A VILLAGE BY A RIVER

                                                                                                                                                Footfalls echo in the memory
                                                                                                                                                Down the passage which we did not take
                                                                                                                                                Towards the door we never opened
                                                                                                                                                Into the rose-garden.
                                                                                                                                                                 —T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"

Through empty countryside the train rolls, a long silver snake coming down from the north, from Seoul. But for one I am alone in the train car, and to me this somehow seems fitting. A book is open in my hands, a book of poetry, but I glance at it only occasionally. For the present my attention is taken by the passing scenery.

Though all has proceeded as planned, I cannot get myself to feel comfortable. My stomach is angry with hunger and my limbs tense. An American with no ties of family or friendship here, no expected welcome at the end, I wonder why I am putting myself through all this.

The day is February 25, 1998, and I am traveling to Janghang, a small city in the province of Choongnam in South Korea. I am going there to visit someone. I know only her name and have a rough guess at her age—about sixty years old. I do not even know what her house looks like or what its address is. But I have already come far, many hours out of my way from Seoul, to meet her.

I cannot turn back now. Whatever may happen—embarrassment, shame, disappointment or satisfaction—is rolling as inexorably toward me as this train towards its final station. I have chosen a fate of some kind and now it is choosing for me.

Outside the windows of the train car I see mostly rice paddies, low mountains green with pines, and small hamlets. The houses are for the most part cement boxes built in the so-called "western style," but sometimes I can see the rustic and elegant tile roof houses, too. They are the slowly disappearing icons of the past, and in my heart they stir certain indescribable feelings of nostalgia. Why this should be I do not know, having never lived in one, but I have always felt this way.

For my journey I am wearing a plaid green and brown shirt my mother sent me last Christmas, my bluest blue jeans, and black dress shoes—more scuffed than I would really like, but still dignified looking. A large black backpack filled with clothes and books sits on the seat next to me. Ordinarily I wouldn’t care so much what kind of impression I made, but today is different.

Nose almost to the glass, I see myself briefly in the window, perhaps the result of a chance moment of shadow cast across the train by a wandering cloud. The phantasm of myself sitting in the train is somehow disquieting. I wonder how it all has come to this, to this longing that never leaves.

It was not like this when I first arrived in Asia. I was young then, idealistic, like a fruit coming into its sweetest taste. But I did not know about the possibility of falling from the limb. For me the world then was something to experiment with, a switch to throw. The responsibilities of adult life, of money and career and commitment, were still things I didn’t think about. I liked being a stranger then, a gaijin, the fingers pointing. It didn’t bother me, and to anyone who asked why I was there I always said I was searching for truth, and people excused me because of my age. One traveler even remarked that I had chosen a novel way to escape my mother. I brushed off such criticisms as simply misunderstandings.

A muffled voice on the intercom informs me that the train will be arriving somewhere soon. My ability in Korean is not more than elementary and train intercoms are never too clear. I can’t tell if my destination is near, or if this is just another stop.

I look around and see that I am now the only passenger in the car. I lift my feet, stretch them across to the seat opposite. I figure I may as well try to be comfortable.

My attention wanders back to the book, a thin, blue hardback, not tall, almost pocket-sized. Its title is Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, by Pablo Neruda. The cover is decorated by a childish-looking watercolor of a nude woman, blue-skinned, wielding the crescent moon like a sword ready for self-impaling. Carelessly, I turn the pages, read:

                                            As all things are filled with my soul
                                            you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
                                            You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
                                            and you are like the word Melancholy.

The book was a gift from my best friend, Carl, at a time when I thought love poems beneath me. On the frontispiece, in his tall, snaky hand, are scrawled the words Something to think about while meditating. Love Carl. I have always believed he was laughing when he wrote that.

To say that I do not like how things have turned out would be the most sublime of understatements. Yet there is a certain, twisted rightness to it all, too, I think. The Buddha’s statement "Life is suffering," was not, I have always believed, meant to deny the reality of joy, but to remind us that even the happiest and longest lived must grow old and sick and die. And then what?

I know my life could easily have been very different. A misdirected letter, a phone call getting though, a welcoming host, a little more money—had any of these materialized at the right time, I would not be sitting here now, wondering about it all, thinking that nothing really ever changes under the sun.

So where would I be?

This is another question altogether. From certain nodes in time infinite pathways branch out and we can choose only one, but others exist and I have wondered about them enough to fill volumes with my stories, to make me mad with longing. Yes, I am sad when I consider what I have done and what has happened as a result. Who would not be? Because of my own past actions, I am sitting now, pensive and alone, in an empty train car journeying to someone’s home, uninvited.

