I'll Be Right There Read online

  OTHER WORK IN ENGLISH BY KYUNG-SOOK SHIN

  Please Look After Mom

  Copyright © 2010 by Kyung-sook Shin

  I’ll Be Right There was first published in Korea by Munhakdongne in 2010.

  Translation copyright © 2013 by Sora Kim-Russell

  This book was translated with the support of The Daesan Foundation.

  Letter on this page from Vincent Van Gogh to Theo Van Gogh translated and edited by Robert Harrison, number 150. http://webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/10/150.htm

  Poem on this page by Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours.

  Translation © Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland 2011.

  Published in Selected Poems (New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2011).

  Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

  Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Shin, Kyung-sook.

  I’ll be right there : a novel / by Kyung-sook Shin; translated by Sora Kim-Russell.

  pages cm

  First published in Korea by Munhakdongne in Korean in 2010.

  ISBN 978-1-59051-673-7 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-59051-674-4 (ebook)

  1. Students—Fiction. 2. Korea—Fiction. I. Title.

  PL992.73.K94I513 2013

  895.7’34—dc23

  2013011936

  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  Who is that weeping, if not simply the wind,

  At this sole hour, with ultimate diamonds?… But who Weeps, so close to myself on the brink of tears?

  —Paul Valéry, “The Young Fate”

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Can I Come Over?

  Chapter 1 - Parting

  Chapter 2 - Water Crosser

  Chapter 3 - We Are Breathing

  Chapter 4 - To The Salt Lake

  Chapter 5 - City Walls

  Chapter 6 - Empty House

  Chapter 7 - Bottom of the Stairs

  Chapter 8 - A Single Small Boat

  Chapter 9 - If We Hug A Hundred Strangers

  Chapter 10 - Us in the Fire

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Authors

  PROLOGUE

  Can I Come Over?

  It was my first phone call from him in eight years.

  I recognized his voice right away. As soon as he said “Hello?” I asked, “Where are you?” He didn’t say anything. Eight years—it was not a short length of time. Broken down into hours, the number would be unimaginable. I say it had been eight years, but we had stopped talking even before then. Once, at some get-together with friends, we had avoided each other’s eyes the entire time, and only when everyone was parting ways did we briefly take each other’s hand without the others seeing. That was it.

  I don’t remember where we were. Only that it was after midnight, summer, and we were standing in front of some steep staircase in a hidden corner of the city. There must have been a fruit stand nearby. The scent floating in the humid air reminded me of biting into a plum. Taking his hand and letting it go was my way of saying goodbye. I did not know what he was thinking, but for me, all of the words I wanted to say to him had collected inside me like pearls. I could not bring myself to say goodbye or see you later. If I had opened my mouth to say a single word, all of the other expired words would have followed and spilled to the ground, as if the string that held them together had snapped. Since I still clung to the memory of how we had grown and matured together, I was vexed by the thought that there would be no controlling my feelings once they came undone. But outwardly I feigned a look of composure. I did not want to spoil my memories of how we used to rely on each other.

  Time is never fair or easy for anyone—not now and not eight years ago. When I calmly asked him where he was, despite not having heard from him in all of that time, I realized that the words I had not been able to say to him then were no longer pent up inside me. Nor did I need to pretend to be fine in order to mask any tumultuous emotions. I mean it when I say I asked him that question calmly. What happened to those words that once drove me to wander aimlessly, my mind filled with doubt and sadness? Those bitter feelings? Those aches that speared my heart whenever I was alone? Where did they finally trickle away to that I should be holding up so well now? Is this life? Is this why the relentless passing of time is both regretful and fortunate? Back when I was caught in the whirling current and could not swim my way out, someone I have since forgotten told me: This, too, shall pass. I suppose this was proof. That advice applies both to those who suffer and to those whose lives are filled with abundance. To one, it gives the strength to endure; to the other, the strength to be humble.

  The silence lengthened between us. Too late, I realized that I had gotten things out of order. I should have said hello first. It was strange. Saying things like long time, no talk or what’s new? felt too awkward. And though I figured he was probably taken aback by the way I immediately asked where he was, I wasn’t comfortable enough yet to ask how he’d been. Asking someone where they are the moment you answer the phone makes sense only if you spend a lot of time together. But there we were, he on one end of the line and I on the other, for the first time in eight years. Time is always bearing down on us; nevertheless, had I understood in my youth that we can never relive the same moment twice, things might have turned out differently. Had I understood that, I would never have said goodbye to someone, and someone else might still be alive. If only I had known that the moment you think everything has ended, something new is beginning.

  I turned to look out the window.

