The Korean Word For Butterfly Read online

  The Korean Word For Butterfly

  A Novel

  By James Zerndt

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, companies, institutions, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 James Zerndt

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Jeroen ten Berge

  JUNE, 2002

  Billie

  Joe and I were met outside the airport by a man in a black suit. He was holding a sign with our names on it just like you see in the movies. He told us he worked for the English school and his name was, get this, Moon. He spoke to us in this quiet, gentle voice that immediately put me at ease. To say I was on edge would be an understatement. Joe and I were frauds. There was no other word for it.

  So, yeah, I just about pooped my pants when this Moon character started yelling at the people loading our baggage into the car. Two totally different sides to the guy in like the first minute. And these other guys got all nervous, started apologizing and bowing all over the place like this Moon was some kind of big shot. All very strange stuff. I’m still not sure what that was all about. It would probably help if I understood some Korean.

  I sat in the back as we drove out of Seoul, while Joe rode up front with Moon. Of course, right? Stick the little lady in the back. Not that I minded really. I got to take it all in without having to stammer through all the small talk. Which is exactly what Joe was having to do. The first thing I noticed were these giant neon crosses on top of some of the buildings. And I mean BIG crosses. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Like Koreans just discovered neon and there was some national contest to see who could erect the biggest cross without having a building topple over.

  I don’t know who won yet, but I’ll be sure to let you know if I find out.

  I already liked Moon.

  Or, at least, the Moon I was watching in the rearview mirror. His face was so serene. And oval. Dare I say, moon-like? There was even something of a glow about him. And I’m not the type of annoying human to use words like aura, so I’m not going to use it no matter how appropriate it might be. But who knows, maybe I was just hungry and hallucinating. God knows we didn’t eat much on the plane. Regardless, let me just say that this Moon seems like one extremely cool cat.

  As the scenery floated by, Moon flipped through the radio stations until he landed on some American music. If you can call it that. Apparently Bon Jovi is big out here because we proceeded to listen to four of their songs in a row. At one point, Moon caught me staring at him in the rearview, turned around, and said, “Heavy Metal. You like-uh?”

  Koreans, from what I’ve gleaned so far from my thirty minutes here, tend to place an “uh” at the end of their English words. My guess is it’s something they do when speaking Korean. Guess I’ll find that out later, too.

  I lied and said, “I love-uh.”

  He smiled, blushed a little, his cheeks turning a soft pink. I sat back, let the countryside unfurl as Moon and Joe went on to discuss butt-rock. Moon managed to pronounce both the names Warrant and Poison perfectly, and, for a short while, he became animated, clearly thrilled that Joe was familiar with these heroes of his.

  With nothing else to do, I listened to Jon Bon Jovi sing about how everything is the same, how only the names change, how he’d drive all night just to get back home.

  Oh, Bon Bon, I hope you’re wrong.

  The rest of the song was, thankfully, sucked out the window, but, even so, I soon began to realize that the Korean countryside did look similar to, say, Iowa. Only instead of corn fields, rice paddies quilted the land. We passed what looked like a city made of green houses, these white half-cylinder huts stretching on and on until they bumped against the horizon. Farmers, too, dotted the rows of vegetation, squatting over their work as if tending to children. And I know I was being ridiculous, but I was a little disappointed they had farmers here. I guess I wanted everything to be different. I don’t know what I was expecting. Red grass? Purple trees? The fact that they even had stop lights was something of a let-down.

  But that’s me in a nutshell.

  Never satisfied, as Joe likes to say.

  Joe. I’m amazed by him. The way he orchestrated all this. This what? I feel like we’re stealing something. Can you steal a job? An adventure? I didn’t think he had it in him. And, loathe as I am to admit it, I kind of like the new Joe. Confidence can be a real turn on. Well, the right amount anyway. Too much and you’re just another idiot. But I don’t have to worry about that with Joe. He’s got enough insecurity to last most anybody a lifetime.

  I’m not sure how long we were driving for when Moon suddenly brightened (pun not intended-- but not withdrawn either) and pointed to a cluster of tall, white buildings.

  “Bundang-gu! Your new home-uh!”

  It looked like any number of other cities we’d been passing, row upon row of project-like buildings with these massive, bizarre cartoon characters ornamenting them. It sort of looked like a giant Lego city. Something built by a child with only so many shapes and sizes to work with. And the cartoon characters added this creepy affect to it all. Like somebody came along and slapped smiley-face stickers all over the place in an attempt to brighten things up.

  Which only had the opposite effect.

  And, which, I kind of absolutely love.

  Everything was going by too fast though. I wanted to reach out and touch things, stick them in my pocket to examine later. Like maybe inspect some of the women hunched over in the fields, ask them if they were happy working out there all alone. Then again, what business of mine was it whether or not they were happy?

  We passed another neon circus of lights which we were told was Samsung Plaza. The local Super Mall. A giant swirl of yellows and reds pulsing and flashing up and down the buildings before spilling out onto the sidewalks and people. This place was alive with light. I could make out a few English words on some of the store fronts, but the rest was a frenzy of color and dancing advertisements.

