31. The sound of dry leaves slithering like snakes
I cautiously shifted my eyes to where the tip of Jin-wook's index finger was pointing. The corners of his mouth — he even smiles in his sleep — were full of mischief. Beside the last step down, planted in the middle of a hollow patch of brush, stood a small white sign.
"Snakes may appear. Please be careful."
I let out a laugh, amused at myself for having tensed up. Jin-wook has always had an unusual way with words. A few lines of conversation from him and my fatigue would lift. That is why there is no defending against this gentle mode of attack of his. He is more earnest than any "church brother," yet he wields his sense of humor this lightly. I burst out laughing loudly enough to startle awake the dead lying beneath the headstones of the cemetery. Jin-wook began laughing too, and gradually the two of us bowed our heads, trying to hold in the sounds spilling out. We were probably laughing for different reasons, but in the end we both love moments like this. As the laughter began to subside, I wanted to land a blow of my own and called out.
"Hey! What's that squirming along over there? Hey, isn't that a snake?"
Jin-wook studied something wriggling and skittering across the paving stones, then said quietly:
"The sound of dry leaves slithering like snakes across black paving stones."
In that instant, that brief instant, Jin-wook's inspiration and wisdom blanketed the quiet cemetery. The line he released into the fresh air formed a couplet with my mother's verse. Even our walk through the cemetery that day had come about thanks to my mother's line. Feeling generous rather than competitive, I recited my mother's verse and Jin-wook's together.
The sound of green grapes rolling across a white plate / The sound of dry leaves slithering like snakes across black paving stones
"Oh! I'm not sure Mother will like it. Putting my line right next to hers, of all things —"
He said that, but he knew perfectly well she would be delighted.
"I'll read both lines to her."
"Really? Thank you. Come to think of it, I matched the rhyme rather well."
The pleasure of our conversation comes from his honesty and his unstinting goodwill.
"Don't you think so? I matched it well. Between the two lines, 'white' and 'black' are a contrast, 'across a plate' and 'across paving stones' are internal rhyme, and then the end rhyme, 'the sound' and 'the sound.' It won't be an embarrassment to your mother's verse. When you add a third line later on, match it well enough that it isn't an embarrassment to us, either."
"You want me to make a third line. Right now?"
"No, whenever."
"…"
"Your mother doesn't seem to get out much. Let's take her out together sometime. She likes going out as the three of us."
"Anyone listening would think you were the son."
"I am the son. What, you're the son?"
"Well, these past few years you did look after Father and spend time with him more than I did."
"Looked after, nothing."
"I thought if Mother came to the cemetery she'd cry thinking of Father, but I've changed my mind. Let's come here together next time. If I tell her it's your special walking path, I think she'll nod. But Jin-wook — are you certain about going into that 'way'? Are you sure about going inside the truth?"
"Yes."
"How can you be so certain?"
"You just saw that dry leaf wriggling along like a snake. You couldn't see it, but the wind was dragging that leaf. The Holy Spirit guides my soul like that. What could be more certain than something invisible, like the wind?"
"Then why doesn't the wind of the spirit come to me?"
The clear wind of the cemetery brushed past my face and left me feeling refreshed. As I wondered how good it would be if a wind like this could touch my soul too, Jin-wook muttered to himself as though he had read my mind. "It will."
Following the paving stones between the headstones, we came nearly to the exit, and a large white building appeared. To put up a structure like that beside a cemetery like this — whoever did it must have had no head for money, or else belonged to that class of artists who live apart from the world. Even from a distance the exterior was anything but ordinary, and the closer we came, the harder it was to look away. A nameless old tree that must have lived several centuries stood guard over it like a gatekeeper, and the white building was divided vertically like the pleats of an accordion, each section built to a different height. That habit my pupils have of opening wide when I meet something beautiful whose identity I cannot place! Jin-wook deliberately widened his own pupils to match mine.
"How did anyone ever think to put up a building this beautiful in a place lined with headstones!"
Jin-wook enjoyed my astonishment as he walked slowly toward the entrance. Above the entrance, at the center of the accordion pleats, stained glass had been set into the wall. The moment I saw it, I cried out inwardly.
"If this isn't a dream — I have been here before!"
That time, darkness had already fallen, so I had not seen the building's accordion pleats. But the light streaming from inside had made the stained glass shine so beautifully that its colors lingered like an afterimage beneath the deep dark sky, a pattern out of heaven. The several steps leading up to the entrance, and the small clearings on either side that looked like stages — those matched my earlier memory exactly.
"Jin-wook! What is this accordion building?"
"Accordion building? Ha, people call it the hapjukseon, the folding paper fan. This is the Yanghwajin Cultural Center."
"Yanghwajin Cultural Center? Did Lee O-young, the former culture minister, ever work here?"
"He was its founding director. Why?"
"I met him inside this building. He knew my father well, so I had chances to meet him from the time I was a child. But when I saw him here, he had already converted to Christianity and published his book 'From Intellect to Spirituality.' Father was very glad about it."
"I see."
After I said this, Jin-wook's face darkened a little. He stood with his head bowed, as though something had come back to him. I stood there unable to speak, confused myself. When I came here before, I never saw this many graves. I did not see a single one. I had parked my car in a wide surface lot, walked up a long curving staircase, arrived at this very spot in front of this building, climbed the few steps in front of me and gone straight inside. It was not a place where one could imagine hundreds of graves like these all around. Either what I saw then was a mirage, or the graves I was seeing now were. Reading my bewildered expression, Jin-wook spoke first.
"At my workplace we once needed to ask Mr. Lee O-young to give a lecture. Memento mori — human beings die, so remember that you too will die. It is a Latin phrase, and it was the title of a book of his conversations. There is no greater counsel than to live your life remembering death, so we planned an invited lecture."
"Is it a religious book?"
"It is and it isn't. It is a record of conversations about what hope there might be in facing death during the COVID-19 pandemic, cast in the form of answers to 24 questions about the death of the late Chairman Lee Byung-chull."
"That sounds like an interesting book."
"I sent him a text laying out the aim and content of the lecture and saying we would like to have him as our speaker. I had met him on cultural matters even before he became a Christian, so I planned to call once he replied."
"Did he accept?"
"… He read the message, but there was no reply. He was someone who always answered immediately no matter how busy he was, so at first I wondered whether he was abroad. After a day or two, all sorts of thoughts crossed my mind — was he ill, had I done something to displease him. And still something felt uneasy. After a few days I sent the request again. This time he didn't even open it."
"Why would that be?"
"The next day I received notice of his death."
"… Ah."
Silence closed in around us.
"You said you met Mr. Lee at the Yanghwajin Cultural Center — you really didn't see this cemetery then?"
"I honestly don't know whether my coming here was a dream. I think I parked in the small clearing beside the building and walked up a long white staircase to reach the front of it. It makes no sense that the darkness kept me from seeing all these headstones. I feel like I'm dreaming."
"If you came by car, you must have entered through the front gate. The Korean Church Centennial Memorial Church is at the front, so you would have parked there and come straight to this building. Today we walked in through the narrow back gate. The front of the Yanghwajin Cultural Center connects to the path toward the church, and behind the building is the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery. The building sits on that boundary, you could say. And the front is low, flat ground while the back is a small hill, so you can't see the cemetery from the front."
"So all this time I've lived looking only forward, never behind."
At those words, which blurted out of me, Jin-wook looked at me with serious eyes.
"The Yanghwajin Cultural Center was built by the Korean Church Centennial Memorial Church to communicate through culture with people outside the church. And the folding-fan shape isn't only for aesthetic effect. They say it was built so that it steps back vertically in tiers from the highest center line. It's a posture of worship before God."
When I lifted my head, the cross atop the building stood with both arms spread against the clear sky.
Kim Da-eun made her debut as a novelist when "A Country That Resembles You" won the third Kukmin Literary Award in 1995. She has published some 20 novels, including "Deokjung's Garden," "The Secret of Hunminjeongeum" and "Rat-Eater Blues," many of which have been translated and introduced abroad. She has taken part in writing residencies including one at the University of Warsaw in Poland, organized by Arts Council Korea, as well as residencies at the Gakju Literature Museum in Cheongsong, the Auraji residency in Yeoryang, Jeongseon, and the Tomunjae residency at Insong Literature Village in Haenam. She graduated from the Department of French Education at Ewha Womans University and earned a doctorate in French literature from the University of Paris 8. She is currently a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Chugye University for the Arts.
(Reproduction, copying or distribution of any part or the whole of this work without the permission of the copyright holder is prohibited.)