  While the silence between us continued, the window slowly filled with the morning light of winter. Yesterday’s weather forecast said it would snow today, but I didn’t believe it. It was early, the light of dawn still lingering. The time of day when you would normally hesitate before calling someone who was not family or otherwise very close to you. Calls at this time were either urgent or brought bad news.

  “The professor is in the hospital,” he finally said.

  “Professor Yoon?”

  “I thought I should tell you.”

  I blinked and looked away from the window. His words—I thought I should tell you—swirled before my eyes like snowflakes. I concentrated on his voice, as if clinging to it, and narrowed my blurry eyes to slits. To my surprise, snowflakes were casting their shadows on the lowered blinds.

  “He’s been in the hospital for about three months now.”

  I’d had no idea.

  “I don’t think he has much longer.”

  Three months? I let out a deep sigh. Resentment toward Professor Yoon welled up in me and subsided. I had not seen him in three years. As his illness progressed, Professor Yoon had insisted on being alone and refused visitors—just as my mother had done. He had become a lone figure in a room that could only be reached by passing through countless closed doors. In the face of death, he want
ed to be strictly and faithfully alone.

  Early one winter morning three years ago, I set out to visit Professor Yoon, but I never made it. I never tried to visit him again. That morning, on the first day of the new year, I had felt like paying him a holiday visit. Though I knew he was having trouble breathing and could not sit up for long periods of time, I wanted to see him in person, however briefly. The sky was dark that morning; large snowflakes had begun to fall. I wasn’t good at driving. I usually assumed it was my fault whenever something went wrong with the car. The snow turned heavy, and the wind was blowing from the north. The car began to skid and then plowed into a snowdrift. Since Professor Yoon’s house was not far, I left the car where it was and began walking the rest of the way. My cheeks felt frozen, and tiny icicles dangled from the hems of my pants. As I walked, I glanced back to see that the mountainsides were blanketed in white. The wind was swirling mounds of snow into the air and sweeping it down into the folds of the mountains. It was getting harder to see. I told myself to keep going, but I became more and more frightened. Each time I heard a snow-laden branch snap and fall to the forest floor, my stomach dropped with it. Finally, when a large dead tree could no longer take the weight of the snow and collapsed with a boom, I turned back with a defeated heart.

  What stopped me from reaching his house? Getting back was no easier. After giving up that night, I never got up the nerve to try again. Each time I thought about him, the idea that I would never be able to reach him spread through my mind like a shadow. And it seemed I was not the only one. One friend told me that he had driven to Professor Yoon’s house in the middle of the night, but as he got closer, he could not bring himself to go the rest of the way and drove to the top of a hill instead, where he looked down at the lights of the house before going home. He said he circled the house a few times and left, biting his lip the whole way. Why couldn’t we just barge into Professor Yoon’s house like we did in the old days? The phone still in my hand, I got up from the desk, went to the window, and pulled open the blinds.

  Outside, white flakes were drifting down.

  I was not surprised to hear he was dying. I had been nervously expecting to get that news someday. I just did not know it would be today. The snow had started off so light that I could have counted it by the individual flakes, but it grew heavier as I stood in the window. In the yard of the house across from mine, a Himalayan cedar tree that had remained a lush green even in winter was turning white. There was no one out. The local neighborhood bus, which I had never once ridden in the four years that I’d lived there, was heading through the side streets, gliding carefully along the snowy roads.

  Though I tend to confuse things that happened yesterday with things that happened ten years ago, and am prone to standing in front of the open refrigerator, trying to remember what I was looking for, only to sheepishly close the door again after bathing in the cold air, I could still remember seeing Professor Yoon for the first time all those years ago like it was yesterday. I was twenty at the time. Back then, I could look at a single book title and think of a dozen other books related to it. On that first day of college, the March sunlight was streaming into the classroom when Professor Yoon walked in. I had my head down on the desk as he walked past. His shoes caught my eye. They were so big that his heels slipped out of the backs with each step. It looked like he was wearing someone else’s shoes. Curious, I lifted my head and immediately felt ashamed. How could anyone be that skinny? The problem was not the shoes. No shoes in the world would have fit him. He looked like a plaster skeleton.

  I looked up at his eyes instead. They gleamed sharply behind his glasses. He turned to look out the window. The shouting of the student demonstrators outside had been disrupting classes. Tear gas wafted into the room, carried on the still-cold March wind. Before class began, someone had struggled to shut the hinged windows. Professor Yoon stood in the window for a long time, watching the demonstrators. He did not move, so we all gradually joined him at the window. Riot police were chasing a group of students. White clouds bobbed above their heads in the frigid air. That day, Professor Yoon had just one thing to say to us: What is the use of art in this day and age? I could not tell whether the question was aimed at us or at himself, but I saw his keen eyes grimace in pain. In that moment, when I first began paying attention to his eyes, a sharp, unfamiliar pain pricked at my heart. Back then, how could I have known what was in store for us? Or that the strange prick I felt that day would still be with me even after all these years? Though my memories of our time together have faded and lost their edge, his eyes still haunt me. Each time I picture them, the same old pain returns. That pain pierces my heart in a thousand places, bursts through the skin, and peppers me with the same question.