  Enough to make a person dizzy.

  And that’s exactly what I wanted.

  I want to puke my guts out after I get off this ride.

  I’d almost forgotten about Joe when he leaned over the back seat and said, “Kind of groovy, huh.”

  “Kind of amazing,” I said back.

  I’m starting to fall in love with him. Probably a strange thing to be saying at this point, but there it is. I guess maybe I’ve got some trust issues, but who doesn’t? If you don’t, my guess is there’s something very, very wrong with you. I mean, a person’s bound to get a little banged up if they’re doing this whole being alive thing, right?

  We left Samsung Plaza behind us, and within a few minutes Moon was pulling up in front of a three-story building. This, we were told, was the school we’d be teaching at for the next year. Kid’s Inc. We’d already seen photos of it on the internet and knew the school part was on the top floor. What we hadn’t seen was the bottom floor. And, just in case we somehow missed it, Moon pointed proudly at the giant letters greeting us.

  T.G.I.F

  This was definitely not on the brochure.

  My heart sank.

  Not exactly the exotic change I’d hoped for when agreeing to a job some 5,000 miles away.

  Moon

  Moon settles down on the couch with his snack for the night: rice cakes filled with sweet beans. It was a favorite of his father’s. Chapssaltteok. As a boy, his father would pick them up on his way home from work. Now Moon does the same.

  His father was a good man.

  A great man.
/>   Only it’s taken Moon a long time to realize that. His father worked at a bank. A salary man. He wore the same style suit for over forty years and never missed a day of work that Moon could remember.

  Plain.

  That pretty much summed up his father.

  But plain has taken on new meaning for Moon. What was so wrong with being plain? The Korean monks he sees downtown are plain and doesn’t he admire them? Isn’t that the whole point? To strip things down to their essence? To do away with all the glitter of illusion?

  He looks at the mantle above the TV, at the statue of a woman playing a saenghwang, a traditional wind instrument, he won at The Golden Disk Awards. The award is anything but simple. It’s shiny. All gold. And, to Moon, it no longer symbolizes everything he’s won.

  It symbolizes everything he’s lost.

  His father and mother used to play duets after dinner. Moon remembers that. Though it all seems like a dream now. How outdated his father had looked sitting on that mat, playing those silly crude instruments while his mother accompanied him on a danso. And when he wasn’t playing his flute, he was always telling stories about their ancestors, reminding Moon over and over again how important family was. How important it was to remember where he came from.

  Moon pulls out his cell phone, thumbs down to their number but doesn’t call. He can’t. He’s brought shame upon his family. All they would do is ask about Hyo, ask when they could see him again. Moon couldn’t bear it.

  Next to the award on the mantle sits an unopened bottle of soju. JINRO CHAMISUL. It was Moon’s favorite. His soju of choice. Not the most expensive, but it was smoother than the others.

  It’s a reminder.

  Something Moon can pick up and feel in his hands. He likes to twist the cap back and forth, pretend like he’s going to break the seal. Then he looks at the photo next to the bottle of Moon holding twelve-month-old Hyo in his arms. His wife is standing beside him in the photo, beaming up at the two of them. She’s proud. Happy. Everything she wants standing right beside her.

  It makes Moon put the bottle down every time.

  He picks up his rice cake, takes a bite. Eat, he reminds himself. Eat. This will pass. It always does.

  He turns the TV on.

  There’s something about an accident with a U.S. tank.

  Two middle school girls killed.

  He sets his rice cakes down.

  Yun-ji

  Yun-ji was tired. She took business classes in the mornings and worked at the English school until six at night. Then it was straight home for dinner with Mom and Dad. Well, with Mom. Dad was usually at the family restaurant. Or at the soju tent across the street. You’d think he owned two restaurants, the amount of time he spent there.

  After dinner it was three hours of studying. Then, if she was lucky, thirty minutes of TV before bed. Yoon Do Hyun's Love Letter. Or, maybe, Bad Girls. Depending on the mood she was in. And if her mom was asleep.

  This was Yun-ji’s life.

  And, if her father had his way, she’d end up managing the family restaurant one day. Yun-ji knew nothing would make him happier than having her within arm’s reach every day.

  But Yun-ji had worked at the restaurant since she was a little girl. If she had anything to say about it, she’d be opening her own business one day.

  Yun-ji’s Women-Only Internet Café!

  It would be the first of its kind in Bundang-gu. Maybe in all of Korea. Her internet cafe would be a safe place for any girl who wanted to study in peace, without the distraction of boys. And no matter what anybody said, boys were a distraction.

  But for now, she had to keep her nose to the grindstone.

  10,500 Won an hour.

  That’s what she got paid as one of the secretaries for Kids Inc! About nine U.S. dollars. And for what? To sit around and listen to the teachers complain about their jobs mostly. They made four times her pay and still they thought they had it so rough. Plus they got a free apartment. And free round-trip airfare. Plus a bonus if they stayed an entire year.

  And why? Because of their language. Whoever heard of being hired for the language you happened to grow up speaking?

  English. Even the word sounded like money.

