Scarlet swamp

“Is this train going to Rome Termini?” I asked my husband, catching the very last car of the train just as it was about to leave Italy’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

“Mom!” Suddenly, my younger son stood up from a nearby seat and called out to me. I couldn’t believe my eyes—meeting my own child on a train in a distant foreign country after months apart. He was studying in Florence for the semester and was on his way back to school after spending his holidays in Barcelona, Spain. We were supposed to meet in Venice four days later, so running into him here, completely out of the blue, was an overwhelming and joyful surprise.

"Mom, I lost my wallet.” “How?” “I got pickpocketed.” “Oh dear. Come with us to our hotel, let’s have lunch, and I’ll exchange some U.S. dollars for euros for you.” My face was bright with a smile, but my son frowned. “I’m too tired. I think I’ll just head straight to Florence.” Faced with his firm tone and expression, I didn’t argue. I simply pressed some dollars into his hand, and we parted ways.

A few days later, we met him again in Venice. Unlike our trip to Rome, where we had to wander around constantly checking the map, following him was incredibly easy. He guided us smoothly, accepting every situation without any friction. “Wait, I think something went wrong,” I said at one point. “Mom, don’t waste your energy on things that don’t matter!” he shot back, acting completely cool. He seemed like a totally different person from the boy I knew at home.

“Mom, email me if you need me. Ciao.” As soon as we returned to our hotel in Florence after the Venice trip, he waved goodbye and rushed off back to his school. Suddenly, I felt as if I were locked alone in a strange, empty warehouse. My chest felt tight, and all the strength drained from my legs.

Outside the window, rows of orange-red roofs wrapped in the fading twilight stretched out like waves of the sea. Beneath those tightly packed roofs, the sorrow of life seemed to whisper to me. In that melancholic color, a vivid scarlet from the depths of my childhood memory suddenly surfaced—goldfish gasping for air, flopping around on a yellow linoleum floor. Even at that young age, had I already realized that living was a desperate struggle, much like a goldfish that had lost its bowl and was suffocating without water?

It was April, during my third year of middle school. I have an older sister who is much older than me. That day was her wedding, right after she graduated from college. I thought everyone had gone home after the ceremony, but my two aunts suddenly burst through our front door as if they were going to break it down, screaming, “Sister! Sister!” My mother, who was always sick in bed, had managed to summon the strength to dress up, attend her eldest daughter's wedding, and had just lain back down to rest. My aunts forced her up. “Sister, get up! This is no time to be lying down!” Supporting my mother, they pushed me to the front, making a massive fuss about going somewhere. I wanted no part in my aunts' frantic drama, so I held my breath. “From now on, you are the eldest daughter in the house, so you must lead the way. Come with us!”

I was pushed by my back into a taxi waiting in front of the house. It was as if my aunts had split my mother’s missing health between the two of them; they were both bursting with energy and fiercely hot-tempered. Coming to our house almost every single day, making a fuss over our sick mother as if they would lay down their lives for her, was their greatest joy in life. Today, they seemed even more thrilled, like fishermen who had caught a giant prize. In that bizarre atmosphere so far removed from daily life, a wave of anxiety washed over me.

The apartment complex they dragged my mother and pushed me into was not very large. Looking up at the dark grey walls of the building, a chilling premonition struck me, as if I were facing a massive monster. In front of the first door on the right on the ground floor, my aunts nudged my back, telling me to ring the doorbell. I pulled back, resisting. “Why aren’t you leading the way? Ring every single doorbell until we find him!” My aunts took turns slapping my back, rushing me. My feet wouldn't move; I looked around, desperately wanting to hide somewhere. “Remember, you are the eldest daughter now. You have to protect your sick mother.” Every time I dragged my feet and stopped, they dragged and pushed me to the next doorbell.

Whether it was a curse or a blessing, when I rang the sixth doorbell, a thin, gentle-looking woman opened the door just a crack. “Who are you?” Before I could say a word, I craned my neck to peek inside the living room. At that exact moment, a voice echoed from inside. “Who is it?” It was my father. Hearing the voice of my father—the man who cherished me so deeply—coming from that unfamiliar house, I froze as if struck by lightning. As I hesitated and stepped back, my quick-tempered aunts pushed past me, glared fiercely at the woman, and threw the door wide open.

My father stood up awkwardly in the living room, and our eyes met. I kept stepping backward, and the moment my mother saw him, she collapsed onto a nearby chair as if she had given up entirely. My father started to say something to me, but then stopped, turned around, and abruptly walked out of the house. Even now, I can hardly believe that I just stood there, staring blankly at my father's hurrying back as he disappeared through the door. My simple, peaceful childhood ended on that very day.

