by Bandi
“Hello! This is Choi Gwang!”
“Ah, hello, Comrade Chief!” Yeong-il forced a note of eagerness into his lackluster voice. “To what do we owe—”
“It’s not as communications chief that I’m calling you today. This is a surveillance matter.”
“Surveillance? Has there been some kind of incident?”
“Now, what was it … Ah yes! ‘Irya Madya’! You’ve a man by that name in your factory, correct?”
“Yes, that’s right, though it’s a nickname, of course. His real name is Seol Yong-su.”
“Seol Yong-su?”
“You never heard of him? He’s a wrestler, or at least he used to be, back in his army days. He was quite a famous character, a regular strongman…. There wasn’t a match that didn’t end with him swinging his opponent up onto his shoulders, bellowing ‘Irya Madya’ like some kind of war cry, telling his horse to move faster. Though of course, he’s got a fair few winters under his belt since then.” Unwittingly drawn into the conversation, Yeong-il gradually forgot his numbed hands while explaining the history of this man Yong-su, which he knew very well.
“So that’s where this bizarre nickname comes from, is it?”
“Well, not exactly. He’s a driver, you see, has been all his life, and it’s the phrase he uses to urge on his horses. He always sits in silence at our factory meetings, then the one time he decides he’s got something to say he gets tongue-tied and starts mumbling nonsense to himself: ‘Come on now, what was it? Irya Madya!’ You know, as if to spur himself on …”
“Hahaha!” Chae Gwang’s gurgling laughter sounded so absurd that Yeong-il couldn’t help chuckling in response.
“It’s understandable, though. He was as strong as an ox even as a child, but he never darkened the door of a school. It’s quite a sight, him standing up on top of his cart, a mountain of luggage bouncing behind him, driving like the wind and shouting ‘Irya Madya.’ People in the street just stop in their tracks and stare like their eyes will pop out.”
“Yes, yes, but what kind of man is he at his core?”
“At his core?” Yeong-il was silent for a time, beginning to suspect that this conversation wouldn’t prove so easy to get out of. With his free hand he pulled the chair over toward him, pushed it right up against the radiator, and sat down. With the receiver clamped between his jaw and shoulder, he was able to hold both hands to the radiator. The telephone’s kinked cord stretched taut, and Yeong-il himself was no less tense, as this already irritating conversation seemed to be taking a sinister turn, with Chae Gwang angling for information on Seol Yong-su.
The deep bond between Yeong-il and Yong-su was an open secret within the factory walls. There was almost no one who didn’t know that Yeong-il’s father and Yong-su had grown as close as brothers during the years of the Japanese occupation, their friendship cemented by shared hardships and a series of close shaves with death. Through the decades following liberation that friendship never wavered, and a few years ago, when Yeong-il’s father died, the close relationship had been passed to his son, who still referred to Yong-su affectionately as “Uncle.” Now that Chae Gwang, of all people, was grubbing around for information, Yeong-il couldn’t help feeling uneasy.
Chae Gwang assumed that the long silence was due to Yeong-il’s rummaging around for Yong-su’s official documents, and his patience was reaching its limit. He loudly cleared his throat.
“I have it, Comrade Chief…. At his core, he’s someone whose work has never given cause for complaint.” Yeong-il said this firmly, as though drawing a line under the matter. But Chae Gwang wasn’t to be put off.
“That’s not saying much,” he snapped. “Don’t beat around the bush, man. I want specifics.”
“Very well. He joined the Communist Party immediately after liberation and was decorated for his heroism during the war. A revolutionary worker, in other words, who has dedicated himself solely to the establishment and preservation of socialism, alongside his work as a coach driver. In fact, I’ve just come from a medal-giving ceremony, and once again it was Seol Yong-su’s name called. Second Order of Merit. He must have a dozen awards by now.”
“And why do you think that is?” Now was the time to risk the question which Yeong-il had been itching to get off his chest. There might not be a better opportunity.
“What’s happened, exactly, Comrade Chief?”
“There’s an old tree in this man’s yard, am I right?”
“Yes, that’s right, a large elm.”
“And the military police telephone line passes very close to that elm.”
“Yes, and so?”
“And so, our men went to disentangle the line the day before yesterday, and as the tree was in their way, they decided to cut one of its branches off—a single branch, you understand.”
“And?”
“And do you know how this ‘Irya Madya’ reacted? He went completely berserk, like he was having some kind of fit, rampaging around and threatening to take his axe to whoever dared even touch his tree. Waving an actual axe in their face!”
“An axe?”
“An axe! Meaning my men came back without having done their job. Imbeciles. They’ve been severely reprimanded, of course. I won’t have some old man defying me!”
This last exclamation was accompanied by a terrific thud, presumably the sound of Chae Gwang thumping his desk. Yeong-il could almost see him—red in the face and round as a jar, fairly quivering with apoplexy—and the image was so ridiculous that a trickle of laughter broke through the tension. That pigheaded man would make a mountain out of a molehill, given half the chance—something it occurred now to Yeong-il that he ought to prevent.
“Haha, Comrade Chief! You know, it doesn’t do for someone of your magnificent girth to agitate himself.”
“What?”
“What I mean is, getting worked up over such a trifling matter is liable to harm your health. There’s a story behind that elm, you see, which might explain Seol Yong-su’s reaction.”
“Story? You think I have time for stories?”
“You see, old Yong-su planted that tree himself back in 1948, to commemorate his joining the Party.”
“Oh, so it’s a ‘special’ tree is it?” Chae Gwang sneered. “I’m shaking in my boots!”
“That’s right, a very special tree.” Yeong-il had to struggle to maintain an even tone, and to swallow the words which had rushed up unbidden to the tip of his tongue: that there was also an elm in the yard of his own house, the house he had inherited from his father, an elm that had been planted on the same day and for the same reason.
Once the Japanese army had been defeated and the Korean Peninsula liberated, the ideals of the newly established Communist Party had been music to the ears of the two sworn brothers, who had both spent the occupation years toiling at a labor camp, driving teams of horses and cattle to haul logs for construction. They joined the Party together, on the same hour of the same day, their heads filled with dreams of prosperity.
Yeong-il was still a shaven-headed lad when he’d first learned the true significance of the tree. He’d been pestering his parents for a new tracksuit—Labor Day must have been coming up—and eventually his father had become so sick of his whining that he’d given him a sharp clip around the ear. Bawling at this bad treatment, Yeong-il had immediately gone in search of his “uncle.” He found him in the stable, giving the walls a fresh coat of plaster before winter set in and the horses would have to be brought inside. Standing on the dirt floor in his bare feet, the older man turned and gave the boy a friendly greeting, then stood there in silence, hands on hips, as Yeong-il blurted out the story of his woes.
“What, some big hairy grown-up hit our Yeong-il? Where is he, eh? You just take me to him, then we’ll see what’s what!” Setting down his plastering trowel, Yong-su beckoned the boy over and sat him on his knee, wiping away the tears and snot that were streaming down his face. “Yeong-il!” he said, continuing in a conspiratorial tone: “Yo
ur house has got a tree just like that one, right?” Yeong-il’s gaze followed his uncle’s finger to the sapling visible through the stable door, but he was still too upset to do more than nod in answer. “Well, do you know what kind of tree it is?”
Put out by what he considered a blockheaded question, Yeong-il recovered his voice. “An elm, of course.”
“Yes, but it’s not just any old elm—it’s a magic elm.”
“A magic elm?”
“That’s right! When it grows to be as tall as that chimney over there, sugar candy and honey cookies will rain down from it, thick as leaves.”
“Pfft, that’s a big fat lie.”
“It’s all true! When has your uncle ever lied to you?” “But what about my tracksuit?”
“A tracksuit’s nothing special—not like pure white rice with meat every day, and silk clothes, and a house with a tiled roof !”
“We’re going to have all that? Wow!” Yeong-il clapped excitedly.
“But listen, Yeong-il! It’s because we know that day will come that we have to really knuckle down now, and work as hard as we can to prepare for it. I have to work hard with my cart, and you with your alphabet—because we’re establishing a new, democratic North Korea.”
“But if we do that then it really will happen? Meat every day?”
“It’ll happen for sure.”
“Then promise!” Yeong-il stuck his little finger out, and Yong-su hooked his own calloused digit around it.
“It’s—a—pro—mise!”
Even today, those chanted syllables reverberated loud and clear in Yeong-il’s mind, suffused with the zeal of conviction. Of course, the story Yong-su told him that day wasn’t something he’d concocted himself. The two men had heard these words at their district’s Communist Party office, recently established by a cadre dispatched from Pyongyang, the day they’d shown up to ask for membership, shivering in the thin jackets which were the warmest clothes they owned. The story of the “magic elm” had been an additional embellishment for the naïve dream Yong-su already held, perfectly encapsulating his expectations for the new day that was sure to dawn. And that was the story of the “magic elm,” its roots as deep as the living tree’s, a story that summed up Yong-su’s whole life.
But if Yeong-il was to make Chae Gwang understand the elm’s full significance, he would have to relate the content of a certain article, which had been carried in the magazine Chosun Literature when Yeong-il was still a boy. At the time, he’d read it so often as to have it practically memorized, and the intervening years had done nothing to dull the memory. Deciding that all he had to do was leave out his father’s name, Yeong-il brought the receiver to his mouth again.
“Comrade Chief! I’d like to tell you a little more about this tree.”
“Why not, when I’ve clearly got all day? Let’s have it then, the dazzling exploits of this extraordinary tree….”
“Well, there was an article once in Chosun Literature, with the title ‘The Swift Steed Looks to the Future.’ Here’s how it went”:
For Seol Yong-su, the elm was a banner bearing the slogans of struggle, a placard encouraging him to keep up hope, reminding him of the blissful future which lay in wait. Even when the fires of war were raging, when he drove his wagon in a daring charge over a burning bridge, safely delivering its load of ammunition, and then during that difficult period just after the war, when he worked on the Haeju-Haseong railroad construction site, being eaten alive by lice and mosquitoes and living out of a grass tent, the branches of his elm fluttered like a flag in front of Yong-su’s eyes, spurring him on to fresh feats of heroism with the promise of an abundant harvest, the golden fruit he would one day pluck from them. The deep bond between Yong-su and his elm was such that he even gave it the name ‘Swift Steed,’ the selfsame name borne by each of three horses that have ever pulled his wagon. ‘Irya Madya’! This is the song that sums up his life, painting the picture of communism’s shining future, when everyone will eat meat and white rice every day, wear silk clothes, and live in a tile-roofed house.
“That’s enough,” Chae Gwang snapped in irritation, cutting Yeong-il off. “I’ve no taste for that puffed-up speechifying.”
The condensation which Yeong-il’s breath had formed on the receiver, still sandwiched between his ear and shoulder, was now forming thread-thin rivulets.
“And besides, if he really is as heroic as all that, all the more reason for him not to hinder our work. Especially nowadays, when reactionaries around the world are slandering our socialism. We cannot permit it! Who was that axe intended for? … We must be stringent. No compromises, no exceptions. However red he might have been in the past, I can’t afford to overlook this current outrage. Not on any account. And that’s how it is.”
Brusquely and without ceremony, Chae Gwang cut off the call. And yet, Yeong-il didn’t move to straighten up or put the handset down at his end. In his mind, the thought was slowly forming that it was he, Jeon Yeong-il, who couldn’t afford to overlook this business, though in a different sense from what Chae Gwang had intended. Thinking, too, of his deceased father, he felt certain that he had to prevent the fruits of Yong-su’s life’s work from being pulled down around him. And then there was another consideration: Were this incident to leave even the faintest hint of a black mark hanging over Yong-su, suspicion would inevitably fall on Yeong-il too.
When Yeong-il left his house that night he had in his coat pocket a bottle of Kaoliang wine, which he’d asked his wife to get for him. Yong-su’s home was only a stone’s throw from his, so they would often drop in on each other, but today he’d felt unable to go empty-handed, conscious of the delicate matter he had to discuss.
As soon as dusk had fallen, the cold had shown a renewed vigor, and the pallid sliver of moon had retreated behind the patchy forest on the ridge of the northeast mountains, as though startled by the cracking of the river ice. Even with the collar of his coat turned up and the flaps of his winter cap tugged down, his forehead ached until it became numb and the flesh inside his nostrils stung.
But none of this served to deaden his thoughts. Whatever could have possessed Yong-su to behave so recklessly, and with military policemen to boot? As was often the case with physically strong men, Yong-su’s simple kindness knew no bounds. He couldn’t even force himself to apply the whip to any of his three “Swift Steeds.” If such a man really had “waved an axe” in another’s face, he must have had an extremely good reason.
Chae Gwang’s knife was hanging over Yong-su’s head, and it was up to Yeong-il to remove it; thinking this, he stepped into Yong-su’s yard and came face-to-face with the elm that was at the heart of the matter. Though it stretched up almost as high as the house, it seemed to huddle there in the cold and the black, and the wind in its branches made a queer whistling sound. Sensing a human presence even through the stable wall, Swift Steed whinnied softly. Without knocking, as though he were entering his own home, Yeong-il pushed the door to the kitchen open. The shape and feel of its handle were almost as familiar to him as his own skin, though once it had seemed so much bigger in his palm.
Yong-su was sitting on the floor with his hands on his thighs, his back as upright as a stake planted in the ground, and when Yeong-il came in he turned his head but not his body, as though he’d been expecting the younger man.
“Where’s Aunt?” Yeong-il asked in place of a proper greeting.
“Gone to the market. She got the train yesterday afternoon; we’d run out of everything, and she was hoping there might be some corn. I guess there wasn’t, or she would have been back by now.”
“So that’s why it’s so cold in here. Like an abandoned house.”
“Come sit on this,” Yong-su offered, smoothing out the worn old blanket on which he himself was installed. “This floor’s like a block of ice.”
It wasn’t only the floor. A white layer of frost had actually formed on the far wall, around the hulking old-fashioned television and the chest used to store bedding
during the day.
Yeong-il sat down where Yong-su had suggested, removing his hat but keeping his coat buttoned up. Only then did he notice what Yong-su had spread out over his lap: a jacket weighed down with dazzling medals. Perhaps he’d been choosing a place to pin the latest addition, the one he’d received today, and had lost himself in reminiscence. But whatever old memories might have been revived, the freezing room and Yong-su’s dark expression hinted that the joy they gave him was not unadulterated.
In any case, in an atmosphere like this, it was clear that Yeong-il would have to be all the more careful in broaching the matter at hand. Though normally gentle as a lamb, on one day out of a hundred, when something had roused him to behave rashly, Yong-su could be fierce as a lion, and liable to roar like one too.
Stumped as to how and where to begin, Yeong-il reached into his pocket and produced the bottle of strong sorghum wine.
“I thought this might help to ward off the cold. What do you say, Uncle, shall we warm ourselves up?”
“Ah, that’s just the thing,” Yong-su responded. “My throat was getting dry.”
Yeong-il made to get up and go to the kitchen, but Yongsu laid a hand on his arm.
“Sit down, sit down. We’ve got everything here, don’t put yourself out….”
Remaining seated, the older man reached out and pulled over a small, low, rather shoddily made table that had been shoved up against the wall.
On the table were a soup dish empty but for chopsticks and a spoon, a small bowl containing some scraps of cabbage kimchi, the bowl’s upturned lid, and an empty water glass.
“Well, go on,” Yong-su urged, “pour it into one of these.” Suppressing a shudder at the pitiful state his uncle’s house had been reduced to, Yeong-il divided the alcohol between the water glass and the bowl lid.
“There,” his uncle said. “Drink up!”
The harsh, raw alcohol made Yeong-il catch his breath almost as soon as he brought the lid to his lips, but Yong-su downed his in a single gulp, as though it were nothing stronger than beer. It wasn’t usually his way, but today it was as though a stiffness had come over him, which was able to relax only after a strong drink. Once he’d emptied two cups in rapid succession, he began to roll himself a cigarette. This proved to be rather a lengthy process, what with his eyes and his hands constantly straying back to his medals. Yeong-il was finding himself similarly enthralled, though he couldn’t have said why. After all, they were as familiar to him as if they’d been his own; he could reel off the story behind each one almost without thinking. How many times had he done just that, as a ruddy-cheeked schoolboy boasting to his classmates about the great achievements of his uncle and his father!