A glance up from the pages reveals my image once more in the window. For a moment my face is a ghost, floating in the air outside the train car, staring back at me. I blink and it is gone. Light and shadow have rearranged themselves and the world with them, and I realize the train is no longer in the countryside—a small city is spread out just beyond the tracks: Janghang.

Again the voice warbles over the intercom. But this time I am more attentive and hear the words distinctly. We are now arriving at Janghang Station, they say.

Good, I think, let’s get on with it.

Half a minute later and the train begins slowing, finally coming to a stop. The last stop.

I close my book, hoist my pack. I amble to the end of the train car and open the door, stepping into the tight compartment between the cars. I can see the station through the windows of the door. A final announcement is broadcast over the intercom: Janghang Station. Janghang Station. I slide open the door, step down to the metal footrest, then hop to the pavement.

I have arrived.

It is a station like any other for a medium-sized Korean city. People bustle in and out, coming and going. I walk along the train towards its front. I see others passing through a gate there and join them, heading through the gate into a small building.

Departures and arrivals are marked on an electric board above the ticket counter. I glance around, searching for a bite to eat. There is nothing but the usual junk—chocolate cakes, Korean soft drinks, and hard-boiled eggs. None of it tempts me, so I turn toward the front entrance and exit the building.

White and yellow taxis fill the parking lot. I’ll need one soon enough, but think first of my empty stomach. My eyes survey the little shops across the road and I start for the first restaurant they see.

Korean diners often paste the names of menu items on their windows and this diner’s selection does not satisfy me. I pass several others and finally settle on a noodle shop at an intersection almost immediately across from the station parking lot.

I duck into the shop. The proprietress, working alone, greets me.

What would you like? she asks.

Kkuksu, I say, asking for a common noodle dish.

I settle on the floor, in front of a low table. I open my backpack and take out the book of poetry, my fingers turning to my favorite poem in the collection.

My attention wanders back and forth between the pages of the book and the proprietress. It is not her appearance that attracts me, but the accent of her Korean.

She soon brings my bowl of noodles. As I eat, I watch her out of the tops of my eyes. I want to hear her speak again, in that accent so familiar to me.

South Korea is a tiny country, smaller than Virginia, but with a number of distinct regional accents and dialects. Some, such as those from the Julla provinces and the island province of Jejoo, can be difficult for the others to understand. The speech of the south, such as that of the port city of Pusan, is hard and rough. Foreigners overhearing Pusaners speak often think they are arguing. Perhaps they are simply discussing the weather.

But the speech of the north, such as that of Choongnam Province in which Janghang is located, is sweet and sonorous, like a mountain stream that’s satisfied in its course. Several years ago, when I first began hearing it, I always had the feeling of taking part in a seduction, though which part I never could tell.

Because of these fashions of speech and how they inflect the heart, there is a saying in Korea: Nam nam, buk nyuh—"Southern man, northern woman." I understand the saying well enough, but some time ago I modified it more to my liking: Suh nam, dong yuh—"Western man, eastern woman."

Finally I say something to the proprietress. I ask, How far is it from here to Shinpo-ree?

Maybe ten minutes by taxi, she says.

Have you gone there before?

No, she says, and asks me if I know someone there.

And now I know the other reason I wanted to talk with her: that is the question I wanted her to ask me.

Yes, I tell her, a girl, long time ago.

I feel shy—perhaps I have already given away too much. Her eyes seem to comprehend more than my words say. And I would like so much to tell her more. To tell her how beautiful her dialect is, how much I love the women of this country. I wonder, if she asked me to, would I put my heart out on the table for her to pick up and clear away, like so many dishes and spoons? I know it would be embarrassing—I would feel a fool—but I would do it.

She goes about her work. She is pretty in her own way, I see. A taxi driver I once met in Pusan told me the most beautiful women in Korea come from Pyoungyang in the North, and from the area around Daejun, a large city nestled against Choongnam Province. I would not argue with him on this point.

The story I want to tell this woman is one I have thought about so much its pain has become a permanent part of me, like a tenant a landlord is unable to evict. The tenant is a beautiful woman. She cannot pay, she cannot go. The landlord falls in love with her. Every month her arrears are a hole in his pocket. He feels no peace with her there, but he does not want her to go either. A memory can be the same.

In Korean such memories are called han. The word means "longing," or "great regret." It is a strong wish to return to what once was but can never be again and this is a typically Korean sentiment. Perhaps it is this affinity of emotion that has drawn me back time and again to this little country, that draws out of me the sense of a lost home when I journey through its countryside.

I finish my noodles in silence, then pay for the meal and ask her if I can use the toilet. It’s around back, she says.

