The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [181]
Then he’d be gone again, and I would miss him with a fierceness that I hadn’t known for all the years of our separation. I missed his eyes following me when I crossed the room. I missed hearing his voice as he solved a problem with the workmen, his gentle and diplomatic persuasion when they disagreed on how to approach a task. I missed the flat way he wielded his chopsticks, the questions he asked about the years apart, the foreign stiffness when he sat or stood, the stories he told about colleges and America, the woolly smell of his army sweater, his breath mixing with mine in the same house.
At night I crawled into bed in the room that Grandmother, Sunok and I shared in the winter. I awaited sleep, exhausted, and the image of my husband behind my closed eyes gradually changed as the days since his homecoming grew in number. I envisioned his charming smile, how his shoulders rolled and his hands moved, the smart way his cap accented his chin, the handsome cut of his coat when he belted it, the interesting line of his three-quarter profile. But the last two thoughts I had were always the same. First was the mortifying anticipation of sharing his bed, and any nervous or pleasurable thrill I felt was always quashed by my second thought: that I must tell my husband the truth about having lost my battle of faith. It brought a frown to my brow that stayed until morning.
The New House
DECEMBER 1945
A WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS, INCHES OF POWDERY SNOW COVERED THE entire city, and the workmen left until spring thaw. The front of the new house needed carpentry—trim, doors and windows installed—but the back was ready to live in. Calvin said he’d move in Friday evening. I laid planks to bypass the unfinished front rooms and tested the floor heating and the rear chimney’s draw. Although the house was wired, electricity had yet to reach our street. Similarly, the bathroom had a working toilet but lacked running water. I thought the house waited for an uncertain future, much like myself, and fretted over the effort and expense it was taking to build. I filled kerosene lanterns Calvin had provided, swept sawdust and arranged a cistern and washbasin in the bathroom.
Three rooms were livable in the new wing—bedroom, sitting room and bathroom—and knowing I would have privacy with my husband for the first time since the hotel in Manchuria, I gladly cleaned them to counter my nervousness. Wiping the porcelain surfaces, I recalled being that young newlywed. It wasn’t the memory of my innocent bride’s optimism that struck me now, but the realization that I’d been consumed with scraping meals together for so long that I had truly banished all the dreams of those days. I refused to consider them now because too much was in flux, both with the return of my husband and the return of independence to our country. I also believed I was undeserving, and I had yet to confess the dismal condition of my soul. I couldn’t think a moment beyond that.
With a wet rag and soap from the PX, I scrubbed the walls and yellow ondol floors of the new house, hoping the perfumed lather would lessen the noxious new flooring and lacquer smells. It brought to mind how I’d washed all the surfaces of my in-laws’ house as a way to accept responsibility for the leaky hut, but I had been a slave there and not a family member. I would never tell my husband about the misery of those years.
Friday morning brought a steady light snow, but not enough to prevent the Jeep from reaching the house. I immediately expunged this disgraceful thought and focused instead on the preparations for my husband’s formal return and our move into the new house. After a tepid and bland breakfast prepared by Meeja, I sat for a time with Grandmother during her morning ritual. In the odd gray light of muffling snowfall, I bent my