I wanted to say something to him, but I could not think of anything to say.
“I can’t sleep. I can’t do anything.” His voice grew so quiet that I could barely hear him. “I’ve been thinking about leaving school and joining the army.”
There was nothing I could do to make him feel better. Nothing other than go to him, take his hand, and swing it back and forth in the dark.
When I told my father I was going back to school, he handed me two bankbooks that my mother had left to me. One was for the money from my mother’s life insurance policy, and the other was the one my mother kept before she got sick. He told me to find a place of my own in the city. Both bankbooks had my name printed inside them. I opened the second bankbook: it listed the money my mother had saved up before she got sick. She had deposited a little bit every day, without fail. How did my father keep from spending it? I tried to give the life insurance money back to my father. But he insisted that she’d meant for me to have it. He said, “You’re a grown-up now, so you have to look after yourself.” While I was packing for the city, I put the bankbooks in the bottom of my bag. Several times on the train, I took them out and tried to count how much money she had deposited each day. I could picture her hands. Some days, it was ten thousand won, others thirty thousand, still others eighty thousand … Then one day, something must have happened, because she had deposited two hundred thousand all at one time. I withdrew some cash and rented an oktap bang, a converted studio—a shack, really—on a rooftop, in a hilly neighborhood near my cousin’s apartment. The first thing I unpacked was the soil from my mother’s grave, still clumped together like a ball of rice. Then I put on my tennis shoes and walked to the bookstore on Jongno Street to buy a copy of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and an atlas with detailed maps of the city. On the way back, I stopped at a florist and bought a flowerpot. I put the soil from my mother’s grave in the flowerpot and opened the atlas. Having returned after a year to this city, I decided it was time I got to know it. In order to do that, I would explore every corner of it on foot.
Haven’t been to school in days. Registered for classes, but the only one I feel like going to is Professor Yoon’s. The school is still a riot zone. I got there half an hour early so I could stop by the bookstore. I hadn’t been by in a long time. The guy who works there looked happy to see me. He said really loudly, “Still single, huh?”
Does it show that I don’t have a girlfriend? I asked how he could tell whether I was seeing someone or not.
“It’s written all over your face!” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I can tell just by looking at you that it’s been a long time since your last kiss.”
He slapped me on the shoulder. I looked through the piles of textbooks, magazines, and new books, but all I wound up buying was this small brown leather-bound journal that I am now writing in. I like the color and how it feels in my hand. I’m going to use it to write down my thoughts and things that happen. Figure it’ll go missing eventually. I’ve left my bag on the subway before. Another time, I slipped my sneakers off at a bar and forgot them there under the table. I lost all of the journals that I filled with chicken scratch in high school. It’s like all of the thoughts and feelings that I had scribbled down were lost along with the journals that held them. But I pulled myself together and decided to start writing again. I wanted to give my journal a title to commemorate the event. I thought about calling it “Sae Notes.” Sae means “new,” but it can also mean “between,” as well as “bird.” A bird flying freely through the heavens … But if I do that, should I call it “Sae Notes” or “Notes of Sae”? That sounds strange. “Wind Notes”? “Spring Notes”? “Proof of Existence”? I spent a couple of hours pondering different names but finally settled on “Brown Notebook.” Because the cover is brown. Boring, I know. Why am I even writing this? I have no idea. Not a clue. I just hope that compared with my previous diaries, whatever I write here will be proof of my maturity and growth.
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I took a photography class in high school. I found a book one day by Roland Barthes in which he wrote, “Writing develops like a seed.” It was like coming across a window. Later, I found out that Barthes had also written about photography. I read Camera Lucida, which made me want to start taking photos. My father owned a camera, but I had never seen him use it. He would take it out once in a while and stroke it and talk about how if my grandfather hadn’t left the bathhouse to him, he would have become a photographer and traveled around the world. I wanted to try my father’s camera out for myself. But when I joined the class, there was nothing for me to learn. No one there had ever heard of studium or punctum, which I’d picked up from reading Barthes. They’d never even heard the name Barthes before. I got sick of the club. One day, the teacher was explaining how to take portraits. I was restless and couldn’t take another minute of it. I tried to slip out of the classroom unseen, but the teacher yelled my name and stopped me in my tracks.
