Bromford Below - Part 20

 

»Others! Others! Others!«

The Asian looking man comes running towards us pointing to the doors to the next waggon.

»You must excuse my husband. He is a little upset and excited«, the Asian looking woman tries to explain something we didn't need no explanations for. »We were on flight Oceanic 815 from Sydney to Los Angeles when something happened.«

She frowns, her face and her forehead wrinkled as if she is trying very hard to remember what exactly happened on that flight.

The man is shaking our hands, one by one.

»Jin-Soo Kwon«, he says. »That's my name. And here is my beautiful wife Sun-Hwa Kwon and our lovely daughter Ji Yeon.«

»She shouldn't be here«, his wife says still frowning. »It is too late. It is too cold. We shouldn't have brought her with us.«

»You are from Korea, aren't you?« Nigel asks Jin. »Which one is it? The good or the bad one?«

»Always the good one«, Jin laughs, »South Korea. Not the other one.«

»The plane«, Sun is still trying to remember. »Something happened to the plane.«

Meanwhile Jin seems to want to tell us their whole story of their lives, »My father was a fisherman. My mama was the fisherman’s friend. And I was born in the boredom and the chowder. She's a rich girl. She don't try to hide it. Diamonds on the soles of her shoes«

»Your English has much improved since the last time«, I say without knowing exactly why.

»I had a lot of time to learn«, Jin says. »Back in the past, in the seventies.«

Something seems to bother him while he is saying that.

»I was a fisherman's son. And in the eyes of Sun's father I was never good enough for his daughter. And no matter what I did for him, it was never good enough.«

»The plane«, Sun is breathing heavily now, »it broke into two and we crashed on that lost island.«

Her little daughter is now hugging one of her legs, her head pressed to her mother's thigh.

Oceanic Six, I think. But wasn't Sun, the woman, the only one of these two to three persons in this group of survivors of the plane crash of Oceanic flight 815? Hasn't Jin always been one of the missing or the dead?

»The plane crashed in the Bermuda Triangle, didn't it?« I ask.

»No.« Jin is shaking his head, laying his arms around his little family. »Our island was on the other side of South or North America, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. It is hard to say and still confusing after all these years.«

And I have to admit that he might be right. For me, in my head and thinking, a plane always flies west from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles, USA. I always forget that this world of ours is round and that you can fly east across the Pacific and that it is probably closer that way. All those maps only show us a cut-out of the globe. And most of the times Africa is in the centre. And Greenland is almost as big as the whole African continent. Just turn the globe around, change the focus and the point of view and it will be all too clear that L.A. is closer to Sydney when you come from the west side. And there sure is no Bermuda Triangle between those two cities.

»Soma«, Kylie says all of a sudden.

»What?« I ask.

»You forgot to mention Soma, the town in Gambia, Africa. Just saying…«

This is all so mixed-up. This is all so random. What am I doing here? Feels like putting songs' lyrics and people from the past and characters from old tv shows into a big mixer, turning it on and waiting to see what comes out in the end.

»I don't remember«, Sun says in a sad voice, »was Jack the real Jacob in the end?«

And I try to remember whether these two to three persons had their happy-ending on or off the island.

But when Professor Sideburns starts humming one of Ringo's old songs, Sun-Hwa Kwon bursts into tears.

🎶
We all live in a yellow submarine

Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

🎵

»Don't sing that song«, she whimpers. »We never left that island. And we will never see our daughter again. Jin has never seen her. We went on that submarine. And we drowned in it.«

Ghosts all over again. I am surrounded by ghosts.

🎄🎄🎄🕯🎄🎅
🎄🎄🎄🎄🕯🎄

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🕯

🎄🎄

"All The Lost Souls Welcome You To Bromford"

Years ago my soul went missing
It was looking for a life no-one would mourn
Until it faded into the smile of some fool
Still looking for shelter from this storm

All the lost souls welcome you to Bromford

At 22 I came here to retire
And tell myself that I was free
But now all day I always stoke the fire
That I saw fade on the shining sea

I came looking for the party
Ah come on Marty, you're the king of 22nd Street
Just give me some hope, or give me at least enough rope
I want to fly, shake the dirt off my feet


All the lost souls welcome you to Bromford

A city built by fire trucks!
Dirty old bastards drunk on love
And mean old queens who never forgive
The compromises they made to live

Now you can always find me at the celebration
Waiting for glory to strike me down
I'm trying to keep the good times rolling
Because they're almost gone

All the lost souls welcome you to Bromford

It's a beauty your hearts all recognize
And never get their fill
Everyone is hunting a love supreme
Watching it roll softly down the hill


All the lost souls welcome you to Bromford