by Hwang Sunwon
Sharing the cell with Father and Pastor Pak were two other ideological prisoners, both young men. One had been apprehended in a village in the southern provinces for reasons related to the March 1 uprising, and the other, also working in the independence movement, was based in Manchuria and had been captured there. The southerner was the youngest of the four, from a farming village, and the calluses on his palms were hard as nails. He must have had the toughest skin, because he alone didn’t develop scabies and he held up best under the beatings by the guards. The young man from Manchuria frequently sang a song about An Chunggŭn, the martyr executed at Yŏsun Prison, and he taught it to the other three. Although they initially sang the song to themselves, it wasn’t long before they warmed up to it and sang it in a loud chorus, after which they were summoned one by one by the guards and each given a terrific beating. My father still remembers that song:
Bright moon shining on lone mountain,
Cuckoo crying in the deep of night
Till throat bleeds dry and moonlight wanes.
Tell me, cuckoo, are you the soul
Of he who is ever mindful
Of his native land?
When I arrived, Father put aside the newspaper he was reading, asked me how the grandchildren were doing, then removed his reading glasses. Mother was ill, lying on the warmer part of the heated floor, a moistened towel wrapped around her forehead. She looked up as I entered. “You aren’t feeling well?” I asked her. She said she was fine and expressed her concern about my family and me, asking if the children were well and how they were getting along.
Father said in an undertone that Mother was having her dizzy spells again; it had been several days now. Practically every year when winter set in she was susceptible to the cold drafts. There was no mystery about this recurring ailment, for she was almost sixty and in recent days had been up in the hills behind Samch’ŏng-dong gathering the leaves and branches used to heat the room. But never did she complain that her hardships had come about because I had brought her to Seoul to live.
What a fine son I had turned out to be, so enamored of Seoul that I had uprooted my parents from the ancestral home and dragged them here, and now look at me! For their part, Father and Mother made sure that this fine child of theirs understood that when times were difficult it was even more important to do the right thing.
And here this fine child was proposing to turn out some fine writing. So I began to question Father: “Can you tell me why Teacher An was tortured more than Teacher Namgang, until it broke him brutally?”
Father readily responded: “Mainly it had to do with him representing a group of people and making a statement of their views to the Japanese government.”
“Did the mental problems start after he got out of prison? Or while he was there?”
“While he was there. And that’s what got him paroled.”
Father had once told me that the March 1 movement had to do with President Wilson’s Doctrine of Self-Determination of Nations, but the larger issue was Koreans’ increasing resentment under Japanese military rule, and in this light it seems obvious that Teacher An’s breakdown resulted from his torture as an ideological criminal by the police, who were instrumental in that rule. Because Father had been forced to witness Teacher An’s torture, I thought I would try to get a more detailed account from him, but before I could ask, Father spoke up.
“You know, a couple of days ago,” he began in his P’yŏngan-accented speech, putting his glasses back on and staring off into space, “I went downtown, and on my way home, in Anguk-dong, I saw someone coming my way. I’ve never been one to examine everybody I see when I’m out and about, but this person was examining me. He passed by, and then someone called out to me, and I turned to see a country fellow in a fur cap pulled low over his face, wearing a coat that had seen better days. I wondered who he might be, and he asked me if my family name was Hwang and said he was Kim So-and-so, and perhaps I remembered him? I couldn’t place him, and I told him so. Well, what do you know? He said he was Kim So-and-so who was in Sŏdaemun Prison with me in 1919 because of the independence movement, and didn’t I recognize him? And that’s when it hit me—he was the young fellow from down south, the one who was the youngest of us four. I took his hand, and when I saw all the calluses I knew it was him, sure enough. And after a close-up look at the dark face with all the lines beneath the fur cap, I could see, clear as day, the way he looked back then. . . . There was a place to eat right close by, so we went inside and caught up on everything. He got around to telling me that the reason he was in Seoul was the UN trusteeship matter. Said that where he was in the country it was hard to get a good grip on the issue—he didn’t know whether he should be for it or against it. So first he would get it clear in his mind, and then he’d go and educate the folks back home. One thing was for sure, he said—Jap-style military rule should never again be allowed on our land. Lately he kept coming back to thoughts about the March 1 movement, and it got to the point where he felt he had to come to Seoul. And once he was here, it was only natural that memories of our prison experience had come to mind along with all the rest. So when he saw me on the street he knew right away who I was. . . . He’s got plenty of white around the ears. But there’s such a nice glow to that wrinkled, sun-darkened face of his, and then the way he talks and thinks, it makes him look so young, and him looking young made me feel younger myself.”
The way my father told this story made me forget for the moment what I was going to ask him. As I observed him, hair half white and half dark, I felt as if he too was the kind of man who aged gracefully.
