As a boy, he had lived the life of privileged invalid. Tutors and servants had been his primary companions. When it was good weather and he wasn't well enough to walk, the servants or his elder brothers used to carry him on their backs. If the doctor wanted him to get air, the blade-thin gardener would put Isak in an A-frame and stroll through the orchard, letting the child pull off the apples from the lower branches. Isak could almost smell the heady perfume of the apples, feel the weight of the red fruit in his hands and taste the sweet crunch of the first bite, its pale juice running down his wrist. He missed home, and he felt like a sick child again, stuck in his room, begging for permission to see the sunlight.
Yangjin was seated on her knees with her samll, coarse hands folded in her lap, not knowing what to say. It was not approriate for a woman to walk with a man who wasn't a member of family. She was older than he was, so she didn't fear any gossip, but Yangjin had never walked alongside a man who wasn't her father or husgand.
He peered into her troubled face. He felt awful for making another imposition.
"You've already done so much, and I'm asking for more."
Yangjin straightened her back. She'd never gone on a leisurely walk on the beack with her husband. Hoonie's legs and back had given him profound pain throughout his brief life-he had not complained of it, but he would conserve his energies for the work he had to get done. How much he must have wanted to run as a normal boy, swallow lungfuls of salty air and chase the seagulls-thingsnearl every child in Yeongdo had done growning up.
"There is something very selfish in me," he said. "I'm sorry." Isak decided to wait until one of the lodgers could take him out.
Yangjin got up. "You'll need your coat," she said. "I'll get it."
The heavy scent of seaweed, the foamy lather of the waves along the rocky beach, and the emptiness of the blue-and-gray landscape but for the white circling birds above them-the sensations were almost too much to bear after being in that tiny room for so long. The morning sun warmed Isak's uncovered head. He had never been drunk on wine, but he imagined that this was how the farmers must have felt dancing during chuseok after too many cups.