Twilight

Hwang Sun-won

tr. Heinz Insu Fenkl

It was an enchanting twilight, a brilliant twilight that seemed to spread its evening radiance like a giant fan across the horizon, and then, in an imperceptible instant, to fold it up again. The scarlet, so clear until now, was turning a deeper shade of red. Was it the season, now verging on autumn, that made the twilight as beautiful as this? Or was it because the sky had just cleared after a hard rain and the clouds were dispersed so lightly like cotton across the western sky?

A twilight this beautiful was only visible once in a lifetime, and yet it could disappear at any moment. As the man passed the vacant lot preoccupied with these thoughts, he noticed two small silhouettes walking towards him with their backs to the evening light. They were a girl, about ten, and a boy, about seven. In such tattered clothes, with cans slung over their shoulders, they were no doubt beggar children. But something was strange about them. The two did not hold hands, and yet it seemed that the boy sought comfort from the girl; and the girl, although she did not touch him, seemed to be protecting the boy as they walked in his direction. Without changing this attitude, they passed him. They appeared to be brother and sister.

After a moment the man turned and looked behind him. The two children still walked in the same way. Before them, in the once empty lot, the new shacks were obscured in evening smoke. Now that it was dark, the children would be on their way back home with the alms they had begged. Perhaps they were returning to a widowed mother who lay ill at home. Somehow, it seemed to the man that their begging cans would not be quite full.

Now a shadow, different from those of the two children before him, emerged from his past, making his chest tight with remorse. For some reason, there had been many occasions these days when long-forgotten memories from his past would rise up at unexpected times, in unexpected places, and make him heartsore. Was he that old already?

It must have been evening then. . . . The light had shone obliquely along the horizon. He remembered that over the broad, vacant slope in front of his house, the twilight had been as beautiful as tonight's.

That was the spring he had enrolled in middle school. His mother had been bedridden at home for many days after a stroke. And so they had hired a maid - a young woman, only thirty, green with youth and yet already a widow.

To have such a young woman was the not most desirable thing, but his mother had not been able to find a suitable maid, and she had been forced to hire just anyone. A young maid would leave things half done. It was regrettable, his mother said, but because the maid was young she would probably not stick to one thing for very long; she was bound to go off somewhere else by the time they had gotten used to one another.

Yet after less than ten days his mother was full of praise for the maid. Yes, she was young, but contrary to her expectations, there seemed to be nothing she couldn't do. In fact, she was unusually meticulous.

Sometimes the maid quietly said that she would never remarry and that she wanted to grow old like a daughter in the family. Every time she said this, his mother would ask how a young woman could possibly want to grow old alone. She suggested the maid just live with them until she found a good match and married again.

Once in a while, as if she were wondering aloud to herself in front of the maid, his mother would say that she couldn't understand it - how could a young woman who didn't seem to be burdened with a bad fate end up a widow?

Spring passed and summer arrived. One night in midsummer, he got up to go to the bathroom, probably because of the watermelon he had eaten before going to sleep. As he opened the door to go out, he noticed the young maid seeing a man off and then quietly locking the gate. The electric light was dim, but he could tell that it was the man who delivered water to their house. Even after the maid had retired to her room, he couldn't go out to the bathroom for a long time.

For some reason he found that he could no longer look the maid in the eye after that night. He would even avoid her. During breakfast and dinner, when she served such things as the tea made of scorched rice, he purposely concentrated on picking up the slippery fish eyes with his chopsticks so that he wouldn't have to look at her. "You bitch," he said to himself again and again.

One morning, when the maid should have come out to prepare breakfast, she was nowhere to be found. His mother went to look in the small room behind the garden and discovered that she had not come home to sleep. The previous evening, the maid had said that she needed to buy some things at the night market. She had asked for all of her back pay, and then she had gone out and not returned. He went out to look for her and noticed that even the gate, which she should have locked on her way in, had been left unlatched. The only thing the young widow had left behind was the small bundle she had brought with her when she had first arrived. When his mother unwrapped it, she found that it contained one soiled cotton jacket and a pair of underpants.

His mother said the maid would be back soon since she had left the bundle, but he knew that she would never come back. In fact, the young maid never did return, and after the day she left, neither did they see the water delivery man. He had been young then, and yet he had known somehow that things would turn out that way.

Then, one day when he came home a bit late after a soccer game at school, he saw his mother sitting out on the back porch talking with a middle-aged woman. She was shabbily dressed and carried an infant on her back. A child of four or five stood at her side. From what she and his mother said, he gathered that she was the wife of the man who used to deliver water to their house. It seemed that until just then, his mother had not realized that the young maid had run off with the water delivery man.

The woman stood there, quietly bowed. It would be enough for herself simply to have food to eat, she said, but trying to keep her young children alive was an ordeal. If only she knew where her husband was, she said, wherever he might have gone she would go there and bring him back. His mother said again that she hadn't know the truth until just then, and that she regretted the fact that she hadn't caught on sooner. But no matter how early on she might have noticed, he knew that his mother would not have been able to prevent the maid from running off with the water delivery man.

The woman stood there vacantly for a long time, then gave a weak bow and turned to leave. His mother took out a few bills and put them in the hand of the little girl who stood at the woman's side. She said it was some water delivery money she owed. The woman bowed once again to thank her.

As if the thought had just occurred to her, his mother instructed him to go to the small room and bring the bundle. Then, perhaps because it was not the sort of thing to ask of a boy, she tried to get up to go get it herself. But she had suffered from a long illness, and she could get only to her knees. He wondered what she intended to do with the bundle, but he went to get it for her before she could get up herself.

He was about to return from the small room when he had a thought and he paused to unwrap the bundle. The underpants fell out. He picked them up, one side of the crotch in each of his hands, and shouting, "You bitch!" he tore them apart with all his might. Then he wrapped them in the bundle once again and came out.

His mother said that the bundle had been left by the young maid. She told the woman to take it with her. At first the woman looked at the bundle as if she were surprised and a bit offended. He also disapproved, and wondered why his mother was doing this.

His mother said the jacket and the underwear were still sound and could be worn through several more washings. With a look of having endured great hardships, the woman quietly put out her hand to receive the bundle. She bowed her thanks once again, then took the hand of the girl at her side and walked out through the gate.

In front of the house, over the broad vacant lot on the incline where the woman walked, the evening light shone obliquely. It was the twilight, as beautiful as if he were seeing it for the first time in his life.

But then he thought of what he had done just a moment ago in the small room behind the garden, and what his mother had done when he had come out. Gradually, in light of his mother's condition and the woman's predicament, it occurred to him that his own behavior had been utterly petty. Now his chest grew tight with shame, and he could not bear to look any longer at the form of the woman receding in the twilight.