This Burns My Heart Page 0,46

paddies, and a river. He was terribly bored, he said, unable to work or leave the house. There was no radio there, and the only time he saw someone was once or twice a week when his old uncle would come by with pots full of watery rice and a little banchan: cubed turnips laced with grains of sand, and pickled cabbage more sour than spicy. She felt like writing back, Can’t they boil an egg for you? Or kill a chicken? Soo-Ja wondered if this was any better than jail, but as she lay in bed alone at night, thinking about it, she figured it was. At least he could breathe in some fresh air, and watch the sun rise and fall. And she knew Min was safe. Her only worry for the moment was that Min would alienate his uncle. She could see the uncle start out feeling sorry or protective of Min, but then growing tired of him. Maybe the uncle would not come by as often, or not be as nice to Min, frustrating and frustrated as he was, living the life of a dog tied to a post.

Around Christmas, Soo-Ja decided she should visit Min. It had been almost two months, and Soo-Ja felt that it would be safe. She wanted to check on his state, and to have him see Hana, as she knew the separation was tough on both of them. How do you explain to a three-year-old that the police are after her father, and he has to hide for the time being? Soo-Ja knew how much Hana wanted to sit on her father’s familiar lap, and how much Min wanted to kiss his daughter’s cheeks, turning her upside down and making her giggle.

When Soo-Ja told Father-in-law of her plans, he nodded and said that he would come, too, along with Mother-in-law and the others, as if this were someone’s strange idea of a family vacation. Soo-Ja told him she should go on her own, and this was just so Hana could see her father. But Father-in-law looked terribly hurt, and said he missed Min much more than Hana missed her daddy. Soo-Ja at first couldn’t believe he was comparing his feelings to those of a toddler, but finally she relented, amazed that he’d already forgotten the very reason Min had to hide in the first place. Father-in-law felt no guilt for sacrificing his son, nor—her second hope—any gratitude toward him. She wondered if he wrestled with those demons on his own, in the dark, until she figured that was wishful thinking on her part. Regret and pangs of conscience are feelings we assign to others to make the world seem a little more fair, to even things out a little and provide consolation. In reality, those who do wrong to us never think about us as much as we think about them, and that is the ultimate irony: their deeds live inside us, festering, while they live out in the world, plucking peaches off trees, biting juicily into them, their minds on things lovely and sweet.

Min looked much changed—his almost adolescent gait gone, his old swagger replaced by an older man’s contemplative stillness. He’d started smoking more often, he informed her within minutes of her arrival, and each drag of his cigarette seemed like a reproach to her. Min had lost weight, and his clothes—a light brown pullover sweater with crew neck and dark brown pleated gabardine pants—hung over him like an older brother’s hand-me-downs. He seemed to her like someone who had come to life only upon her wish, but in doing so made her aware of her initial impulse—to long for him, endlessly, rather than actually have this awkward, foreign body inches away from her.

Father-in-law and the others had stayed behind in his brother’s house near the harbor; Soo-Ja and Hana alone had made the crossing in the middle of the night, knees deep into freezing lakes, past wet marshes and muddy banks, before arriving at the secluded one-room house by an abandoned potato field. The house was miles away from the main roads, in a mostly unpopulated area, and the few people who did live nearby—farmers and rice paddy workers—did not think to bother Min. Although, he told Soo-Ja in a paranoid manner, those who did pass by him acted as if they knew he was there hiding, and were careful not to get too close, keeping the river and the night between them.

Soo-Ja figured this was the