अ Novel

Episode 9:In the Pitch Dark Room



It's been ashamed of me as I made a guilty mention of the retrieval of a previous job. A teaching profession couldn't be had like we used to recapture a lost territory. It shouldn't be. It's been so brazen of me to leave and recapture the earlier job of elementary school teaching in such short span of time.

Of course I had not been restored to the same job of the same school. I had presented myself to the local education board and submitted a suggested document in order to be reappointed to a teaching job at an elementary school. As a result, I got my job back at the fall semester of 1968 at Kilan Elementary School about 16 kilometers far from the Jeomgok Elementary School for which Willows had been serving.

This is a very awkward moment. Really. I have to give my readers an apt explanation for my retreat, that is, why I had plunged down to a rustic town again. The one reason: I was not able to register at the administration office of Chungang University for the first semester of the sophomore year, and I was not resourceful enough to withstand an urban life in the national capital.

The gang, really Samaritan, who had been armed with worried considerations, mobbed me, giving out ideas for my salvation. To which I thought it's time I blew a whistle for myself and for them also. I also had to fight an iota of an urge to take advantage of the others' good intentions. (We're willing to finance your whole academic courses!) I said good bye to my love on a winter night and cried all the way home trudging along the long river bank.

I also take this moment to give you readers an insight to the way in which I was and I would be unraveling my story. I am actually writing my story for the third time. And that in a book form. The previous one is on sale in www.textore.com about how many copies have been sold I have no knowledge.

Although I have rewritten the whole story of mine for the third time, what I seek your understanding, about which I am very proud, is that I have never compared notes with the earlier ones. There will naturally be omissions and new additions. I have from time to time been tempted to look into the previous descriptions, but I have fought the urge. So I can assuredly say that no line, sentence or paragraph is identical with each other.

It's been a really torturous process to have taken a fresh route of writing, but I think there's been a reward in its own way: I have experienced and experimented with a wide expanse of an expository prose. And I casually confess that Google has been truly instrumental, that is, I have consulted Google, particularly through its image searches, about the most recommendable lexicographical option out of a lot of conceivable expressions. If this were to see the global light as a successful writing piece, the half of the credit is Google's.

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My class, which I now vaguely guess comprised 60-some students, of which the boy students were dominant, came from valley and riverside villages. They were a very jovial and active group, who were getting along with one another. I saw to it that there would not be a bully or bullies who would keep harassing their classmates.

The parents of my students were mostly farmers, among the rest of whom were merchants, a postman and the holders of other mercenary jobs. The local people were a quite hilarious lot, of whom the Three Cannons of Kilan were famous, three humorous exaggerators, that is.

Kilan, to which my young man had taken a visit as an elementary school teacher, was eight kilometers far from Sun Valley to the south, in which he had spent eight childhood years, and 12 kilometers far from Jeomgok Elementary School, over a hilly pass. Kilan is an intermediary town linked to Cheongsong to the east, Euiseong to the west, and to Andong City to the north west.

Kilan was a sane rustic town. At the time of my residence, the town folks enjoyed exchanging gags. They also enjoyed throwing fishnets over the river but they were optimistic over the catches as they threw and pulled them up.

Kilan, a small cozy town, which is built along a tributary of a great river, the Nakdong River, collects tributaries of its own and is merged into the Nakdong River proper. Kilan could be named as a sort of souvenir town because my young man collected souvenirs of his own.

The thought that my young man had collected a souvenir or two of some sort might be a mistaken notion. Why? In a certain sense, the young man had been collected by a young lady as a souvenir for her, who had premeditatedly ambushed him, snaring him.

The siren, who had long made a transmorphosis of a fatigued young sea man into an obedient pig, assuring herself of the state of the pig's powerlessness and loyal bondage to her, confided to the charmed animal that she had followed a fortuneteller's recommendation: "Go east, and you'll run into your mate."

Taking the fortune teller at her word, she had come to Kilan from Pungsan, opening a seamstress' shop by a roadside on the way to Kilan Elementary School. In the summer of 1969 Cha Hee was 21 years old, and the young man that had been me was 27. In linguistic terms, she had been attracted to me, but in physiological and Freudian terms, she had been in heat, that is, at the peak of her libido, and I might have been at my peak age, too.

She was just like Wanda in the movie Wanda Nevada. She was as young and brilliant as Wanda, as street smart as Wanda had been in the movie, and more beautiful than Wanda herself. I liked the siren in purple dress. I wanted to be the air going inside her dress.

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In the leftist-dominant society, the wording is rampant that everybody is equal, people are the same, things of this kind or that are similar. No way. In the strict sense of word, no people are equal, nothing is the same with each other. All is different, people and things

People are different, in color, gender, age, length and weight, their tastes and job capabilities. People could be ranked in millions of tiers of monthly income and social status, and could be listed in files of intelligence, even in amorous abilities.

In brief, people are different, and things are different, too. Like the sky and earth are different. From the olden times, it's been a commonsensical idea that this is the world of "thousands of differences, and tens of thousands of categories..."

In the leftist-dominant society, the members of the communities have been trained so long by the ideology of identicality and equality and so much influenced by the ill-conceived routines that they have been hampered to think rightly. So it's time we the people are supposed to enhance the awareness of the differences of people and things.

