by Hwang Sunwon
The meeting was scheduled for six, and Chunho went home for an early dinner. But once he was there his thoughts turned to drink instead of food. His initial thought was to drink only a little, but then he had a change of heart and decided he would drink his fill and then at the meeting spill out all he had to say, and he proceeded to drink a beer bottle full of soju. Before he knew it, it was dark enough to turn on the lights. He had already taken off his suit jacket, which felt confining.
By now they were all at the distillery, waiting for him. Sure, but that son of a bitch Kŏnsŏp had probably already stood up and was talking about the liquor in storage at the distillery; or maybe he was proposing that there was something they could do right then, and that was to divvy up the liquor in Chunho’s basement; or maybe he was revisiting the management issue and explaining that it was better to let the union take over operations, but using big words and phrases too difficult for the ignorant employees to understand. The employees probably thought that son of a bitch Kŏnsŏp was a great guy; they probably thought that everything he said was right. He even pulled the wool over my eyes. An image of Kŏnsŏp and his big mouth rose in Chunho’s mind. So, you sons of bitches are going to leave out the man who spent the last twenty years at the distillery, you figure you’ll have your meeting before I get there?
Before he knew it he was shouting, “It’s a conspiracy!” Just like the Japanese conspiracy he had seen the previous evening. His bulging eyes, bloodshot from drink and lack of sleep, bulged out even more, producing a strange gleam, and before he knew it he was on his feet. But he had no pistol. Must be a knife around somewhere.
Chunho went out to the kitchen. His wife was in the next room, the room with the heated floor. She opened the small serving door to the kitchen and asked if Chunho wanted his supper. Chunho offered the excuse that he was thirsty and was looking for water, and would eat after he returned from his meeting. And then, to get his wife to shut the serving door, he actually drank some water. Once he started drinking he realized he really was thirsty and gulped several mouthfuls, but the moment his wife shut the serving door he quickly located a kitchen knife, pocketed it, and left. Sons of bitches, wait till you get a taste of this!
The streets were dark. It was full autumn, and a chill wind penetrated the dusk. The wind cooled his face and chest—his jacket was unbuttoned—but Chunho grew more unsteady on his feet nonetheless, owing to the alcohol and his lack of sleep. Even more unsteady was his mind.
As he stumbled along he kept shouting, “You sons of bitches, you scheming sons of bitches, wait till you get a taste of this!” Passersby laughed and said, “Yeah, let’s hear it for Liberation!” but Chunho paid them no heed. “You sons of bitches, if you aren’t a bunch of scheming sons of bitches then what are you? Look at me, I spent my entire youth at this distillery—and somebody else is gonna be the rep? Listen to me, you sons of bitches—who was the man who threw that pile of hundred-wŏn notes, it was five or six thousand wŏn, easy—who was the man who threw it all up in the air when they tried to bribe him? Who’s the man who’s going to give you sons of bitches a living in the future? And you’re going to cut me out? You sons of bitches deserve to die!” He passed the jail from the previous evening; it was shrouded in darkness. “Yeah, I’m gonna stick all of you scheming sons of bitches right here in this jail—yes I will—just you wait.”
The light was on in the night-duty room of the Yugyŏng Distillery in Sŏsŏng-ni. “You sons of bitches deserve to die!” And with that Chunho half stumbled, half ran to the door, yanked it open, and entered. “Hands up!” he shouted, producing his knife. “Hands up, you sons of bitches, and don’t move an inch—hands up!”
The employees recoiled. Kŏnsŏp rose. “Hands up!” Chunho barked, his hoarse voice even louder. He advanced toward Kŏnsŏp, but his wobbly legs got tangled and he pitched forward on his face. The employees swarmed around Chunho. His mouth and nose bleeding, he produced a low moan from deep within. The hand holding the knife quivered. Without a word Kŏnsŏp removed the knife and tossed it into the corner.
Chunho opened his teary eyes halfway, looked up, and tried to lift himself, but then his eyes closed shut and his face sank back onto the tatami mat.
October 1945
THE TOAD
One man’s death is another man’s cold. This was Hyŏnse’s thought as he walked toward the South Gate.
