Marijuana

Jay and I are sitting in a bar somewhere in The Hague, drinking beer. Ever since we arrived in Amsterdam yesterday, Jay has been pestering me about wanting to try marijuana, just one joint, just once. It is not as though I am not curious myself. To be honest, I simply do not have the nerve. Not that I am a coward or anything. What scares me is not some textbook issue like marijuana being illegal in Korea, or Korean law applying to Koreans even overseas. Whatever anyone says, marijuana is a drug. That is the problem. I am the kind of person who gets hooked easily on things that are bad for him. I know perfectly well that once I fall into something, I have a hard time crawling back out. There are already too many things I started with a casual “What the hell, I’ll try it once,” only to find I could not quit. My life is already that of a washout pushed right to the edge of a cliff. I am in no position to add “drug addict” to the list.

Jay had recently come out of a long, exhausting divorce battle. At first she had planned on a divorce by mutual consent, but the division of property turned the whole thing into litigation, and only at the very end did she somehow manage to reach a settlement. Jay’s hope that she and her husband might remain good friends after the divorce was smashed to pieces. She should never have entertained such a hope in the first place. If it had simply been another woman, perhaps it might not have gone as far as divorce. If he had not set up house with some young bitch, she might have been broad-minded enough to let it slide, saying, “Men do that sort of thing.” In fact, Jay’s husband was not exactly innocent when it came to women. Whenever he came back from a round of golf with his high school friends, Jay could smell something strange on him. At first she thought it was just the cheap lotion and aftershave from the golf club locker room. But that was not it. One day, because the housekeeper’s father had died and the laundry had piled up for several days, Jay was sorting the clothes to run the washing machine when she happened to find a long yellow hair stuck to her husband’s underwear. That night, after a terrific fight with him, Jay called me. And this is what she said.

“Careless bastard. Why the hell did he have to get caught with that?”

With Jay’s temperament, once suspicion took root, she could no longer believe anything. Whenever her husband came home after drinking, she checked his underwear. If he resisted and refused to take it off, she would go at him: “You bastard, where were you, and who were you screwing?” Then she picked up the phone, threatening to tell his family. Each time, her husband dropped to his knees and begged and begged with both hands clasped.

The incident that finally made Jay decide on divorce was her husband’s hidden camera. Last winter, Jay called and poured it all out.

“That crazy bastard filmed everything he did with me. And he has footage of himself doing it with other bitches too.”

Every night, whenever her husband went into his study, he locked the door behind him, and that had bothered her. So one day she searched his computer from top to bottom. She found nothing on the computer. Knowing how meticulous her husband was, Jay went through the books in the study one by one, and found a small laptop hidden away. At first she gave a little laugh, thinking, “So the man’s been sneaking porn every night?” But that was not it.

“Are you going to get divorced?”

“Yeah… No, I don’t know. What should I do? I guess I have to, don’t I?”

Jay was clumsy about many things. Sometimes she was brisk and sharp, and sometimes she was plain stupid. Once she decided to ask for a divorce, her daughter became the biggest headache. Jay did not have the ability to raise the child, and even if she had, she had no intention of doing so. The girl had always been on her father’s side.

“Worry about that later. First, make copies.”

“How do I do that?”

“You don’t know? Then bring the laptop to my coffee shop right now.”

“Why there?”

“You said you don’t know how to copy files. Stop wasting time and come now.”

I swore to Jay on the life of Mong, my family’s dog, that I would never, under any circumstances, watch the videos I had backed up. Strangely enough, I do not trust myself, my wife does not trust me, and even my parents do not trust me, yet Jay has always believed me. I will say nothing about the unspeakable abuse that passed between Jay and her husband that night, the laptop smashed to pieces with a golf club, the neighbors calling the police, or the fight they had in front of the officers who showed up. The important thing is that because of the videos I had backed up, Jay’s in-laws had no choice in the end but to settle. Better a settlement than prison, wouldn’t you say?