I gather my belongings and go. Behind the shop I find the toilet, open to a little alleyway. I brush my teeth, checking them in a small dirty mirror. I arrange my hair, adjust the collar of my shirt. I blow my nose. I leave feeling like I’m going for a job interview. If that were so, it would be for a job I knew was already taken.

I must get a gift, I think. It would be terrible if I forgot that. In Korea whenever you go to a person’s house for the first time, you should always bring a gift—juice, fruit, cake or bread are the most common things given. I have forgotten this custom often enough to insure I don’t forget it again.

Around the corner from the noodle shop is a small grocery story, what Koreans call a "super." There is nothing super about it. It is a dim cell cluttered to the ceiling with home essentials and junk food—mostly junk food. A dark-skinned boy in his early teens with a bowl cut is sitting guard by the counter. He stands up and looks at me blankly as I enter. Probably his mother or father is out for lunch or on some errand.

My eyes quickly search the stacks of wares. Korea is littered by countless thousands of these small convenience stores, all seemingly cut from the same mold like so many cookies. There is almost never any mystery about what one will find. On such occasions as this I usually purchase fruit juice, but when I spot a carton of canned ginseng drinks in a corner, I know what I will buy.

I pay for the carton with some ten thousand won bills and the boy has to run out of the shop to get change. When he comes back and hands me the money I leave, feeling good about how things are proceeding.

Still, I feel anxious, but my anxiety is now made more bearable by a rising sense of expectation. I want to get this whole affair over with, to be able to look back at it like something shrinking away in a rear view mirror. Somehow I know going through with it is right, a natural effect of previous causes, and I feel a satisfaction akin to scratching an itch.

I need a taxi and I look cross the road to the lot in front of the train station. When I arrived an hour ago it was filled with taxis, all impatiently waiting. Now it is empty except for the sunlight. I walk toward the lot, my pack snugly fitted on my back, the carton of ginseng drinks in my hand.

The day is getting warmer and I am perspiring lightly. The sky is bright and empty. Spring will come early this year, I think.

A yellow cab pulls up from behind me and I wave to the driver. He stops. I open the back right door and slide in, setting the carton on my lap. I have a history of forgetting things and I would not trust myself to place it on the floor of the car.

The driver, a young, clean looking man, glances at me in the mirror.

I want to go to Shinpo-ree, I say.

But it seems there is some problem. He looks uncertain. He asks me, Which Shinpo-ree? Masuh-myun Shinpo-ree?

He is asking for the ward.

Yes, I say, and I tell him the county, ward and village. Suchun-goon, Masuh-myun, Shinpo-ree.

He smiles and nods his head vigorously to show his understanding. I will take you there, he assures me.

And so it is done. The car starts forward and I feel the dust and grit whip back under the wheels. I gaze out the window, my memories tagging along with me from the noodle shop. We travel up a road in parallel with the tracks I came in on and I am filled with nostalgia as the empty countryside slides by. It seems a lonely land, lonely like a lost child.

The taxi soon makes a right off the main road. The land we are entering is rice-growing land. The road runs past paddies, then around a series of low hills. I see houses up ahead.

Is that Shinpo-ree? I ask my driver.

He shakes his right hand. No, he says. He points beyond a group of low green hills in the distance and tells me Shinpo-ree is on the other side of those.

I settle back in the seat. Absentmindedly I check for the umpteenth time the inside breast pocket of my jacket. A thin brown envelope is there with three words in Korean letters written on it: "Lee Sung-hee." It contains a personal letter in English, and it is for the delivery of this letter that I have come all this way.

Deeper inside my pocket lies a second note, unwrapped and unmarked, written in my childish-looking Korean script. I do not fancy myself as anything but poor at delivering impromptu speeches in languages other than my own, so I have written on this the gist of why I have come. It is an explanation, a request, and a confession of sorts.

From this point on I try to be as observant as possible. This place is special for me. She has traveled this road all her life when returning home. This is her land, insignificant in the greater scheme of things, but her beginning place nonetheless. I wonder if perhaps when she was young she walked to school with the children who lived in the tile-roof houses I now look upon.

Our vehicle passes through and around the green hills.

We soon come to a straightaway, and drive quickly down this. In the distance I can see a church steeple rearing up over the surrounding houses and for a moment I reflect with disappointment upon the displacement of the native Buddhist and shamanist cultures. Something has been lost, I think, and most people are not aware of it, not even the Koreans.

My driver is now shaking an excited finger in the direction of the approaching church. There! he says. There is Shinpo-ree.

