The groundskeeper stopped before her and bowed, and she returned the bow.
Sunja smiled at the polite young man, who must have been about forty or forty-five. Uchida-san looked younger than Mozasu. How did she look to him? Her skin was deeply grooved from the years of sun, and her short hair was bright white. No matter—seventy-three did not feel very old to her. Had the groundskeeper heard her mumbling in Korean? Ever since she’d stopped working at the confectionery, her limited Japanese had deteriorated further. It was not terrible, but lately she felt shy around native speakers. Uchida-san picked up his rake and walked away.
Sunja put both hands on the white marble, as if she could touch Isak from where she was.
“I wish you could tell me what will happen to us. I wish. I wish I knew that Noa was with you.”
Several rows from her, the groundskeeper cleared wet leaves from stone markers. Now and then he would glance up at her, and Sunja felt embarrassed to be seen talking to a grave. She wanted to stay a little longer. Wanting to look like she was busy, Sunja opened her canvas bag to put away the dirty towels. In the bottom of her bag, she found her house keys on the key ring with thumbnail-sized photographs of Noa and Mozasu in a sealed acrylic frame.
Sunja started to weep, and she could not help her crying.
“Boku-san.”
“Hai?” Sunja looked up at the groundskeeper.
“May I get you something to drink? I have a thermos of tea in the cottage. It is not very fine tea, but it is warm.”
“No, no. Thank you. All time, you see people cry,” she said in broken Japanese.
“No, actually, very few people come here, but your family visits regularly. You have two sons and a grandson, Solomon. Mozasu-sama visits every month or two. I haven’t seen Noa-sama in eleven years, but he used to come on the last Thursday of each month. You could set a watch to him. How is Noa-sama? He was a very kind man.”
“Noa come here? Come before 1978?”
“Hai.”
“From 1963 to 1978?” She mentioned the years he would have been in Nagano. She said the dates again, hoping that her Japanese was correct. Sunja pointed to Noa’s photograph on the key ring. “He visit here?”
The groundskeeper nodded with conviction at the photograph, then looked up in the sky like he was trying to see some sort of calendar in his mind.
“Hai, hai. He came in those years and before, too. Noa-sama told me to go to school and even offered to send me if I wished.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but I told him I have an empty gourd for a head, and that it would have been pointless to send me to school. Besides, I like it here. It’s quiet. Everybody who comes to visit is very kind. He asked me never to mention his visits, but I have not seen him in over a decade, and I’d wondered if he moved away to England. He told me to read good books and brought me translations of the great British author Charles Dickens.”
“Noa, my son, is dead.”
The groundskeeper opened his mouth slightly.
“My son, my son,” Sunja said quietly.
“I am very sad to hear that, Boku-san. Truly, I am,” the groundskeeper said, looking forlorn. “I’d been hoping to tell him that after I finished all the books he’d brought me, I bought more of my own. I have read through all of Mr. Dickens’s books in translations, but my favorite is the first one he gave me, David Copperfield. I admire David.”
“Noa loved to read. The best. He loved to read.”
“Have you read Mr. Dickens?”
“I don’t know how,” she said. “To read.”
“Maji? If you are Noa’s mother, you are very smart, too. Perhaps you can go to night school for adults. That is what Noa-sama told me to do.”
Sunja smiled at the groundskeeper, who seemed hopeful about sending an old woman to school. She remembered Noa cajoling Mozasu to persevere with his studies.
The groundskeeper looked at his rake. He bowed deeply, then excused himself to return to his tasks.
When he was out of sight, Sunja dug a hole at the base of the tombstone about a foot deep with her hands and dropped the key ring photograph inside. She covered the hole with dirt and grass, then did what she could to clean her hands with her handkerchief, but dirt remained beneath her nails. Sunja tamped down the earth, then brushed the grass with her fingers.
She picked up her bags. Kyunghee would be waiting for her at home.
Acknowledgments