Knowing perfectly well that her in-laws would not give up the child, Jay pressed even harder for custody. In exchange for letting her husband take the girl, Jay walked away with a fat settlement. She got a spacious apartment in Gimpo New Town and a four-story commercial building. Everyone around her said she had struck gold and envied her, but I saw it differently. To me, Jay looked as if she had been banished to some place of exile and left there to serve her sentence. Once, drunk, Jay said, “Maybe it’s for the best. I don’t have any regrets now. You have no idea how freeing it is to come home and find no one there.” I thought that was not sincerity but bluff. When Jay drank, she spoke before thinking. After she sobered up, she did not remember what she had said. No, she did not even try to remember. Of course, she had not always been that way. If anything, I was the one who had been like that.

In fact, my own marriage is one step away from ruin. Of course, not because of Jay. My wife has no real interest in my relationship with Jay. She probably thinks, “Hmph. You? Please.” If it is not a woman problem, what else could it be? In my case, as in most cases, it is money. My wife demanded a divorce, saying she could no longer stand watching me fail at everything I did. Karaoke room, Korean-style PC café, coffee shop—nothing I touched amounted to much. At least with the café I managed to recover part of the premium and unload it on some innocent woman; otherwise I really might have been wiped out. It would be nice if I could get a job, but there was nowhere for me to go. I thought about working the night shift at a convenience store, but with my stamina and all that, I gave up. That was something to consider only in the absolute worst case. Things had not fallen that far yet.

And more than anything, I did not want to leave my wife. When my wife brought up divorce, I begged her to try living apart for exactly three months, and if her mind still had not changed after that, I would step aside without fuss. In the end, she agreed. The only remaining question was who would live outside the home. My wife said she would stay with her parents. I begged her once more, please not to tell her family about our separation. Then my wife said, “You’ve cut ties with your own family, so you have nowhere to go, do you?” I insisted that since the apartment was in her name, it was only right for me to leave. Then I hurriedly packed and came outside. My luggage consisted of toiletries and a few pairs of underwear. I smoked a cigarette at the entrance to the apartment building. Somehow I felt as if I had walked straight into my wife’s strategy. It felt as though I had taken a counterpunch while standing there completely unguarded, having made no preparations for this sort of situation. From now on, I told myself, I would have to move more carefully.

After finishing one cigarette, I put another between my lips and called Jay. I will not lie. To be honest, since Jay owed me one, I was thinking of living off her for three months. Spending three months in hotels was out of the question with the money in my wallet. But I could not stay in a cheap motel either. Better to sleep rough than in a motel. Dirty sheets, moaning from the next room, the fan of a cheap refrigerator humming away, neon signs from the entertainment district, drunks shouting outside—just thinking about it was enough to make me shudder.

“Take a taxi and come right now.”

“Really?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with your voice?”

“Cigarette smoke must have gotten in my eyes.”

“What about taxi fare?”

“I still have the emergency money I tucked away when I closed the café.”

From the very first day of my separation, for two full months, I lived in a room at Jay’s place. No matter how much Jay owed me, I could not eat and sleep there for free. So I thought I ought to at least earn my meals. As soon as I woke up in the morning, I went grocery shopping. Then I prepared two slices of toast, one boiled egg, half an apple, a quarter of a bell pepper, and morning coffee before waking Jay. Jay said she could not remember the last time she had eaten breakfast, and tears welled up in her eyes. Our breakfasts became routine. I also took charge of washing the dishes and cleaning the house. Of course, I had help from the dishwasher and the robot vacuum cleaner. Jay said we should each do our own laundry, but I said what did it matter when we were family living under the same roof, and I ran the washing machine once a week. Then one day it suddenly occurred to me: why had I never done any of this in my own home? When my wife kept asking me to help with the housework, why had I always dodged her and pretended not to hear? I could not understand it at all. With a dishwasher and a robot vacuum cleaner, it was not hard in the slightest. I wanted to call my wife and tell her that from now on I would take care of all the housework. Then perhaps my wife would calm down and ask me to come home. But it seemed my wife had other ideas. She did not want to see me changed. Instead, she said she had prepared the papers and told me not to come home but to meet her at a café near the apartment. Truly, I did not want even to dream of divorce or a divorce lawsuit like Jay’s. Because I still loved my wife.

