Wed to a Bird With No Wings

Every pretty girl his sweetheart

Ch’ŏn Sang-Pyŏng had any number of sweethearts. If a woman appealed to him, there was no asking her how she felt about him, she was chosen to be one of his sweethearts on the spot. If a pretty girl happened to pass by as he walked down the street or sat in a car, he would stare at her piercingly. Any ordinary person would have glanced furtively once for just a moment, but he used to scrutinize her thoroughly for as like as he pleased.

When there was some girl that he was inspecting intently, I would ask him: “Have you chosen another secret sweetheart?” and he would reply: “That’s right.” He loved “pretty” girls. It made no difference whether it was her face, her hand, or her foot that was pretty. He had only to catch sight of a pretty girl to get carried away and start humming.

A “secret sweetheart” was one that only needed to be stored away in his heart, nothing more; as a result, if he saw a pretty girl he freely chose her for a sweetheart. He met many of these secret sweethearts at Kwich’ŏn. If a girl with a pretty face came in, he would admire her, murmuring: “Pretty face, pretty face”. If she came in with someone else, he might mutter: “Very pretty hands, very pretty hands.” If he remarked on the pretty hands, he meant that the face was not pretty.

“My sweetheart, my sweetheart.”

If a girl pleased him, he would make his pledge to her, hold her hand, keep company with her. A certain Mrs. No, who wrote poems, was already a mother of children but he still spoke to her in familiar tones and called her his sweetheart. If she appeared he would address her fondly: “Why have you been away so long? Why have you been away so long?”

Before her poems were approved and she was recognized as a poet, they went together to Myŏngdong Cathedral and he prayed in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary: “Maria-nim, please let Mrs. No’s poems be approved.” They even went hand in hand like children to Kyŏngbok-kung Palace and had their photo taken, provoking the envy of the other sweethearts.

Still, even after he had sworn several times that someone was his sweetheart, if he did not see her for a few months he frequently forgot her completely. He would chose some other girl as his sweetheart instead. If he managed to switch sweethearts in this way, like eating cold porridge, without ever getting himself sworn at, it was because his heart was as clear as a flowing stream and he was utterly selfless.

“Sŏnsaeng-nim, I thought that back before you told me I was your sweetheart but now you can’t even remember my name? I won’t be your sweetheart any more.”

Sometimes his former sweethearts would speak like that, and he would explain: “I forget all sorts of things. I even forget my own name.” But at other times he would snap back: “I never chose you for my sweetheart!” It was not something he did deliberately. Simply there were times when things went blank and he could not recognize people in the slightest. Sometimes a phone call would come from someone he found hard to remember, and he would hang up with a hasty, “Um... um... Look, I must go and have a pee, I can’t talk now.” The caller might know him perfectly well, he was sure it was someone he did not know.

There was a Mrs. Song he had been very close to in his youth but she had been living in the States for many years; she had seen him only a few years before but when she met him the next time he had no memory of her at all.

“Sŏnsaeng-nim, don’t you remember? How last time in Kwanghwa-mun you asked me to marry you?”

“When did I do such a thing? I never did.”

She was upset, and sent a lengthy letter full of memorable episodes and talk of the family, intended to stir his memory. She asked me to add additional details in an attempt to help him recall after he had read the letter, so I added other stories of the old days and asked him if now he remembered, but still he insisted that he knew nothing of her. In the end it seemed that the blanks were partial; there were things he remembered vividly and others that had vanished completely.

Even forty years after the event, the memory of his first love still remained vivid in his mind. While he was a refugee at Pusan in his second year of university, he was so eager to see a girl named Pyŏn In-ho from the humanities college that he even audited language classes she was taking. Once they were back in Seoul, he would go to the Humanities College building in Tongsŭng-dong early and wait for her to arrive at school. When she appeared, he would be so overjoyed he would tell her frankly how his heart was beating wildly, like an adolescent boy confessing his love.

According to the dramatist Shin Bong-sŭng, who was his close friend, once down in Pusan when there was no sign of her Ch’ŏn Sang-pyŏng enquired and was told that she had gone on some business to the island of Yŏng-do. He accordingly went to the street leading from the bridge linking Yŏng-do with the city and waited all day long for her to come back; just as night was falling, he noticed a bus speeding past and uttered a “damn”. It had not struck him before that she might go speeding past in a bus, not because he was stupid, but because he was so absorbed and so innocent.

He related that the affair had come to an end a year later, when the girl left to study in America. Her mother was the second daughter of Park Sun-ch’ŏn, a member of the National Assembly, and the always bashful Ch’ŏn Sang-pyŏng confessed that she had been his only sweetheart in those days.

“Poor dear, unrequited love... what a sweetheart to have.”

“Not at all, not unrequited, it wasn’t unrequited. She said she liked me.”

“How much did she like you?”

“I was never once able to hold her hand.”

“Did you talk about marriage?”

“She suggested we go to America together but how could I ever go to America? So we parted. There was no one after that. Now there’s only you.”

From time to time old love affairs would come to mind, but he would always insist that he loved me best of all.