Читать книгу Marilyn and Me - Ji-min Lee - Страница 7

July 1947

I got off the streetcar and walked self-consciously in the brown lambskin shoes I had received from my uncle for my twentieth birthday. My gait reflected who I was—light, carefree, and coquettish. Only the heel of my right shoe was worn, and from that you could deduce that I was stubborn and didn’t have a great sense of balance. My pale, goosebump-covered calves were revealed all too easily each time the hem of my skirt fluttered. Even if you didn’t have an acute sixth sense you would guess that I was on my way to see my lover. That was how carelessly I displayed my passion. I was firmly deluded in believing that the entire world was envious of my romance. I was still a young girl trying my best to look sophisticated. What I didn’t realize was that the world had no morals and wasn’t interested in one individual. And so, with a truly innocent smile on my face, I walked the streets of Seoul that were brimming with memories of colonization. To my eyes, the streets lined with ginkgo trees—an emblem of Tokyo planted here by the Japanese—were just a splendid sight.

I was in Tokyo when Korea was liberated from Japan. On September 2, 1945, as Japan was signing the Instrument of Surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, I was staring at a parcel that had just arrived. I had been planning to go look at the Missouri, which was supposed to be unfathomably vast, but the parcel distracted me. A few years later, I had a chance to see the Missouri as we were escaping Hungnam; the loud booms of the ship’s sixteen-inch artillery made me wet myself several times. Anyway, one of my father’s black frockcoats was inside that parcel. It looked like a large dead black bird. Upon receiving the news of my father’s death, I’d written home, asking for an item from his closet. Father, a sad, elegant man much like a black bird, left eight frockcoats behind. I stood in front of the mirror to try the coat on. Only then did his death sink in.