The soldier's doll

Sub Title: Adorable

The soldier's doll  

Written by Kalsavina (Mijin Kim)

Translated by Sujin Hong

Where the biochemical weapon swept through, there were tons of corpses dispersed everywhere. And it was the military that occupied the city.

My father was a fairly high-ranking officer among those soldiers. Nobody had known why he had got such an undeserved status at his young age.

Perhaps he, only himself, knew why. It was the morning just two days after when the city got taken over. And he came out to the street alone to get away from his chronic headache, with only a spare one with himself. And 'In fact,' he said.

-As I watched the corpses rolling all over the roadside loaded onto trucks like bales, I had to keep my nerves from being dispersed and scattered. I knew all too well that if there were a single crack happening in my mind, all kinds of anguish, confusion, remorse, and doubt would seep into that and could destroy me.

And he stopped in front of an old, falling apartment trying to get rid of his migraine outside and seal his soul tightly  without losing him from his inside. There was a dead body of an old lady. The corpse's face seemed like a piece of left baggage that was covered with long gray hair that was invisible. He walked into the door open past the corpse. As if her soul beckoned to attract him.

In a room of the house, he found two corpses of a young lady and a child. Both of them were lying on the bed as if they were sleeping. The house was full of distractive miscellaneous goods, and it made him feel some queer mood is not identical with typical home and strangely intrigued him.

Finally, he found a small room with the door half-opened. It could be the dead older woman's, and he looked at a bed with the dresses piled up on it like a hill. And there was a bookshelf full of books. In front, you could see a roundtable that is with a long tablecloth. It was blocking the bookshelf.  

He reached to the bookshelf and picked some books out. He did not know whether it was due to his pure curiosity or from the guidance of the ghosts. At once, he realized that it was not some cheap, tacky books. On the contrary, these were truly great ones that someone who has excellent taste and intellect must have collected somehow.

A book after the other taking it out from its shelf, he had to remove the table to look into the bottom of eventually.

And it was truly unbelievable what he had found there.  

-Just thinking about the moment always makes my heart tremble. Perhaps... the heart of the woodcutter who found the fairy taking a bath felt it like me. It was... as if it were a miracle.

 By thinking about it, it was a miracle.

It was a urethane doll that gently hid under the bookshelf. And It had gorgeous and milky-white mold. I now know that the country's technology to which the city belonged at that time could never have made such a high-quality urethane doll. And, how someone who lived in the house could get the doll and where she got it remains a mystery.

 My father, a young officer, came back to his country with beauty. And after that, he had got married, and his only child, I, was born.

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-Your father was faithful to me all these years.

My mother was sitting in front of the kitchen table looking outside of the window told me.

-Maybe, it was not because he had an affection for me, but from his best adorable was at home.

And we knew that the "best adorable" was neither my mother nor me.  

The doll's house was just a build-in wardrobe in his study. When the night came for the light, he closed the door. But, he took out her during the day and displayed it on the desk under the shade.

She was so clean and beautiful that it was hard to believe she came from a battlefield. And, the doll was like a Saint-Mary in my home.  It was unacceptable to praise Virgin Mary as we have believed in Buddhism in the family for generations, but she was just like that. The blonde hair and green eyes were as it is, although she had been there years.

My father called me to his study on my thirteenth birthday and asked me to look after her. It was trivial work such as brushing her hair, changing dresses, or wiping dust away. So, it was an essential task, though I did not realize what it meant by then. However, I did not put such an effort into looking after her.

However,I tried my best to take care of her, at least from my point of view. Honestly, I never liked it. More precisely, I was scared of it. I did not know how old the doll was, what she had been through, and how many deaths she had seen. And it was too difficult to forget my mother's eyes looking at her with the number of sighs when she was there to clean the study room. She, cold, white dazzling, but beautiful, made my mother suffer in despair. There was no need to listen to the explanation.