I did not go to the café. My wife called and tore into me. Then we made another appointment, and I did not go to that one either. I ran away from my wife. It may look somewhat irresponsible, but I could not think of a better way. The night I missed the second appointment, Jay and I were watching a travel program about Europe on television when she said she wanted to see Paris once before she died. I said, full of bravado, “Then come with me.” I was a little drunk at the time. Jay was fairly drunk too. The next day, when I said perhaps now was not the best time and that we should definitely go to Paris together another time, Jay insisted that absolutely would not do, and if I was going to say that, I should leave her house at once. In the end, I had no choice but to lose to Jay. For the time being, I decided to think about the divorce problem after the trip to Europe. Why drag around some useless worry when I had a major undertaking ahead? Perhaps because it was the off-season, two tickets to Paris were easy to get. As for lodging, once we arrived in Paris, we decided to take any hotel near the opera house. As soon as the tickets were booked, Jay went out shopping, saying she needed clothes to wear in Europe.

As we were going through departure procedures at Incheon Airport, my wife called. I did not answer. While I was buying cigarettes at the duty-free shop, the phone rang again, and again I did not answer. Then I turned the phone off. My wife must have been furious. All through our marriage, she had snapped at me countless times, saying she could not stand that kind of attitude of mine. But from my point of view, what could I have said to her? That because I could not divorce her, I was running away to Paris with a female friend? She would have called me insane, obviously. But if anyone knew my circumstances, no one could blame me. First, my wife had agreed to three months of separation and then tried to shove divorce papers at me after only two months. That was a clear breach of contract. Second, during the two months I was living outside the home, my wife did not once call first to ask how I was. No matter how much she hated me, that was no way to treat her precious husband. Third—and I really do not want to bring this up because it has to do with Jay’s privacy, but I suppose I have no choice—in those two months, Jay and I did not have sex even once. Of course, we had never done so before either. To be more precise, I had never once so much as held Jay’s wrist. We were truly nothing more than pure friends. Platonic love, I mean—the sort of thing vulgar people in this world could never understand. Just those three points alone show that I am not such a bad guy. Then again, who isn’t guilty of something? Even the fact that I did not pick up the phone at the airport was, in the end, my wife’s own doing. All at once I felt strangely relieved. I wanted to get to Paris as soon as possible.

I had been to Paris once before. Back in college, like everyone else, I had spent about two weeks going around Europe—Paris, London, Rome, places like that. Of course I had not traveled alone. Naturally, I had gone on a package tour. Then as now, going abroad alone did not appeal to me. What was I supposed to do in a place where I did not speak the language if I sprained my ankle or got a stomachache? Go to a hospital? Fine. Let us say a hospital could solve that. But what if I had all my money stolen by a pickpocket on the subway in Rome, or ran into a mugger in some back alley in Paris? I really do not even want to imagine it. People may curse me, saying what kind of man has so little guts. That is all right. That is simply the kind of man I am. It is not pickpockets or muggers I am afraid of. It is the annoying mess that would follow. I cannot stand troublesome things.

It was not as if Jay and I had come to Paris with some grand travel plan. Like everyone else, we went up the Eiffel Tower, looked at the Arc de Triomphe, and walked along the Champs-Élysées. We stopped at a few cathedrals listed in the travel book. No matter how many cathedrals you look at, a cathedral is still just a cathedral. Just as no matter how handsome a Korean temple may be, it is still a temple. We drank strong espresso at sidewalk cafés and smoked cigarettes in style. When we got hungry on our walks, we went into nice bakeries and ate our fill of fragrant French bread. Once I bought a pastry thinking it was filled with sweet red bean paste, only to discover it was packed with chocolate, which put me in a bad mood for a while, but for the most part the days were pleasant. In Paris, life became active. We walked and walked every day. I had been sitting still for too long. Perhaps it was because we had managed well enough on my wife’s income alone. If I had held down a regular job like other people, perhaps things would not have come to this. I have the perfectly ordinary constitution of a man whose body instinctively rejects the word “workplace.” Unfortunately, I have neither business sense nor business skill, so there is nothing else for me to do. When my wife said that doing nothing would be the best help I could give, perhaps she was not entirely wrong. To be honest, I have no desire to blame others, but the fact that I ended up like this is certainly not my fault alone. I suppose I simply had bad luck.

