Auld Author

This piece is another work in translation from Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton. A glimpse of another culture but the lesson or message is, I believe, universal.

A Tableau by Kyung-sook Shin

Translated from the Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton

A woman with a nursling strapped to her back was watching an old woman coming down the steps to the subway platform. The mother began to rock the sleepy, whimpering baby but her eyes were fixed on the old woman, who looked to be in her eighties. She was skinny and wrinkled, couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, and held a paper bag in one hand and a beige handbag in the other. The mother’s gaze shifted to a woman with permed hair who was following the old woman. Maybe her daughter? Or a daughter-in-law? The permed woman carried a bundle atop her head. Wrapped in linen and tied in a knot, it squashed her permed hair; it must have weighed more than the old woman.

The permed woman grimaced painfully as she descended to the platform. She dropped the bundle to the platform and it landed with a thud. “Well,” she blurted, “I’m heading back. Kids should be home from school around now.” And up the steps she scampered, ignoring the old woman’s attempts to detain her.

“The train is approaching,” came the prompt from the public address system, and the old woman asked the mother if it was the train for Tangsan Station. With a worried expression the mother nodded. How in heaven’s name could the old woman drag that bundle aboard? The train roared into the station and the doors thunked open. The mother boarded first, stealing glances at the old woman as she did so; she had a baby to care for and couldn’t help her. The old woman deftly set her bags inside the opened doors, then hefted the bundle with both hands and followed. The mother silently praised her: amazing how that scrawny granny handled the huge bundle. It was early afternoon, a relatively slack time on the subways, but most of the bench seats that flanked the aisle were occupied, the passengers glued to their cell phones, listening to music through earbuds with their eyes closed, or reading a book. No one paid attention to the old woman and the mother. The mother located an unoccupied seat and looked back toward the old woman, wondering if she should offer her the seat or take it herself. The old woman told her to have it, then sat herself down on the bundle.  Her forehead was beaded with sweat.

As the mother eased herself and the baby onto the seat with a remorseful expression, an elderly woman sitting across the aisle scooted to the side to make room and beckoned the old woman, saying “You don’t have to do that.” The old woman made several attempts to decline but finally yielded to the other woman’s entreaty. Her skinny frame looked none the worse for wear.

The other woman tutted and said, “What could you possibly be hauling around at your age?”

“Something for my girl….”

“Whatever could it be?”

“It’s nothing much, just a small butterfly chest that she adores. I feel like my days are coming to an end and so I thought I would give it to her.”

“Why not have her come and get it—or you could take a cab?”

“I don’t want to bother her, and a taxi would cost too much.”

The mother brought the baby to her bosom as she listened to the conversation between the two women, the one who must have been in her eighties and the other, who looked to be a decade younger.

“You don’t want to bother her? Grannies like you make my blood boil. Why do you have to live like that? You look like you barely manage just yourself, but going somewhere toting a load that’s bigger than you are? What do you think you’re doing?”

The old woman continued to listen to this stranger she had just met, but all she could do was mumble, “Yeah, really.” 

The mother thought about the permed woman who had unloaded the bundled cargo before disappearing. Was she the old woman’s daughter-in-law?          

“Where are you headed, anyway?”

“Tangsan.”

“Will she be waiting for you at the station?”

“No.”

“Then you’re going to drag this dead weight around some more?”

“I’ll survive…don’t worry, I won’t ask you to be my porter.”

“No, it’s just that I can see myself in your situation. Why do we have to live like this? Why do we have to feel guilty toward our kids? We didn’t do anything wrong. We’ve jumped in the water, we’ve walked through fire for our kids, haven’t we? And now that we’re old we have to stand up for ourselves. It’s nothing to feel sorry or bothered about…we simply put ourselves first–agreed?”

“Can you really do that?”

“Me? Well….” The hard eyes of the other woman began trembling, and her tone, so assured until now, softened. “A few days ago I was on my way home from somewhere, and the back of my head started pounding and I had this shooting pain in my heels. I had to stop. I called around, and guess what? I have four sons, four daughters-in-law, and how many grandsons?… Let me count…. Well, nobody answered! I barely made it up the steps from the train, but I felt so dizzy I thought I was going to die, so I plunked myself down at the top of the steps. And then this young man comes by and asks if I’m all right. I tell him I’m out of steam. So he says, ‘Here, hold onto me, let’s see if you can get up.’ ‘I can wait,’ I tell him, ‘I’m not in a hurry, so you can head off.’ And.…”

“And…?”

“Much later he returns, and you know what? He puts a candy in my mouth and then takes off.”

The old woman chortled. “See, what did I tell you? We’ll survive. It’s meant to be.”

“I guess he felt sorry for me. So I grumbled at his back, ‘Hey, young fellow, I’m not some old sad sack’–but I was already busy sucking on that candy.”

Tears gathered in the elderly woman’s reddened eyes. Gently she took the hand of the old woman transporting the butterfly chest in its linen wrap to Tangsan Station, the chest that outweighed her and that her daughter adored. She then placed her other hand atop the old woman’s. Before long the two women were leaning against each other and nodding off. The mother gave her breast to the whimpering baby and gazed at them. The train had already passed Tangsan Station.

Kyung-sook Shin – Page in draft

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton