The next morning, Isak finished his Bible study and prayers, then ate his breakfast in the front room by himself. The lodgers had already gone out for the day. He felt strong enough to go to Osaka, and he wanted to make preparations to leave. Before heading out to Japan, he had wanted to visit the pastor of a church in Busan, but there had been no chance for that. He hadn’t contacted him for fear that he’d stop by and get sick. Isak’s legs felt okay, not wobbly as before. In his room, he had been doing light calisthenics that his eldest brother, Samoel, had taught him when he was a boy. Having spent most of his life indoors, he’d had to learn how to keep fit in less obvious ways.
Yangjin came to clear his breakfast tray. She brought him barley tea, and he thanked her.
“I think I’d like to take a walk. I can go by myself,” he said, smiling. “It wouldn’t be for long. I feel very well this morning. I won’t go far.”
Yangjin couldn’t keep her face blank. She couldn’t keep him cooped up like a prized rooster in her henhouse, but what would happen if he fell? The area near her house was desolate. If he walked by the beach and had an accident, no one would see him.
“I don’t think you should go by yourself, sir.” The lodgers were at work or in town doing things she didn’t want to know about. There was no one to ask to accompany him at the moment.
Isak bit his lip. If he didn’t strengthen his legs, the journey would be delayed.
“It would be a big imposition.” He paused. “You have a great deal of work, but perhaps you can take me for just a short while.” It was outrageous to ask a woman to walk with him on the beach, but Isak felt he’d go insane if he didn’t walk outside today. “If you cannot go, I understand. I will take a very short walk near the water. For a few minutes.”
As a boy, he had lived the life of a privileged invalid. Tutors and servants had been his primary companions. When it was good weather and he wasn’t well enough to walk, the servants or his elder brothers used to carry him on their backs. If the doctor wanted him to get air, the blade-thin gardener would put Isak in an A-frame and stroll through the orchard, letting the child pull off the apples from the lower branches. Isak could almost smell the heady perfume of the apples, feel the weight of the red fruit in his hands and taste the sweet crunch of the first bite, its pale juice running down his wrist. He missed home, and he felt like a sick child again, stuck in his room, begging for permission to see the sunlight.
Yangjin was seated on her knees with her small, coarse hands folded in her lap, not knowing what to say. It was not appropriate for a woman to walk with a man who wasn’t a member of her family. She was older than he was, so she didn’t fear any gossip, but Yangjin had never walked alongside a man who wasn’t her father or husband.
He peered into her troubled face. He felt awful for making another imposition.
“You’ve already done so much, and I’m asking for more.”
Yangjin straightened her back. She’d never gone on a leisurely walk on the beach with her husband. Hoonie’s legs and back had given him profound pain throughout his brief life—he had not complained of it, but he would conserve his energies for the work he had to get done. How much he must have wanted to run as a normal boy, swallow lungfuls of salty air and chase the seagulls—things nearly every child in Yeongdo had done growing up.
“There is something very selfish in me,” he said. “I’m sorry.” Isak decided to wait until one of the lodgers could take him out.
Yangjin got up. “You’ll need your coat,” she said. “I’ll get it.”
The heavy scent of seaweed, the foamy lather of the waves along the rocky beach, and the emptiness of the blue-and-gray landscape but for the white circling birds above them—the sensations were almost too much to bear after being in that tiny room for so long. The morning sun warmed Isak’s uncovered head. He had never been drunk on wine, but he imagined that this was how the farmers must have felt dancing during Chuseok after too many cups.
On the beach, Isak carried his leather shoes in his hands. He walked steadily, not feeling any trace of illness within his tall, gaunt frame. He didn’t feel strong, but he felt better than he’d been.
“Thank you,” he said, without looking in her direction. His pale face shone in the morning light. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
Yangjin glanced at the smiling young man. He possessed an innocence, she supposed, a kind of childlike wholeness that couldn’t be hidden. She wanted to protect him.
“You have been so kind.”
She dismissed this with a wave, not knowing what to do with his gratitude. Yangjin was miserable. She had no time for this walk, and being outside made the dull weight in her heart take a definable shape; it pressed against her from the inside.
“May I ask you something?”
“Hmm?”