It is true that I have done plenty of things worth being criticized for, but one must not overlook the fact that I started them with good intentions. Take the café, for instance. At first business was good. But who could have known that within a few months every first floor of every building would have a café in it? When big corporate franchises too numerous to memorize came charging in as if their lives depended on it, what was I supposed to do? Retirees were pouring in their severance pay, even their entire savings. How could a decent person like me, someone who had hoped to run a refined little business listening to music and drinking coffee at leisure, compete with that? If I had known things would go that way, I would never have started. It was lucky enough that I did not take a huge loss. As soon as I closed the café, my wife brought up divorce. Our relationship—neither marriage nor separation nor divorce—was already rushing toward disaster. If my wife had another man, I might have felt more at ease, but that was not the case either. If that man could have made her happy, I might easily have agreed to divorce. Love, too, once the foam has gone flat, is not much different from stale beer. When you meet dressed nicely, with makeup on and good clothes, everything is lovely; but once you get married and step into daily life, even good feelings are bound to go dull. Why else would people divorce over the cap of a toothpaste tube?

My wife must know. She must know there is no one on this earth who loves her more than I do. Still, it is not as if I had no complaints about her at all. I cannot stand the way my wife raises her little finger when she holds a pen. Even when she picks up a teacup, she always sticks out that little finger. In the old days, I found it cute and lovable. Now, whenever I see that little finger, I feel I might go mad. Just as there is no reason for liking someone, there does not have to be any reason for disliking someone either. In any case, not one thing in my life has ever gone the way I wanted. Again, I suppose I simply had bad luck.

The trip to Paris with Jay was smooth in every respect. If there was one problem, it was the sleeping arrangement. The fairly nice hotels near the opera house had no rooms. Chinese tour groups were to blame. At a hotel across from the Louvre Museum, there happened to be exactly one vacant room left, but unfortunately it was not a twin. We had to decide whether to find lodging on the outskirts of the city or sleep in the same bed. When I asked Jay whether it might be better to find a guesthouse or a hostel, Jay folded her arms and stared at me for a moment as if putting me on trial. Feeling awkward, I muttered, “I mean, why are there so many people traveling around leisurely in the off-season?”

In the end, in Paris, I slept in the bed and Jay slept on the carpet with a blanket spread out beneath her. Since childhood, I have had the habit of not being able to sleep a wink unless I am in a bed, so I felt bad for Jay, but there was nothing I could do. I told her several times that we should move to a hotel on the outskirts, but Jay would not listen. She said she was fine sleeping below the bed, so what else could I do? I went along with it. Perhaps Jay was secretly hoping I would tell her to sleep beside me. But that would not do. I do not love Jay enough to sleep in the same bed with her. She is merely someone I have known since middle school, a longtime drinking companion and conversation partner. Jay probably thinks of me the same way. Now, if I say that, you must not conclude that Jay lacks feminine appeal. In fact, the opposite is true. If you do not look too closely, Jay could pass for a woman in her early thirties. There are hardly any wrinkles around her eyes or neck. Her skin is clean enough that you could search with your eyes washed out and not find a single skin tag. Sharing a bed does not necessarily make two people that sort of pair, but when I thought of my wife in Seoul, I simply could not. Later, if my wife asked what I had done with Jay in Paris, I wanted to answer proudly. I wanted to say that nothing at all had happened between Jay and me. How admirable would my wife find that? Just thinking about it made my heart swell.

Once I decided that Jay sleeping on the floor was all her own doing, I felt much lighter. Fortunately, there was no sleeping problem in Amsterdam. Here too every hotel was full because of Chinese tourists, but by luck we found a twin room whose reservation had just been canceled. It was a splendid room, even with a terrace. I yielded the double bed to Jay and unpacked my things on the single bed. As a gentleman, I thought this much concession was only right. No matter how nice the room was, Amsterdam did not have much to see. The canals were boring, and the famous flower market only gave me a headache with all its flower smell. The Van Gogh Museum was so packed with Chinese tour groups that we could not see anything properly. Besides, I had not come all the way to Europe to look at paintings and such. The Anne Frank House was listed in the travel book as a required stop, but we did not go. I preferred simply walking wherever our feet took us and passing the time that way. Jay seemed to feel the same, because she did not suggest anywhere in particular. Then, in front of Descartes’s house, which we discovered entirely by chance, I showed off a little to Jay, and that at least became a pleasant memory. It was from a documentary I had seen long ago on television, but according to it, Descartes had moved dozens of times and lived his whole life in hiding because of his dangerous writings. That house was probably one of his hideouts. I did not tell Jay that I had seen this on television.

