I'm not sure it was reality, or it was "humanism", or it was my guidance appearing in the strangest garb, but tonight while eating eel qalbi with my foreign professor colleagues, a very old woman walked in. She was hunched over, holding a heavy bag of something in a white woven bag. When I saw her being chased away from "Wa" Bar, I thought she was holding rice, and a conversation ensued about why she was selling rice at Wa Bar and why the owner was chasing her out. Then, there she was plying her goods in the qalbi shop. I was sort of interested, not in the rice, but in who this elderly woman intent on selling to drunken Friday night crowds was; a little elf, a goblin with magical manna.
Having made the rounds she was leaving the qalbi restaurant and almost out the door, when she turned around and spoke to us in stunning English, "You want a buy some rice cakes." (by which she meant "ddeok", a chewy glutinous snack, as opposed to the crunchy, airy snack of health food store rice cakes). Leo, the Phillipino whom had seemed to look at her with scorn as a beggar, asked her how much and she brought forth three plastic wrapped packets which each contained four long rice cakes and she said ten thousand won. Actually, first she said, "Expensive, but for you something okay."
I don't remember what happened next, we didn't really want to buy her rice cakes, but were really amazed that she spoke ENglish so well; that she could follow and respond to our questions. And, the words she spoke, disjointed and random, seemed poignant and keenly appropriate to my little "situation" of the moment (I didn't say 'love affair', I said 'situation').
Next thing we knew, she had picked up and downed Leo's beer and was inciting him to order another bottle for her, and she sat down. Brian lighted her one of his cigarettes after buying a packet of her rice cakes, still gape-mouthed that her English vocabulary was so advanced she was calling him a "humanist" for giving her cigarettes.
She looked me in the eye, the wrinkles around her face nearly folding over her eyes, one side winking, and she said, "Sweetheart, lover....bullshit! Easy man, easy go! So what? Why not?" I repeated her phrases as she spoke, laughing, and we elucidated amongst ourselves, her focus unwavering even as she spilled her beer and dropped her cigarette on herself. "I know everything. Still I am human. Everything is my fault. Yes, I did it, I broke it, my fault, I did it!" As the others went into side conversations and looks of bewilderment, she looked at me and spoke in Korean saying something about the feeling of love and being at a higher level, but no one knows, but I know.
We persisted with questions, "Halmoni, grandmother, what's your name?" "I am Gentle Wind." Gentle Wind! But what's your name. "My name is Gentle....WIND." And, Gentle Wind, how old are you?" "Old enough, old enough." Her answers ambiguous as they were clear, we toasted to "Gentle Wind" and ordered more beer, and she spoke. "America wants, not you white, but America, wants war to North Korea and this makes world war. No war, don't do." She spoke as someone who knows all, who sees all, who feels all, and ultimately as someone who survived a war in front of her eyes....right here in Chungju, Japanese invasion, killing, torture, inhumane treatment, mandatory English class. She learned well, though, well enough to every forget.
"Buy me one more bottle, and one more cigarette." She was aggressive, she was wise. The owner was looking at us like we were causing some sort of disgrace, but allowed it because she was chattering along in English with us and we kept buying. She offered to buy us the final bottle of beer. She took all of the blue bills out of her pockets, with swollen fingers and soft skin. (Blue bills are the lowest denomination, 1000 won, less than a dollar. She had one brown bill, 5,000 won, which Brian had given her for one pack of rice cakes.) We didn't let her give any money.
"I want no boyfriend, because my teeth tell. I am single, so I have work, if I have a boyfriend, no work. But, I like work." We pondered all she had said as she walked half falling through the plastic wrap sliding door out of the outside area into the street and squatted in the parking lot behind us to pee. She could have used the restaurant bathroom, though maybe they wouldn't have let her, though maybe she wouldn't have wanted to. She came back and we toasted Gentle Breeze again. "We will again see, never happened." It pierced like a knife, this sentiment "romantic" that here enjoying such a true and alive experience together, that we would never again meet, what was she talking about? How could she say that? She didn't want to meet? No, she knows, there is no sense to attachment, it is binding, no attachment is freeing. Yes, will again see, never happened. Go, go into the world, don't try to recreate what is not there. Be where you are, let the gentle wind carry you on, forward, not backward.
The beer was finished, and we got up to leave, she took our hands one by one and said "I love you. Because human." She was very drunk, having downed glass after glass of beer in single shots. She seemed to have forgotten she lived on the street for a split second, and looked at us like an abandoned kitten not knowing where to go. But as we walked away, she bolstered herself in philosophies, and holding the sack of rice gluten over her back, walked guardedly in to the next Friday night crowd restaurant to sell her rice cakes. Gentle Wind, God be with you. "I don't care. I am right. I don't care. I did everything, all me."
