The Surrendered Page 17

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, dusting off her hands on her work shorts, cutoffs from surplus army-issue trousers. “I can’t wait to see it. The children were just telling me you tacked up a curtain and were sawing and hammering behind there in secret.”

  “It’s all nothing,” he said. “None of it is any good.”

  “What did my husband think?”

  “He hasn’t seen it.”

  “I’m lucky,” she said, walking past him toward the dormitories. “I’ll be the very first.”

  When they were inside the vestibule the tarp he used for a dust curtain was still up and she told him she was ready and he pulled it down all at once.

  “Oh, Hector.”

  She stayed in the back for a while, not moving at all. Every surface was gray, as he had painted the pews, the floor, the walls, the roof beams, the old picnic table he converted to an altar, even the large, simple cross he fashioned by notching two two-by-fours and suspended by wire from the rafters. He’d left only the stove its color. But it all shined fiercely in the sunlight streaming in through the three narrow windows in the far wall, which he’d set intentionally unevenly, because of their difference in size. And then the light came through the square window he’d put in the roof, directly above the floating cross. She made her way forward along the wall, touching the side of each pew, and when she stood beside the altar and peered upward the glow of her face and hair radiated a burning, white firelight.

  “How did you ever put that in?”

  “I got up on the roof and built out a frame. I sealed the edges with pitch, but we’ll see if it leaks when it rains.”

  “It won’t matter if it does,” she said.

  “I was going to try to paint the insides of the windows with finger paints, to make them look like stained glass, but I couldn’t find any. I can still try to get some when I go to the base next.”

  “Please don’t,” she said. “It’s just right, as it is.”

  “You don’t think it’s colorless?”

  “It is,” she said, gently nudging the cross. “But that’s what makes it perfect. It’s so ghostly and serene.”

  “You don’t make it sound too good.”

  “But it is, Hector. You’ve made me remember now. You couldn’t have known it would, but you have. This is how every church should be.”

  When he looked down at his feet, like a boy greatly relieved, she surprised him with an embrace. He felt his heart might collapse. He instantly took her up and held her against him. Her face was turned but his mouth and eyes were pressed against her ear, the soft plate of her cheek, and the more tightly he held on to her the more she seemed to give way, to cave, as if she were made of loose, dry dirt. He wanted to pick every piece of her up. Fill his mouth with her hair. But they heard voices and she came alive and pushed away from him just before a boisterous troop of girls came bounding into the room. They were suddenly quiet but their eyes widened and they started chattering excitedly about the chapel, all the windows, the big cross in the air, the strange color of the room. Soon he and Sylvie were up to their belts with their bristling number, he lifting the littlest ones so they could make the cross sway and swing, Sylvie explaining to the others that the three windows he’d put in were meant to suggest those in a Western church, and for the first instant in his adult life, in this ease of happy bodies, Hector could imagine himself in willing tow of such a brood, to be always trailed by its shouts and flows.

  BUT WOULDN’T SUCH A TRAIL have to include June? Perhaps like any of the children in the orphanage he, too, was fantasizing some ongoing life with Sylvie, and assumed that June would always be in the picture. But the next evening, as Hector was crossing in front of the Tanners’ cottage after shutting down the generator, June ran past him in a moonlit flash. She quickly disappeared into the dormitory. He would have kept going on to his quarters but the cottage door was ajar and he could hear Tanner’s voice. Something possessed him to crouch down and he leaned with his back to the cottage, his head turned so that his ear pressed against the wood. There was nothing but clapboards and a thin sheathing covering the structure and he could hear them as clearly as if he were sitting beside them in the room.

  “I’m sorry I had to say that to her,” Tanner said, though he didn’t sound sorry at all. “I lost control. But I can’t stand her speaking to us like that.”

  “She’s only a child, Ames,” Sylvie answered. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “Oh please, darling! She’s smart as a whip. Nothing is an accident with her. When she said she would be sure to ‘take care’ of us it made me crazy. Her arrogance is astounding.”

  “But you couldn’t have been meaner,” she said to him, her voice low and hard. “To tell her that we would never need her.”

  “I’m sorry. I am. I shouldn’t have said it. But here’s the truth, the truth I’ve known since the day you took her up. I don’t want you to spend any more extra time with her. She can work here in the house for her chores, but that’s all. It’s unfair to let her believe she has a future with us. Can’t you see that? You’re simply being cruel. You obviously can’t believe it, but you are. You’re going to devastate her.”

  She didn’t answer him. Finally she said: “I think it’s you who’s cruel.”

  There were steps across the floor and a creaking sound, as if he just sat down beside her on the daybed.

  “Do you truly think that of me?” he said to her.

  “No, no,” she said, her voice full of misery. It was quiet and then after a moment she began to cry, her gasps coming in soft heaves. “I don’t. You’ve been nothing but wonderful to the children. More so every day.”

  “Then you must believe me when I say this can’t come to any good. I’m sorry for what I said to her and I’ll apologize to her tomorrow. But you must be realistic. The three infants in Seoul we signed on to adopt, have you completely forgotten about them?”

  “No… of course not…”

  “So what does she think is going to happen? What have you promised her?”

  “Nothing. I’ve promised her nothing.”

  “Then what are you hoping for?”

  “I was hoping we could take her, too. I know it’ll be difficult with the embassy, but you know that one consulate officer well and I thought you might ask if he could make an exception for us, so we could take one more. Besides, I thought June could help me with the children. I don’t know if I can handle them all myself.”

  “First off, I’ll help you. And your aunt will help out, too, I’m sure. But do you for a second believe that June will make things easier? For you, perhaps, because she obviously loves you. But for us? For our other children? Do you truly believe that June would be kind to them? That she would show them love and care? Do you think she would treat them well when you weren’t around? Come on, tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know how she’ll be.”

  “Of course you do, dear. How can you imagine otherwise, with the way she’s behaved herself here? The fact is, the girl has already grown up. She’s who she is now, through and through. She’s not going to change.”

  “Why couldn’t she?”

  “Because she’s not a nice girl. She’s not a kind girl. Maybe she was once, but she isn’t anymore. I hate to be so hard, but I don’t know any other way to say it.”

  “You have no idea what’s happened to her, Ames. You don’t know what she’s been through. If you did you wouldn’t talk like this.”

  “I don’t know what happened to her,” he said. “That’s true. But I know plenty about some of the others, as do you. None them has a more profound story than any of the rest. Not in sum, at least. They all have nothing, and we agreed that we would start with them from this point on. It’s all we can do. There are thousands of needy children in this country. Maybe tens of thousands. And we’re only helping the orphans! We were warned by our colleagues, remember? What was their saying? ‘So many pretty sto
nes in the river, but you can’t pick them all up’? How right they were-so many of them, right here with us. But you chose the stone that’s razor sharp.”

  “She chose me, Ames.”

  “But you encouraged her over all the others. Everyone saw that.”

  “No one else is going to adopt her,” she said, defeated. “They won’t, and you know it.”

  He didn’t answer her. Soon Hector heard her crying again, if very softly. Weak beams of candlelight showed through cracks in the door-jamb and when he put his eye before it he saw Tanner embracing her as she sat. She was wearing a thin cotton nightgown, dark knee socks. Hector could see the silhouette of her breast inside the loose fabric. Tanner cupped her there and tried to kiss her but her posture was unmoving and after a moment he gave up.

  “You’ve been terribly low, darling. For so long now. It can’t be all about that girl. I’ve done nothing different since we’ve come here. I’ve done nothing wrong. Have I?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe I have but can’t see it,” he said anyway, exasperation pitching his voice higher. His face looked as desperate and broken as hers. “Please tell me. Tell me if I have.”

  But Sylvie didn’t say any more or look up at him and Tanner finally rose and picked up a tea mug and reared back as though he were going to hurl it against the wall. But he stopped himself, then set it heavily on the desk. He walked back to the bedroom. She pulled her knees up to her chest and covered her head with her arms, her hands. Hector watched her for a while longer, searching her, until the point at which the votive candle burned down, flickered out, flared alive again, then finally died. It was pure black and nothing moved in the dark. He was going to wait her out, but two aunties were heading his way to leave by the back path to their village at the other end of the valley, so he got up before they caught sight of him pressed strangely against the cottage and ambled back to his room. He could have crouched there until morning. Instead, he found himself, in the middle of the night, mirroring her shape in his own bed, rubbing his face against his forearm, his knee, to try to taste anything of flesh, wondering how long she would remain that way, if she could spend the entire night in that self-bound coil, or would wait until her husband was dead asleep and then spring herself back to life.

  That week the Tanners had planned to leave for ten days to visit other church-associated orphanages, a trip that would have taken them south to Pusan through Andong, then up along the western coast, from the city of Kwangju. But on the morning they were to leave it was Tanner alone bidding everyone goodbye, the children and aunties bowing deeply as his car departed. Hector was fixing the fallen rails of the wooden gate of the entrance when Tanner had the car stop. He stepped out of the car and lifted the other end of a rail as Hector fitted his end into the post he had just reanchored. Hector asked him what he wanted. Tanner took them a few more steps away from the car. He spoke softly, as if not wishing the driver to hear them, though there was little chance the man spoke much English.

  “I’m going on a trip now.”

  “I know.”

  “Mrs. Tanner is staying behind. Another minister from Seoul will come for part of each day while I’m gone, to supervise. But I would ask if you could remain close to the compound while I’m away. Will you do that for me, Hector?”

  “I haven’t been anywhere else, for a while.”

  “Yes, I know, and I appreciate it. That and your hard work. You’re making excellent progress on the projects. But while I’m gone I’d feel more comfortable if you’d be sure to stay on the grounds. Or at least nearby. My wife hasn’t been feeling well for some time now. Perhaps you’ve noticed something.”

