9
Wedlock
Seoul
In the morning, Sonya accompanied the Chairman to view a large parcel of property in Hongdae—six attached buildings not far from the university.
The canny seller, who had come down from the North during the war with his family as a young man, now wanted to retire, and his middle-aged daughter, who lived in America, couldn’t manage the properties.
The eighty-year-old seller, wearing a maroon wool vest over a charcoal cardigan and gray corduroys, said he wanted a fair price without fuss, and the Chairman was the first person he’d contacted, knowing his solid reputation in the shaky world of real estate.
Mun’s handshake was a surety of a clean and open deal.
As he was leaving, the Chairman told the seller that he would send the company team for due diligence, but as far as he was concerned, if the engineer, accountants, and lawyers thought it was what the seller had purported, he would buy it.
Seeing the valuable site lifted the Chairman’s mood considerably, and he proposed lunch at the Shilla, which was thirty minutes away.
Without having to ask, the host seated the Chairman and Sonya in the back of the restaurant with a grand view of the mountain.
“I feel like a young man,” he said.
“You are not an old man.”
“You always speak in such a kind way.”
Sonya smiled.
“Did you want to get the buffet or order à la carte?” she asked.
“I feel like eating well today,” he said.
The two ordered a bottle of sparkling water to share because the Chairman never drank alcohol in the afternoon.
As they ate their lunch, now and then a person would stop by and bow to either the Chairman or Sonya. Across the main room, they spotted a number of friends, and even the pastor of their church was dining with several businessmen.
“I always forget how busy this hotel is,” Sonya said.
“It’s good to be around and about with my Sonya.”
When the bill came, the Chairman paid it, and they walked out of the restaurant, again greeted by a number of people they knew.
“Would you like to pick up some bread?” he asked as they passed the hotel bakery.
Sonya paused to look over the pastries. Her sons had loved the cream bread as boys, but they were now grown men.
She selected a loaf of the milk bread and a twist doughnut for the Chairman.
When she looked up to ask if he wanted anything else, Sonya spotted her husband walking hand in hand with a slender beauty toward the elevators.
She was not the same woman who’d visited Sonya two years ago. This one was taller and looked more professional in her beige suit-dress and beige suede heels. They stood in front of the bank of elevators and released their hands only for Yong-gil to press the up button.
The Chairman followed Sonya’s gaze and frowned before checking his watch. “It is two o’clock.”
He motioned with his right hand toward Yong-gil and the young woman, and Sonya suddenly put her right arm on the Chairman’s left shoulder.
“It isn’t that I don’t care,” she said. “I do. But I don’t think it’s wise to approach them now. I’m sorry you had to see that.”
The Chairman looked sad.
“It is hard for me to believe that my nephew could be so thoughtless.”
“I would prefer to return home,” she said, leaving the tray of bread on the counter.
The car ride home was silent. The Chairman rarely spoke about private matters in front of the chauffeur.
At home, the Chairman asked her to come to his office.
“What would you like to do? This is not the first time, and surely it will not be the last. I know a little about some of them, and so far, there have been no children out of wedlock. I suppose I should be grateful for that.”
“You looked so happy after seeing the property and during lunch. It’s a pity that your good afternoon was spoiled,” Sonya said.
It was unusual for her to speak of unpleasant things like this with him.
She didn’t want her husband to be out of favor with the Chairman, but he had witnessed her humiliation, and for the first time, her husband’s philandering struck a different chord within her.
“You married him because I asked it of you,” he said.
“You trusted me and my choice. I take responsibility for this. I did not know the extent of his weakness. He is an excellent businessman. I suppose all of this was not enough.” The Chairman raised his right arm slightly, gesturing to his exquisite home.
“I am not enough,” she said.
“That’s not true. He is a fool. Young men are fools.
” The Chairman corrected himself. “He is no longer young. In fact, it is precisely when men are this age that they act most absurdly to prove that they are not old. I thought he would be wiser. My sister-in-law spent a fortune on his education and raised him to be a smart businessman, but she did not raise a good man. I thought too little before choosing him for you. What a waste,” he muttered.
Sonya felt miserable. She was a failed wife. She had not been able to keep her husband’s interest or esteem. In the middle of the day, he held hands with a woman at a hotel where anyone in their world could have seen them.
Everything about her life in Seoul seemed false. Worse, she had let the Chairman down, after he had rescued her from the fate women from her background usually faced. She’d admired no one as much as the Chairman.
The Chairman was embarrassed by Yong-gil’s flaunting of his mistress.
Their pastor had been in that dining room only moments before.
He could have seen his nephew with the woman.
The Chairman had always prided himself on properly assessing the character of his employees, and he had treasured Sonya so much that he had asked her to be his nephew’s bride.
The Chairman had already written a will leaving his business to Yong-gil, Sonya, and their two sons, whose births he’d awaited in the hospital just the same as Yong-gil. He had named the boys himself.
