Lost Souls

by Hwang Sunwon

  Lucky Nose responded with a belch, then began talking again about the salt business he was establishing.

  The village head couldn’t quite understand what his guest meant by “wholesaling” salt. All he knew was that this fellow Lucky Nose seemed to have become a rich man.

  “I’m happy things are working out so well for you, Mr. Kim. But it looks like the folks around here will have a hard time finding salt from now on.”

  Before Lucky Nose arrived on the scene, an elderly salt peddler had made the rounds. But for some reason or other he had stopped coming. One of the villagers had gone as far as Changnim in search of a replacement, and there he had found Lucky Nose. The old man was reminded of all the trouble this other villager had gone to.

  “No cause to worry. I aim to hire some peddlers, and I’ll pick out the best of the salt and have one of them deliver it to you.” This was a genuine offer.

  “That would be wonderful.”

  At this point, Lucky Nose felt comfortable about speaking his mind.

  “By the way, Grandfather Headman,” he began. And in a more confidential tone: “There’s something I’d like to ask you about.”

  The village head gazed at Lucky Nose, wondering what this fellow could possibly want to discuss with him.

  “It’s about Koptani. Has she ever taken sick—you know, real sick?”

  Not knowing the reason behind this question, the village head continued to gaze at Lucky Nose before replying.

  “Why would she be sick?”

  “Her face, I mean. She’s kind of dark complected—doesn’t look very healthy.”

  “Oh, that. It’s the sun. You won’t find many people with fair skin in these parts.”

  “So that’s it,” said Lucky Nose, though he knew well enough.

  “Actually, she was fair-skinned to begin with, so she’s lighter than the rest of us.”

  “Her parents said Crazy Hair was sick in bed, and I thought Koptani might have caught something too.”

  The village head searched Lucky Nose’s face, wondering why he was bringing this up. Then he remembered the precious cigarette burning near his fingertips, and he drew on it several times.

  “You know, I’ve got a notion to take her for my wife. I’d like to hear your opinion on that.”

  The village head was about to take another puff, but the salt peddler’s words brought the fingers holding the cigarette to a stop in front of his lips.

  “What? You mean to tell me you’re not married?”

  “That’s right. Take my pleasure from making money, I guess. Haven’t met the right woman, either.”

  “What do you want with a girl from a mountain village?”

  “Please, please. I’ve thought about that. First of all, the girls out here have pure hearts. And a girl who’s had to put up with a hellish life will treat her husband like a god. Isn’t that right?”

  “I agree with you there.”

  But no matter how he looked at it, the two of them were a mismatch in terms of age, the village head thought as he stuck the cigarette butt in the bowl of his pipe and drew this time on the stem.

  As if he had foreseen this objection, Lucky Nose spoke up again.

  “I don’t feel quite right talking about myself, but the truth is, a man like me with a few years under his belt knows how to care for the little woman.”

  “I see, now that you put it that way,” said the older man, bobbing his head.

  “Well now, could I ask you to speak for me to Koptani’s folks? Better a man in your position, instead of the one who’s directly involved.”

  “This is a match I’d be tickled to help out with.”

  Lucky Nose got back on the subject of wholesaling salt. He intended to make it into a large business, but there was no way he could go it alone—it would be swell if someone like Koptani’s father could lend a hand.

  Koptani’s folks stood to reap the benefits of raising a daughter like Koptani, the village head realized. They wouldn’t want to turn up their noses at a golden opportunity like this.

  The night was well along when Lucky Nose left the village head’s house. The moon—more than a crescent, less than half—shone faintly through a veil of thin clouds. The breeze had died down, and in every direction all seemed buried in the still of the night. A cuckoo called from a distant valley. To Lucky Nose the fleeting call was like something from a dream. A bird heading for its nest grazed his shoulder and disappeared into the darkness.

  Lucky Nose was pleased with himself. Everything was going his way, he thought as he approached Koptani’s house.