Glancing anxiously at my mother, the woman snapped at my aunts, “What do you third parties think you're doing?” “Third party? How dare you speak of third parties! Do you want to see what happens to you today?” My younger aunt reached out and grabbed the woman by her hair, and my older aunt rushed in like a demon, raining blows down on her. The three women became tangled together, thrashing around the living room and entryway, crashing into everything. Furniture was overturned, and neighbors began to peek through the doorway at the commotion. I could neither enter nor run away; I could only crouch, paralyzed, just inside the doorframe.

There, at the far end of the ruined living room, hanging above a large, rectangular fish tank, I saw a familiar painting. It was my watercolor painting that had won a prize at an art competition not long ago. It was framed neatly in gold, hanging there quietly as if it had been waiting for me all along. It wasn’t a painting of famous palaces like Gyeonghoeru or Hyangwonjeong; it was a lonely wooden building hidden in a secluded corner of Gyeongbokgung Palace. My father had taken it, saying he would frame it for me. But why was it hanging in this house? My chest throbbed with a sharp, piercing pain, as if pricked by a needle.

Fearing that my mother might notice, I pretended nothing was wrong and shifted my eyes to the fish tank beneath the painting. The goldfish were frantically beating their scarlet fins. Every time they quickly moved their tiny fins, their large tails thrashed wildly, filling the tank with a dazzling, chaotic swirl of orange-red. Sensing the chaos, the goldfish rolled their bulging black eyes, opening and closing their mouths over and over without knowing what was happening. “Aunt, look out! The fish tank is behind you!”

Pushed back by the resisting woman's strength, my older aunt lost her balance and crashed backward into the tank. In an instant, with a loud shatter, the fish tank collapsed onto the floor. The goldfish were swept out all at once in a wave of water. Right beneath the feet of the three fighting women, among the shattered glass and overturned furniture, they leaped with all their might, desperate to survive.

I ran to the kitchen and brought back a bowl filled with water. Squeezing my way through the tangled, fighting women, I carefully picked up the goldfish one by one as they struggled on the dusty floor. My mother, with what little strength she had, lifted her weak hand and silently pointed to where the fish were flopping. “Stop it now. You’re going to kill her. Won’t you stop this instant?” My mother called out in a feeble voice, but my aunts did not stop, as if venting a deep-seated resentment from never being loved by their own husbands. I wondered how many of them were actually alive, but I couldn't ask the woman who was suffocating underneath my younger aunt. With the sole obsession of saving those scarlet lives, I searched every corner of the house, looking thoroughly under the furniture for the fish.

Holding the bowl of goldfish close to my chest, I leaned against the wall in the apartment hallway. Onlookers gathered around, whispering to one another. “I heard his first wife died, but that was a complete lie!” “Look, his wife is right there, completely alive!” “Poor little thing...”

One of the whispering women pushed through the crowd, took me by the hand, and led me into her apartment. Only then did all the tension release, and exhaustion washed over me like a tidal wave. I sank into her sofa and stared blankly at a framed frame on the opposite wall. 'Though life decides to deceive you, do not be saddened, do not be angry. Endure the day of sorrow, and a day of joy will surely come.' The woman sighed as she handed me a cup of juice. “You poor, poor child...” My gaze drifted away from the frame and dug back into the bowl in my arms. 'One goldfish, two goldfish, three scarlet, four scarlet, five scarlet...'

Why was that desperate scarlet swamp—where I suffocated after losing my fishbowl—returning to me so vividly now, in this distant land of Florence?

My husband and I did not contact our son again for the rest of our trip through Florence and Cinque Terre. [Ciao. See you in New York.] I sent him that short, cool email, and in the quiet of the early morning, dragged our luggage toward the airport. Every time the wheels of the suitcases scraped against the stone pavement, tearing through the dawn air, a faint shiver ran through my body.

The crimson sun rose, piercing through the darkness. Along the train tracks heading to Leonardo da Vinci Airport, a scattering of wild poppies hung in a shade of orange-red so intense it made my eyes sting. Those vibrant poppies, blooming amidst the ancient Roman ruins, looked like the bloodstains of Julius Caesar, who had fallen on the steps of the Senate, splattering his blood under the blades of his comrades. That piercing, indelible scarlet was intoxicating me, filling me with a deep, intoxicating sorrow.