“I took his dollars,” Sonya said, looking up.
“From his bedroom safe. He knows it was me. Only I have his passcode. I deposited the money already in an account in California. It was $250,000. I don’t know where he got it, and I didn’t ask.
I took it as my compensation. For all the terrible, terrible conversations I’d had over the years.
” For a moment, she could hear her own self-pity, and she stopped speaking and looked at her manicured nails.
“It wasn’t enough,” he said. “A million wouldn’t cover it. Not $10 million.”
Sonya laughed, and she covered her face with her hands.
“I’m glad you can still laugh.”
“Would it be possible to get a million dollars?”
“What?”
“From him.”
“Why?”
Sonya couldn’t believe the words had come out of her mouth, but when she’d said it, she’d realized that this was what she needed.
“I spoke to a lawyer. I can get an investor visa for America if I invest in a business and create new jobs. She said I’d need a million.”
“I’ll take it out of his share of the business. I can do that. It’s my money to give.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” he said, feeling pleased. “You never ask me for anything. You can have two. It’s easier for me to give you money from his share of the estate than to kill him for hurting your feelings.”
She laughed again.
“But why do you need a visa? Did you really want to leave?”
Sonya didn’t say anything.
“I need you here,” he said. “Even if my stupid nephew—” The Chairman stopped himself. “And the boys need you.”
“They’re twenty-five and twenty-three,” she said, shaking her head, not believing how old they’d become.
“They’re fine sons,” he said. “You’re a good mother. They’re better men than their own father.”
Neither of them wanted dinner, so Sonya and the Chairman stayed in the den and watched a documentary about a man who had climbed some of the highest mountains around the world.
The housekeeper and cook came by to tell Sonya they were leaving for the night.
At ten o’clock, Yong-gil wasn’t home yet.
What would the Chairman say? she wondered.
She was afraid to ask him. It was hard not to think about her husband in a room at the Shilla with that tall beauty in the beige dress.
Whenever mistresses had visited her, it had been during the day, and the conversation had taken place in her office at home.
Almost never did she think about the woman and her husband making love.
It had been many years since she had been with him, but since he was the only man she had ever slept with, everything she knew about lovemaking was related to Yong-gil.
Sometimes she blamed herself for not being sexually attractive or skilled enough to keep him interested in her.
Seeing Yong-gil at the elevator banks holding the woman’s hand had made all the prior conversations feel different.
Her husband had looked happy and in love.
Perhaps he was proud to be with a young, beautiful, and elegant woman in daylight at a luxurious hotel.
Perhaps every man knew what they would do, and he had indeed felt young again, drunk on the wine of other men’s admiration.
“Do you think I’m attractive?” she asked the Chairman. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe—”
“I think you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met,” he said. The Chairman put his index and middle fingers lightly between her eyebrows and smoothed out the ridges.
Sonya sat beside the Chairman and watched the clock, wondering if Yong-gil would appear before eleven. If he didn’t come home in thirty minutes, he would sleep out and join them in the morning for breakfast. Yong-gil had been more lax recently about his evening schedule.
“He won’t be home tonight,” the Chairman said. “You should go to sleep.”
Sonya went to her room. After she bathed and changed, she went to bed but couldn’t sleep. She rose and went to the kitchen.
She got her glass of water and saw that the Chairman was still awake in his room.
“You’re not sleeping,” she said. She wore a bathrobe over her pajamas.
“Come in and sit down. Talk to me,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”
Sonya entered his room. He was seated in his reading chair by the large window with an open newspaper on his lap.
“Will you give the American business to your sister and her husband?” he asked.
“I thought if I lived there, then I could be useful. I’m not useful here. They could also work for me. To get the visa, I have to create jobs. I met a woman who owns a nail salon that’s really successful. I looked at the numbers. It’s impressive. I would be able to pay you back in a few years.”
“You’ve thought it all out. You are leaving me. When I haven’t done anything wrong.” The Chairman smiled.
“My sister needs me more, I think.”
“No. I need you more, Sonya. You and the boys are all I have in this world. I’m sixty-five years old, and all the money and buildings are nothing without you.”
Sonya pulled the white robe tightly across her body as if she were cold.
“Is the air-conditioning too strong?”
She shook her head, and then she got up and went to close his door.
Sonya opened her robe and unbuttoned her pajama top. The Chairman looked at her body, then her face.
She moved closer to him and placed his hands on her breasts. He was still seated and dumbstruck at what she was doing. He kept his hands lightly on her, breathing quietly, not speaking.
“It would not be right—” she said, and as she stirred as if waking from her own spell, he pulled her closer to him.
“You’re everything that’s good in my life,” he said, removing her white robe, and she stepped out of her clothes. He followed her to his bed.
Like young lovers, fumbling and shy, without any extra words, they remembered what they were supposed to do, and, submerged in a deep dream, they found each other.