  But then he noticed a shadow in the gloom near the back corner of the kitchen. He tiptoed forward. If it was Koptani, he would have a word with her. The thought excited him. He might even take her by the wrist. If you did that to these mountain girls, they wouldn’t disappoint you in the future. He had done so two years earlier with Sŏbun, and from then on he had the girl at his mercy. He inched forward, fueled by these thoughts. But no: it was Koptani, all right, only she wasn’t alone. He pressed himself against a pear tree.

  “So, what’s it going to be?” came the insistent, low-pitched voice of a man.

  There was a pause, and then Lucky Nose heard Koptani’s voice, also muffled. “I just don’t know,” she said anxiously.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? That damn salt peddler’s over at Grandpa’s right now, and it sounds like he’s fixing to take you away. Is that what you want, get yourself dragged off by him?”

  Lucky Nose’s heart pounded harder. The son of a bitch who was feeding Koptani this line was none other than that good-for-nothing Komi.

  “What do you really feel like doing? Huh?”

  All Koptani could do was whimper feebly.

  “We have to get out of here—tonight. It’s the only way. Like I said, if we can get as far as Tongt’anjibol, we can take up farming—rice or whatever. I’ve looked into it. Let’s just go, tonight.”

  Koptani’s faint sobbing was the only response.

  “You haven’t changed your mind about me, have you?”

  Koptani’s sobbing abruptly stopped.

  “Tell me the truth. You haven’t changed your mind, have you? . . . Well then, let’s get out of here.”

  Koptani remained silent.

  “Try not to worry about your mom and dad. We’ll go first, and when we’re settled they can join us. You think I like the idea of running away from my grandparents, after they raised me like their own boy? It breaks my heart. But we can take them in with us too.”

  Still no answer from Koptani.

  “We’ll leave at the first crow of the rooster. When you hear it, come outside. I’ll come by for you. Now don’t forget.”

  Koptani began to whimper again. “I just don’t know,” she quavered. “I don’t know what’s right.”

  “Of course you do. Just make up your mind and do it my way.”

  “Do we have to run away? What if I don’t marry the salt peddler?”

  “What are you going to do, say no to your mom and dad? Don’t be silly. We have to get out of here tonight. If we don’t, we’ll never see each other again.”

  Koptani’s anguish briefly burst forth in sobbing.

  “I just don’t know. . . . Everything’s so scary. . . .”

  “Not if you make up your mind. I was scared too when I first thought about this. Not now, though.”

  More faint sobbing from Koptani.

  “So buck up, and when the rooster crows, come outside. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  At these words, Koptani’s whimpering stopped.

  “No, it’s no good here. . . . What if someone has to go to the outhouse and sees you? It’s all right now because Mom and Dad are inside talking about you.” And then she spoke more distinctly: “Instead, cover yourself up with one of those straw mats in the front yard, like you did before.” Resolve had crept into her voice.

  “All right. I’ll see you when the rooster crows—don’t forget.”


  Lucky Nose, unnoticed behind the pear tree, was swept by conflicting emotions. But then the trace of a smile formed beneath his nose with its round red tip. He had hit upon an idea.

  Inside, Koptani’s parents had lit the pine knots that fueled their lamp.

  “Dear, any way I look at it, it scares me, sending her off to town,” the mother said yet again, hunched up next to Koptani’s bedridden brother.

  “I know,” said Koptani’s father. “Like they say, a privy rat belongs in the privy, and a barn rat belongs in the barn. But you know, now that I’ve had a chance to look over this salt peddler, he seems all right. Sure, there’s an age difference, but that’s good for Koptani—she’ll get more affection from him because of it.”

  “Well. . . .” Koptani’s mother searched her husband’s face. “As far as I can tell, a fellow like Komi would do just fine for her.”

  She had wanted to tell her husband this for some time.

  She had a good enough reason. About this time last spring, Pottori’s mother had dropped by one evening and told her a story: she had gone up in the hills behind the village that day to gather some wild greens. Suddenly a roe deer had jumped out from a cluster of kiwi vines. Transfixed by the sight, she had watched as a startled roebuck then leaped from the same cluster and bounded off. Hearing this story, Koptani’s mother had said, why not have Pottori’s father set a snare for the animals? But with a knowing smile, Pottori’s mother put her lips to the other woman’s ear. “Actually they weren’t deer; they were deer people. One of them was a Koptani deer and the other was a Komi deer. . . . This morning I asked if Koptani wanted to go gather greens with me, and she said she had to weave some hemp cloth. Maybe she was doing her weaving in those vines,” she said with an insinuating smile. This had set Koptani’s mother to thinking about her seventeen-year-old daughter. At the same time, she had taken a closer look at young Komi’s behavior toward Koptani. Sure enough, there was more to their relationship than met the eye. For example, whenever Komi had come to help in the fields, hadn’t their Koptani heaped his rice bowl full? From then on, everything seemed to indicate that Komi would become her son-in-law.

  Koptani’s father had thought likewise. If he were to pick a son-in-law from the immediate area, Komi would be the obvious choice. He realized that he had Koptani to thank for Komi’s willingness to work from first light until late in the evening whenever he came to help in their fields. And so his mind had wavered ever since the salt peddler had emerged as a potential husband for his daughter.

  “She’d be safe marrying Komi,” he now said to his wife, “but then she’d just end up like us, working herself to death out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “But even if she marries the salt peddler and moves to town. . . . You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “That’s not always true. There’s such a thing as fate.” Koptani’s father lifted his gaunt face toward his wife. “The peddler says he’s started wholesaling salt,” he said fervently. “But he can’t do it by himself—says he needs someone to help out. And I have a hunch that I’m the one he has in mind. It would probably take less out of me than working these fields, so I could give him an honest day’s work. The important thing is, we should get while the getting is good.”

  There was no more mention of the privy rat and the barn rat.

  “I’ll never get used to the idea of her living in that awful city. . . .”

  “Remember, though, we have to think of him.” So saying, he gestured with his chin toward the boy lying on the warmer part of the heated floor.

  Koptani’s mother could find no reply to this. So they might have to move to the city. Well, as long as her boy and girl turned out well, then all of her present fears and reluctance would amount to nothing.

  “I’ve made up my mind. If the salt peddler speaks up about Koptani, I’ll give her to him.”

  Koptani’s mother thought about the fabric that Lucky Nose had given her that evening. Perhaps the material for Koptani was meant for a wedding dress. Suddenly she thought of Komi, and shuddered.

  After seeing Komi off, Koptani had returned to the kitchen, and there she overheard this conversation. So it was just as Komi had said: they were going to marry her off to the salt peddler, and it would be useless to try to talk them out of it. For the sake of her parents and her little brother, had she any choice but to become his wife? The palpitations of her heart were replaced by a burning sensation.

  Finally, after a long while, from a neighbor’s house came the crow of a rooster. Koptani instinctively jumped up from where she had hidden near the stove. She was drawn by something even more precious than her parents and brother—something she dared not lose. There was a place she had to go, and now was the time. But as she pushed open the kitchen door, she heard someone emerging from the adjoining room.

  It was her father. The crow of the rooster had set him to wondering why there had been no sign of Lucky Nose. He drew the screen to the guest room and looked inside. No, the salt peddler hadn’t returned.

  As long as he was up, he thought he might as well visit the outhouse. But as he stepped down to the stone shoe-ledge, a movement startled him. The moon was perched on the ridge to the west, and its faint light disclosed something crawling under a straw mat that lay folded at the side of the yard.

  After a moment of uncertainty it became clear to him that the form beneath the mat was a man. His heart quickened. Komi, that rascal! So this is what he’s been up to—thinks he’s going to fiddle with my daughter! The blood rose to his head. He found himself a club.

  As he was about to approach the figure beneath the mat, he noticed someone else’s shadow moving about next to the donkey. Well, the salt peddler had finally returned from Grandfather Headman’s house and was tending to his donkey. What’s going to happen if he greets me and this other guy finds out I’m here? But then the shadow near the donkey disappeared toward the outhouse.

  Koptani’s father set down the club and took a piece of rope hanging from the rafter of the shed. He tiptoed toward the straw mat. Just as he reached it, a hand shot out and grabbed him by the ankle. But it was too late. Koptani’s father pounced on the mat.

  “Don’t move, you son of a bitch, or I’ll smash your head in—I mean what I say!” he raged in a choking voice.

  He rolled up the mat and its occupant and began carefully to tie it up.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Sure, you’re a strong young buck. But there was a time when I could carry a tree as big as a good-sized cow. Worthless son of a bitch—you haven’t seen anything yet. We’ll leave you like this for tonight—you’re in enough trouble already—and in the morning we’ll bring you out in front of all the neighbors and teach you a lesson you’ll never forget. And I’m going to make sure you never settle your ass here again—son of a bitch!”

  On the far side of the hills to the west of Basin Village the light of the moon showed a donkey being urged down a dark path. A young man held the reins. There was no bell around the donkey’s neck. A woman was riding the animal.

  The man gave the donkey an occasional swat on the rump with his whip. It was a bit awkward the way he handled the whip and led the donkey. Yet he and the woman on the donkey moved with a purpose, making their way along the dark path redolent of pine resin, and on down the hill.

  October 1955

  LOST SOULS

  It was in November of the previous year that Suni had left for Sŏjetkol to become the concubine of a former low-level official named Pak. And it was then that Sŏgi had taken to gazing from the paddy dike out to where the dusty road disappeared around a nearby hill. Suni had left in a sedan chair and someday, Sŏgi told himself, she would return in one.

  But the new year arrived and January passed without Suni returning to pay respects to her family. Suni’s case was unusual: her role as a concubine was to care for a sick old man. Sŏgi guessed old Pak had taken a turn for the worse because of the cold weather, and this would have prevente
d Suni from returning.

  Nor did Suni appear in early May for the Tano Festival. As in the old days, the villagers staged a wrestling competition and tied a triple-ply rope swing to the old weeping willow at the entrance to the village. But Suni, who should have been among the village maidens as they washed their hair with sweet flag and combed it, the scent of ch’ŏn’gungi all about them, was not to be seen. And so Sŏgi shut himself up at home.

  The rope swing was taken down and several days passed. Sŏgi went out again to the dike. But on this particular day he wasn’t expecting Suni. Given her absence from the Tano Festival, he held no hope of her returning before the Yudu Festival in mid-June. All the same, Sŏgi gazed toward the nearby hill. His face was noticeably drawn.

  For some time Sŏgi had been plagued by a disturbing dream: Suni had returned in a sedan chair. But unlike the chair that had taken her to Pak’s house, this one was white. This could only mean that old Pak had passed away. But Suni’s sedan chair stopped only a moment at her house, then returned to Sŏjetkol. She had to prepare for the traditional three-year mourning period, Sŏgi assumed. Or perhaps she had returned there to live out the rest of her days as a widow. Sŏgi found the latter thought intolerable, so off he went to Sŏjetkol, where he climbed the lofty wall of Pak’s house on a rope made of cotton cloth and stole away with Suni on his back. Sometimes the dream would continue with Suni obediently following Sŏgi. Other times Suni resisted, rolling on the floor, kicking and screaming. Usually he awakened at the point of jumping from Pak’s wall with Suni on his back.

  Deep down inside, Sŏgi wished old Pak really were dead, and this realization brought with it a sense of shame. Why couldn’t he have contrived to prevent Suni from leaving in the first place? It disgusted Sŏgi to see himself in this light.

  Suddenly a chilly breeze came up, raising dust devils on the dike. Dark rain clouds swept in over the ridge behind the village, and in no time everything was in shadow.

  Sŏgi started down the dike, taking one last look toward the hill as he did so. There, what was that? Coming into sight was a sedan chair—there was no mistaking it. Even from this distance he could see it was the regular variety and not a white one.