I sit forward on the edge of the back seat, situating my face just to the right of his headrest. I am uncertain as to what exactly I should tell him at this point. I do not know how big Shinpo-ree is, or where in the village the dwelling I seek.

Our vehicle slows to a halt just outside the gate of the church on our left. His finger points at the building. Shinpo-ree Church, he says.

I wave my hands at the empty fields on our right and at the church and adjacent buildings. Is this all Shinpo-ree? I ask.

He says something I don’t catch but is nodding his head, so I assume it is.

I try to ask him if there is more to the village, but I doubt if my Korean is clear. There is a road that turns to the left just after the church and I point at it.

The vehicle suddenly lurches forward and rounds the turn. Apparently he thought I wanted him to go that way.

He is driving unhurriedly. He keeps talking but I cannot understand much of what he says and, besides, I am hardly listening. I swing my head from side to side, gazing at the scene as it goes by. On the left is a line of hills parallel to the road. Old tile houses, many in various stages of decay, sit at their feet. On the right a narrow lane leaves the road and cuts across paddies to follow another line of hills perpendicular to our route. We pass it and climb up the low ridge of the hills.

At the top of the ridge the taxi stops again. The driver is asking me if I want to get off here.

I tell him, I don’t know where exactly to get off.

What are you looking for?

A person, I say.

Who? he asks.

Don’t worry, I say, and wave him on.

From the top of the ridge I had glimpsed a river and now we are approaching it. It is not wide—a mere ten yards or so—and is spanned by a new looking bridge of white concrete. The taxi slows to a creep and crosses the bridge. We stop at the far side.

I remember once in a class when the students described their hometowns, Sung-hee mentioned a bridge having been built over the river next to her village. I assume this is the one she meant.

I tell the driver I will get out here.

I start handing him the money I owe but suddenly wonder how I will get back to Janghang. I give him the rest of the money, then ask him how I can do this.

You will have to call another taxi, he says. He pauses, then offers to wait for me.

That is out of the question, so I thank him and step out of the car. I will have to figure it out later.

I reach back into the vehicle and drag out my backpack. I place it on the pavement. I put my hand on the door to push it shut, then remember the case of ginseng drinks.

How typical, I think. I almost forgot it.

I lug it out and set it down next to the pack.

With a wave to the driver I shut the door. He crosses the bridge and turns around, nodding cheerfully to me as he drives by, taking the road back to Janghang. For a minute I stand on the bridge, surveying the surrounding landscape, feeling like an archaeologist whose spade has just cleared the last bit of debris from the portal of an ancient tomb.

There is no traffic on the road in either direction. From where I stand on the bridge, I cannot see anyone about. Except for the almost indiscernible murmur of the river, the world is silent. What a god-forsaken place to be born in, I think.

Finally I decide to move on, and hoist my pack onto my shoulders. I adjust the straps. I lift the case of ginseng drinks in my hand. I am ready to start forward down the road on which the taxi came when an idea occurs to me.

Turning around, a few strides carry me to the end of the bridge. I search its end for a plaque. Koreans habitually date bridges, as well as school buildings and sewer caps, and I am curious as to when the bridge was built. There it is: June 1995—one month before Sung-hee’s wedding. So this can’t be the bridge she mentioned in class on that occasion. But to the left I see another bridge—a crumbling, gray structure that crouches low over the water like a wounded animal. It appears almost too narrow for even a single car and I can see it is in an advanced stage of decay.

The relic perks my curiosity. I decide there is no need to rush. It is still early afternoon, only a little after one, and I want to explore everything thoroughly. Having come this far I may as well enjoy myself as best I can.

I amble over to the far side of the river. Several temporary, metal-roofed structures huddle by the bank. Apparently there is some kind of construction in progress.

Exactly what is being built I cannot tell. Some men are sitting in front of one of the structures, smoking cigarettes. I ask them a question that has been jogging at my mind since I arrived.

On which side of the river is the original Shinpo-ree? I say.

They indicate the side we’re on, the side from which I came in the taxi.

Good, I think. I decide I will explore first—wander around until I’m tired of it, then start asking people about the house I am searching for.

I have to step and hop warily across a muddy flat crisscrossed by planks to get to the bank of the river. By the water’s edge is a tree and I stand next to this. It looks old, its trunk twisted and knobby, and it hangs out over the water in a way that makes me think the local children must once have used it with a rope as a sort of swing.

For the first time I examine the water. It is slow moving, the color of earth. Oil slicks are gathered at its edges. Looking at it I feel sad. Sung-hee once said that when she was a child she often swam in it. It is probably loaded with heavy metals and pesticides now. Nobody would want to swim in it.

