Sunja changed the compress on Isak’s feverish head. The nearest hospital was a long trolley ride away, and even if she could move him by herself, an all-night wait wouldn’t ensure that a doctor would see him. If she could tuck him into the kimchi cart and wheel him to the trolley stop, she could possibly get him into the car, but then what would she do with the cart itself? It wouldn’t pass through the trolley door. Noa might be able to push it back home, but then how would she get Isak from the stop to the hospital without the cart? And what if the driver wouldn’t let them board? More than once, she’d witnessed the trolley driver asking a sick woman or man to get off.
Noa sat by his father’s legs to keep away from his coughing. He felt an urge to pat his father’s sharp knee bone—to touch him, to make sure he was real. The boy pulled out his notebook from his satchel to do his homework, keeping close watch on Isak’s breathing.
“Noa, you have to put your shoes back on. Go to the drugstore and ask Pharmacist Kong to come. Can you tell him that it’s important—that umma will pay him double?” Sunja decided that if the Korean pharmacist wouldn’t come, she’d ask Kyunghee to plead with the Japanese pharmacist to come by the house, though that was unlikely.
The boy got up and left without a murmur. She could hear him running down the street in his even, rapid steps.
Sunja wrung out the hand towel she was using to bathe Isak above the brass basin. Fresh welts from recent beatings and a number of older scars covered his wide, bony back. She felt sick as she washed his dark and bruised frame. There was no one as good as Isak. He’d tried to understand her, to respect her feelings; he’d never once brought up her shame. He’d comforted her patiently when she’d lost the pregnancies between Noa and Mozasu. Finally, when she gave birth to their son, he’d been overjoyed, but she’d been too worried about how they’d survive with so little money to feel his happiness. Now that he was back home to die, what did money matter, anyway? She should’ve done more for him; she should’ve tried to know him the way he had tried to know her; and now it was over. Even with his gashed and emaciated frame, his beauty was remarkable. He was the opposite of her, really; where she was thick and short, he was slender and long-limbed—even his torn-up feet were well shaped. If her eyes were small and anxious, his were large and full of acceptance. The basin water was now gray, and Sunja got up to change it again.
Isak woke up. He saw Sunja wearing farmer pants and walking away from him. He called out to her, “Yobo,” but she didn’t turn around. He felt like he didn’t know how to raise his voice. It was as if his voice was dying while his mind was alive.
“Yobo,” Isak mumbled, and he reached for her, but she was almost in the kitchen already. He was in Yoseb’s house in Osaka. This had to be true because he was, in fact, waking from a dream where he was a boy. In the dream, Isak had been sitting on a low bough of the chestnut tree in his childhood garden; the scent of the chestnut blossoms still lingered in his nose. It was like many of the dreams he’d had in prison where, while he dreamed, he was aware that the dream itself wasn’t real. In real life, he’d never been on a tree. When he was young, the family gardener would prop him below that very tree to get some fresh air, but he’d never been strong enough to climb it the way Yoseb could. The gardener used to call Yoseb “Monkey.” In the dream, Isak was hugging the thick branches tightly, unable to break from the embrace of the dark green foliage, the clusters of white blossoms with their dark pink hearts. From the house, cheerful voices of the women called to him. He wanted to see his old nursemaid and his sister, though they had died years ago; in the dream, they were laughing like girls.
“Yobo—”
“Uh-muh.” She put down the washbasin at the threshold of the kitchen and rushed back to him. “Are you all right? Can I get you something?”
“My wife,” he said slowly. “How have you been?” Isak felt drowsy and uncertain, but relieved. Sunja’s face was different than he remembered—a little older, more weary. “How you must’ve struggled here. I am so sorry.”
“Shhh—you must rest,” she said.
“Noa.” He said the boy’s name like he remembered something good. “Where is he? He was here before.”
“He went to fetch the pharmacist.”
“He looks so healthy. And bright.” It was hard to get the words out, but his mind felt clear suddenly, and he wanted to tell her the things he’d been saving up for her.
“You’re working at a restaurant now? Are you cooking there?” Isak began to cough and couldn’t stop. Pindots of blood splattered on her blouse, and she wiped his mouth with a towel.
When he tried to sit up, she placed her left hand beneath his head and her right over his chest to calm him, fearful that he might hurt himself. The coughs wracked his body. His skin felt hot even through the blankets.
“Please rest. Later. We can talk later.”
He shook his head.
“No, no. I—I want to tell you something.”