I was never dexterous, but I could sew. Although, unfortunately, the dresses I made were tacky, my father would be silent instead of criticizing them. By the time I was 20, I had made a pretty good early Dior style dress based on pictures I had seen in magazines. But, of course, it was for the doll.I made it from the sewing machine that my friend asked me to store when she moved. And I did it just before I made something for myself.

The following day, my father called me to his study. He asked me, indicating her.

-Did you make it?

I answered, puzzled. -yes.  

He gazed at her for a long time. My father let out a long sigh. And once I found out that it was from the amazement, I was relieved. And then, he took his wallet out; gave me a check with an unbelievable tremendous amount written on it. I had never had such great significant money before the time and after.

With the money, I bought a dress that I wanted to get.  Therefore, I naturally canceled my plan of making the same clothes as the doll. It was a natural step.

Though I made several dresses for the doll and my father, the more critical matter has happened to me as I was buried in my busy daily life. Eventually, I have forgotten the doll, the dresses, and my father.

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My first marriage was very short with an absurd failure. I did not have a child. And, of course, I did not take any divorce alimony.

So, I returned to my parent's home alone without any child and money.

I never thought about the doll deeply until then. It was just a doll that my father brought from the battlefield. The doll that I brushed its hair, cleaned its dust, and dressed. That was all the meaning of the doll to me and no more.

One day that my father was hospitalized, I have brought the doll to please him. When he had seen the doll, he showed me an unspeakably strange look. I just wanted to laugh it away at the expression of man's love. But, some more emotion that is much more complicated has occupied his face.

 -Take it away and put it in the closet. And don't you ever bring the doll here again.

-Don't you want her?

-I am just afraid that it  might break  when you wander  around here or there.

-Oh my god. You don't believe me. I brought it here carefully enough because I know that you will be worried about it.

And eventually, I put the doll into his closet and closed the door as he asked me. He was discharged from the hospital after a while. And for some reason, he didn't take the doll out of the closet. After that, my mum started to be ill. And it was my job to take her to the hospital whenever she needed it as she insisted not to be hospitalized.

On a deepening autumn day, the man visited us.

A long time ago, my parents and their pictures were in the magazine. But, of course, its background was my father's library, so maybe the doll was naturally on it. It turned out that a man who became the owner of the magazine among my father's subordinates when he was serving the military published his essay to show some respect for him, and posted the photo together.

"the photo" brought him to us.

 -I want to buy the doll.

I couldn't understand why he came to get the doll on the corner of an old magazine, suggesting a large amount of money even though there are tons of much more beautiful urethane dolls made from the great technology. My father squinted and stared at him with irritation and anger. And he looked as he were in his thirties and had coal-black hair. I just knew that the man was from where the doll came from, intuitively.

-I can't do it.

-then, could you show it, please?

Perhaps, he would probably hope to kick him out of our home. But, my mother, who must have already felt death approaching him little by little, grabbed my father's arm. And it was the scene that a wife who had never disobeyed to husband served as a royal servant, resisted against her husband-superiority, for the first time.

At that moment, the decision was mine.

I went to the study and took the doll out, opening the closet. Then, I returned to the living room and put the doll on the chair facing the man where he was standing vaguely. He sat down with an unbelievable look staring at her for a long time. The doll was so white as if it was like a brand new, newly made from yesterday. And we could not find the trace of thirty years from it.

The doll calmly stared at the man's gaze with green eyes and endured the man's gaze, staring at him with the spirit of making a hole in his face.

Finally, the man opened his mouth.

-Is this the doll that you brought it back from 'city B' 30 years ago, right?

Indeed, I did not miss my father's pupil getting bigger awfully.'

 -How did you know that?

-I am sure of that. This is the doll of my grauntie. I remember this doll even though I was four years old. It is because I used to live in that room. She always kept it under the bookshelf that hid it with the tablecloth. And she waited for me to fall asleep. I still remember that my grauntie was taking care of it at night, as it is like yesterday, even though I was so tiny that I didn't even take off diapers yet.

Finally, He choked up and could not speak. My father was silent, and my mother left the living room. I was waiting until he started talking again.

