“Are you really blaming me?”
“Exit! Exit!” my mother said, pointing to a sign going by. “Nobody’s blaming anybody. Don’t you know by now that—”
“Was I the one who—”
“Shush!” my mother said.
We got off the exit and followed the sign pointing to Waltham. It led to a dimly lit two-lane road. We passed dark Puritan houses shaped like the hotels from a Monopoly set, flat and without decoration, most of them with the lights out. Every so often, we passed under small stone bridges that had been built in the sixteen hundreds.
“Yobo,” my mother said, “slow down. You think we’re still on the highway?”
“Sixteen years in America,” my father said, making a gesture of counting with his fingers. “Sixteen years of working twelve, fourteen hours . . . And your mother!” His voice grew louder. “Your mother used to be a beauty, but look at her now! . . . Don’t you see how tired she is?”
“They know, they know,” my mother said impatiently. “Just slow down. Tired or beautiful, what do they care? I’m just their mother.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” my father shouted. The car was weaving slightly as though in emphasis of his words. The houses were going by faster, though it was hard to tell in the dark. “What have we worked for . . . to come to this . . . this disgrace!”
“Always exaggerating,” my mother said with disgust. “Speak calmly, reasonably. Then maybe someone will listen to you.”
“Shut up!” he said. “It’s your fault too! . . . You and me and our two measly stores . . . What do you think we’ve been scrimping and saving for? To feed and clothe these two idiots we have for children?”
The numbers on the digital speedometer sped up and down between seventy and eighty miles per hour. I thought I saw in the headlights the white stones of a bridge.
My mother stopped speaking and sat facing my father a little, but looking through the windshield, the tips of one hand against the dashboard.
“Dad . . .,” I said.
“You son-of-a-bitch! You’ve shamed us for the last time! I ought to hit this bridge!” he nearly screamed. And then he leaned his body onto the pedal.
“I’m sorry!” Jin cried out.
The bridge appeared like a great white monument and then flashed by. I’d been sure we’d hit it. I was sure he wanted to. But after we passed it, he slowed down and slumped his shoulders over the wheel. He said in English, “I don’t understand. . . .”
Beside him, I heard my mother let her breath out very slowly.
When we got to the hotel, I helped my father unpack the car. My mother and Jin had gone ahead—the right side of Jin’s face had started to swell. After he slammed the trunk, I said suddenly, “Promise me that you won’t hit him, okay, Dad? Will you promise me, Dad?”
There was a hard sliver of a moon that shed almost no light on his face. Beyond the line of tall trees the hotel had planted I could hear the highway smooth as glass.
I am the only painter in the world, Cézanne had said.
He stared at me for a long time, though it was so dark I could only feel it. “Ya,” he said. He nodded. “Okay. Because you my daughter and because you ask me. Okay.”
He said, “You know, sometime—you see when you—not everything—”
Abruptly, he bent down for the two overnight bags and walked away toward the yellow light of the building.
The farther away he got, the smaller he grew. Just a trick of perspective.
I followed so he wouldn’t disappear.
The Prince of Mournful Thoughts
Excerpt from Journey to Korea:
My Life and Travels in Chosun,
Land of the Morning Calm, 1810–1815
by Jeremiah Davies
I had the pleasure of meeting Yi Young Dal in a drinking house half a day’s travel from the Chosun capital of Seoul. This simple establishment, made mostly out of the humble materials of mud and rough wood, sat near the top of a hill, flanked by a higher hill behind it. I was traveling in those hills, staying in a different hamlet each night, discovering anew the delights of finding oneself in a foreign land. I told myself I would spend the next night on that higher hill.
There was a celebration taking place at the inn. It was brightly lit and loud with merriment from the many people sitting around small tables and eating. Drink also seemed in great supply. They welcomed me joyously and I soon found out the party was for Yi Young Dal, who had reached the venerable age of eighty. He was surrounded by a large family and many friends enjoying the last of the summer night air. I explained my journey in their country. This noble gentleman agreed to meet me the next day for an interview, and surprised me by telling a most remarkable story.
As translated by me through my guide, these are the words of Yi Young Dal.
Though I was born here in Suwon and will end here as well, there was a time when I worked in the palace. I would like to tell you about this time.
My family was yangban, of the gentleman class, but we had no money. This was worse than being born a peasant, for at least a peasant lived or died by his ability to work. An enterprising fellow could really make something of himself. In fact, some of the rich, landowning families had started out in just this way. But you must understand, for a yangban, working with one’s hands, with one’s body is shameful. We are expected to study, to become scholars, the best of us rising to become advisors to the king.
Though we were distantly related to King Taejo, our family had fallen out of favor many generations ago, and we lived in exile until we were forgotten. At first we had land and slaves and many lis of cotton and rice, but like every decaying family, we were beset by the overspending, bad judgment, and ill fortune of first
