अ Novel

Episode 8: I Was Crazy



It was just like you came into the real world out of the movie theater where you were watching the movie. Wisps of wind got you shuddering The army career in the waning days of my 30-some month service was, when looked from today and from the day of my discharge at that time, a cozy cocoon.

The folks at my home town were almost the same in numbers and in their jobs, but what differed in themselves was that they were getting older and nastier than ever before. The environs they were living in were almost the same as before.

I was capacitated in my district as an elementary school teacher. In easy English, I took my earlier job back and that at my home town. Cousin West. a manager at Euiseong Education Bureau, three-times-removed cousin of mine, who was 20-some years older than me, might have exercised some influence on my reappointment, which made my commuting possible to and from Jeomgok Elementary School.

It was too static a landscape..The uncles of the village were still ploughing the field using cattle. The heavy load was still on father's A-Frame. I don't say nothing did not change at all. Father built his own wooden house with his own carpenter's design. Which was a real great thing. All that was needed now was an earner of a decent income.

I went to the army to change myself. I changed of course a little bit, but I did not change much. The red eyes of snipers' disappeared., but fear settled inside me, and with me forever. I lived with fear; Fear was my companion.
Everything was fear itself. I was afraid of the school and the school staff. They looked to be smarter, wiser, and above all things, richer. Rumors had it that the school teachers were real rich, so much so that some teachers were rumored to have bought this or that real estate that had been mostly paddy fields.

The cranes were coming onto the woods mostly of the oak trees. It was April and the cranes were perched on the branches of the taller oak trees. The beautiful wood parks are gone now of course by development sort of.

The school consisted of a dozen-some classes and one teacher took charge of one class. Of the school teachers, the teachers of the Kim family clan occupied the top 5 list, who were smarter than the rest of the teaching staff.

Willows, one of the four lady teachers, didn't come from the Kim clan but she was a maverick sort of. She was medium height, which means she stood below 160 centimeters. She had an affable feature and a likable calm voice. She walked steady, spoke in a very low voice. She was two years junior to me.

Of all the characteristic traits of Willows, her penmanship was wonderful, that is, a state of the art. The characters on her lettering pad, the writing pad or on the students' grade book were touting a feat of her marvelous penmanship with the apt distance between pretty characters--sesame fashion.

She walked right, said right things, and of course wrote right characters. She was a paragon of all the virtue. She lived with her mother in a small house with the front of a black gate. I thought her in awe and I looked at the house with black gate with reverence.

She said in a calm and subdued voice, "Your depression is contagious," It was on an afternoon of my classroom of an early winter. A warm ray of afternoon sun was slanting down through the glass window on my classroom from which my students had commuted back home. I didn't say anything, but I acknowledged that she had said the right thing, by which I was going to be depressed again.



Don't blame me with Iris. I just didn't not think of Iris. I had thought of her more than a dozen times, which had racked my brains.

I liked her, and if I am allowed to speak out, I can say I loved her. But love is a bilateral thing. I didn't have a chance to go see her and say to her, "I like you!"

She was a far-away thing, that is, a revered presence. From the moment I had witnessed her at her graduation of her elementary school, she became my idol. She shined me with her own brightness. It was a bliss for me to discover her but I couldn't get to her because I had been such a trivial man.

"Please Iris, grow up fine," I had prayed. I prayed Iris would grow up to be a fine lady. It was thrilling to imagine her in her high school uniform. And I dreamed there might come the day that I would meet her at last.



Confrontation Day Three: Shall I be able to finish this story? On what day shall I be found out to my wife and sons? Will they blame me for my distrust of my family and abandon of them? Will they cry for me to surrender so easily to death rather than fight it out, trusting the contemporary medicine and capable doctors? On what day will a serious surge of a cancerous pain begin with gusto?



My heart aches, but I think I'll have to get it over with. Thinking of Willows, I think it was odd, that is, a surreal love. I, Willows and me, or we, whosoever, did not touch each other, and didn't even shake each other's hands, either. I, Willows and me, or we, whosoever, didn't say to each other, "I love you!" We or anyone of us didn't try to propose to marry.

However, above all those lacks of niceties and intermediate procedures, I assure you, we knew it was love, and we kept to each other the commitment to marriage, and the cancellation of it was considered as betrayal. Mind, instead of language, of love found its way to each other.