  “She’s been sick.”

  “It’s not only a physical illness,” Tanner said. He cleared his throat. “I’m only telling you this because I’m afraid something might happen while I’m away.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered gravely. “I’m afraid that she’ll somehow hurt herself.”

  “Why don’t you take her with you, then?”

  “She won’t come. She wants to stay here.” A column of wind whipped up dust from the road and Tanner had to hold on to the brim of his hat. The car rolled up and the driver reminded Tanner in Korean that they still had to drive in the opposite direction, toward Inchon, to pick up the other American minister who was accompanying him.

  “I have to go. Will you do this for me?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “You’ll please just look in on her. Knock on her door, if you like.”

  For the rest of the day Hector rehearsed in his mind how he would do so. But for the first few days of Tanner’s absence Hector simply avoided her. There was little reason for anything else, as Sylvie was regularly teaching her classes and taking meals with the children under the newly patched roof of the mess hall. She was even playing tag in the yard after the Korean minister from Seoul departed in the early afternoon. The minister, Reverend Kim, was a rail-thin, bookish young man who arrived each morning by nine and led prayers and Bible study and then ate with a ravenous vigor at lunch, even as he was nose deep in his volumes, taking second and third helpings of rice and vegetables and downing his soup in long slurps that echoed in the hall like the sound of a great, sucking drain. The children slyly mocked him by doing the same, and even Sylvie did as well-the man was almost completely oblivious-and whether it was because her husband was gone or she was left alone to play with the children she seemed mostly at ease again, lighthearted and girlish.

  The one obvious difference was that June was no longer at Sylvie’s side as she went about the camp; Sylvie walked by herself or with a phalanx of various others, favoring no one, and perhaps it was now only June who wouldn’t take her turn. Hector didn’t know if Sylvie had spoken to her. He and everyone else was waiting for June to do something, push someone down and start a fight. But she simply kept to the periphery, marking Sylvie from a near distance, watching and listening like some secondary conscience; and if the girl was broken inside or in a rage, one couldn’t tell from the way she wordlessly completed her chores and attended classes. She conducted herself like a more typical orphan, a child vigilant and laconic and careful, as if her temper had completely disappeared.

  In truth it was Hector who most clearly felt the burden of the period. Or at least showed the strains. The reverend’s absence was oppressing him. He had not counted the days at first but now he was counting them down. Soon Tanner would be back; from Pusan he’d phoned the ministries’ administrative office in Seoul, the young Reverend Kim’s home base, and the fellow announced word of it before the service, adding at the end of his prayer an entreaty for Tanner’s safe travels and return, which drew a melodious, resonant amen from the children and the aunties. He thought he heard Sylvie singing it. All this made him moody and preoccupied, at night even more sleepless than usual despite the fact that he was working constantly, his body driving hard to try to exhaust itself, self-bury. He ranged far to collect firewood, affixed yet another stretch of roof tiles. But he would run out of nails, or his ax dulled and too often bounced off the wood, and the night would descend quickly and he’d have to walk with his hands stretched out before him to make his way back to the darkened compound. There was always more sewer trenching to be done, so he returned to that with fury, but this, too, was beginning to thwart him; a spate of rain came and he was becoming slowly sickened by the smell of damp earth, the half-alive taste it left in his mouth, in his gut, the feeling that he was not burrowing into it but that it was instead coursing through his body as if he were an earthworm, veining him with seams of slow-rotting grit.

  On the way back from the digging he stopped when he saw a glow from the rear of the cottage. By tomorrow Tanner would have likely returned. The night sky was clear and the clouds of his breath lingered in the crisp air. He stood at the edge of the small back plot, in full view of the house. He was still running hot from the work and wearing only a
light shirt and dungarees and the sensation of difference against the chill was a kind of welcomed fever. The bedroom window was curtained with a thin lace fabric and he could clearly see she was reading by candlelight. He must have counted a dozen turns of page, deciding each time she lifted her hand to await yet another before he would let his shovel drop and go to her. When at last she put down the book he was resolved, but she rose abruptly and left the frame of the window, as if she realized she was being watched. He froze and braced himself for her to come out and confront him. But now she simply reappeared in the window. She had already taken off her sweater. Without hurry she slipped off her blouse and underclothes, exposing the long smooth shell of her back, the spur of her hip. She shivered visibly but did not clutch herself. Then she pulled on the frock of the nightgown, pushing up her arms, shaking loose the folds gathered at her waist. She extinguished the candle flame. He searched the window, the panes black and glintless, and although he had just glimpsed her in full it was the slow, measured covering of her nakedness that caught his breath. He turned to go, but then he heard the sound of a creaking. And in the starlight he saw the reflected sway of her gown as her long pale hand pulled open the door.

  SEVEN