The old saying fit the events of that morning. When the girl had died, the young daughter of fellow refugees, her worm-infested body swollen all over, Hyŏnse’s first response was not to try to console the young couple squatting on either side of her and stifling their tears. Instead he was irritated by his wife with her sad face and her whimpering and by his daughter, who was the same age as the dead girl, asking, “Why doesn’t she wake up?” and he scowled at them both. Here he was, about to leave to try to raise some money, and all of this was a bad omen. Even when he got around to comforting the young couple, telling them to bear up because the matter was out of their hands, his only thought was that instead of lingering there he ought to out be selling his suit at the South Gate markets so he could buy his family some edibles.
It hadn’t been like this when they had returned from North China a month earlier on the boat. Three children had died on the voyage. All three had recently been weaned, all three had developed severe diarrhea, and a day or two before the boat arrived at Pusan they were dead. Right up until they died they had produced foul-smelling, watery diarrhea. Disgusting as that had been, no one on the boat had wished the children to be dead and gone. When the liquid and powder remedies provided by the medical aides didn’t work, a stranger came forward with what he claimed to be a wonder drug for diarrhea, and this was fed to the children as well. It had no effect either. Although the corpses were not contagious, they couldn’t remain on board with the days growing hot and humid, so the only option was to consign them to the sea. There wasn’t much they could do, said the parents, but they would regret for the rest of their lives not being able to bury the bones of their children in their native land. All who witnessed this burial at sea felt heavy of heart, as if they themselves had been bereaved. For the first time they felt with fervor, each of them, that they were all brothers and sisters of the same homeland.
For Hyŏnse this fervor had cooled before he knew it. Actually he did know it: he knew it from the moment he realized that his homeland would not provide him and his family a livelihood. And as he walked along now he could tell who was in the same predicament: there, that man walking by—and that one—and that one there. . . . Heck! He told himself to think instead about selling his suit at the South Gate markets and buying some potatoes at the East Gate markets. The South Gate markets were supposed to offer the best price for whatever you were selling; it was there that he would sell his suit for as much money as it would bring. And the East Gate markets were supposed to offer whatever you were looking for at the best price; it was there that he would buy some cheap potatoes. Then he could put something into his stomach. With that thought came a little voice from somewhere inside him saying, I’ve got to survive. Yes, I do, he told himself, and he tightened his grip on the suit he was carrying.
He looked up to see the South Gate. Its protruding eaves, top to bottom, were blurry. Not because of tears in his eyes or haze in the air, but because he had skipped breakfast that morning. As he observed the South Gate with his blurred vision he had the illusion that he had returned not to his homeland but instead to Manchuria or North China. He recalled eaves like that on the houses in those places. Maybe all the people he saw now were people he had seen in those alien lands. And maybe that meant that he himself was now in a foreign land.
Lost in these thoughts, he noticed a fleshy face passing before him. That face belonged to someone he knew, someone from before he had left his homeland. Who exactly was it? And then a face came to mind, that of a chum from primary school. And if it was a childhood chum, then he really was back in his homeland and the man must be a fellow cou
ntryman. He turned and saw that the man was continuing on his way. Now what was his name? He had a nickname—was it Fatso? Bulldog?
He had just arrived at the entrance to the South Gate markets when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Hyŏnse—is that you?”
Hyŏnse turned in surprise and there before him was the homeland face he had just seen, only now it was smiling. A shout escaped him.
“It’s me, Tugap,” said the face.
“Yeah!”
It was then that the man’s nickname occurred to him—not Fatso or Bulldog but Toad, because his given name, Tugap, was similar to tukkŏbi, toad, and because his mouth resembled that of a toad.
“Didn’t recognize me, did you? When you passed me by I said to myself, ‘I ought to know his name,’ but it took me a moment to recollect it. What do you say we have ourselves a hot drink?”
Without waiting for an answer, Tugap started back the way he had come. Hyŏnse followed.
Hyŏnse kept falling behind and Tugap kept looking back and remarking, “How long’s it been, anyway? Must be twenty years. We’re a couple of old men now! But you know, if you stay alive long enough, you’re bound to run into somebody like this.”
