Matthew Salesses: The Hundred-Year Flood

“Are you okay?” his father asked.

Tee sensed the ghost woman nearby. Rockefeller still didn’t understand what he had done to Tee; Pavel still believed art had gained and lost him a wife. Tee was a person who couldn’t remember his favorite songs. Without Katka, there was no Prague to return to, no magic in the statue of Jan of Nepomuk. Tee was still in the middle of the flood. He realized he had loved Katka most truly when he wanted Rockefeller to hurt him. He thought about what the man with the old war wound had said — about the bullets jingling inside his body — just before the ghost appeared and the three freckles on the woman came clear. Tee remembered holding his birth mother’s photograph above him, lying in bed, bringing that face down close to his and then away.

“Dad,” he said. “I need to know about her.”

His father tapped the letters and frowned. “I only know what’s written there.”

“No,” Tee said. “I don’t mean Katka. I know Katka. Tell me about my birth mother.”

Finally the room rustled with presence. Tee steadied himself — the flood washed through, and he had nothing to hold on to except for a ghost — and then she was there. He was standing beside his father, and he was standing beside his birth mother. The bird in his throat took flight. He said he knew about the affair, and the truth about his birth. What he didn’t know about was her, the woman he’d come from. All his life, he’d either clung to an empty Korea, or he’d filled it with myths.

His father stood and mixed a drink. “Whatever I say won’t be enough,” he warned.

“Tell me,” Tee said again and again, late into the night.

Over the decade it took to write this book, I met my wife, became a father, moved at least a dozen times. I am thankful to so many people and places. I have tried to capture a certain idea of Prague, and to that end, I have taken some liberties. For example, the bookstore Tee works in takes its name from a bookstore in Prague, though the physical details differ. The characteristics of Tee’s Globe come from my head.

It is amazing to work with an Asian American editor on an Asian American novel. Thank you to Vivian Lee. Also to Tara Parsons, Al Woodworth, and the rest of Little A. Thank you to Chelsea Lindman, who keeps the faith. Thank you to Patrick Barry for the beautiful cover.

Thanks most of all to my family — to my parents and siblings and especially to Ok Kyung Na, who (in so many ways) is the reason I was able to write this book, and to my daughter, who is the reason I was able to understand it. Thank you, wherever she is, to my birth mother.

Thank you to everyone who read earlier drafts, especially to Margot Livesey, whose wisdom and generosity are a light; to Mako Yoshikawa’s novel-class crew (Katharine Gingrich and Dan Pribble in particular); to Robert Boswell, whose advice guided me through the last stages of revision; to Kirstin Chen, who always reassures me; and to Cathy Chung, Roxane Gay, Laura van den Berg, Alyssa Knickerbocker, Carmie Banasky, James Scott, Ken Calhoun, and Amanda O’Brien.

Thank you to Asmin Tulpule for the medical advice.

I am curiously indebted to a passing remark by Mat Johnson. I am indebted to my EFL students from when I lived in Prague, who told me many of these myths and superstitions in service of their English, and to my old flatmates. I also consulted several guidebooks and several books of myth that I have since, sadly, misplaced. The Internet helped immensely.

Thank-yous to: Emerson College, the Good Men Project , the Wiener Center, the Bonchon crew, Grub Street, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Fourth Kingdom (especially Alex Chee and Don Lee), the adoptee and APIA communities, the University of Houston, Inprint, Putney (and Henk Rossouw), Michael Seidlinger, Deena Drewis, Mink Choi, and all the editors and writers and friends who have done so much. You are too many to name. I am grateful for that. I am grateful for you.

It’s been a long journey, but in the end, I touched the statue of Jan of Nepomuk twice, once on either side of a decade. A great writer once said, you end the story where you see it starting to return.

Thank you for reading.

Photo © 2011 Stephanie Mitchell

Matthew Salesses was adopted from Korea at age two. He has written about adoption and race for NPR’s Code Switch , the New York Times Motherlode blog, and Salon , and his fiction has appeared in Guernica /PEN, Glimmer Train , and American Short Fiction , among others. He is the fiction editor and a contributing writer at the Good Men Project . He is also the author of I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying. The Hundred-Year Flood is his first full-length novel.