The old bridge is close by. I walk over to it and gaze down its length and a long ago scene from childhood comes to mind. I once gazed down the length of an old trestle bridge, broken and ragged like the teeth of a skid-row bum. I was ten years old then and accompanied by my two best friends, one of whom, Dougy, was three years older than the other two of us. Dougy said he’d beat the hell out of the first one who tried to cross it. I feel the same sense of fascination and foreboding now as I did then. I step onto the bridge but hesitate to go further. It doesn’t look safe. I think a good flood would be its end.

I decide I’m being too cautious and walk slowly out to the middle. The far end is littered with holes. Though the bridge is concrete, falling through seems a real possibility.

I don’t go any further. Bending over, I pick up a chunk of cement. I finger it for a moment, then chip it into the river. It makes a little plunk sound as it strikes the water and vanishes from view.

I turn around and return to the river’s edge, crossing the mud flat to where the men are smoking. I walk by them without saying anything. They are talking about me.

On the road I walk away from the bridge, toward the hills. The rice paddies on my left are brown. The old houses to the right have seen better days. Some have tile roofs, built in the style of traditional Korean dwellings, with courtyards and gates. Other, newer dwellings are roofed with corrugated metal. I wonder what this place was like when Sung-hee was a child.

Another road branches off to the left just before the low hills. It seems to follow after the river, which runs parallel to the hills. I stop and gaze down it. This place is not beautiful, I realize. I think "quaint" would rightly describe it. But maybe it was beautiful before the government-led New Village movement of the Seventies and Eighties that sought to abolish the thatch-roofed house from the Korean landscape. Thatched roofs were portrayed as an unacceptable shame for a modern, developed country, and there are few left in Korea today.

Looking at the houses I wonder if one of them is that of Sung-hee’s mother. I will find out soon enough. I can see burial mounds up in the hills, plots where family members go to bow and make offerings of rice and rice wine and side dishes to their ancestors on memorial days.

I glance up at the sky. The weather could not be better. It is clear and warm as a spring day. But while the land is sunlit, I feel a heaviness, a darkness that was not in me when I was in Seoul. I cannot tell if this sense has been imparted to me by the village or is something I am carrying inside me. The habitations and fields seem asleep, abandoned, and that may be a part of it.

The loneliness encourages reflection, and I see a woman I once knew as a young child, skipping about these lanes in bare brown feet. She did not know me then. She did not know about America or English. There is a weight of undiscovered memory here, things about which I would have learned if I had taken her as my bride because I would have asked her and she would have told me. Now I can only ask the wind and the stones and if they answer me it is in a language I cannot comprehend.

I decide I have had enough. I could dream forever in this place, dream and never touch my own life again. I have to get on with it.

But I have seen no one except the laborers. I do not feel inclined to return to them and I doubt if they could answer my question.

I walk on.

Near the top of the ridge there is a tiny convenience store. It is even less well endowed than a commonplace super. I can find no one in attendance. Then I spot a dark young man wearing a blue T-shirt walking up the hill towards me, going in the direction from which I just came. His clothing is soiled and I wonder if he is one of the laborers. If so, I am not expecting much.

I ask him if he knows Pak Soon-jum.

He offers me that comic look I know well. Koreans as a rule are helpful to strangers, but the men especially often become embarrassed if they are unable to render the aid requested. I can see he desires to help but doesn’t want to disappoint me by telling me he hasn’t a clue. He scratches his head, looking down the road in both directions. He stalls by asking Mrs. Han’s age.

About sixty, I say.

At that moment we hear the farting sound of a moped in the distance, traveling up the road from Janghang. The man looks relieved. We wait together as the moped approaches. It is driven by a spry looking old woman with steel gray hair. Here, I think, is someone who will be able to tell me what I need to know.

We motion for her to stop and she brings her bike to a halt a few feet from us. Before I can say anything my companion asks her the whereabouts of Pak Soon-jum. She too asks how old this person for whom we’re searching is. Smiling to myself, I wonder if it’s some kind of local ID.

I tell her.

Without hesitation she points back over her shoulder, to the right. Over there, she says.

I feel an immediate thrill of success. With no information but a name I have traveled across the country and found my quarry.

I ask her, Please show me.

She indicates that I should ride with her. I hesitate for an instant and then obey, straddling the carry rack and placing the case of ginseng drinks in front of me. I thank the young man, and with a blast of mechanical farting we lurch forward and ride down the hill.

We follow the road around a bend to the left and then she slows, pointing left across the rice paddy. She is indicating a group of houses off the lane I first passed when I was in the taxi. I assume my destination is one of these houses. I feel a quickening of anticipation. What I have only imagined will soon become real.

We arrive where the road branches off. I ask the woman to stop. She does and I hop off the moped with the drinks in hand.

In which house does Pak Soon-jum live? I ask. I am careful to pronounce the name clearly so there will be no misunderstanding.

The old woman jabs a finger toward the left, her arm almost perpendicular to the road. The one with the blue roof, she says.

I immediately see which one she is indicating. A small, single story house with blue tiles sits at the end of a lane about two hundred yards distant.

I confirm it with her.

Then I ask her if she knows Mrs. Pak well and she says yes.

Do you think she’s home now?

She seems uncertain but says, Probably.

Then she asks me what I had hoped she would not.

She says, Why do you want to see her?

I know her, is all I can manage. Inside, I flinch slightly because I’ve told a lie, but any kind of explanation near the mark would be inappropriate.

For an awkward moment we regard each other. Thank you, I say, wanting her to go away. She nods and revs the machine, then flies off.

I do not watch her but turn and look again at the blue tile roofed house. It occurs to me that the woman may have heard some story about me from Sung-hee’s mother.

I go slowly. On both sides of me are rice paddies. Those on the right extend far into the distance. I hear a popping sound some ways behind me. I turn and see fields a long way off, burning. A thin column of gray smoke is drifting into the sky. I wonder if these are the fields Sung-hee’s father worked when he was alive.

My thoughts are filled with the girl whose life is traced back to this one insignificant corner of the world. It is so different from the Washington suburban landscape in which I grew up. I remember Sung-hee one said there was nothing of any account here, and I can see what she meant. Good, I think, that will save it from the tourists.

I wonder when the last time was a white man walked these roads. It is something of a trivia question but I have always had a knack at concocting such questions. I wish I had a way to answer myself. I flatter myself by speculating that I am perhaps the first since the War.

The road divides at a t-intersection. From here it is just gravel paths. I follow the left one. It leads past a house with a tiny carport attached to it. On the right the road is bordered by a thin copse of pines.

I am walking slowly but after I pass the house with the carport Mrs. Han’s dwelling comes back into view, and my feet begin to resist the forward movement. They slow and then, almost of their own will, come to a halt. The blue-roofed house is just up ahead. I could fling a stone from here into its yard. But I suddenly lack the will to keep going, to walk up to the yard and to the door, and then to knock.

I don’t know if the sensation I am experiencing could rightly be called fear. But I have no other name for it. I am, apparently, suffering from a reality attack. What I am doing suddenly seems absurd. How can I possibly expect to be welcome here? I am not even able to speak the woman’s language. Can she ever think of me as anything other than the man who left her daughter, caused her a lot of suffering, then threatened to disrupt her child’s marriage proceedings?

I set down the pack of ginseng drinks. I heave a deep breath and let it out slowly, but with no feeling of improvement. What do I have to gain from this? I wonder.

I realize I am frightened by what I might learn.

But, I think, I went over all this earlier!

I begin to get angry with myself. I simply cannot back out now.

It’s the same as when you’re a child and you want to try the high dive at the deep end of the pool. It never looks like much from the water but once you climb the ladder and stand on the bouncy board looking down you wish you hadn’t bothered. But you would only feel a fool and the other kids would razz you if you took the ladder back down and in the end the shame is what makes you jump.

I feel that way now.

If I turn back a whole day will have been wasted. I will never have this opportunity again.

I force my feet to start forward. I can feel the resistance, like I’m slogging through deep snow.

The house looms closer.

Then, on my right, in a space cut out from the pines, I see a dilapidated tile house. My feet stop and I realize this must be the house Sung-hee was born and raised in. I feel certain of it. I remember her talking about it and saying her mother had moved out because it had too many leaks in the roof.

I walk nearer to it.

It is a completely natural construction. The lumber appears rough cut and the timber uprights are hatchet-marked. Mud and thatch constitute the plastering. I would guess Sung-hee’s father and some local men built it.

I’ve seen this kind of construction countless times, in old country houses, even in temples, both in Korea and Japan. People in the Orient have been building such dwellings for almost two thousand years.

Though abandoned it appears in fair shape.

My whole attention is consumed by this relic that I presume to be central to Sung-hee’s past. Of course, rural people would not tear it down just because they had ceased living in it. Unless they needed some of its timbers or the land on which it sat they would not bother themselves with needless toil. Since the new house Mrs. Pak had moved into was a modern, cement construction, even the old house’s scrap lumber would not be of any use.

A host of thoughts clamber through my brain. I have so many questions, but there is no one to answer them.

I assume Sung-hee told her husband all about it, probably on his first introduction to her mother. How could she not have?