After graduating from college, I once applied for a job at a major corporation and failed the entrance exam. One of the questions on that exam asked applicants to write down the titles of three major works by Kant. I wrote Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason in the blanks, but in the end I had to leave Critique of Judgment empty. Of course, I do not think that missing that one question is the reason I never became a department head or director at that major corporation. Still, I cannot say I feel no regret. If I had not missed that one question, who knows how my life might have unfolded? One never knows. In any case, when I told Jay about it, she giggled and said, “And you were a philosophy major?” What is more, the incident is still handed down among my college friends like a legend. Even now, if someone says, “You know, that guy—Critique of Judgment,” people immediately think of me.

After loitering for a while in front of Descartes’s house, we turned back toward the hotel near Central Station. Then we took a wrong turn and found ourselves passing through the red-light district and past coffeeshops that sold marijuana. The street smelled acrid but oddly savory.

“This is marijuana smell, right?” Jay said.

“Probably. It definitely isn’t cigarette smoke. I heard you can smoke marijuana in coffeeshops in Amsterdam.”

“Should we try one too?”

“Are you crazy? Absolutely not.”

Perhaps because I cut her off so coldly, Jay did not bring up marijuana again. Since the weather was chilly, we stopped by the hotel, put on our coats, and went out to dinner. After Paris had spoiled my palate, Amsterdam did not seem to have much to eat. Everything was merely expensive. We finished a rough dinner and went into a bar for beer. I had not known the Dutch had so many kinds of beer. When Jay suggested we drink one glass of each kind, I agreed without hesitation. Around midnight, we staggered back to the hotel and fell into bed without even washing. The next morning, I barely managed to get up after ten. My head felt as if it would split open. After a hot shower and a shave, I felt somewhat better. When I came out of the bathroom, Jay was still asleep in bed. I called her name and shook her shoulder. There was no answer. When I shook her again, the thin strap of her slip slid down from her shoulder. Then her nipple, small and erect, came into view from inside the slip. Without meaning to, I swallowed.

“Hey. Wake up already.”

Jay said her head hurt and told me to leave her alone a little longer. I gently covered her with the blanket so that her nipple would not show, and went down to the hotel lobby. Then I bought coffee and croissants at Central Station and returned to the hotel. Jay was in the shower. I left a note saying I would wait in the lobby and quietly came out of the room. While I sat on the sofa by the window in the hotel lobby waiting for Jay, a front-desk employee handed me a newspaper written in Japanese. I said I was not Japanese. Then he said something in Chinese. I said I was not Chinese but Korean. He looked embarrassed and apologized in English. Jay came walking down to the lobby. I handed her the coffee, now a little cooled.

“Where shall we go today?” I said.

“Anywhere but cheese or wooden shoes. Yesterday’s flower trip was a failure.”

“Then how about The Hague?”

“The Hague?”

“Yeah. The Hague.”

“The Hague of Yi Jun?”

“Yeah. That The Hague.”

“What’s there?” Jay said, opening her eyes wide.

“I don’t know. I just think maybe we ought to go once. You and I are Korean, after all.”

“Then let’s go.”

The Hague was less than an hour by train from Amsterdam Central Station. The city was astonishingly clean. It was completely different from Amsterdam, where the pungent smell of marijuana hung in the air. Jay and I went into a restaurant near The Hague Central Station, had a light lunch, and headed for the Yi Jun Peace Museum. It should have taken only ten minutes on foot from The Hague Central Station, but we lost our way and wandered for quite a while. On top of that, a sudden shower came pouring down from a perfectly good sky, so we had to buy a small folding umbrella. I said we should buy two, but Jay said we would only use them once and throw them away, so why waste money, and made me buy just one. To be honest, I was a little annoyed. Still, I did as Jay wanted. I was grateful that she had given me the bed in Paris. A small folding umbrella was not enough to stop the shower. Jay pressed her body against mine and linked her arm through mine, yet strangely enough only Jay’s coat ended up soaked.

There was not a single tourist at the Yi Jun Peace Museum. Perhaps because the atmosphere was too solemn, our hearts grew heavy, and we came out after only ten minutes. Somehow I felt it was not the sort of place that suited us. We walked through the streets of The Hague. The rain had eased, but the drops were still too thick to walk without an umbrella. The streets were quiet. Maybe because of the weather, even after walking for a long while, we hardly saw anyone.

