Tokyo to Tijuana: Gabriele Departing America | Page 5

somehow--for a drunk motorcyclist or a lazy trucker

to whisk a wild adventure and physical intimacies upon him and yet, in full wistful
innocence, he equally wanted what he would always go there for: to hear nothing but
birds and a whisk of wind in the tranquility of that sleepy town in one of its most tranquil
hours. Nothing of the former ever happened and he would always come from the impulse
to a feeling of loss. His impetus to go to Seoul this week had come from a dominant
feeling of disconnection experienced by one who knew the extreme violence of the world,
who knew the madness of hope for anyone, and felt being buried alive in that one
perspective that the world was an evil place-a perspective that was not ethereal but solid
as a coffin even if it did spill over into other things. A further disconnection of any
significance would cause such an individual to let a numbness and deadening of the
concept of self to take place. The day before his fleeing to Seoul, his platonic friendship
with Kim Yang Kwam had gone awry and he found himself floundering in suffocating
despair as that time years earlier at the trial. Yang Kwam was asleep with his hand in his
underwear when Sang Huin awakened. Sang Huin touched him. It was the end of the
closest Korean friendship that had been his life support in the six months he resided in
this foreign country, South Korea, which was his birth home and the source of his
nationality.
Now it was Kim Yang Kwam he kept thinking about in the bus. Sang Huin was labeled
as dirty a few nights ago: the way he walked on the floor with his shoes instead of taking
them off at the door; the half open window that allowed any insect an easy passage; the
fact that he didn't have any rubbing alcohol to cleanse the mosquito bites that his friend
gained while sleeping in Sang Huin's room; the fattening mess of pancakes with half
burnt ridges in place of rice which Sang Huin prepared for him despite the criticism; and
then came questions about the nature of his relationship with Sung Ki.
Glancing out of the window, he pulled out a pint of "ooyoo" (milk) from his sack. His
throat was not dry or hurting but for some reason he felt the need to caress it with what he
drank as well as with his fingertips. He drank his milk, attempted memorizing a few
words of Korean, and then went back to sleep. He had a strange dream of some
inconsequential happening in Seoul. The dream was not much different than reality. In
the dream the subway (Orange Line, number three) stopped and he noticed a young blind
man with a dog getting into one of the cars. Sang Huin quickly moved toward that door.
Then he found himself walking through one car after another since the blind man and the
dog passed through the inside doors. He woke up and thought of the dream in the context
of himself. He was drawn to beauty and carnal activity but also to those captive in some
imperfection for within them sensitivity, existential and knowledgeable of suffering,
would be complete. He yearned for the deep intelligence that knew such things. His
imagination swelled with the thought of this individual just as it had when he actually
encountered him in Soul. Sang Huin was always traveling--especially when he was in the
States. He was discontent and was seeing himself falling further and further away from
the normal path. He had nothing but a college degree, no specialty, no ambition for
money, he couldn't really think of a field or discipline for himself, family was a deep life
altering wound that made the thought of gravitating himself around a wife and children
unbearable, and even his hobby of playing a cello was as a musical dilettante. He looked
out of the window and smoothed out his hair. The bus was becoming full now. Still, no
one was standing.

Maybe, he thought, he should have been proud at the restaurant. Instead, when Yang
Kwam said that he never wanted to see him again Sang Huin said, "I understand," but
was thinking "Well, then why are we eating together?" Yang Kwam's eyes were stern.
Indeed, it was the end. He felt stunned at that table: to lead a person to a restaurant so that
he could not talk to him and then at the inquiry on if he was upset-- Oh, what did it matter?
Sang Huin's head hurt thinking about it. He put his hand on his forehead and looked out
of the window. Sang Huin said nothing to the statement of "Don't ever call me." They