And I think: It should have been me. It could have been, and should have been.

I have felt this way for so long, on so many occasions. Had I stayed with her I would not have gone to such and such a place, with such and such a person, doing such and such a thing. I would have been elsewhere, with someone else, doing something else, thinking different thoughts. Things were not, I am convinced, supposed to have worked out this way.

It is as if I am acting in the wrong play. It is not the part that is wrong—I am playing myself as I always have—but someone handed me the wrong script. I keep reading only because I have nothing else to read. It is a sense of dislocation unlike any other I have ever experienced.

I am certain I was supposed to have come here four years ago with Sung-hee.

Through weeds and mud I step into what used to be a courtyard of sorts. On my left is what appears to have been a storage annex, but it has fallen in and is filled with miscellaneous garbage. Immediately ahead of me is the main structure and I cross the courtyard and step up onto the porch. The boards feel sturdy beneath my feet but the mud walls are crumbling and clods of fallen dirt are scattered about the porch.

I run my finger along the surface of the mud wall and pick off a piece. I examine it, noting the strands of dried grass embedded in it, then crush it between my fingers, letting the fine powder, pebbles and shreds of grass spill out of my hand. I am filled with a disturbing sense of unreality.

A door in front of me, covered with the sort of white paper used in traditional Oriental housing, is hanging slightly ajar. I open it. The room inside is dank, the floor littered with beer cans and cigarette butts.

My heart sinks within me. If my assumption is correct, Sung-hee was probably born on this very floor, or perhaps in one of the back rooms. I feel like a pilgrim come to a revered shrine who finds it littered and graffitied. It is a violation. I am tempted to walk into the house but do not trust the safety of the floor.

I close the door.

No matter what happens now, this trip has been worth it.

I step off the porch and look about, then recall a little tale Sung-hee once told me. On an occasion when she was about ten years old she went to the outhouse to relieve herself and squatted on the old wooden boards over the hole. The boards gave way and she suddenly found herself dangling on the edge of the shit pit. Wailing as loud as she could, she held on until her mother came running and saved her from an ignominious fate.

I imagine the site of the funny story is somewhere close by, maybe on the hill back of the pines. It is just another reminder to me that all I am seeing, this physical place, is really only the tip of a proverbial iceberg of memories, dreams and emotions. Every place is so much more than the things inhabiting it. I feel indescribably small and ignorant.

I walk back to the gravel path and to the edge of the yard surrounding Mrs. Han’s house. On one corner of the house is a tomato patch. Part of it appears freshly dug, but I do not notice any tools lying about haphazardly as is so often the case with people living in the country. Sung-hee always struck me as a clean and orderly person and I can see where she learned her habits.

A noisy black mutt that I assume to be Mrs. Han’s takes note of me and starts yapping. It is not tied up but does not get too close, so I suppose it is not the biting kind.

I regard the animal with a feeling almost akin to envy. "Little dog," I say to it, "if only I could see what you have seen with your eyes."

The feelings of anxiety I had have passed and I walk now without hesitation to the door.

The house is single storied, painted white, with probably no more than three or four rooms. I come to a brown wooden door on a covered porch. White curtains are drawn across bay windows looking onto the porch.

The dog has quieted down, but no one has yet come to see why it was barking.

This is the zero hour.

I lift my right hand up and rap my knuckles solidly against the door. I wait.

Nobody comes, so after a minute or so, I knock again.

No answer.

I walk around both sides of the house, looking for any signs of someone’s presence. The dog keeps its distance but trails me everywhere I go.

I see no one so I return to the door and knock a third time.

Again, no answer.

Wondering if Mrs. Pak is simply out to town, I grip the door handle to see if it will turn. It does so freely and I push the door open a crack. Perhaps she is asleep. I push the door open all the way.

I am looking into a large room with a square kitchen table fifteen or so feet ahead of me. The room is clean and orderly; its furnishings are spare.

On the left are two more rooms. A door shuts off one but the other’s door is slightly ajar. I can see shelves inside and guess it is the bedroom.

I call out, not too loudly, Yoboseyo?

Even the dog is quiet now.

I call again and the silence tells me I should give up. My mission is finished. Unless I am prepared to wait for what may be several hours, I will not be meeting Mrs. Han. For some reason it seems oddly fitting that things should end this way.

I set the pack of ginseng drinks down on the space of floor where shoes are left. I reach into my jacket pocket and remove the two letters. The one to Mrs. Pak I place on top of that to Sung-hee, and then set them on the pack of ginseng drinks.

That is all I can do.