“It would be nice to live somewhere like this,” Jay said.

I said nothing. I felt sorry toward my wife. It was not because I had stolen a look at Jay’s nipple that morning. Nor, of course, was it because I was now walking under one umbrella with Jay, her arm linked through mine. The reason I felt sorry toward my wife was that at Incheon Airport I had turned off my phone without answering her call. In truth, that had bothered me throughout the trip. By now my wife’s anger would have cooled quite a bit, but when we met, she would get angry again. I really did not want to see my wife angry. I did not want to hear her spit out crude words either. And more than anything, I could not bear the thought that my wife was suffering because of me.

Jay and I walked for a while without speaking. Jay too seemed lost in other thoughts, her face a little gloomy. Even the sky was dark and dingy, making the mood all the more melancholy.

“Shall we go somewhere and have a beer?” I said.

“At this hour?”

“With the weather like this, what’s wrong with drinking a little early?”

“What time is the last train?”

“I don’t know. But we should get back to Amsterdam before the last train stops running.”

“Then shall we have just one quick glass?”

Jay and I went into a bar near The Hague Central Station. Though it was early for drinking, there were quite a few customers inside. We ordered two glasses of Dutch beer and sipped them.

“Do we have to go back to Seoul?” Jay said, rubbing the beer glass with both hands.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just because.”

“Then instead of going straight to London, shall we stop by Rome too? We could see Milan and Florence. We can change the plane tickets to another day.”

“Should we? No. Let’s think about it a little more carefully. I want to get to London soon and see a musical too.”

“Sure. Then let’s take our time and think about it.”

“Maybe it’s for the best. I have no regrets now.”

“About what?”

“What do you think? The divorce. Now that I’ve split up, I had no idea I would feel this free.”

I could not believe Jay’s words. She was clearly lying. Her true feelings could not be like that. Perhaps I knew Jay better than my wife did.

“Why? Does it sound like a lie?”

“No. It’s not that.”

“I’m going to transform myself. When I get back to Seoul, I’ll start swimming again and go to the fitness club. It would be so nice if I could get rid of my cesarean scar. Mine is so big they say they can’t remove it completely.” Jay spoke with a serious expression. “Still, it’s all right. I’m still young, and I’m attractive enough. Aren’t I? I should meet a wonderful man too. I’ll love him, but I won’t marry him. I’m going to start singing again too. How wonderful would it be if I could stand on the stage at the Seoul Arts Center one more time?”

“But a little while ago you said you didn’t want to go back to Seoul.”

“When did I? I never said that. When I go back to Seoul, I’m going to love myself. More than anyone else.”

“Of course. You deserve to be loved. But shall we have another drink?”

“Good. But exactly one more.”

I ordered two more beers. And a little later, I ordered two more. I was getting drunk. I resolved that once I returned to Seoul, I would absolutely quit drinking. Of course, I would quit smoking too. I would show my wife that I was changing. My wife would like that side of me. No, perhaps she might even fall in love with me again. I was only in my forties. How was I supposed to live if my wife abandoned me? That would be no different from death. I would have to make that clear to my wife. To me, divorce was death itself. I ordered two more beers. I intended to quit drinking and smoking once I got back to Seoul, but not right now.

Two backpackers took seats at the next table. Every time they moved, a pungent marijuana smell drifted over.

“What do you think it feels like?” Jay said.

“What does what feel like? How am I supposed to know when you put it like that?”

“What do you think? Don’t you smell the marijuana? Every time those guys move, it smells like somebody farted after eating rotten mackerel.”

“What could be so special? It’s probably just a little stronger than cigarettes.”

“Can’t we try smoking just one joint?”

“No.”

“What do you mean no? Don’t they sell marijuana here?”

“They don’t sell marijuana in bars. Only in coffeeshops, apparently. If you drink and smoke marijuana on top of it, they say you get totally blasted.”

“Really? Let’s try just one. Really.”

“No.”

“You peeked at my breasts this morning, didn’t you? Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

“……”

“When we get back to Seoul, I’m telling Mihyun everything.”

“……”

“Ah, if I smoke just one joint, I might forget all about who peeked at my nipples.”

“Fine. Just one. That’s it.”

