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The Plotters

Page 2

by Un-su Kim


  ‘There, there, Santa. Don’t worry,’ the old man said, patting the dog. ‘You’ll get your share.’

  ‘The dog’s name is Santa?’

  ‘I met this fellow on Christmas Day. That day, he lost his owner and I lost my leg.’

  The old man lifted the hem of his left pant leg to reveal a prosthetic.

  ‘He saved me. Dragged me over nearly five kilometres of snow-covered road.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a way to meet.’

  ‘Best Christmas gift I ever got.’

  The old man continued to stroke the dog’s head.

  ‘He’s very gentle for his size.’

  ‘Not exactly. I used to have to keep him leashed all the time. One glimpse of a stranger and he’d attack. But now that he’s old, he’s gone soft. It’s odd. I can’t get used to the idea of an animal being this chummy with people.’

  The meat smelled cooked. The old man poked at it with the skewer and took it off the fire. Using a serrated knife, he carved the meat into thick slices. He gave a piece to Reseng, a piece to himself, and a piece to Santa. Reseng brushed off the ash and took a bite.

  ‘What an unusual flavour. Doesn’t really taste like pork.’

  ‘Good, yeah?’

  ‘It is. But do you have any salt?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No fridge, no salt—that’s quite a way to live. Do the native Peruvians also live without salt?’

  ‘No, no,’ the old man said sheepishly. ‘I ran out a few days ago.’

  ‘Do you hunt?’

  ‘Not anymore. About a month ago I found a wild boar stuck in a poacher’s trap. Still alive. I watched it gasp for breath and thought to myself, Do I kill it now or wait for it to die? If I waited for it to die, then I could blame its death on the poacher who left that trap out, but if I killed it, then I’d be responsible for its death. What would you have done?’

  The old man’s smile was inscrutable. Reseng gave the tin cup a swirl before polishing off the alcohol.

  ‘Hard to say. I don’t think it really matters who killed the boar.’

  The old man seemed to ponder this for a moment before responding.

  ‘I guess you’re right. When you really think about it, it doesn’t matter who killed it. Either way, here we are enjoying some Peruvian-style roasted boar.’

  The old man laughed loudly. Reseng laughed too. It wasn’t much of a joke, but the old man kept laughing, and Reseng followed suit with a loud laugh of his own.

  The old man was in high spirits. He filled Reseng’s cup with whisky until it was nearly overflowing, then filled his own and raised a toast. They downed their cups in one gulp. The old man picked up the skewer and fished a couple of potatoes from the hot ashes. After taking a bite of one, he pronounced it delicious and gave the other to Reseng. Reseng brushed off the ashes and took a bite. ‘That is delicious,’ he said.

  ‘There’s nothing better than a roasted potato on a cold winter’s day.’

  Reseng started to babble. ‘Potatoes always remind me of someone…’ His face was red from the alcohol and the glow of the fire.

  ‘I’m guessing this story doesn’t have a happy ending,’ the old man said.

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘Is that someone alive or dead?’

  ‘Long dead. I was in Africa at the time when we got an emergency call in the middle of the night. We jumped in a truck and headed off. It turned out that a rebel soldier who’d escaped camp had taken an old woman hostage. He was just a kid—still had his baby fat. Must’ve been fifteen, maybe even fourteen? From what I saw, he was worked up and scared out of his wits, but not an actual threat. The old woman kept saying something to him. Meanwhile, he was pointing an AK-47 at her head with one hand and cramming a potato into his mouth with the other. We all knew he wasn’t going to do anything, but then the order came over the walkietalkie to take him out. Someone pulled the trigger. We ran over to take a closer look. Half of the kid’s head was blown away, and in his mouth was the mashed-up potato that he never got the chance to swallow.’

  ‘The poor thing. He must’ve been starving.’

  ‘It felt so strange to look into the mouth of a boy with half his head missing. What would’ve happened if we’d waited just ten more seconds? All I could think was, if we had waited, he would’ve been able to swallow the potato before he died.’