At a tearoom in the Chin’gogae area they sat down across from each other at a table.
“How long has it been?” asked Tugap. “I’m so glad we ran into each other.”
So saying, he produced a handkerchief and mopped his sweaty face, then proceeded to fan himself vigorously with a folding fan decorated with the yin-yang trigrams. Smiling, he acknowledged with a glance the men seated here and there around them.
A serving girl approached.
“What do you want?” he asked Hyŏnse.
“Anything’s fine.”
“One tea,” Tugap said, and with a practiced air he made for the girl a number one with the index finger of the hand holding the fan. “I had mine a little while ago,” he told Hyŏnse.
A glass of milk would be nice, thought Hyŏnse, something to take the edge off his hunger.
Compared with Hyŏnse’s poverty-stricken self and the worn-out clothes he wore for construction work, Tugap wore a serge suit that, although faded from white to yellow, was well pressed and sleek. But the first thing you noticed about him was his shiny oiled hair. If you were looking for flaws in his appearance, there was only his toadlike mouth—if you could call that a flaw.
The tea arrived and when Hyŏnse had taken a sip, Tugap leaned toward him and said, “How long has it been, really? You went to North China, right? I was stuck in P’yeyang until Liberation and then I came here. I tell you what, let’s leave it right there. Even supposing we hashed over all of that, what’s the use? We should think about the future instead, time’s a-wasting and all that. . . . So where are you living now?”
Every time Tugap opened his mouth, Hyŏnse detected an unmistakable smell—grilled beef and garlic, washed down with soju, last night’s dinner.
“In a house where a Western missionary used to live—supposedly it’s where the Kyŏngshin School used to be.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Tugap. “I hear there’s a whole lot of refugees in that missionary’s house. Well, perfect! I tell you what—I’m going to get you a room. And I want you to know, a vacant room here in the capital is like pie in the sky. Yessir, it’s a good thing we ran into each other. And even better that I didn’t just walk on by . . . . We have to help each other out; nobody’s going to do it for us. Now, this room, see, we need to put on a little act—and it’s a pretty simple role, really.”
In fact Tugap had had a scheme in mind before coming across Hyŏnse, but he spoke as if he were letting Hyŏnse in on a clever idea he had just come up with. He paused to allow Hyŏnse to catch his meaning.
“This room I’m talking about is in a house at the top of the hill in Samch’ŏng-dong. And here’s the point of our little act: actually there’s no vacant room at the moment, so what we’re going to do is get all the renters to leave and then we give the rooms to other people. You’re probably wondering how in heck it’s possible to get renters to leave in this day and age—well, what we do is, we pretend someone is going to buy the house. And because someone’s buying the house, all the renters have to move out. You get what I’m talking about? Then we have the house all to ourselves and you move into one of the rooms. That’s all there is to it. So all you have to do is be the person who’s buying the house. There’s just one thing you have to be careful about: you don’t ever tell anyone about this little act you’re putting on.”
Again Tugap paused, looking across at Hyŏnse as if to say, Well, how about it?
“And you’re probably wondering, why go to the trouble of putting on an act to get the current renters to leave? Here’s why. The man who owns the house is a trader; he’s got his hands on a solid chunk of money and plans to be buying and selling on a large scale before too long, and he needs one of the rented rooms, the one that’s beside the gate, for storage. But you can’t ask one renter to leave and not the others, and no amount of talking is going to get them all to go—it’s been tried. These Seoul people are tough nuts to crack, in case you didn’t know. So we have to do our little act—it’s the only way. The owner of the house was the first person I knew in Seoul and we thought that maybe I could play the main role, but the problem is, I’m in and out of the house so often the renters and I know one another’s faces. So that won’t work. And I was trying to find someone to fill the bill when I ran into you, and it’s a good thing I did. I’ll bet you’ve had a hard time finding a room, so you’re just the man I’m looking for. You get yourself a room, the owner gets rid of the renters, and there you have it—two birds with one stone.”
So saying—and Hyŏnse realized that Tugap was speaking almost like a native of Seoul—Tugap produced his toadlike grin as if to say, Make sense?
