Chang-rae Lee - The surrendered

When he looked down at his feet, like a boy greatly relieved, she surprised him with an embrace. He felt his heart might collapse. He instantly took her up and held her against him. Her face was turned but his mouth and eyes were pressed against her ear, the soft plate of her cheek, and the more tightly he held on to her the more she seemed to give way, to cave, as if she were made of loose, dry dirt. He wanted to pick every piece of her up. Fill his mouth with her hair. But they heard voices and she came alive and pushed away from him just before a boisterous troop of girls came bounding into the room. They were suddenly quiet but their eyes widened and they started chattering excitedly about the chapel, all the windows, the big cross in the air, the strange color of the room. Soon he and Sylvie were up to their belts with their bristling number, he lifting the littlest ones so they could make the cross sway and swing, Sylvie explaining to the others that the three windows he’d put in were meant to suggest those in a Western church, and for the first instant in his adult life, in this ease of happy bodies, Hector could imagine himself in willing tow of such a brood, to be always trailed by its shouts and flows.

BUT WOULDN’T SUCH A TRAIL have to include June? Perhaps like any of the children in the orphanage he, too, was fantasizing some ongoing life with Sylvie, and assumed that June would always be in the picture. But the next evening, as Hector was crossing in front of the Tanners’ cottage after shutting down the generator, June ran past him in a moonlit flash. She quickly disappeared into the dormitory. He would have kept going on to his quarters but the cottage door was ajar and he could hear Tanner’s voice. Something possessed him to crouch down and he leaned with his back to the cottage, his head turned so that his ear pressed against the wood. There was nothing but clapboards and a thin sheathing covering the structure and he could hear them as clearly as if he were sitting beside them in the room.

“I’m sorry I had to say that to her,” Tanner said, though he didn’t sound sorry at all. “I lost control. But I can’t stand her speaking to us like that.”

“She’s only a child, Ames,” Sylvie answered. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“Oh please, darling! She’s smart as a whip. Nothing is an accident with her. When she said she would be sure to ‘take care’ of us it made me crazy. Her arrogance is astounding.”

“But you couldn’t have been meaner,” she said to him, her voice low and hard. “To tell her that we would never need her.”

“I’m sorry. I am. I shouldn’t have said it. But here’s the truth, the truth I’ve known since the day you took her up. I don’t want you to spend any more extra time with her. She can work here in the house for her chores, but that’s all. It’s unfair to let her believe she has a future with us. Can’t you see that? You’re simply being cruel. You obviously can’t believe it, but you are. You’re going to devastate her.”

She didn’t answer him. Finally she said: “I think it’s you who’s cruel.”

There were steps across the floor and a creaking sound, as if he just sat down beside her on the daybed.

“Do you truly think that of me?” he said to her.

“No, no,” she said, her voice full of misery. It was quiet and then after a moment she began to cry, her gasps coming in soft heaves. “I don’t. You’ve been nothing but wonderful to the children. More so every day.”

“Then you must believe me when I say this can’t come to any good. I’m sorry for what I said to her and I’ll apologize to her tomorrow. But you must be realistic. The three infants in Seoul we signed on to adopt, have you completely forgotten about them?”

“No… of course not…”

“So what does she think is going to happen? What have you promised her?”

“Nothing. I’ve promised her nothing.”

“Then what are you hoping for?”

“I was hoping we could take her, too. I know it’ll be difficult with the embassy, but you know that one consulate officer well and I thought you might ask if he could make an exception for us, so we could take one more. Besides, I thought June could help me with the children. I don’t know if I can handle them all myself.”

“First off, I’ll help you. And your aunt will help out, too, I’m sure. But do you for a second believe that June will make things easier? For you, perhaps, because she obviously loves you. But for us? For our other children? Do you truly believe that June would be kind to them? That she would show them love and care? Do you think she would treat them well when you weren’t around? Come on, tell me the truth.”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know how she’ll be.”

“Of course you do, dear. How can you imagine otherwise, with the way she’s behaved herself here? The fact is, the girl has already grown up. She’s who she is now, through and through. She’s not going to change.”

“Why couldn’t she?”

“Because she’s not a nice girl. She’s not a kind girl. Maybe she was once, but she isn’t anymore. I hate to be so hard, but I don’t know any other way to say it.”

“You have no idea what’s happened to her, Ames. You don’t know what she’s been through. If you did you wouldn’t talk like this.”

“I don’t know what happened to her,” he said. “That’s true. But I know plenty about some of the others, as do you. None them has a more profound story than any of the rest. Not in sum, at least. They all have nothing, and we agreed that we would start with them from this point on. It’s all we can do. There are thousands of needy children in this country. Maybe tens of thousands. And we’re only helping the orphans! We were warned by our colleagues, remember? What was their saying? ‘So many pretty stones in the river, but you can’t pick them all up’? How right they were-so many of them, right here with us. But you chose the stone that’s razor sharp.”

“She chose me, Ames.”

“But you encouraged her over all the others. Everyone saw that.”

“No one else is going to adopt her,” she said, defeated. “They won’t, and you know it.”

He didn’t answer her. Soon Hector heard her crying again, if very softly. Weak beams of candlelight showed through cracks in the door-jamb and when he put his eye before it he saw Tanner embracing her as she sat. She was wearing a thin cotton nightgown, dark knee socks. Hector could see the silhouette of her breast inside the loose fabric. Tanner cupped her there and tried to kiss her but her posture was unmoving and after a moment he gave up.

“You’ve been terribly low, darling. For so long now. It can’t be all about that girl. I’ve done nothing different since we’ve come here. I’ve done nothing wrong. Have I?”

She shook her head.

“Maybe I have but can’t see it,” he said anyway, exasperation pitching his voice higher. His face looked as desperate and broken as hers. “Please tell me. Tell me if I have.”

But Sylvie didn’t say any more or look up at him and Tanner finally rose and picked up a tea mug and reared back as though he were going to hurl it against the wall. But he stopped himself, then set it heavily on the desk. He walked back to the bedroom. She pulled her knees up to her chest and covered her head with her arms, her hands. Hector watched her for a while longer, searching her, until the point at which the votive candle burned down, flickered out, flared alive again, then finally died. It was pure black and nothing moved in the dark. He was going to wait her out, but two aunties were heading his way to leave by the back path to their village at the other end of the valley, so he got up before they caught sight of him pressed strangely against the cottage and ambled back to his room. He could have crouched there until morning. Instead, he found himself, in the middle of the night, mirroring her shape in his own bed, rubbing his face against his forearm, his knee, to try to taste anything of flesh, wondering how long she would remain that way, if she could spend the entire night in that self-bound coil, or would wait until her husband was dead asleep and then spring herself back to life.