“Yi Myungsuh! Where do you think you’re going?”
I told him I had to go to the doctor.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I wasn’t really sick, and I didn’t really have to go. I just wanted to get out of there.
“I said, what’s wrong with you?” the teacher yelled again.
I didn’t know what to say. I hesitated and then blurted out, “My heart is broken.”
Even I was shocked by how immature I sounded. I thought, now I’ll be a total laughingstock. He’ll make me run around the track ten, maybe twenty, times. The photography teacher also taught science. Whenever students disobeyed him in class, he would make them do an army crawl, or cane them, or make them run around the track when the sun was at its hottest until they dropped from exhaustion. I resigned myself to being punished, but the teacher’s reaction caught me by surprise.
“Your heart is broken?” He gazed at me abstractedly through his glasses. “Better hurry then. And don’t be late for next period.”
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I left the campus and climbed the hill behind the school. There, I lay on top of a grave that seemed to have no owner and gazed up at a fluffy white cloud floating in the sky like an island before eventually heading back to photography class. After that day, I never missed a single session. I even became more interested in science, which I had never done well in before. If I had not gone up to the grave on the hill behind the school and watched that cloud drifting in the sky, I probably would have given the camera back to my father.
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Massive demonstration today. This morning, I went to throw the newspaper out, but a picture of some dogs caught my eye and I opened it back up again. It was a story about two abandoned dogs. One of the dogs was blind. Everywhere they went, the dog with good eyesight stayed right next to the blind dog to protect it. When they crossed the street or stopped for a drink of water, the seeing dog stood watch while the blind dog went first. The article said the dogs had even been seen resting their heads together or on each other’s bellies when they were tired. Whenever the blind dog stopped walking, the seeing dog would stop as well.
Was it training, or instinct?
They say that a dog will not voluntarily guide another dog that cannot see, and yet such a dog exists. What does it mean? Stormy days continue. I feel as though I’ve been cast out at school and on the streets with a blindfold over my eyes. I stared long and hard at the photo of the two dogs.
—Brown Notebook 1
CHAPTER 2
Water Crosser
Two hours before class, I put on my sneakers and left my room. I was going to walk to school instead of taking the bus. On my way out, I paused to look at the dirt from my mother’s grave that I had put in the flowerpot and thought about what kind of flower to plant in it. Though I had checked the route on the map before leaving, it was a winding and unfamiliar path. The road dead-ended, forcing me to backtrack and take a pedestrian overpass instead. At the top of the overpass, I paused to lean over the railing a
nd look around. Everything looked different from above. I could see the roofs and tops of things and the small alleyways branching off the main street. There were windows and cars and trashcans, rooftops and streetlights, a bathhouse chimney, and far off in the distance, the tops of people’s heads as they came and went.
Viewing the world from a different angle made it all look strange and dynamic, as if seeing it for the first time—the sycamores and ginkgo trees planted along the road, the small, shy-looking flowerbeds, the hand-painted theater billboards. From the overpass, and especially through the thick tangle of power lines, the sky looked vast and endless. I had always looked up at the overpass but never looked down from on top of it. The tops of the cars looked flat and harmless, and the trees were so thick and lush that their branches grazed the windows of the buildings. As I kept going, I came across a large traffic tunnel. I peered inside and debated whether to just walk through. But I couldn’t tell how far the tunnel went, and there were no signs indicating that it was open to pedestrians. I strained my eyes to try to see where the deep, dark tunnel ended, but then changed my mind and walked back to a bus stop instead. There, I caught a bus the rest of the way to the university.
School was the same as when I had left.
The drama majors were still posing as if they were waiting for Godot, the photography students ran around lugging heavy camera bags, and the students from the classical Korean music department crowded into the small theater with their stringed gayageums, eyebrows penciled in, hair pulled into chignons, and faces drawn into prim expressions. I thought about how I used to peek through the front gate—the campus itself always exuding the excitement of a performance about to begin—and debate whether or not to enter. But instead of making me hesitate, those memories emboldened me, and I strode lightly into the school. I barely recognized anyone. The few boys in my department whom I would have recognized must have been off completing their military service, and even the girls I had gone to class with had permed their hair since then, or started wearing makeup and piling on the accessories, or had work done on their eyes. On my way to the lecture hall, I looked for things that had not changed: the library, the campus bookstore, the school post office, the wooden benches in front of the lotus pond where I used to sit. I let out a sigh of relief at the sight of them. The smell of tear gas in the air was also unchanged.
My first class was Professor Yoon’s.
As luck would have it, it was in the same room as before. I went in and sat in the back, where everyone was clustered. Though I had promised myself I would not sit alone, it felt uncomfortable to be staring at the back of a boy’s head just inches away from me, so I moved to a seat near the window. In the very last row, a boy and girl were sitting side by side as if they were a couple. Was he a reentry student? He looked older than the rest of us. I didn’t know him, but he looked strangely familiar. He was so tall that he seemed to be scrunched into the desk, and his eyes never seemed to leave the face of the girl next to him as they talked. Suddenly he turned to look at me. I pretended to rub my face and turned back around. But something made me turn to look at them again. Something about the girl kept tugging at me. I leaned over to try to get a peek at her face, but even with my cheek practically grazing the desk, I still could not get a good look. Her long black hair spilled forward and hid her face from view. I had no idea what he was saying to her, but she lowered her face each time he spoke.
“Yi Myungsuh.”
“Here.”
It was only when Professor Yoon started calling attendance that I found out his name was Myungsuh.
The past merged with the present.
Professor Yoon was as thin as ever, as unchanged as the stone steps in front of the library. Even his eyes, deep and keen, which had grimaced in pain when he stood in the window and looked down at the rioting students, were the same as before. Whenever I was alone, my memories from a year ago were hazy and indistinct; now that I was back in the same classroom, the old me was as sharp and clear as if she were sitting right in front of me. Professor Yoon called each name in turn. When he got to Myungsuh’s name, he looked up from the attendance sheet.
“Shouldn’t you have graduated by now?” he asked, and smiled at Myungsuh from over his glasses.
Myungsuh scratched his head and smiled. It was a bashful smile, but it spread from ear to ear. You couldn’t help but smile, too, when you saw it. Nevertheless, the girl beside him kept her head down. I wanted to know her name. I listened carefully as Professor Yoon read the rest of the attendance sheet. Had I missed it? He finished calling roll, but he had not called her name. When he put the sheet away, I looked back at the two of them again.
Yi Myungsuh. I wrote his name down. When was the last time I’d written someone’s name in my notebook? I kept casually glancing back at them during class. Each time, I noticed something different—his wavy hair, his strong profile, the way he twirled his pencil—but I didn’t learn anything about her. She sat in the same position the whole time and did not lift her head. All I could see was a glimpse of her nose from behind the long veil of hair. I felt intensely curious about her name, her eyes. There was something about her that made me want to find out more. Professor Yoon must have felt it, too, because his gaze kept drifting over to her during his lecture.
Since it was the first day of the semester, we expected the class to just be a general overview of the syllabus. Professor Yoon told us which texts were required and which were recommended reading, and then he listed off the things we had to keep in mind while attending his class, most of which amounted to threats, such as if we were more than ten minutes late we should not even think of entering the classroom, or if we failed to turn in three or more assignments in a row then we would get an automatic F. Several other professors had already given the same speech, so everyone’s eyes were starting to glaze over with boredom. Some students even assumed class was almost over and were already packing up their pens and notebook.
Professor Yoon adjusted his glasses and gazed out the window. The shouting of student demonstrators outside burst into the room. Nothing had changed since last year. Professor Yoon glanced around the room.
“Have any of you heard about a man named Christopher?”
Christopher?
