If she had agreed to remain his mistress and waited for him to visit her, she would have been able to keep him. He could’ve gone to see his wife and daughters in Japan whenever he wanted. Yet this arrangement had felt impossible to her, and even in her present weakness, it felt untenable. She missed him, but she couldn’t imagine sharing him with another woman he also loved.
Sunja had been foolish. Why had she supposed that a man of his age and position wouldn’t have a wife and children? That he could want to marry some ignorant peasant girl was absurd indeed. Wealthy men had wives and mistresses, sometimes even in the same household. She couldn’t be his mistress, however. Her crippled father had loved her mother, who had grown up even poorer than most; he had treasured her. When he was alive, after the boardinghouse guests were served their meals, the three would eat together as a family at the same low dinner table. Her father could’ve eaten before the women, but he’d never wanted that. At the table, he’d make sure that her mother had as much meat and fish on her plate as he did. In the summer, after finishing a long day, he’d tend to the watermelon patch because it was his wife’s favorite fruit. Each winter, he’d procure fresh cotton wool to pad their jackets, and if there wasn’t enough, he’d claim his own jacket didn’t need new filling.
“You have the kindest father in the land,” her mother would often remark, and Sunja had been proud of his love for them, the way a child from a rich family might have been proud of her father’s numerous bags of rice and piles of gold rings.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t stop thinking of Hansu. Whenever she’d met him at the cove, the cloudless sky and jade-colored water would recede from her sight, leaving only the images of him, and she used to wonder how their time together could vanish so quickly. What amusing story would he tell her? What could she do to make him stay even a few minutes longer?
So when he would tuck her in between two sheltering boulders and untie the long sash of her blouse, she let him do what he wanted even though the cold air cut her. She’d dissolve herself into his warm mouth and skin. When he slid his hands below her long skirt and lifted her bottom to him, she understood that this was what a man wanted from his woman. Lovemaking would make her feel alert; her body seemed to want this touch; and her lower parts accommodated the pressure of him. Sunja had believed that he would do what was good for her.
Sometimes, she imagined that if she carried the load of wash on her head and walked to the beach, he’d be waiting for her on that steep rock by the clear water, his open newspaper flapping noisily in the breeze. He’d lift the bundle from her head, tug at her braid gently, and say, “My girl, where were you? Do you know I would have waited for you until the morning.” Last week, she’d felt the call of him so strongly that she made an excuse one afternoon and ran to the cove, and of course, it had been in vain. The chalk-marked rock they used to leave behind like a message was no longer in its crevice, and she was bereft because she would have liked to have drawn an X and left it in the hollow of the rocks to show him that she had come back and waited for him.
He had cared for her; those feelings were true. He had not been lying, she thought, but it was little consolation. Sunja opened her eyes suddenly when she heard the servant girls laughing in the kitchen, then quieting down. There was no sound of her mother. Sunja shifted her body away from the door to face the interior wall and placed her hand on her cheek to imitate his caress. Whenever he saw her, he would touch her constantly, like he could not help from doing so; after making love, his finger traced the curve of her face from her small, round chin to the bend of her ears to the expanse of her pale brow. Why had she never touched him that way? She’d never touched him first; it was he who’d reached for her. She wanted to touch his face now—to memorize the continuous line of his bones.
In the morning, Isak put on his navy woolen sweater over his warmest undershirt and dress shirt and sat on the floor of the front room using a low dining table as his desk. The lodgers had left already, and the house was quiet except for the sounds of the women working. Isak’s Bible lay open on the table; Isak had not begun his morning studies, because he couldn’t concentrate. In the small foyer by the front room, Yangjin tended to the brazier filled with hot coals. He wanted to speak to her, yet feeling shy, Isak waited. Yangjin stirred the coals using a crude poker, observing the glowing embers.
“Are you warm enough? I’ll put this by you.” Yangjin got on her knees and pushed the brazier to where he was seated.
“Let me help you,” Isak said, getting up.
“No, stay where you are. You just slide it.” This was how her husband, Hoonie, used to move the brazier.
As she moved closer, he looked around to see if the others could hear.