  Tomorrow, two new American teachers started. That meant Yun-ji would have to hold their hands and show them the ropes. Hopefully they wouldn’t be too bad. Then again, they couldn’t be much worse than the last teacher. The Canadian. What a disaster that had been. Which was a surprise to everybody at the school since usually the Canadians were far better behaved.

  Yun-ji’s phone lit up. Soo. She wanted to go to the park and talk. Yun-ji was already finished with her homework, and she could catch up on her shows tomorrow. Her Mom scolded her about her studies but eventually relented. Yun-ji texted back.

  20 min?

  Youldong Park was only a few blocks from their apartment. The air was cool and crisp, the lights surrounding the big lake all lit up and shining down on the water. The park, like always on summer nights, was full of couples strolling hand in hand, families, high-school boys and girls walking in happy, gossiping clumps.

  Soo was already there, two coffees waiting on the table.

  “Walk or sit?”

  “Walk,” Yun-ji said and gave her friend a hug. “I could use the exercise.”

  Soo hooked her arm around Yun-ji’s and, as they set off, they were careful to take the inside lane around the lake. The outer lane was for joggers, bikers, and rollerbladers. There were always accidents because of people using their cell phones and not paying attention to what they were doing. That was one of Soo and Yun-ji’s rules: no cell phones! They agreed to put them on vibrate whenever they took their walks and only check them in cases of an emergency.

  Which meant one of two things: boyfriends or parents.

  For Yun-ji it meant only one thing since she didn’t have a boyfriend anymore. How many walks around the lake with poor Soo did it take for her to get over that? About a thousand? And, if she was honest, she still wasn’t really over him. Yun-ji didn’t understand how other people seemed to move from one relationship to the next so easily, like they were simply changing their internet provider.

  Depending on how fast or slow they went, it took about 45 minutes to walk the entire lake. Tonight Soo and Yun-ji were taking their time. Soo was having problems again with her fiancée, although “problems” might not be the right word for it.

  “He works too much. I never see him. What’s the point of having a fiancée if you don’t ever see him? And I found out he went to the driving range last night after work again. Can you believe that? To unwind, he said. Literally, he said. Like it was some kind of joke. Like he was so very clever. Sometimes, Yun-ji, I swear I’m going to...Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just love him so much and can’t wait until we’re married, and we have a little baby, and you can come over, and we can talk all afternoon. Won’t that be just wonderful?”

  Yun-ji had heard all of this before. It was funny how in all of these future family scenarios, Yun-ji was always single, without a job, and free to simply bask in her friend’s happiness. And babysit, most likely.

  “Yes,” Yun-ji said and patted her friend’s arm. “It’ll be wonderful. I can’t wait.”

  Once they made it halfway around the lake, they came to the forty-five-meter tall platform people paid to jump from. Soo loved the bungee jump, but Yun-ji got nervous just looking at the thing. Never. Never in a million years. The things people did just to feel alive. Wasn’t walking and breathing and seeing the beautiful koi enough?

  There was a crowd gathered, which meant somebody was getting ready to jump. People were talking excitedly and pointing, but Yun-ji couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about.

  “It’s a foreigner. A megook,” Soo whispered.

  Then, as if on cue, a man walked to the lip of the platform. He was white. Yun-ji could tell that much from the ground. And crazy. Just like all the others who jumped. Yun-ji said a silent prayer fo
r the man, asked God to watch over him, over everybody who did these stupid, reckless things.

  With her hands still clasped to her chest, she made a small sign of the cross using just her finger. Amen. She knew that if Soo saw, she’d make fun of her. Maybe call Yun-ji a nun-in-training like her ex-boyfriend had that one time. It wasn’t true though. Yun-ji wasn’t anything like a nun. But, then again, she wasn’t as promiscuous as some other certain people she knew who were standing very close to her at the moment.

  The figure above them jumped. Or, more like, dropped. It was so quiet looking, so graceful, that the crowd seemed to draw a collective breath and hold it as the man fell. It only took seconds for him to reach the water, but something about it seemed much longer, much slower. He’d jumped head first, as some of the more adventurous ones do, with the cord strapped to his feet. A lot of jumpers scream when the fall begins to gather speed. Some cry. Some try to yell out something funny. Some simply make incomprehensible, garbled sounds. Sounds they probably didn’t think they were capable of and regretted making afterwards.

  But there was nothing from the megook.

  Not a peep.

  The white figure simply spread his arms out wide, like a crucifixion, and fell. That’s exactly what Yun-ji was thinking, that the man looked like a beautiful crucifixion, when the length of the bungee cord finally pulled taut and began to recoil, and the man’s head, just the very top of it, momentarily broke the surface of the lake before soaring back up into the air, a trail of water chasing after him like he’d just been baptized by an angry God.

  “He’s cute,” Soo said once they began walking again.

  “You could barely even see him.”

  “He falls cutely then.”

  “Give me a break, Soo.”

  They took their time strolling, stole glances as the man was pulled from the water and unharnessed. He had a shaved head. An army cut. Which was strange. Usually all the foreigners they saw in the area were English teachers. Maybe he just liked to keep his hair short.

  The man took his shirt off, wrung it out.