“Yeah. One is enough.”

“Then let’s go back to Amsterdam and smoke there. If something happens while we smoke here, it’ll be a nuisance. How about that?”

“If you break your promise, I’m telling Mihyun everything.”

“All right. So please stop bringing up Mihyun.”

We went straight to The Hague Central Station and got on a train bound for Amsterdam. As soon as we arrived at Amsterdam Central Station, we went into a coffeeshop near the hotel and took seats. The comfortable sofa and cozy atmosphere relaxed me. Jay’s face was flushed red, the beer from The Hague not yet fully out of her system. I gestured to the waiter. He came to our table and smiled at Jay and me. In clumsy English, I asked if we could buy marijuana. He spread a marijuana menu on the table and kindly explained the varieties and strengths. Among them, one called Krishna caught my eye. I assumed it was named after Krishna, the Indian god. When I asked for Krishna, the waiter said it was the strongest one and asked whether that was all right. I did not hesitate. It felt as though it had to be Krishna or nothing. At the counter, a man who looked like the manager was changing the CD in the stereo. A quiet piano trio began flowing from the speakers. When the waiter put the marijuana on our table, Jay looked at me, beamed, and winked. I carefully rolled one joint. Then I rolled another. Jay rubbed her hands together and watched my movements with eyes full of curiosity. After I had rolled two large ones, I handed one to Jay. Jay wet her lips and put the joint in her mouth. When I lit it with the lighter, she inhaled deeply. I lit my own joint and took a drag.

“What kind of taste is this?” Jay said, coughing.

“All those stories about getting high on marijuana are lies. This is milder than a cigarette.”

“Ugh. We’ve been totally had.”

“Exactly. Why did you insist on smoking this expensive stuff? What a waste.”

“I’m sorry. I was being stubborn for no reason.”

We finished the joints in our hands. But even after smoking them all, nothing especially impressive happened. The marijuana had the musty smell of old hemp cloth. My mouth felt dry and grimy, so I kept sipping coffee the whole time.

“But listen, were we supposed to go to London the day after tomorrow, or Barcelona? No, was it Rome?” Jay said.

“Shall we go to London and see a musical?”

“A musical?”

“How about The Phantom of the Opera or Les Misérables?”

“Those are too gloomy. Isn’t there anything else?”

“Chicago or Mamma Mia?”

“Let’s do Mamma Mia.”

“Fine.”

“And what else?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see when we get there. But why is this music playing here?” I said, pointing at the speaker.

“What music?”

“You don’t know this song? It’s Lee Tae-won’s ‘Solgae.’ But it sounds a little strange. It must be the original recording. Wait.”

I closed my eyes and listened closely to the music coming from the speaker. It was definitely Lee Tae-won’s “Solgae.” I felt as if my body were floating into the air. It was an ecstatic sensation, as though I had become a kite soaring through the sky. I hummed along to Lee Tae-won’s “Solgae” as it came from the speaker.

“Did you hear that?” I said.

“Hear what?”

“This song. It’s Lee Tae-won’s ‘Solgae.’ In the second verse of ‘Solgae,’ you know, ‘laughing at me’ was changed to ‘looking at me.’ In the third verse, ‘a meaningless day’ was changed to ‘a meaningful day.’ Back in the military-dictatorship days, those bastards censored the thing and changed the original lyrics however they pleased. Rotten bastards. Who would’ve thought I’d hear the original ‘Solgae’ in Amsterdam? Isn’t that strange? Maybe the manager here has some connection to Korea.”

“Hey, what is wrong with you?” Jay said, laughing.

“What did I do?”

“You idiot. This song is not Lee Tae-won’s ‘Solgae.’”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s Song Dae-kwan’s ‘Haetteul Nal,’ ‘The Day the Sun Rises.’ Listen properly.”

Then Jay suddenly stood up and began singing Song Dae-kwan’s “Haetteul Nal.”

“I came with a dream, I came here, sorrow and suffering, all of you, get out of the way, nothing is impossible, if you work hard, bright and shining, the day the sun rises will come back, bright and shining, the day the sun rises will come back.”

And sure enough, what was coming from the speaker was not Lee Tae-won’s “Solgae,” but Song Dae-kwan’s “Haetteul Nal.” The rhythm was so cheerful that even my shoulders began to bounce.