February 1947
THE DOG OF CROSSOVER VILLAGE
Strike out in any direction, and you had a narrow pass to cross over. Except for the long, winding valley to the south, mountains were all around, and whatever your destination, a mountain pass awaited you. And so the settlement had come to be called Crossover Village.
There was a time, from early one spring to late in the fall, when quite a few people bound for the Jiantao region of Manchuria passed through Crossover Village. Those arriving by the pass from the south inevitably stopped to rest their tired legs at the well in front of the shacks beneath the mountains to the west.
These were not what you would call small families. There was the occasional young couple—man and wife, most likely—but it was mostly large families who filed through the narrow pass from the south. The younger people toted cloth bundles from which tattered clothing poked out, while the old folks limped along trying to keep the youngsters in hand. The women carried babies on their backs and loads on their heads.
Reaching the well, the travelers would first stop in the shade of the weeping willow and wet their throats. All would take turns drinking, again they would drink, and then water would be given to the children, restive by now, and to the young ones not yet weaned. The mothers seemed to prefer feeding their babes water to giving suck with breasts that no longer produced much milk.
Next they would splash the cold water over their chafed and blistered feet, again taking several turns. When the adults had finished, the children drew water by themselves, all they wished, and splashed it over their feet. And when it was time to leave, these travelers would shuffle along as before, disappearing over the pass to the north.
Some groups arrived near dusk. They too stopped beneath the mountains to the west, passing the night at the decrepit mill there. Once settled, the women would untie the gourd each carried from her waist and go begging for a meal. Their destination: the two houses with the tile roofs at the foot of the mountain directly to the east. Usually the children would tag along, and if a grain of cooked rice were to fall from the gourds, it would be gobbled up at once. The women would remind the children that the grown-ups also needed to fill their stomachs. Still, by the time they returned from the houses with the tile roofs, some of the gourds would be nearly empty. The next day, these wanderers would set out in the gloom sometime before daybreak and stream north, ever
north, and out of sight.
One spring, a dog appeared in Crossover Village at the mill beneath the western mountains, next to where Kannan’s family lived. There it began licking the underside of the winnow, which was thick and gray with dust—the mill had lain idle for what seemed the longest time. The dog, which looked ravenous, was a bitch of medium size. Her coat must have once been a lovely white, but was now a dirty ocher yellow. Her belly, pinched in toward the hindquarters, pumped in and out with every breath. From her appearance you would think she had walked a long distance to get there. And a close look would show where a leash of some sort had been tied around her neck.
Which suggested she had come from far away. For when people bound for Jiantao passed through, you would see now and then a dog led by a rope around its neck. The owners of this white dog might very well have been such wayfarers. Among their modest household items they undoubtedly had sold those they couldn’t take a long distance, in order to raise more cash for the journey. But in leaving home with their meager possessions they had probably allowed this dog to tag along like any member of the family—perhaps one of the children had badgered them. And on their way here to P’yŏngan from Chŏlla, Kyŏngsang, or some other region, when they had run out of conveniently transported foods such as chaffy rice cake, they would beg food or go without, until finally they had nothing to feed the dog. Perhaps the best they could think of then was to leave the animal tied up beside the road, hoping someone would take her home. And so it may have been that this white dog, howling for her master, had managed to struggle free and had drifted into Crossover Village searching for him.
Then again, wayfarers bound for the P’yŏngan region might have sold the dog before arriving at Crossover Village, realizing they couldn’t take her all the way to their destination. Or perhaps in thanks for a meal they had given her to a family. In any case, the dog may have been unable to forget her master and may have set off after him, making her way to the village.
Finally, if you looked carefully you might have noticed that the ocher color of her coat was somehow different from the ocher of the P’yŏngan soil.
Now, finding nothing but dust beneath the winnow, the dog moved to the millstone and nuzzled it all over, the limp in one of her hind legs suggesting just how far she had walked to get to Crossover Village. She lapped and lapped, but the millstone too wore only a layer of gray dust. Still, she licked for some time before giving up. Then she began nosing around the rest of this mill, where her master, bound for P’yŏngan, might have spent a night of troubled dreams, worrying about the wretched lot of his family and about the dog they had abandoned beside the road.
This white dog left the mill and slipped through the gate of millet stalks in front of Kannan’s house next door. The family’s yellow dog, lying prone in the yard at the foot of the veranda, looked up and rose to confront this stranger. Fearing a bite, the white dog tucked her tail between her legs and against her shrunken belly and limped away. She passed a cluster of humble shacks, and beyond them a vegetable patch, hobbling along even after realizing that Yellow had given up the chase. After the patch were some hardscrabble plots, and beyond them a ditch that showed only gravel in times of drought but now held an occasional pool of water. Whitey lapped up some of the water.
Directly opposite the ditch was a rise. Tucked against the top and set a short distance apart were the tile-roof houses of the two brothers who were headmen of Crossover Village. Between the houses sat a mill used solely by the two families.
