But I realize that I’m also leaving some things out, diary. Let me describe some of the beautiful moments, at least before the LNWI riots started and the checkpoints went up by the F train.
We go to midtown Korean restaurants and feast on rice cakes swaddled in chili paste, squid drowning in garlic, frightening fish bellies bursting with salty roe, and the ever-present little plates of cabbages and preserved turnips and seaweed and chunks of delectable dried beef. We eat in the Asian fashion, eyes on our food, hearty slurps of tofu stew and little belches indicating our involvement with the meal, my hand reaching for a glass of alcoholic soju, hers for a dainty cup of barley tea. A peaceful family. No need for words. We love each other and feed each other. She calls me kokiri and kisses my nose. I call her malishka, or “little one” in Russian, a dangerous word only because it once spilled out of my parents’ mouths, back when I was under three feet tall and their love for me was simple and true.
And the warmth of a Korean restaurant, the endless procession of plates, as if the meal cannot end until the whole world is eaten, the shouting and laughter after the meal is done, the unchecked inebriation of the older men, the giggly chatter of the younger women, and everywhere the ties of the family. It’s no wonder for me that Jews and Koreans jump so easily into romantic relations. We were stewed in different pots, to be sure, but both pots are burbling with familial warmth and the easiness, nosiness, and neuroticism that such proximity creates.
While we were lunching at one of the louder places on 32nd Street, Eunice saw a man eating by himself and sipping a Coca-Cola. “It’s so sad,” Eunice said, “to see a Korean man without a wife or girlfriend to tell him not to drink that junk.” She lifted up her cup of barley tea as if to show him a healthier alternative.
“I don’t think he’s Korean,” I said to Eunice. “My äppärät says he’s from Shanghai.”
“Oh,” she said, losing interest as soon as her bloodlines to the solitary Asian Coca-Cola drinker were cut.
When we were walking home, our stomachs filled with garlic and chili, the summer heat without and the pepper heat within covering our bodies with a lovely sheen, I started to ponder what Eunice had said. It was sad, according to her, that the Asian man did not have a wife or girlfriend to tell him not to drink the Coca-Cola. A grown man had to be told how to behave. He needed the presence of a girlfriend or wife to curb his basest instincts. What monstrous disregard for individuality! As if all of us didn’t lust, on occasion, for a drop of artificially sweetened liquid to fall upon our tongues.
But then I started thinking about it from Eunice’s point of view. The family was eternal. The bonds of kinship could never be broken. You watched out for others of your kind and they watched out for you. Perhaps it was I who had been remiss, in not caring enough for Eunice, in not correcting her when she ordered garlicky sweet-potato fries or drank a milkshake without the requisite vitamin boost. Wasn’t it just yesterday, after I had commented on our age difference, that she had said, quite seriously, “You can’t die before me, Lenny.” And then, after a moment’s consideration: “Please promise me that you’ll always take care of yourself, even when I’m not around to tell you what to do.”
And so, walking down the street, our breath ponderous with kimchi and fizzy OB beer, I began to reconsider our relationship. I started to see it Eunice’s way. We now had obligations to each other. Our families had failed us, and now we had to form an equally strong and enduring connection to each other. Any gap between us was a failure. Success would come when neither of us knew where one ended and the other began.
With that in mind, I crawled on top of her when we had reached home and pressed myself against her pubic bone with great urgency. “Lenny,” she said. She was breathing very quickly. I’d known her for a month, and we had still not consummated our relationship. What I had seen as a sign of great patience and traditional morality on my part I now saw as a failure to connect.
“Eunice,” I said. “My love.” But that sounded too small. “My life,” I said. Eunice’s legs were spread, and she was trying to accommodate me. “You are my life.”
“What?”
“You are-”
“Shhh,” she said, rubbing my pale shoulders. “Shush, Lenny. Be quiet, my sweet, sweet tuna-brain.”
I pressed myself inside her all the more, trying to wend my way into a place from which I would never depart. When I arrived there, when her muscles tensed and clasped me, when her collarbone jutted out, when the spectacular late-June twilight detonated across my simple bedroom and she groaned with what I hoped was pleasure, I saw that there were at least two truths to my life. The truth of my existence and the truth of my demise. With my mind’s eye floating over my bald spot and, beneath that, the thick tendrils of Eunice’s mane spilling over three supportive pillows, I saw her strong, vital legs with their half-moon calves and between them the chalky white bulk of me moored, righted, held in place for life. I saw the tanned, boyish body beneath me, and the new summertime freckles, and the alert nipples that formed tight brown capsules between my fingers, and felt the melody of her garlicky, sweet, slightly turned breath-and I began, with the kind of insistence that brings out heart attacks in men six years older than myself, to plunge in and out of Eunice’s tightness, a desperate animal growl filtering out of my lungs. Eunice’s eyes, wet and compassionate, watched me do what I needed to do. Unlike others of her generation, she was not completely steeped in pornography, and so the instinct for sex came from somewhere else inside her; it spoke of the need for warmth instead of debasement. She lifted up her head, enveloping me with her own heat, and bit the soft protuberance of my lower lip. “Don’t leave me, Lenny,” she whispered into my ear. “Don’t please ever leave me.”
14 THE QUIET AMERICAN
CHUNG.WON.PARK TO EUNI-TARD:
Eunhee,
We terrible worry right now because it sound like bad political situation in Manhattan. You should move back to Fort Lee and be family. This is more important than study for LSAT even. Remember we are old people and we see history. Daddy and I live through bad time in Korea when many people die on street, student young people like you and Sally. Make sure you no political. Make sure Sally no political. Some time she talk. We want come see you Tuesday coming up. Reverend Suk he was teacher to our Reverend Cho bring his special sinners crusade to madison square garden from Korea and we think all family should go and pray and we go to dinner later and meet this meeguk boy you say just Roommate. I am dissapoint you lie to me that you live with Joy Lee but I thank Jesu that you and Sally alive and safe. Even Daddy is so quiet now because he is Grateful and on his knee before God. This is difficult time. We come to America and now what happen to America? We worry. What it was all for? When we first come, before you were born, it was not so easy. You dont know how Daddy struggle for patient, even poor Mexican who has no insurance and he pay fifty dollar a hundred dollar. Even now he struggle. Maybe we make big mistake.
So please, make time for us Tuesday. Dress nice, nothing cheap or like “ho” but I always trust how you wear. Daddy say now there is road block on GW bridge and also holland tunnel. So how people from New Jersey suppose come?