“Hey. Wait, wait a second,” I called to Jay.

“What?”

I grinned foolishly and said, “Let’s sing it together.”

Thoroughly stoned, Jay and I sang Song Dae-kwan’s “Haetteul Nal” at the tops of our voices. Jay even took the folding umbrella out of her bag, held it like a microphone, and imitated Song Dae-kwan. We faced each other and laughed loudly. Jay, laughing so innocently, looked beautiful to me. All the stress that had piled up inside me vanished like smoke. Then the waiter came over to our table and said we could not sing there. I took a deep breath and looked around. The people in the coffeeshop had even turned their chairs around and were giggling as they watched us. The young people smoking marijuana at a corner table were even clapping for us.

I grabbed Jay by the wrist and tried to make her sit down. Jay shook off my hand and shouted, “Why?” For a moment, I lost my words and stared at her. Jay must have sensed something was off too, because she looked around with cloudy eyes and then dropped into her seat.

“Ugh, how embarrassing,” Jay said.

For a while neither of us spoke. No one was looking at us anymore.

“Shall we go?”

“Already?”

Jay put on a coy expression and stuck out her lips. Seeing Jay’s cute lips made me remember the pink nipple I had stolen a glimpse of that morning. I pinched my earlobe hard.

“Let’s smoke just one more. Roll one small one,” Jay said.

“Let’s stop now.”

“What about what’s left?”

“We’ll throw it away.”

“Why throw away something this expensive? Come on, can’t we smoke just one more?” Jay said in a nasal, wheedling voice.

“Then let’s go back to the hotel and smoke it there.”

“But I want one more now. The memory of you peeking at my nipples still hasn’t been wiped clean. Please, just one more.”

I hesitated for a moment. Of course, it was not as though I had no desire to smoke one more myself.

“Our room has a balcony. If we smoke there, no one will know. That solves it.”

“Fine. Then we’ll smoke the marijuana comfortably at the hotel. You promised. Definitely.”

“Fine, fine.”

Jay and I quietly sipped our coffee. Jay seemed to be thinking about something, drawing circles on the table with her finger.

“In middle school, you were shorter than me. Then you suddenly shot up when you got to high school.”

“Was I? I suppose maybe I was.”

“Do you remember the shepherd that used to live in our neighborhood when we were young? Sometimes it wandered around without even a leash.”

“The vicious shepherd from Principal Na Gyeong-su’s house? Of course I remember. It barked like a wolf every night. The son of that family had a temper every bit as nasty as that shepherd.”

“You remember. Once, on my way home from school, that shepherd charged at me, and you stood in front of me with that tiny body of yours and blocked the dog.”

“Did that happen?”

“When you shouted, ‘Go away! Go away!’ the shepherd got startled and backed off, flinching. If that dog had bitten me in the neck then, I would have died. You saved my life. You really don’t remember?”

“I don’t remember. Why?”

“Idiot. Never mind, then. The commercial building in Gimpo is a headache.”

“It’s brand-new. What headache?”

“Managing a building is no small thing. It would be nice if there were someone I could trust and leave it to.”

“Ask around. Or post a job ad on a recruitment site. That would be fastest.”

“When you get back to Seoul, are you really going to divorce Mihyun?”

“No. Why would I divorce her? I’m not going to.”

“The separation period is almost over now.”

“Even so, I can’t. Mihyun can’t live without me either.”

“That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

“No. Mihyun must think the same. We only needed some time apart to look at the situation calmly. When I go back, I’m going to quit drinking and quit smoking. If Mihyun sees that, she’ll definitely be glad.”

But I knew. I knew our marriage was already over.

Tonight, drunk on marijuana, Jay might seduce me. No, perhaps I might seduce Jay first. It is not as if I have no desire to kiss Jay’s cute lips and suck once on her pinkish nipple. But I will absolutely not have sex with Jay. If my wife learns that I did not sleep with Jay in Paris, or Amsterdam, or even London, perhaps she will think well of me. I have betrayed myself countless times, but I have never once betrayed my wife. I intend to stake my last hope on that.

On the way back to the hotel, I softly hummed “Solgae.”

“Can we not live without speaking? Like a flying kite…”

It was past nine o’clock, but the sky was still bright. I knew perfectly well it was only the latitude.

—The End—