Grandma's memory was deteriorating. Too tall and too blunt, her first daughter-in-law, who had recently cohabited with her mother-in-law, casually pointed that out at first. "Mama is so strange," she started talking, first to her husband with reservations, second to her sons with some assurance, and lastly to her neighbors with some jest.

Grandma had ruled our family, that is, my parents and their offspring, dictatorially but her long dictatorship was possible because mom had been so obedient. In my hindsight recollection, my grandma's misfortune in her later years might have not developed if she had spent her final years with us, that is, with my parents.

But after we had moved to a great place from Sun Valley, that is, to the water mill house, she had moved to her first-son's. She had not liked the idea but she had had to accede to the traditional custom. The move actually meant that her departure from the world was near at hand.

Even after she moved in her first son's house, grandma commuted to our house to meet mom and talk her grumble about my great aunt. My mom then had mildly rebuked grandma, that is, her mother-in-law who had kept abusing her so mercilessly for so long.

After grandma had gone back home, such as it had been, mom had been more often than not seen to wipe her tears thinking of her poor mother-in-law's plight. Grandma's visits became less often, and in no time, I started hearing about grandma's banned outings.



I conspired to leave the place again. My mind dictated to me that I settle, as a decent income earner, I have to lighten the heavy load of my father, and please mother, but my body led me aside from the place

Too cramped, Hard to breathe much less move. First of all, I couldn't stand father. He overworked his sons that were my brother and me. No, he overworked himself so much so that made the onlookers shriek. He knew how to work but didn't know how to take rest.

He didn't know how to say to his people about him to take some rest. He only worked himself endlessly for all to see. He didn't even raise his body but bent his to the ground. The whole parts of his bo요 were actually glued to earth. The onlookers took the message to mean to work without stopping.

I couldn't stand mama, either. Father was too dominant and overbearing, but mother was too powerless. It was too painful of me to look at mama on the other end of the scale. Mama should have acted as an arbitrator, negotiator, coordinator, or consultant. I wanted to flee.



Exodus is a wrong word, of course. The person who had done an exodus led a group of people, just like we see in the case of Moses' Exodus from Egypt, whereas the person who had done an escape used to do that for his own sake.

I feel incredibly ashamed of my young man who was determined to escape from the reality--from his grandma with deteriorating memory, from the pressure of his dad, from his mom's powerlessness, and finally from Willows' perfection.

Where to? I planned to go to college in Seoul at the relatively late years of 25. Nothing was set but determination, that is, an overblown determination. I had no money and no person to finance my college education, either. Even the target college was not set and I had not touched high school subjects for more than eight years. There was no home in Seoul to house or board my young man.

It would not be worthy of a comment about the severity or sincerity of the amorous feeling between Willows and me Some might make a mockery of the presence of such emotion and the others might scoff at the mention itself.

The assertion could be feasible because the one party would keep mum while I, as a writer, such as he might be, would keep mouthing about it by myself. No one would come out to verify the enthusiasm on the verge of insanity of my love toward her.

The one party, Willows, remained an iceberg, or, seemed to be an iceberg, whereas me remained a volcano, or, seemed to be a dormant volcano which was about to erupt in any minute.

How severe? I dreamed of her so often. I was looking for her mail on a daily basis. I more often than not rushed, in the broad city street, to a wrong woman of medium height and green overcoat, met with startled eyes.



I went to college in March, 1967. Standing on the campus ground of Chungang University, I thought back the late few months with mixed feelings. On financial and other terms, I shouldn't have come to college. So I was not devastated but understood about the fact that my parents hadn't said a word of cheers or health care at our parting.

Willows hadn't come to see me off but her mother had wished me well instead. I had overstayed a night at my friend's that had been Willows' close relative and Willows' mother had deigned to rise so early as to say goodby to me for her daughter. "Forget about any other worry, and only study hard," she had said.

Today exactly 43 years later, I feel I am indebted to her to a great deal and I am bound to say a few words of thanks to Madam Reverend, Willows' mother about her unfathomable warm considerations to me personally. And I deeply apologize to her for my repudiation.