-As much as I remember, the doll remained the same, which is unbelievable. I am sure you know it already; most people got killed from its biological warfare. It happened just after my parents left my grauntie's home with me to their hometown. And my older brother who was there got killed. By then, he was six years old.

 The man stood up with a pale face.

-I guess you are not going to sell her.

We should have returned it by then. But I couldn't. It was not my doll. It was my father's. It was a soldier's doll. She was an immortal love of a veteran who had lived with an unsolvable sense of guilt in her heart.

Nobody could sleep on that night.

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 -if I die,

My dying mother said.

-leave your father. You have to go far away. He does not need anything but the doll. He had never told me, but I've known him ever since. He was involved with the massacre that killed innocent people, somehow. Maybe, he was free from the guilty conscience only when looking at the doll. It would have been only for a short moment, but he must have escaped from the horrible memory. Of course, there must be bags of emotions or thoughts, but I don't want to think about it that far.

My mother loved him, and she was loyal. The unconditional love that never asked anything back hurt me a lot.

 After my mother passed away, my father took the doll out from the closet. Her position is always one since I was a baby. It was the corner of the shady bookshelf blocking the sunlight.

And I had dreams almost every night by that time. It was about one woman wandering in his study. The woman was sometimes a girl, but mostly she was a young lady. And she was wearing a very old-fashioned negligee with chignon hair. And even, she was occasionally elderly. So, I could have known she was the owner of the doll, even if it was just a dream. It was just a dream so she could appear with different looks every time.

I pitied the woman, the doll's owner couldn't leave the doll in all these years. What was the meaning of the doll? How much does she love it?

One thing was sure. My father's love towards the doll was not much different from her love.

When the death angel finally visited my father, he stared at the doll for hours and hours, silent with a deep sigh. I don't know whether he blamed himself for not being able to return the doll to the man, or he was struggling to get out of the guilt that he had embraced for the rest of his life, as my mother said. Perhaps, he was silently talking to the doll's owner.

The doll, her subtle eyes, were pitiful as always. In the eyes, any fear, hatred, grudge didn't appear.

A month before my father's death, an article criticizing the biochemical warfare of the time was released in a local newspaper. The article's contents spread widely around the world via the internet and social network called SNS. And my father's name was on the list of war criminals in the article. It was the name of my father, who was a competent but vicious military doctor.

It was the time of leaving my father, as my mother told me.

But I didn't feel the need to leave him because he was already preparing to leave the doll and me.

And since my father was about to leave me and the doll, I did not see the reason for doing it.

After my father's death, I thought of giving the doll back to the man if he appeared. But, he never came to me again.

Perhaps, I should have removed it. But I couldn't do it.

It was challenging to get rid of the doll as it was still fascinating as it aged with the love and greed of many people. But the doll started to turn bluish only in recent years after my father's death.

I gaze at the heartrending face of the ruined doll willingly. The sadness of urethane mass that can't harrow people's hearts and lost nutrients is sometimes fascinating in harmony between light and darkness.

She is my only friend in the prison of solitude where there is no exit.  

She was once the soldier's doll.

Nobody knows the truth except her.

Nobody knows the truth that the soldier who committed the unforgivable sin had never forgotten what he did.

Now, only two women in the world know why the soldier took the pistol and went out on that day. Who would have known the doll appeared like magic under the tablecloth, that was lifted like a woman's skirt had blocked the suicide of the officer? And who else would have known that it was that doll, not even his daughter or wife, who prevented the suicide of a man every morning over forty years.

 My father passed away at the study. There was a loaded Colt pistol that was still glittering like brand new in his chest. It has always been there, even at the moment of discovery of the doll.

She gave breathing life filled with the series of pain that gnaws his nerves rather than giving him a comfortable death. And for me, his daughter, she gave another pain to witness how quickly she is losing her beauty. No matter how big or strong the conscience, repentance, or regret is, it does not pay for the price of the sin. Painful regrets sometimes remain as regrets; they cannot bring back the six-year-old boy.

 It is the sadness that a soldier's doll came from the battlefield left me.

*Secial thanks and love Sujin, my precious teacher.