Then, on an impulse, I slide my pack off my body, lower it to the floor, open it and draw out the book of Neruda poems. My eyes stare for a moment at its cover, at the blue woman with the crescent moon, and then I reach out and set it, too, on the package of drinks. Mrs. Han’s letter I place on top. Sung-hee’s letter I slip inside the thin volume so half of it is sticking out.

Satisfied, I step back outside and close the door.

The dog regards me silently but is still excited and untrusting. I think of the hill behind the house. I walk along the porch, step off it, and trudge up a narrow dirt path towards its top. The dog offers several barks of protest but it does not follow me. Apparently it regards the yard and porch as its turf and little outside that.

At the top of the hill is a grave mound. There is a shiny gray stone in front of it etched with Chinese characters. It has obviously seen some wear but does not appear too old.

Perhaps it is the grave of Sung-hee’s father. If I am right, he has lain here under the earth for twenty-six years since dying of stomach cancer, honored three times a year by his widow and children, on New Year’s, Thanksgiving, and the anniversary of his death.

Strange as it may seem, I have often thought about the scene of this man’s death and burial—of his widow wailing over his corpse, of his children standing beside her, one of whom I would one day come to love. Sung-hee was four at the time and, by her own admission, too young then to understand what had happened or why her mother was so distraught.

Other villagers must have joined them. There may have been a procession, with clanging cymbals, a man hired to wail the dirge, and colorful banners hung about the coffin. I cannot comprehend why, but standing by this man’s grave makes me desperately want to know the history of that time. I want to see and feel those moments as my own memories.

I never met him. And I will never meet the widow who cried over him and suffered long years of loneliness because of his absence. But each by their union has affected me deeply in a way neither can ever know, and I am rocked by how marvelously strange this is. I, a product of late twentieth century suburban America, have come to a foreign land to stand, in recollection and sympathy, beside the grave of a poor farmer whom I never knew and whose full name is unknown to me.

I turn away from the grass-covered mound of earth and look across the village to the thin brown line of the river. My gaze wanders the pine-green hills. I turn and look across the fallow fields in the direction of the church, but trees standing on the ridge of the hill obscure it. I gaze back along the road by which I came here and suck in a breath of country air, so much sweeter than the tired atmosphere of the city.

The question so many people have asked me, that I have asked myself so many times, returns to me, but I am not left grasping for an answer. I know why I left Sung-hee.

Simply, I had not believed in myself. I had not believed I was worthy of such happiness. I do not want to ever lack such faith again.

For a while longer I stand there, not thinking, merely looking and breathing. I do not feel I can ask more from this place. I came here unsure of what I sought, but it seems I will not leave empty-handed.

Finally, I know it is time to go and I walk back down the hill past the house. I look briefly to my left at the remains of Sung-hee’s childhood, stop, turn, and gaze a few seconds once again toward the hilltop, and then move on, my hands thrust into my pockets. I go quickly, not pausing, my eyes wide, ears listening, gathering in the nuances of my last moments in that place as liquid time flows silently and irresistibly past me.

I hear the popping of burning fields in the distance. A swallow soars over my shoulder and down the road with a soft cry. The road under my feet, filled clamoring with the ghosts of memories I have never known and cannot see, is empty as far as the church on the corner. The sleepiness of the world has given my own dream a moment’s last reprieve from disturbance.

When I come to the church I see a group of children standing in the gate of the house next door. I ask them if they would telephone a taxi for me. The oldest, a girl, skips happily away to make the call. The others stare at me and ask the usual questions: Where are you from? Why are you here? Etcetera.

I am American, I tell them. I used to know someone here.

When the oldest girl comes back she tells me the taxi will arrive in ten minutes.

I ask her, How long have you lived in Shipo-ree?

Twenty years, she says. I was born here.

For some reason I feel great satisfaction to have made the acquaintance of someone else from this village.

The taxi comes at last and I tell them thank you and goodbye. They wave to me as I get in the car. It drives off and I look back through the window.

They are standing in the road, watching me leave and perhaps wondering what really brought me to their village. What would they say if they knew the whole story?

I leave Janghang on the train, going back the way I came. It is a long trip and I do not arrive home until after dark. But it was all worth it. I wish Sung-hee had been my guide through her village, to acquaint me with its history and her memories, but it did not happen that way. I saw that place through my own eyes instead, and through the recollections of her that I carry inside me.

I wonder most about whether or not the letter and book I entrusted to her mother will ever be seen by Sung-hee. I can only pray they will. I try to imagine what she might think and feel when she slides the paper from the envelope and opens it and reads what I have to say to her, these five years after our parting.

What would I say to her if I could look her in the eyes again, now that she is only a story for me to tell?

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