Citizens of the World
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Tomorrow's Cantabile
Copyright: Tomoko Kinomiya/KBS2 Network
The first time Song Mi Na met Franz Stresemann, she was lost.
Vienna confused her. The streets ran in circles. The Western letters everywhere, though she could read it, gave her a headache with their unfamiliarity. Almost everyone on the streets was taller than her, and they jostled her back and forth without so much as an apology.
When she saw a Korean-looking face in the crowd, she ran towards it like a homesick child.
"Excuse me," she said, bowing hastily. "Do you know where - "
But the look of utter bewilderment on the stranger's face made her stop short.
"Wie bitte?" he said, with a rueful smile and shrug. "Tut mir Leid, ich verstehe kein Wort."
What was that? I'm sorry, I don't understand a word.
It felt like vertigo, like having the ground pulled out from under her. She swallowed an absurd and undignified lump in her throat, took a deep breath, and mustered her best German.
"Can you tell me," she said, "Where the Conservatory is?"
He gave her a smile of such radiance that it made her squint a little. She noticed for the first time that he was about her own age, and handsome, with artfully tousled hair like a European rock star's, and warm brown eyes that made her feel at home. Even the beat-up denim jacket he wore suited him, because he wore it with confidence. Mi Na felt like a little girl in her yellow sundress with the matching ribbons in her hair.
"Oh, are you a music student?" he exclaimed, switching to the informal Du pronoun, as was the custom for fellow students here. "Me too! What a coincidence. Come on, I'll show you the way."
He took her arm - something few Korean men would have dared to do at first meeting - but she caught herself smiling as he tugged her along the cobblestoned street.
"So are you from here?" she asked, a little breathlessly, trying to keep up with his seemingly boundless energy. "You speak German so well."
"I," he said grandly, "Am a citizen of the world. Permit me to introduce myself: Franz Stresemann."
He let go of her long enough to click his heels and bow with a flourish of his arm. Surrounded by nineteenth-century buildings, with a statue in the background of some bewigged and frilled character of Austrian history, the gesture didn't look at all out of place.
"I'm Mi Na Song." She remembered, just in time, to put her given name first.
"Mi Na Song." He said it slowly, savoring the sound. "Your name has music. It's beautiful."
She ducked her head, hoping her curly pigtails would hide her blush.
"Are you Chinese?" he asked.
"Korean." She winced. Apparently he wasn't immune to the embarrassing habit most Westerners had of assuming all Asians looked alike.
"Oh … " The low, thoughtful sound of that surprised her, given how hyper he had been a moment ago. "My birth parents were Korean. I don't remember them. I grew up here."
She avoided his gaze as they walked, a little slower this time. She didn't know what to say. A surprising rush of sympathy for this man, an outsider on two continents, silenced her.
"I have so many questions," said Franz, brightening up again, with one of those dizzying mood swings she was to learn were typical for him. "This is the first time I've met anyone from Korea. What's it like there? I'd love to go, if only I could afford it."
His enthusiasm made her laugh. "Well, I have a lot of questions about Austria," she said. "I just got here. Everything's so strange."
"So maybe we can make a deal," he said. "How about it, Mi Na? You answer my questions, I'll answer yours?"
The intimacy of her given name was like lightning down her spine, but she didn't think to protest. She'd known in advance that her Austrian schoolmates would all do that. The German language was a little less hierarchical than Korean.
Besides, oddly enough, from him it felt right.
"Okay … Franz," she said. "But, ah … to answer them all could take a long time."
"That's exactly my idea." He winked, touched two fingers to his lips, and blew her a kiss.
The first time Mi Na met Franz, she couldn't understand him. That has continued to be the case for the next twenty years.
But given enough effort on both sides, she finds, translation is always possible. And it's always, always worth it.