North Station. Suah Bae
with genuine happiness. On the fourth day, Yang heard another of the library employees wish Edmund a quick “Happy birthday!” as they walked past him.
“Today is your birthday?” Yang asked, also quite casually. By this time, they were sufficiently intimate that their conversation could stray slightly beyond the formal exchanges of visitor and employee, though it was of course still bound by the domain of the library.
“Actually no, it’s tomorrow; Mrs. Hella has a day off tomorrow, so she wished me happy birthday in advance.”
“Ah, in that case I want to say happy birthday too. How old are you?”
“Nineteen. Thank you.”
“And I’d like to give you some kind of present. Since you’ve been helping me so much.”
Looking genuinely shocked, though with his smile as unwavering as ever, Edmund replied that there was no need for that, he was merely doing his job.
“All the same, would you mind giving me your address? I really would like to send you a present, as long as that’s okay.”
Edmund hesitated for a bit before acquiescing—“if you really want”—and writing his address in the notebook that Yang held out to him. Yang slipped the notebook back into his pocket. Edmund regarded Yang with a somewhat blank look, unsmiling. Then, when Yang met his eyes and said “bye then,” he blurted out “bye” in response and awkwardly raised his hand, extremely flustered. Yang strutted out without looking back.
Each time he passed the gift shop, Yang’s eyes strayed toward the china dolls. Never in his life had he possessed such an object, or even considered that he might one day purchase one. The majority of the city’s gift stores were clustered along a huge road that stretched out to the west. When the evening sun was setting on those smooth milky brows, the dolls seemed like shy, flustered beings standing there at a loss, blushing, yet zealous and warm and surprisingly intimate. Yang was only too well aware of his own timidity, that he was always at least somewhat afraid. He’d always been that way, ever since his school days, but he’d never been able to understand why this timid disposition, perfectly natural to him, caused others to feel discomfort or awkwardness or even open hostility. To Yang, this defensive state of his was actually quite beautiful. Because it was another acute sensation only perceptible to himself. When he first spotted the china dolls in that shop, Yang had seen in them a single personality, irritating and intractable, like a fractious stepchild, but also pale and weak and frightened and beautiful. To Yang, this was by no means an unfamiliar combination. He found the china dolls’ pose of pessimistic hesitation far more attractive than the gorgeous coquetry of Eastern European painted porcelain dolls. He used all the cash he had on him to buy a Meissen sleeping Venus figurine. Yang could spend some time in close study of the sleeping Venus, and still find that it aroused no greater a desire for access or possession than had those other surpassingly beautiful beings. The salesperson put the Venus in a box, gift-wrapped it, and finished it with a red ribbon that read “Edmund, a very happy birthday.” The next day Yang bought nineteen yellow roses, and, walking slowly and clutching the note with the address, went to find Edmund’s house.
It was getting near to evening, and the sunlight was so pallidly faint that there was almost no warmth to be had from it, and the ducks had all vanished somewhere, and when the wind grew even chillier the people began to fold up their blankets and leave their spots by the lake. The tall couple, along with Yang, were among the last to leave. They sat up side by side, adjusted their glasses, and brushed any remaining moisture from their swimsuits, pulled on T-shirts and trousers over their swimwear, stood up and into their shoes, then folded their towels and hung them over their shoulders. Though Yang wanted to address them with some brief word of parting, and ask whether she had stopped working at the library, almost as soon as the thought occurred to him he felt that it would be difficult and annoying to put it into practice and actually open his mouth, besides which, the couple would likely have responded with indifference, so in the end he just stayed quiet. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he would soon need to set off for home. Mira had decided to call on him around 8 P.M., so he needed to be back before then, though beyond that there was nothing, absolutely no reason to rush. Yang had let the time drag on in the hope that Mira might wear herself out and decide not to come after all, but these hopes had ultimately been thwarted. Though he had no reason to think so, at some point during this impatient passage of time Yang had begun to worry that Mira had him confused with someone else. It was possible. They hadn’t seen each other in at least eight years, and whichever way you looked at it, Mira coming all this way to meet him, to meet Yang—she’d said it was just a passing visit but it was clear that he was the reason for her trip—simply wasn’t credible. By the same logic, she might not even recognize him. Again, as it was so long since they’d last met, or even heard the other’s voice, it was possible. Yang experimented with examining himself in the mirror, assessing to what extent his appearance had altered over the past eight years, but he couldn’t even guess what he’d looked like so long ago. And surely Mira’s memory would be equally poor, as in fact his was of her. Yang repeatedly reminded himself that Mira was a specific, material human being, a specific, material woman; sometimes this was strange and discomfiting, sometimes it seemed a joke so clumsy he wanted to laugh, and at one point he genuinely did laugh so hard he was almost doubled over. Eight years ago, Yang had been afraid of Mira. It was the same now. She was a magnificent-looking woman, strong-willed and fearsomely obstinate, and her assertiveness was uncommonly pronounced. But Yang’s fear of her wasn’t solely down to her powerful ego or will to dominate. It was because she had wanted him to fear her. There had been a period in his life when he had quailed at the thought that she might leave him. (The terror had been such that it seemed his chest would explode from the anticipation alone, and had gone on for such a long time at this same intensity that when Mira finally did cast him aside, in a dramatic scene entirely her own creation, it was actually less painful.) Back then Mira had hesitated, gently and patiently holding Yang’s head to her chest. We fell in love at first sight, you know, in a way that had never happened before. And still you’re afraid, what on earth are you afraid of? . . . Despite having arranged to come around at eight, it was past nine and there was still no sight of her. Yang sat on the bed and waited, watching the clock. Though strongly suspecting that she would arrive in due course, Yang fervently hoped that a last-minute change of heart might cause her to stay on the train and just pass the city by entirely. He didn’t put the radio on, or the lights, didn’t light any candles or make a pot of coffee. He simply waited, adopting unbeknownst to himself a posture of obedience toward some vague subject, preparing to receive the aggressor into the sphere of his shy soul. This was waiting only, without performing any action. At some point he fell asleep.
And then at some point he woke up; because he wasn’t immediately aware that he’d been asleep, it took him some time to grasp why he was collapsed in bed with his clothes, even his shoes, still on, and what had then woken him up. In this state of his exhausted bewilderment he heard shoes shuffling across the floor, and dishes clattering in the sink, which went on for an uncomfortably long time. These rude, unpleasant sounds rubbed his nerves the wrong way, needlessly reviving evil memories like a coin dropped into a tin dish. And who was that crossing the unlit room? Mira had arrived. She had opened the unlocked door and come in, made herself something to drink—paying no attention to the sleeping Yang—and had just now emerged from the kitchen. This was a moment he had imagined time and time again, suffocating inside every time that he did, but now, seeing the shape it was actually taking, he was convinced that reality was no rare thing, was in fact nothing more than a poor imitation, dull and run-of-the-mill, of that imagination that anticipates everything. He was in no hurry to get up, and given that his body was deaf to his commands, leaving him unable to so much as turn his head, shackled to the air as is common in fever dreams, he could do nothing but continue to lie down as he was, watching Mira get some bread out of the cupboard, slice it, and spread it with margarine. Even in the dark Yang could see that Mira had grown yet more emaciated, as though a gust of wind might blow her away, and that her long hair was hanging down behind her back in a very ordinary way, tied in a ponytail. She was wearing a pale-colored wool dress, belted at the waist, and though her clothes didn’t seem all that big, the material looked baggy on her hips. The fact that she had dwindled away like an aged, withering woman triggered surprise in Yang.