“Bastards! Sons of bitches!” they cried out.
Jade turned around and saw a line of about a dozen men, wrists bound and roped together like a string of dried croaker fish. Each man had a large placard hanging over his neck. I AM A THIEF AND I DESERVE PUNISHMENT read one sign. I SLEPT WITH MY FATHER’S WIFE read another. Not merely satisfied with booing, some people started picking up stones and throwing them at the men.
Jade nearly screamed out loud when she saw JungHo in the middle of the line. His sign, in a shaky, childlike handwriting, said: I AM A GANGSTER & A COMMUNIST & I DESERVE TO DIE.
“No! No!” Jade cried, pushing aside the waves of gleeful strangers. People hissed at her from all sides, but she made her way to the front and followed the train of men.
“JungHo!”
Somehow, above the din of the crowd, JungHo heard her and found her eyes. One side of his face was already purple and swollen, and the rocks still flew by him. One hit him in the back and some young men near Jade erupted in delighted whoops.
“Stop, you dogs!” Jade pushed the young man who was cheering the loudest.
“What the fuck? Old bitch,” he muttered, not so loudly, and then disappeared into the crowd with his friends.
Jade met JungHo’s eyes again. He gave her the tiniest shake of his head—don’t do anything. Then he smiled, to let her know he was okay.
He was remembering at that moment the parade of courtesans, many years ago now. It was almost at this same spot he’d fallen for the beautiful young girl who threw a flower at his face—the first time he saw Jade. He had the delirious sensation that he’d been walking this road all this time; and all this time, she was there to meet him. He wanted to look at Jade again, but thought that might provoke her into doing something dangerous and heroic. He had to look away, even though it pained him not being able to say to her, I love you. The rope was tugged, another rock hit him in the ear, and the jeer of the crowd faded away. He began to walk again, one footstep at a time, toward wherever the road ended.
Epilogue
The Seawoman
1965
AFTER THE EXECUTION, I COULDN’T BEAR TO STAY IN SEOUL. I RESIGNED from the school, came home, and packed all my things. I gave away almost everything to the neighbors and some of my pupils. Then I went to the garden and dug up the diamond necklace and the celadon vase. Wrapped in silk and hidden in two nesting boxes, they still looked the same as when I had last seen them. It was only I who had changed.
I took the train to Busan, watching the landscape change out the window. When I got off the train, the sun was setting in the harbor and a flock of seagulls landed noisily near my feet. Then I heard the ships blow their horns, just like the poet told me. I felt like I could breathe again for the first time since that day. But this still wasn’t far enough from Seoul, and the next morning I got on a ship to Jejudo.
Everything about Jejudo is different from the mainland, starting from the sea. It is light turquoise near a sandy beach, and deepens to emerald-green and sapphire-blue farther from the shore. In some places where the black volcanic rock dashes off to a sudden bluff, the indigo waves look like they’re reflecting the night sky even when it’s sunny and bright. In midwinter the camellia trees with their glossy green leaves were in full bloom, and when the wind blew, their red flowers fell on the black cliffs or tumbled into the sea. The air smelled of salt and ripe tangerines.
Hesoon used to say that Jejudo is the most beautiful place in the world. I haven’t seen much of the world to truly know, but she may have been right.
I found an empty hut by the sea. There were a lot of abandoned houses in Jejudo after the unrest and the cholera in the 1940s and 1950s. No one in the village was happy to see me, but no one told me to get out, either. The island people are wary of mainlanders. None of them spoke standard Korean, and I didn’t understand them when they whispered and giggled in front of my face.
THE FIRST THING I DID was scatter the ashes. If I had a way to find Hesoon’s family, I would have tried—but I was just a child when we met, and I didn’t even know her last name. I took them to the top of a cliff near my house and the wind carried them to the sea. “Do you like it here? Isn’t it beautiful, Aunt Dani? Are you happy to be back, Hesoon?” No one answered, except for the howling of the wind.
FROM THE CLIFF, I COULD look down and see a cove where the seawomen got changed and rested between dives. After several days of hesitating, I finally went down there. The descent itself sent my head spinning and my legs shaking.
“I would like to learn how to dive,” I said to the women, not sure any of them would understand. They talked among themselves in their dialect, laughed a little, and went back to drying themselves over a fire. One of them was nursing a baby, and another one was sharing her tangerines with her mates. They seemed to think I would leave eventually. I turned around, dismayed at the thought of the climb back up to the top.
“What’s a mainlander like you doing here?” I heard a voice behind my back and turned around. She was in a pair of black linen diving pants, yet under her white chemise she was heavily pregnant. She was speaking in the thick, lilting Jeolla dialect.
“I was hoping I could become a seawoman,” I said.