  What are you doing with your life?

  When I was twenty, each time I asked myself that, I left the university and walked for hours around the city, eyes streaming from the sting of tear gas in the air. Has nothing changed since then? Even now, whenever I picture his eyes, I have to get out of my house and walk—I pick any road and follow it to the end. Neither society nor I have changed for the better; we have only become more imperfect in different ways. When the bridge over the river that cuts through the city collapsed and a bus carrying girls to school plunged into the river, when I saw an airplane crash into a tall Wall Street building one morning, when I sat in front of the television on the first day of the new year and watched for hours in disbelief as flames engulfed Sungnyemun Gate, I asked myself the same question: What are you doing with your life? I drove in circles around what was left of the burned city gate in the middle of the night until I felt like returning home again. Now as then, whenever I feel like giving up, I walk around the city. Through the depression and loneliness, the same thought arises: If only he were here.

  Which of us was the first to let go?

  At some point, I realized I would have to live without him. I was nervous and afraid, but the time had come for me to go it alone. Even afterward, images of him clung and would not let go. Like that night we spent in some seaside village on a remote island. How were we able to walk all night like that? And while getting caught in cloudbursts. We took a ferry from Incheon so far out into the sea, and yet I’ve completely forgotten the name of the village. We hadn’t planned on going there. We just jumped on Subway Line 1 at Seoul Station for some reason. The fact that it was Line 1 doesn’t hold any meaning; I am only assuming that was how we got there because I remember passing Bucheon Station. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, which means it was probably midsummer. The subway train was so packed that it was hard to stand up straight. I was tired, and it must have been one of those days when I was not in the mood to talk. Each time the train stopped, a crowd of people surged in, filling the car with the smell of sweat. As he stood there swaying, brow furrowed, I said, “Let’s go somewhere far away.” Or maybe it was his idea. We got off the subway at Incheon and took a bus to the ferry terminal. We did not care where the ferry went as long as it was as far as possible from the harbor. The ferry carried us across the sea. As we stood at the side of the boat and took in the breeze, whatever it was that had me feeling so worn down did not seem to matter anymore. We stared at the sea. I had never gone that far from the coast before. Since he had grown up in a beach town, the experience was probably different for him than it was for me. It was not easy to get to the island. The ferry ride took two hours, and when we reached the island, the tide had come in, making it impossible to go all the way to shore. Someone brought a small motorboat out to us from the village dock. After everyone boarded, we headed for the island. I saw children fishing way out in the water. I frowned, worried they might be swept away at any moment, but someone told me they were standing on an embankment and were not actually in the water. They said I would be able to see it once the tide was out. The boat let us off on another submerged embankment. I hiked up my skirt, and he rolled his pants up to his thighs, and together we waded along the embankment to the island.


  That day, we walked as far around the island as we could. It must have been the rainy season, because more people were sitting on the beach than swimming in the water, and the farther we got from the dock, the fewer people we ran into. We could smell salt on the air, and a line of trees next to the beach shook violently in the wind. We stood on the beach and put our arms around each other as the sun slipped into the sea. In the blink of an eye, the crimson disk disappeared below the horizon. Afterward, he turned moody. Though he had kept trying to cheer me up while I was feeling down, now he was the one not saying a word. I grew quiet. As we walked along the beach together in silence, we came upon a dead seagull carried in on the tide.

  “A bird!” I murmured.

  He started digging a hole in the sand to bury it.

  “What’s the point?” I asked. “The tide will just wash it out.”

  “All the same!”

  When I think of the way he said that, I cannot help but smile. That phrase always used to remind me of him. Whatever the situation, he would say, “All the same, it’s better that way!” He took a notebook out of his bag, tore a sheet of paper from it, and wrote, Rise again, dear bird. Then he rolled the piece of paper around a stick and planted it in front of the bird’s grave.

  Did we eat anything that night? I don’t remember eating, nor do I remember being hungry. That night, we walked until the whole island was dark, as if we were trying to find out where the water ended. That was probably the first time I watched the sea grow black as darkness fell. The black water climbed over and over itself until it reached our feet and retreated.

  “Jung Yoon!” Whenever he called me by my full name, it meant he had something on his mind.

  “What is it?”

  “Let’s remember this day forever.”

  That’s it? Unimpressed, I mumbled under my breath that if you wanted to remember something, you ought to have a memento. I heard a rustling sound in the dark. He slipped his journal out of his bag and into my hand.