Posts tagged “old garden”
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The Old Garden: “Now, I Am Going Back to Kalmae” (Part 22/28)
October 20, 2009
Eighteen years ago on the night a typhoon arrived, I left for Seoul. Yoon Hee followed me to the bridge, holding onto an umbrella. Her peasant skirt with printed flowers was wet; her pointy rubber shoes kept coming off. The headlights of the last bus appeared out of the darkness. What looked like the eyes of a beast got bigger and bigger, reflected in the pouring rain. I turned around once before climbing up into the bus. Yoon Hee was going to say something but instead raised one arm halfway and meekly waved her hand. As soon as I got in, the bus departed. I tumbled and hurried toward the back window. For an instant I saw a trace of her body holding the umbrella, but it quickly disappeared into darkness.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: Kalmae (Part 21/28)
October 15, 2009
The driver checked out his passengers and climbed into his seat. Yoon Hee told him the destination, and I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. The taxi traveled on an unpaved road, clouds of dust trailing behind, and crossed a hill. Our destination was the next village. It took about twenty minutes. We arrived at a tiny depot that looked like any other depot in any other town and got out. Yoon Hee left the taxi stand and walked down the main street, again just like in any other town.
“I think it’ll be better to take a bus from here. We could have continued in the taxi, though. With a direct bus, it takes about forty minutes to my school.”
“Where are we going now?”
“Just follow me. I’m taking you to paradise.”
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: The Guy Who Disappeared into the Hwarang Cigarette Smoke (Part 20/26)
October 14, 2009
I went to see Han Yoon Hee, trusting the address Bong Han had gotten through numerous layers of contacts. I was going to quietly disappear if I detected any hesitation from her. She came to the inn around sunset. Yoon Hee was wearing a turtleneck sweater, a down parka, and a pair of casual pants. She did not look like someone going to work. In fact, carrying a little backpack, she looked more like a traveler than me. When Yoon Hee arrived, I had briefly fallen asleep in my room at the very back of the inn warmed by the wood furnace. Still, even in sleep, I felt the gentle movement and opened my eyes. The footsteps stopped on the porch, followed by a muffled cough. The sliding door cracked open silently. I stayed lying down, I just lifted my elbow from my forehead to turn my head and looked through the crack.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: Nature Does Not Change (Part 19/26)
October 13, 2009
Right by the first entrance to the temple where pine trees were abundant, I sat on a rock to cool down. Underneath the rock where it was shaded, snow had frozen into ice, which was in turn slowly melting from the bottom, forming an endless little stream of pure droplets. I could hear a man and a woman talking to each other gently from down the hill. I guessed they were having a picnic. They were young. The man began singing in a high clear tenor. I return to the hill where I used to play, the old poet lied when he said that nature does not change. The grand pine tree that once stood here is now gone, cut down. I cannot forget their mindless singing. Just like an old movie.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: The Day I Met Yoon Hee (Part 18/26)
October 8, 2009
Bong Han had just switched his hiding place for the second time. He was at the top of the wanted list, and it was the most dangerous period for him. We were to meet in Miari in a billiard hall with two exits, one leading onto the main street, one into a back alley. It was around three or four in the afternoon, when there were plenty of people coming and going. I got the only empty table and pretended to play by myself, while I continuously watched the two exits. I did not see him come in, but Kwon Hyung was sitting there on a long bench under the scoreboard right behind the billiard table. He smoothly took a cue and hit a red ball as if it was now his turn.
“Bong Han is not coming. His pictures are everywhere.”
