.

Nowadays, compared to something like Seo Taiji’s rap number “I Know,” the song feels almost classical, but when I first hear “What Can I Do” on the radio, I almost shrink with shock and turn the radio off. It is completely different from the songs I have been listening to. But I, who am sixteen years old and positioned in a place utterly different from that of the voices in the outside world calling to put an end to the Yusin regime and Park’s emergency rule, I, who have nothing else to do but listen to the radio all day, turn the radio back on. “What Can I Do” comes on again. Perhaps “What Can I Do” has conquered the entire city. On every station that plays music, they are playing “What Can I Do.” After hearing the song a few times, I am singing along. How could you, you were once so loving, once so tender.

The girl sings along, her
expression rather blank. The mailman comes at about eleven o’clock.

At the time, the girl’s dream goes something like this: to leave this dull place and go live with Oldest Brother in the city. To meet someone there and hear from him that he is happy to be given the chance to know her. But today, once again, the mailman does not make a stop.

Here I am on the island Jeju-do.

It is my first time writing away from home. As far as writing habits go, mine has always been to head home to write, even if I was out. Even if I had just set out on a trip, I would impulsively lament the fact that I was not home when I felt the urge to write. Head on home, I would think, as I rushed to pack up, pushed along by the sentences springing to the surface in an unfamiliar place. Was writing home to me? Wherever I might be at that instant, these sentences, surging up through my body, pushed me to hurry back home. When I was writing, I had to have the things around that my hands found comfortable and that my eyes were accustomed to—cotton swabs to keep my ears clean and my toothbrush on its stand by the bathroom sink. I had to have, by my side, smells that did not feel strange, and to have nearby the T-shirts and pants that I always wore. Fresh socks that I could change into any moment. All of my daily routines in their respective places, like my tongue inside my mouth, like my plastic washbowl under the tap.

Some sentences are like ambushing soldiers, jumping out from behind the bushes inside of me on an autumn day like this one, while I am walking down the street to keep an appointment. They conquer reality in an instant and fill me up with an excitement that seems to be wrapped in light. I am willingly captured by these soldiers mid-ambush
and turn my back on my appointment. I head home.

But this time I abandon my habits. I abandon home.

I abandon home and arrive here on this island, and think about home. About my childhood under the thatched roof, before the New Village Movement replaced straw with synthetic slates; my family in that house with the thatched roof; the springs and summers and falls and winters that circulated so vividly above that roof of straw.

I take a breath.

I, sixteen years old, am now down on my stomach on the yellow flooring of lacquered paper, writing a letter. Dear Brother, please hurry, come and take me from here. Halfway into the letter, I tear it to pieces. It is already June. Rice planting season out in the paddies. In the compost dump, barley straw is rotting. Sunlight lands on my neck, stinging hot. The rose moss growing by the gate already has its face sticking out, as if it were pouting. I am sick of sunlight and rose moss. I pull down the pitchfork from a wall inside the shed. At first I drag the pitchfork to the compost dump and poke at the barley straw. Sunlight pours down, stinging my forehead. My hands begin to move wildly. What has happened? I think I see the pitchfork flash in the sunlight, but then it strikes down all the way through to the sole of my foot, clumsily lifted from the ground and up into my foot. I am dumbfounded. I do not dare pull out the pitchfork stuck in the sole of my foot. My shocked sole does not even bleed. I collapse on the ground. I cannot quite register the pain and I am not crying, either. With the pitchfork stuck on my sole, I lay myself down on the barley straw. The blue sky pours down on my face. A while passes and Mom returns, shouting, “What happened?”

Mom.

Only when I feel Mom’s presence do the tears start streaming down. Only then I feel scared; only then I feel pain. Mom is in shock as she shouts, “Close your eyes, close them tight.” I close my eyes, close them tight. From my tightly shut eyes, tears stream down. Mom grabs hard at the pitchfork and shouts again. “Don’t open your eyes until I pull out the pitchfork.” My eyes open furtively and catch Mom’s eyes. She must find it all dreadful: her eyes also close as she holds on to the pitchfork by the tip of its handle. Without hesitating, Mom grabs the pitchfork with force and pulls it out of my foot. My nerves must have been so shocked that there is no blood even after the pitchfork is out.

“What a viciously dogged girl you are.” Mom throws the pitchfork aside and lifts me up. “Just lying there, with that thing in your foot! Not even shouting out for help!” Mom’s huge hand lands on my back with a sticky slap. Mom lays me down on the wooden floor of our veranda and places cow dung on the hole in my foot, wraps it with plastic. I lie on my stomach on the floor with cow dung on my sole and start writing my letter again. Dear Brother, hurry, please, come and take me away from here.