Into this mill limped Whitey. Here, at least, chaff was mixed with the dust. Around the winnow she went, licking industriously. Her shriveled belly pumped faster.
After a time, the elder headman’s large black dog caught sight of Whitey from a distance and dashed over. It stopped at the door to the mill and growled, teeth bared, glossy fur bristling. Whitey, yelping as if a chunk had been taken from her hide, tucked her tail between her legs but kept licking. Blackie, perhaps deciding Whitey was no match for him, stole up and began sniffing her all over. Aha, a bitch! Blackie let down his guard and began wagging his tail. In the presence of the other dog Whitey quivered in fear. But she never stopped licking.
After licking beneath the winnow and the grindstone, Whitey visited each house’s privy, then returned beneath the winnow and settled down on her stomach. She began blinking drowsily. The blinking became more frequent, and finally the eyes closed altogether. Blackie, sitting a short distance away, kept watch.
That evening a woman’s voice could be heard calling the dog from the elder headman’s house. Blackie ran for home. Whitey returned to where she’d been earlier and resumed licking. But then, as if on a hunch, she set out for the headman’s house.
Sure enough, from outside the gate she could see the open door to the kitchen, and just beyond it a basin where Blackie was slurping up his dinner. Instinctively Whitey stuck her tail between her legs and approached, trembling. But before she could get near the basin, Blackie bared his teeth and growled, fur bristling. Whitey stopped, stared at the basin, and hunched down to wait.
Before long Blackie was licking his snout with various contortions of his long, drooping tongue. Then he withdrew. Whitey rose immediately. Still quivering, she went to the basin and stuck her snout right in. Fortunately, some rice was left at the bottom, as well as a few grains stuck to the sides. She attacked the basin, quivering more and more violently. She licked and licked, and when nothing was left she slunk past Blackie, who had kept to himself, and out the gate.
A dog with black and white spots—the younger headman’s dog—blocked the path to the mill. Again Whitey cringed instinctively. The spotted dog sniffed Whitey all over. This time it was Whitey who perked up; she smelled something. The other dog’s snout was still moist from his dinner, and Whitey began licking it.
Annoyed, Spotty struck out for home. But Whitey was right behind. Spotty went through the gate and sat down in the middle of the yard. Whitey went directly to the basin outside the kitchen door.
This basin also held rice, some on the bottom and quite a few grains on the sides. Whitey busied herself licking, and when the basin was clean she returned to the mill and her place beneath the winnow.
It began to rain in the middle of the night, and the next day was gray and sodden. From daybreak Whitey was in and out through the dog holes beneath the walls of the headmen’s houses. She walked better than the day before, but still with a limp. Her first few visits she found only rainwater in the basins. When food finally appeared, she had to wait until the master’s dog had eaten its fill and withdrawn. And so she licked up what the two dogs had left, and after a stop at the outhouses she returned to the mill and lay down beneath the winnow. Around noontime she crawled outside, licked up some rainwater, and went back to her resting place.
That evening the rain finally stopped. Whitey had already made the rounds of the two houses with the tile roofs, finding food in the basins. Spotty seemed to have lost his appetite; he had left a fair amount of food.
The next day was clear and fair, springlike. Again Whitey found food by making the rounds of the two houses, starting at dawn. Her limp was almost gone. She returned to the mill, found a sunny spot, and lay down to bask in the warmth.
Late that morning Whitey heard someone approach, a farmhand who worked for the two headmen coming to hull rice. He thumped down a bundle of rice stalks and went back the way he had come. As he was leaving, Kannan’s grandmother arrived with a hand winnow. With her was Kannan’s mother, who carried on her head a mat to collect the hulled rice. Although Kannan’s grandfather no longer did farm work for the headmen, his wife and daughter continued to set aside their own duties when necessary to attend to the various chores they had always handled for the brothers.
While Kannan’s mother was sweeping the grindstone, the farmhand returned with an ox and another bundle of rice stalks. The farmhand untied the bundle, and the first thing Whitey noticed was a savory smell—more food. She drew near. But the farmhand was
n’t having any of this and kicked her in the ribs.
“Mangy bitch—can’t you see we’re busy?”
It wasn’t a very strong kick, but the farmhand’s leg was firm and stout, and Whitey tumbled to the side with a yelp. Back she went to her resting place nearby to soak up the sun.
When the hulling of the first batch of stalks was almost finished, the younger headman appeared. He was a stumpy fellow, solidly built, hair closely cropped. His color was good, and though he was approaching forty, he certainly didn’t look his age.
“Better be dry enough to hull,” he said in a firm voice—to no one in particular, it seemed, because he didn’t wait for an answer. “Just make sure you don’t crush it.”
Kannan’s grandmother, guiding the ox from the rear as it turned the grindstone, picked up a handful of hulled rice and examined it closely, seemed to find it properly hulled, then returned it without comment to the mat.
As the headman turned to leave, he noticed Whitey.