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: Every Fire in the World Goes Out Eventually (Part 17/26)
October 7, 2009
Bong Han was a man of principles. He counted every bean, and he rarely trusted anyone but himself. He divided things into black and white and then cut them with a knife. Many people complained that he was hardhearted. His life was locked up in Kwangju in 1980. In the middle of the massacres, he had escaped to Seoul and hidden in an attic for two years before he was smuggled out of the country. Kang Won, who wrote poetry, met him accidentally during his underground days, and the little study group they organized together became a network of spies. After serving five years in prison, Kang Won struggled to make ends meet and died of cancer like Nam Soo. I liked Bong Han and loathed him, equally. It would have been better if he had remained a revolutionary, like those of the Japanese occupation era, but he was lucky enough to survive and unfortunate enough to live past the end of his own legend.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: In the 5.18 Cemetery (Part 16/26)
October 6, 2009
We said hello to many different names. In the 5.18 cemetery were Sang Woon, Young Joon, and Chul Young, who passed away more recently. Chul Young, unlike me, spent nineteen years in a psychiatric hospital, his brain injured during torture. He lived his whole life stuck in that day. He lost his mind because the memory was frozen. Whenever his struggling wife came during a visitation, Chul Young asked her about the safety of those already dead and what was happening in front of the state capital. He’d been the last of the civilian militia in solitary confinement at a psychiatric hospital. Decorated with marble, the 5.18 cemetery looked more like another kind of prison. Where Nam Soo was resting was a real, older cemetery, where myriad friends gathered amiably. There, even the dry grass seemed warm and comfortable.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: Nam Soo (Part 15/26)
October 1, 2009
It’s been more than twenty years since Nam Soo first went into hiding after the Reading Group incident. He was imprisoned for ten years because of a case involving another organization and was released before I was. During the bloody uprising in Kwangju he was already in prison, and by the time he was released I was in prison. When we first met in the seventies, I was a high school teacher in a small southern town and was preparing to leave the country to study abroad. We both were young and opposed the Yushin regime, which changed the constitutional law in order for General Park to continue his dictatorship. I read him a poem by Sergei Yesenin, handwritten in an old notebook. I do not remember where I got that notebook.
Still around, old dear? How are you keeping?
I too am around. Hello to you!
May that magic twilight ever stream
Over your cottage as it used to doPeople write how sad you are, and anxious
For my sake, though you won’t tell them so
And that you in your old-fashioned jacket
Out onto the highroad often goI could not clearly remember what followed next. It was something like, Don’t go eating your heart out with worry that I am now an unknown drunk at a tavern for fear that someone will stick a knife into my chest.
Read Part Fifteen
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: Mang Wal Cemetery (Part 14/26)
September 30, 2009
“Mr. Oh, here!”
“Kun! It’s been too long!”
I hugged him tightly. Then I began to study his face. There were many strands of white hair from his temples to almost the top of his head, and many little lines around his eyes. I had seen Kun briefly at the detention cell, then we were separated. He finished his sentence and was released a few years before me. He was probably five or six years younger than me. I had escaped from Kwangju, but he took up arms as part of a civilian militia. Later, he was arrested for his underground activities. If he had been captured earlier at the state capital, Kun would have led a much easier life. Kun found me at my hiding place in the slums two days after the last crackdown at the state capital. His cheeks were hollow and his face haggard; he was wearing a shirt stained with dirt; he grimaced and burst into tears as he tried to hold on to us. Sang Woon is dead. Young Joon insisted I get out first, later I saw he was gone, he got shot just once. Ah, we would never be able to embrace each other again as we did that dawn.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Old Garden: A Soup With Dried Pollack (Part 13/26)
September 29, 2009
After persevering in solitary confinement for a long time, your small emotions are mostly hidden deep underneath a thick layer of insensitivity. Showing them helps no one. In the beginning, you forget words. It’s an easy one. You can’t remember when last you actually wanted to use them. More words disappear from your mind, even the names of those around you. The next step is when you cannot recall names of everyday things that are right in front of you. Wait a minute, what was that thing called? Then comes the symptom of muttering to yourself. Hey, it’s time to sleep, or that guard is such a stickler, or you fart and complain to yourself, gee, that stinks. Among the prisoners, those with long sentences rarely smile or cry. During the audio-visual education lessons, when they show you movies, prisoners shed their tears in darkness and cry to their heart’s content. Their eyes are red and bloodshot when they walk out of the room.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
“old garden” Posts
- Oct 20, The Old Garden: “Now, I Am Going Back to Kalmae” (Part 22/28)
- Oct 15, The Old Garden: Kalmae (Part 21/28)
- Oct 14, The Old Garden: The Guy Who Disappeared into the Hwarang Cigarette Smoke (Part 20/26)
- Oct 13, The Old Garden: Nature Does Not Change (Part 19/26)
- Oct 8, The Old Garden: The Day I Met Yoon Hee (Part 18/26)
- Oct 7, The Old Garden: Every Fire in the World Goes Out Eventually (Part 17/26)
- Oct 6, The Old Garden: In the 5.18 Cemetery (Part 16/26)
- Oct 1, The Old Garden: Nam Soo (Part 15/26)
- Sep 30, The Old Garden: Mang Wal Cemetery (Part 14/26)
- Sep 29, The Old Garden: A Soup With Dried Pollack (Part 13/26)