Hyŏnse was not so inclined. His immediate concern was not a room to live in—there were no worries there—but his empty stomach. He was anxious to get to the South Gate markets to sell his suit, and then to the East Gate markets to buy the potatoes, and then to take them back to his family and steam them. . . .
“So what do you think?”
“I’ll think it over,” said Hyŏnse without actually considering what he was saying.
“You’ll think it over? Sounds like you don’t have a worry in the world about where you’re going to live. Maybe you’re feeling sorry for the people who have to leave, maybe taking their place doesn’t sit right with you—well, don’t waste your sympathies. Like the fellow says, put out your own fire first and then think of the other guy. Those renters have survived in Seoul till now—they’ll manage. See what I’m saying? You don’t want to miss this opportunity. Today, or tomorrow morning at the latest, you’re going to see a realtor in Samch’ŏng-dong and tell him you want to buy a house—that’s all there is to it. You see, the owner has already put the house up for sale with this realtor.”
Tugap wrote directions to the realtor’s office and the house on a piece of paper, gave it to Hyŏnse, and said, “Listen to what I’m telling you and forget the think-it-over. I’ll see you here tomorrow around one.”
After they parted Hyŏnse sold his suit at the South Gate markets, bought the potatoes at the East Gate markets and put them in a sack, and started back to where his wife and children were. He was so hungry he couldn’t help walking slouched over; he didn’t even have the energy to wipe the sweat that was streaming from his forehead into his eyes and his mouth. Now it was the perspiration that was blurring his vision. All he could think of was steaming those damned potatoes and taking big bites out of them . . . blowing on them first if they were too hot . . . that light, powdery texture . . . but wait, just potatoes? . . . No, there had to be some cabbage-leaf soup to slurp, and he shouldn’t eat the potatoes too fast. . . . These thoughts had him drooling and swallowing the rest of the way home.
Back home everyone was in bed. Except for those who had been picked for day l
abor for road construction or street cleaning, everybody spent the morning in bed. By eating breakfast as late as possible they attempted to stretch two meals a day into three, or even one meal a day into two. Those with children prepared a mixture of potatoes and rice when the little ones’ pestering became too much, but were unable to resist eating along with them, and then would go back to bed for fear of digesting their meal too quickly. The young couple who had just lost their child had gone back to bed too, almost as if it were their turn to be invalids.
From here and there Hyŏnse heard the voices of the ill; it sounded as though they were talking in their sleep. From their wretched appearance you would think their condition was serious. The ground floor of this Western-style house had been opened up and all the partitions removed, and with all the people lying there it resembled a public clinic.
Hyŏnse likewise went back to bed after appeasing his children with a meal of steamed potatoes and cabbage-leaf soup. He lay still but was sweating profusely. This was unusual. He decided it was because he had taken hot food on an empty stomach. And the really hot days of summer were still to come. Hyŏnse hoped they would go by fast. Then again, they could complain all they wanted about the heat, and before they knew it they’d be complaining all they wanted about the cold. But for refugees, hot summer was better than cold winter, no two ways about it. Just in terms of a place to live, you could spend the summer on a nice cool wooden floor like this, or practically anywhere for that matter.
But in winter? Forget winter, the problem was right here and now. Elder Kim upstairs had been pressuring them at every opportunity to vacate. Elder Kim with his rimless glasses, paunch swelling out to the sides, Bible in its leather cover always in hand. He was a very dignified man. He had arrived, with the title House Manager, only a few days after Hyŏnse and his family. Two days later, in the morning, the elder had come downstairs, hand resting gracefully on his leather-bound Bible, and declared, “Brothers and sisters, you who have no place to live, I have much sympathy for you, but though I know not why, from my first night here, sound sleep has eluded me, I dream fitful dreams on account of you, my brothers and sisters, and I know not what to do. Brothers and sisters, sympathize with me in your turn and vacate this house, vacate it with all due haste. You shall not spend winter in this house, and I beseech you to sympathize with me and vacate with all due haste.” He was a very dignified man, from his carriage to his manner of speaking and the tone of his voice, a voice that brooked no opposition.