The name Christopher reminded me of a book I’d read in high school called Jean-Christophe, by Romain Rolland. It was a ten-volume fictionalized account of the life of Beethoven. It was the only book I had ever seen my cousin read, so I read it, too. I was deeply impressed by the main character, who becomes ever more positive in the face of increasing despair. Regardless of what happens, he never gives up on his quest for self-perfection. Filled with a sense of awe and admiration for the main character, I read every volume in a thrall of emotions and held those yellow books printed with his name close to my heart. I even wanted to see the Rhine one day because the title character was born in a small town on the banks of that river. I wondered if Professor Yoon was referring to the same person, but I was not confident enough to raise my hand and say that I had heard about him. I sat up straight and fixed my eyes on Professor Yoon. The walls of the classroom seemed to drop away and leave us all, professor and students alike, standing in the middle of an open field with the wind blowing over us. Nobody said a word, so Professor Yoon continued.
“Christopher is the name of a medieval European saint. Some of you must be churchgoers. Has no one heard of him?”
One student hesitantly raised her hand. She stammered, “I don’t know, but …”
“Then tell us what you do know,” Professor Yoon quipped.
Everyone giggled. The girl stood up and said that she had heard the story from her Sunday school teacher when she was young and therefore did not remember it clearly, but was he talking about the man who was saved because he carried Jesus across a river? It was more of a question than an answer. Professor Yoon nodded. When the girl sat back down, Professor Yoon cleared his throat, glanced around the classroom, and said in a low voice that there
was indeed such a legend. The students who thought class was almost over and had begun clearing their desks stared at Professor Yoon. He gripped the podium and began his lecture.
“This is the story of Saint Christopher.
“According to legend, Christopher was a Canaanite. A giant, some say. A man of great strength who was afraid of nothing. He made up his mind to serve only the greatest, strongest man in the world. But no matter where he looked, he could find none worth devoting his life to. Everyone disappointed him. He grew weary of ever finding someone worth serving and became despondent. But here, I’ll spare you the boring details and get straight to the most important part. Christopher built a house for himself on the banks of a river and made a living carrying travelers across the water. He was very strong. He owned only a single pole, but he used it to pick his way through even the roughest current and carry people safely to the other side. It was just a pastime to him. He was a boatman with no boat, a man who ferried people with his body.”
The world seemed to have come to a stop. In a classroom filled with thirty, maybe forty, students, no one so much as cleared their throat.
“One night, Christopher was fast asleep when he heard a faint voice calling his name. Wondering whom it could be at that time of night, he opened the door. But there was no one there. Only darkness. He closed the door and went back to bed, but the voice returned. Christopher! He opened the door again, but just as before, there was only darkness. The third time he heard the voice, it sounded like it was right beside him. He looked all around but saw no one. Thinking this odd, Christopher took up his pole and headed down to the river. There in the darkness beside the river was a small child. The child told him he had to get to the other side before the night ended, and he asked Christopher to carry him across. The child was so young and his plea so earnest that Christopher agreed to help, despite the late hour. He put the child on his shoulders and entered the river. But the moment he stepped into the river, the water began to rise. In an instant, it nearly reached over the tall Christopher’s head. And that was not all. The child, so light at first, grew heavier the higher the waters rose. The weight, like a massive piece of iron, so unbelievable for such a small child, pressed down on Christopher’s shoulders. The waters rose inch by inch, and the child pressed down on him with its enormous weight. The once overly confident Christopher began to tremble with fear for the first time at the thought that he might drown. Barely able to keep his balance with the pole, Christopher plowed his way through the water with the child on his shoulders and just made it to the other side. As he set the child down, he said, ‘I thought I was going to die because of you. Though you are so small, you were so heavy that it felt as if I was carrying the weight of the world. I have carried many across this river, but I have never carried one so heavy as you.’ At that moment, the child vanished and Jesus appeared before him, surrounded by a dazzling light. He said, ‘Christopher! What you just carried was no child. It was I, Christ. When you crossed that river, you were carrying the world on your shoulders.’ ”