Chang-rae Lee: The surrendered

“What are you doing here, noo-nah ?” he said, his shoulders hunched up tight against the cold. He was wearing a sweater over his pajamas. He turned down the wick of the lamp. “It’s freezing. You should come inside.”

She didn’t respond. During dinner, before Min disappeared, she had resolved never to speak to him again, or maybe to do worse: she had flashed with a rage, wanting to pummel him, make him plead and cry. But the sight of him slightly limping, the kerosene lamp still too big for his hand, momentarily disarmed her.

“Please come now, noo-nah .”

“Just leave me alone.”

“I went in the chapel and made the fire in the stove. It’s been going for a half-hour already, so it’s nice and warm in there.”

“Go back inside, then.”

“You don’t look right. You’re going to get sick in this cold. You could die.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do,” he said, kneeling down beside her. “And it’s not because Byong-Ok might beat me. He doesn’t care about me anymore. The others don’t care, either. Nobody does.”

“You’re better off that way.”

“Are you still my friend?”

June stood up and began walking away. Her feet were tingling, nearly numb, her fingers cramping, and she thought that she should go now down the dirt road and veer off on a trail deep into the woods, where no one could find her.

“Well, are you?” he asked, following her closely. “I want to know. I don’t want to live here anymore if you don’t even care about me.”

“Why should I?” she said, turning and shoving him roughly. He fell to the ground, just barely keeping the lamp upright. She put her foot on his hand as she stood over him. “I should strangle you. Why did you lie about our being adopted? Didn’t you think I’d find out?”

“I didn’t know!” he cried, trying to pull his hand away. But she just stepped more heavily on him.

“You’re a liar!”

“I didn’t want to know!” he said wretchedly, trying with his free hand to push her foot away. She let him go and he curled into himself like a wounded snail, holding his hand against his chest. “Isn’t it the same for you? Don’t you have to make believe, too? Everybody knows I’ve got little chance, with my foot. Not when there are so many others with nothing wrong with them.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said, clutching the collar of his sweater. “Not with me!”

“Nothing?” he said, and almost laughed. “You can say it ten thousand times over, but it’s not going to make it true. You’re the way you are. Everybody knows it. The way you’ll always be. You’re trouble, just like me.”

She grabbed him by the throat with both hands, her fingers monstrously vitalized by the heat of his neck, his windpipe like the gently ribbed sections of a delicate reed, and had he not turned his face to the lamp, revealing the willing forfeit flooding his eyes, she might not have let go.

But she did. Min coughed horribly, shudderingly low, as if he were a dying old man, and after he regained his breath she got him up on her back and carried him to the main building. The chapel was lit by the bright honeyed light leaking out around the edges of the door of the old steel stove. Min had already moved the front pews together and close to it, as they had done the previous nights, their shared blanket was neatly laid out, his pillow set to one side to make enough room for hers, and she gently tipped him over the pew back and let him down on his side. She leaned over him, to make sure he was okay. He wasn’t speaking but he was breathing shallowly and steadily, and in the odd crib of the pews his body seemed even smaller than it was, loosed of stuffing, like some worn-out, sunken doll. He was staring up at her, not with wonderment or anger or even hurt but with the plainest appeal: Stay. Please don’t go. She didn’t know what she wished to do but what else was there now? He was not her brother or her friend or someone to care for or love. He was all right now and she owed him nothing. And yet she let him take her hand. He gently tugged on her and she climbed over the pew back to lie beside him, and when he turned and rolled right onto her, his face pressed into her chest, his hands seeking the pits of her arms, she wanted to push him off. But there was something in his certain sorry weight that seemed to seep down into her, suffuse her, until a strange new fullness had risen up in the stripped caverns of her belly.

They fell asleep. After some time June awoke to a dying fire and climbed out of the pews to feed a small log into the stove. The fire flared quickly with new heat.

“Could I have some water, noo-nah ?” Min said to her, peeking up over the pew back, his voice raspy.

She said all right. Outside, the sky was clear but moonless and the stars barely thwarted the darkness. But her eyes quickly adjusted and she made her way to the well. It was by the kitchen, and after she worked the hand pump five or six times the frigid water splashed out of the spout. Beneath there was a wooden ladle in a bucket, and while she filled its large cup she noticed a tiny, weak glow at the far end of the field. It was Min’s kerosene lamp; they had left it by the gate. She went across the field to fetch it and was about to head back to the chapel when the low groan of a door broke the silence. June instinctively crouched down, thrusting the lamp behind her to shield its light.

A dusky figure emerged from the Tanners’ cottage. It was Hector. He must have gone over while she and Min were asleep. Hector turned and held out his hands toward the pitch-black doorway and then it was Sylvie, in her light-hued robe, stepping out gingerly on the stoop. He helped her down, her one leg unsteady, and though it was obviously painful for her she appeared to want to walk by herself, if closely braced by him. But as they made their way across the yard she tucked her face deeply into his neck, not so much with ardor but rather as if she were trying to blind herself, as if she were unwilling to see.

They had not noticed her. June waited until they were long inside Hector’s room before rising. The night air had grown even colder now but June did not feel its sharpness. She stood stiffly before his quarters, staring at the lamplight or stove light knifing out from a vertical gap near the bottom of the door. She had no picture in her mind of what might be going on inside, whether they were speaking or kissing or making love, but that was no matter now. She did not desire to see them or hear them as she had from the other side of the shared wall, for she did not want any image of their animate bodies, or the sounds of even chaste breathing, any signs of life.

June crept into the storeroom and took a can of kerosene. Outside she silently doused the wooden stoop, the walls, splashed the ground in front of his door. She raised high the wick of her lamp, the heightened brightness surging through the clear glass globe to illumine the whole side of the building and the night as though she were still in search of someone, still bearing the light of everlasting devotion. She lifted the lamp and was ready to hurl it against the door when a shadow inside interrupted the slat of light at the bottom. It was a moment’s pause, a mere flicker, and yet it was enough to send a shudder through her bones.

She extinguished the lamp. She picked up the square-bottomed ladle from the ground. It was night again, and she suddenly felt the full chill of being alone. Inside the chapel, Min had pushed open the pews so that he was sitting directly in front of the fire, the door of the stove opened for light; he was looking at the book Sylvie had given her, flipping through the pages. When he realized June had returned he quickly put it down. He said, “You were taking so long.”