Willows and Cha Hee were different. Whereas Willows reminded to me the contagiousness of my depression to her, Cha Hee was out to stoke its surface. She had a lot of funny stories to tell, of which the story entitled "May I come in naked or fully clothed?" made me laugh.

How she came to hold a fat sack of funny stories was really interesting. Her father, a farmer by profession and a chief of a district political party chapter by pastime, liked to take her second daughter Cha Hee with him to the adult gatherings. She naturally acquired a large repertoire of funny stories.

Her father was different as to how he bestowed an audience with a would-be son-in-law. Unlike a large number of the worldly parents, he was not trying to be difficult to the young visitor. Cha Hee's father, who had been in his late fifties at that time, after greeted by me on an early morning of an early winter day, smiled at me and said, "I am rich in daughters. She is up for grabs. for any young man."

My wedding, which was celebrated by the whole teaching staff of Kilan Elementary School and several fifth-graders of my class, and some friends including Brother Paragon at Euiseong, took place at Andong Wedding Hall, four months after I had met Cha Hee. The wedding car stopped rattling the empty cans at its tail at the borderline hill between Andong and Euiseong.

I am greatly indebted to my parents-in-law, whose benevolence, generosity, and tolerance had embraced my faults and follies of youth endlessly. Both of them have passed away, with their six daughters and one son doing well with their spouses and offspring.

I am also greatly indebted to my great uncle and aunt for my wedding reception which they had held for their nephew and his wife because my parents had gone back home in Taejon after having attended their son's wedding.

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To make a long story short, my parent's move to Taejon had everything to do with my insecure plan and Chungang's subsequent repudiation. I had negotiated my way, through correspondence, with Chungang University's academic administration office, into the full scholarship benefits for me. But they had repudiated their assured pledge at the final phase. They had mailed me suddenly one day the next spring a sorry note to the effect that they had failed to register me for the sophomore class.

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I heard and watched a tragic news yesterday on television (October 8, 2010) that "Lecturer of Happiness" Mrs. Choi Yoon Hee had died at a suburban motel room in a suicide pact with her husband. She had left a note to the effect that she had succumbed to the extreme pain from heart and lung diseases.

I shudder at an anxious anticipation at what corner the brutal army of cancer is turning. My doctor told me weeks ago that the numerical index indicating to the incidence of my intestinal glands cancer, specifically lymphatic, is so high that I have to go through the sophisticate examination at a university- level hospital.

I have no time for that. Above all things, I refuse to wear the patient's uniform and lie on the couch. I have to go ahead with this story and finish it in time. My wish is that my loving wife will be able to put my book, if it were to be published until that time, in my casket.

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Winding up the overnight honeymoon at Daegu City, making a customary three-day stay at Cha Hee's home at Pungsan, we hit the road for Taejon to pay our parents, who had been roughing up at a new place, a courtesy visit. The cab driver gave us an unashamed show of irritation at which we were equally irritated and embarrassed.

The cabbie in his early forties, who, starting igniting the engine of his ugly car grumbling, when, in 20 or so minutes, passing a river bridge, he swerved to a unpaved shallow road, having some back-breaking jolts on some pocked earth, was belching out curse words.

Cha Hee and me, who were forced to get off the cab at the entrance of a particular urban village, had to make knocks on some dwellings and ask questions, was able to enter the residence of parents. It was a ugly-looking shack. They were perplexed at the unnoticed visit. "Why not send us a telegram?" mother said.

I was annoyed at the terrible condition in which my parents had been put. I was to blame for all the troubles they had been going through. Father was really roughing up himself, getting rid of the modest peach farm and well-built wooden house of his own design. I chastised Chungang between my teeth for its distrust.

Mother got herself busy, getting in and out of the room, to feed the uninvited guests, making everything out of nothing. Steamy modest meals were set on a small dining table. Mother was saying sorry for the rough meals.

The winter night was long going. Having done with early supper, and listening to all the soap operas on radio, night was long left. Father said like an army commander's order it's time to sleep. Blankets and bed sheets were supplied for their daughter-in-law and their son, such as they had been.

Whenever I mention the "incident" my wife of 41 years blushes herself. She even negates the occurrence that night. I hold it as a fond memory of youth, and what has been missing is that she has never done me the same hospitality she had done that night again.

Because the room had no windows but the only room door, which was no glass, as mother switched off the only electric bulb, the room was wrapped in a pitch dark and death-like quiet. We were slumber mates to each other, father to mother and me to Cha Hee.

Hardly had some minutes had passed when I was about to slip into sleep. I felt a groping touch: Her left hand was gliding down my belly. My right hand caught hers in between but could not restrain hers, which thrust down to my crotch.

Her willingness to get away with some urgent needs of hers transmitted through the grip of her hand was so strong that I could not breathe much less give a decent cough. Ascertaining the hardness of erection of my staff, she got on top with agility, with her one hand pulling my stuff into her opening, thrusting her body forward deep into mine.

Locked to each other water tight, I was imagining her giving me agile pushes and sterile pulls on top of me, with her two hands around my neck and with her eyes closed, only relishing the intensity of the locking through her spine. In some minutes, the grip of her hands on me was more tightened, with liquids streaming down her loose legs and with her upper body collapsing, then me exploding inside her, with her coming again with some silent shakes, all of which was done with such agility in the wraps of bed sheets.