In recollection, it had been a turbulent year with two and a half stormy months and sleepless nights. It had taken a full seven days to persuade my parents to allow me a collegial education by and for myself. A real hard cramming for a college entrance exam. The target college was decided on Chungang University.

It was winter. To stem the onrush of drowsiness, I made my room deprived of heating and even when I took to a cat sleep the room door was let to be ajar. I had imagined my proud name, during the cramming period, on the list of successful candidates for the entrance exam. Even during exam preparation, father popped his head in my room once or twice and condescendingly asked, "How about thinking twice, son?"

Once in, I was able to forget all the worldly worries and apprehensions. A country boy, who had been badgered by bullies, got surrounded with amiable and intelligent allies. A traumatic victim, who had gotten scared and terrorized by nightmarish snipers, got himself felt cured by the therapeutic environs of college. A frontline stretcher guy, who had been bored by the routine of details, got enlivened by the lively atmosphere of the college campus.

There were not cries but laughters. There were only smiles but not sneers. There was only peace but not war. There were no arguments but low whispers.

They were not getting old. When I was sharing with my classmates junior to me one of long benches which had taken its place around the Blue Dragon Pond, the pretty young coeds, taking their fat textbooks in their arms, shot friendly glances toward the gang, me included.

If I were to call a few moments or hours or months or years my own, and the best of mine, I would not be reluctant to call my years at college the jewel of my life. I had thought so at that time, and I think so today. If you were to call one particular place on earth a paradise, college will be it. In there, time stops going, with timepieces stopping running, with your consciousness of passage paralyzed, shut off from the outside world.

Once outside of the campus gate, I was battered with all the gamut of noises, odors, and sights. Long faces were ganging upon me: Grandma's deteriorating memories were going worse, Second sister who had been born at Sun Valley after the Korean War left the house to become a Buddhist nun.

A mail from Willows was waiting at the house of my tutoree who was going to elementary school as six-year-student going sitting for a middle school exam the next year. The home was my classmate's at which I was actually quartered as a private in-house-tutor for his brother.

The letter was a kind of courtesy mail sent to my previous long letter. It was as short as possible and as simple as a business letter. The characters of the mail were as neat as blue sky and as tiny as sesame seeds. In the letter was enveloped an envelope, of all the envelopes, of Iris.

Willows described in her letter how she had happened to send the envelope which had been sent to my previous service residence, Jeomgok Elementary School. In the enveloped letter, Iris, in three years' absence, she said hello to me. She found my name in a district paper. She went to a commercial high school. She had to because she would take care of her sister and brother. At the tail of the letter, she apologized to me for the photo, excusing herself that there had been no right photo of hers then.

I thanked hundreds of times to Iris' appreciative mind to seek me who was so trivial, so timid, and so inconsiderate. I envisioned the tortuous route her beautiful mind had trailed all along--the social section of a district newspaper to Jeomgok Elementary School, via Willows' hand, and finally to me to Seoul.

I apologize this time to Iris myself. I remember very vividly now I had said some strange remarks which might have turned out brutal to her, which I shouldn't have said, and which had been so weird and surreal. Which had been a sure sign of immaturity and inconsideration.

Looking back on my young man and people about him at that time, I realize that the lack of resourceful preparations and subsequent recklessness on his part had caused them a lot of indescribable troubles and inconveniences. I am hugely indebted to Y.C. Kwon, C.S. Hwang, Y.S. Lee, D.I.Park, and others for their warm considerations. Kwon arranged an accommodation and a tutorial job for me; Hwang even sold his gold ring for my allowance; And the others chipped in to give me conveniences of this sort or that. The tuition fee for the second semester in 1967 was paid by the advance payment of the tutorial charges.

There had not just been tough days but some shiny moments in store for me. Professor Paik of the politics department of the college called me one afternoon of the early fall in his research room and praised me for the full marks he had given me. After a few amicable moments he casually asked, "Are you married?"

"Not yet, sir. But I have a girl friend, sir!" To my smooth and unhesitant answer, he beamed. Getting out of the research room and stepping down the long stone stairs of the Law College, I asked myself what it meant by Willows. I wondered aloud whether Willows was a real girl friend in the true sense of the word. She had not sent me a letter by herself unless I had. I had imagined myself for the full summer days of that year running into Willows in a street of Seoul. I was crazy.