But why are you in the hospital? And what is the doctor doing? He’s not making you better, he keeps asking you silly questions. He keeps asking you your name. Why is he doing that? And why aren’t you telling him your name? All you have to say is “Lee Eun-gyu,” so why are you not answering, making him ask again and again? Really, why is the doctor doing that? Now he’s holding a toy boat and asking, “Do you know what this is?” Is this a joke? It’s a boat! What does he mean, “Do you know what this is?” But the strangest thing is you. Why aren’t you answering? Oh, you really don’t know? You mean you have forgotten what your name is? You don’t know what that toy boat is? Really?
The doctor is asking again: “Your age?”
“One hundred!”
“No, please tell me how old you are.”
“Two hundred!”
You’re really being grumpy. Why do you say you are two hundred years old? You’re five years younger than me, so that makes you… The doctor asks your name again.
“Shin Gu!”
“Please think carefully.”
“Baek Il Sup!”
The actor Shin Gu? The television actor Baek Il Sup? Are you talking about the Shin Gu and Baek Il Sup that I like?
“Please don’t do that, think and tell us what it is.”
You’re sniffling. What is going on? Why are you here, and why are you being asked these silly questions? Why are you crying, unable to answer these easy questions? I’ve never seen you cry before. I was always the one who cried. You saw me cry so many times, but this is the first time I’m seeing you cry.
“Now, please tell me your name again!”
You’re quiet.
“One more time!”
“Park So-nyo!”
That’s not your name, that’s mine. I remember the day you asked me what my name was. You’re paved in my heart like an old road. Like the pebbles in a pebble field, dirt in dirt, dust in dust, cobwebs in cobwebs. I was young then. I don’t think I ever thought I was in my youth when I was living it, but if I think about when I first met you, I can see my youthful face. One late afternoon, I was walking home from the mill on the new avenue, kicking up dust, my nickel basin filled with flour resting on my head. My youthful footsteps were quick. I was on my way home to make dough out of the flour and cook dough-flake soup to feed the children. The mill was four or five ri away, across the bridge. My forehead was sweaty from the flour-filled nickel basin on my head. You passed by me on a bicycle, then stopped along the road and called, “Excuse me.”
I kept walking, looking straight ahead. My breast was about to pop out of my chogori, which I was wearing with baggy pants.
“Put down that basin and give it to me. I’ll carry it for you on my bicycle.”
“How can I trust a stranger passing by and give this to you?” I said, but my youthful steps slowed. Actually, the basin was so heavy that my head felt like it would get crushed. I’d made a cushion out of a towel and put it under the basin, but I still felt as if my forehead and the bridge of my nose were going to collapse.
“I’m not carrying anything on my bike anyway. Where do you live?”
“In the village across the bridge…”
“There’s a shop at the entrance to the village, right? I’ll leave it there for you. So give it here and walk more freely. It looks so heavy, and here I am on a bicycle, carrying nothing on it. If you just put that basin down, you’ll be able to walk faster and get home quicker.”
I looked at you as you got off your bicycle, and I bit down on the end of the towel hanging by my face, the towel I’d placed on my head under the basin. Compared with Hyong-chol’s father, you were plain-looking, both then and now. You were pale, like you had never worked a day in your life, and your long horselike face and drooping eyes weren’t all that handsome. Your thick, straight eyebrows made you look honest. Your mouth made you seem respectable and trustworthy. Your eyes, gazing at me quietly, were familiar, as if I’d seen them somewhere before. When I didn’t immediately give you the basin and instead studied your face, you turned to get back on your bicycle. “I don’t have a hidden motive. I just wanted to help out because it looked so heavy. I can’t force you to let me help you if you don’t want me to.” You placed a foot on the sturdy pedal of your bicycle. That was when I hurriedly thanked you and handed over the basin from my head. I watched as you undid the thick rubber ties on the back of the bicycle and secured the basin with them.
“So I’ll leave it at the shop!”
You raced down the avenue-you, a man I’d just met, carrying my children’s food. I took off the towel wrapped around my head and slapped the dust off my pants and watched you and your bicycle disappear. Dust rose and clouded you and your bicycle, so I rubbed my eyes and watched you get smaller. I felt relieved, the weight on my head gone. I walked along the avenue, swinging my arms lightly. A pleasant breeze passed through my clothes. When was the last time I’d walked alone, with nothing in my hands, on my head, or on my back? I looked up at the birds flying in the dusky sky, hummed a song I used to sing with my mother when I was young, and headed to the shop. I looked for the basin from far away. I looked at the door of the shop as I approached it, but the basin that should have been by the door wasn’t there. Suddenly my heart started beating fast. I walked faster. I was afraid to ask the woman at the shop, “Did anyone leave a basin for me?” If you had, I would have seen it already, but I couldn’t find it. My towel in my hand, I ran toward the shopkeeper, who stared at me, wondering what was going on. I realized it only then: you had stolen my children’s dinner from me. Tears filled my eyes. Why did I give my basin to a man I’d never seen before, trusting you? What was I thinking? Why did I do that? I can still feel that dread, when my momentary nervousness at seeing your bicycle disappear became reality. I couldn’t go home empty-handed like that. I had to find that basin with flour, no matter what. I remembered the scraping noise I’d heard that morning when I scooped up grain in the shed for breakfast. I couldn’t give up when I knew there was enough flour in that basin for ten days’ worth of meals. I just kept walking, looking for you and your bicycle, though you must have sped past the shop. I went on and on, asking whoever I met whether they’d seen someone who looked like you. Your identity was revealed quickly. That was how careless you were. You didn’t even live far away. When I found out that you lived in the village that had a tile-roofed house, about five ri past our village, before the road reached town, I started running. I would be able to bring back all of the flour in the basin if I reached you before you used it.
When I discovered your bicycle in front of a run-down house at the foot of a hill between paddies, down the road from the entrance to your village, I ran into your house, screaming, “Ahhhh!” And then I saw it all. Your elderly mother sitting on the old porch, with her sunken eyes. Your three-year-old sucking on his finger. And your wife in the middle of a difficult birth. I’d come to retrieve the basin you’d stolen from me. Instead, I grabbed a pot off the wall in the dark and narrow kitchen. I heated water in it. I pushed you aside, since you didn’t know what to do and were just hovering next to your wife, and I grabbed her hand. I’d never met her before, but I shouted at her, “Push! Push harder!” I don’t know how much time passed until we heard the baby’s cry. Your house didn’t have a single strand of seaweed to make seaweed soup for your wife. Your elderly mother was blind and seemed already to be on her way over to the other world. I delivered the baby and scooped some flour from my basin and made dough for dough-flake soup and ladled it into a few bowls and put some broth into the room where the baby’s mother was. How many decades ago was it when I put the basin back on my head and came home? Is that man next to you the baby who was born that day? He’s sponging your hand. He gets you to turn over and sponges your back. It’s been a long time. Your taut neck is now wrinkly. Your thick eyebrows are no longer, and I don’t recognize your mouth. Instead of the doctor, it is now your son who says, “Father! What’s your name? Do you know what your name is?”