  ‘Not like anything would’ve changed for that poor boy if he had swallowed it.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Reseng’s voice wavered. ‘But it still felt weird to think about that chewed-up potato in his mouth.’

  The old man finished the rest of his whisky and poked around in the ashes with the skewer to see if there were any more potatoes. He found one in the corner and offered it to Reseng, who gazed blankly at it and politely declined. The old man looked at the potato; his face darkened and he tossed it back into the ashes.

  ‘I’ve got another bottle of whisky. What do you say?’ the old man asked.

  Reseng thought about it for a moment. ‘Your call,’ he said.

  The old man brought another bottle from the kitchen and poured some for him. They sipped in silence as they watched the flames dance in the fireplace. As Reseng grew tipsy, a feeling of profound unreality washed over him. The old man’s eyes never left the fire.

  ‘Fire is so beautiful,’ Reseng said.

  ‘Ash is more beautiful once you get to know it.’

  The old man slowly swirled his cup as he gazed into the flames. He smiled then, as if recalling something funny.

  ‘My grandfather was a whaler. This was back before they outlawed whaling. He didn’t grow up anywhere near the ocean—he was actually from inland Hamgyeong Province, but he went down south to Jangseng Harbour for work and ended up becoming the best harpooner in the country. During one of the whaling trips, he got dragged under by a sperm whale. Really deep under. What happened was, he threw the harpoon into the whale’s back, but the rope tangled around his foot and pulled him overboard. Those flimsy colonial-era whaling boats and shoddy harpoons were no match for an animal that big. A male sperm whale can grow up to eighteen metres long and weigh up to sixty tons. Think about it. That’s like fifteen adult African elephants. I don’t care if it were just a balloon animal—I would never want to mess with anything that big. No way. But not my grandfather. He stuck his harpoon right in that giant whale.’

  ‘What happened next?’ Reseng asked.

  ‘Utter havoc, of course. He said the shock of falling off the bow made him woozy, and he couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or hallucinating. Meanwhile, he was being dragged helplessly into the dark depths of the ocean by a very angry whale. He said the first thing he saw when he finally snapped out of his daze was a blue light coming off the sperm whale’s fins. As he stared at the light, he forgot all about the danger he was in. When he told me the story, he kept going on about how mysterious and tranquil and beautiful it was. An eighteen-metre-long behemoth coursing through the pitch-black ocean with glowing blue fins. I tried to break it to him gently—he was practically in tears just recalling it—that since whales are not bioluminescent, there was no way its fins could have glowed like that. He threw his chamber pot at my head. Ha! What a hothead! He told the story to everyone he met. I told him everyone thought he was lying because of the part about the fins. But all he said to that was, “Everything people say about whales is a lie. Because everything they say comes from a book. But whales don’t live in books, they live in the ocean.” Anyway, after the whale dragged him under, he passed out.’

  The old man refilled his cup halfway and took a sip.

  ‘He said that when he came to, there was a big full moon hanging in the night sky, and waves were lapping at his ear. He thought luck was on his side and the waves had pushed him onto a reef. But it turned out he was on top of the whale’s head. Incredible, wouldn’t you say? There he was, lying across a whale, staring at a buoy, a growing pool of the whale’s slick red blood all around him, and the whale itself, proppi
ng him up out of the water with its head, that harpoon still sticking out of its back. Can you imagine anything stranger or more incomprehensible? I’ve heard of whales lifting an injured companion or a newborn calf out of the water so they can breathe. But this wasn’t a companion or a baby whale, or even a seal or a penguin, it was my grandfather, a human being, and the same person who’d shoved a harpoon in its back! I honestly don’t understand why the whale saved him.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t make any sense,’ Reseng said, taking a sip of whisky. ‘You’d think that whale would have torn him apart.’

  ‘He just lay there on the whale’s head for a long time, even after he’d regained consciousness. It was awkward, to say the least. What can you do when you’re stuck on top of a whale? There was nothing out there but the silvery moon, the dark waves, a sperm whale spilling buckets of blood, and him—well and truly up shit creek. My grandfather said the sight of all that blood in the moonlight made him apologise to the whale. It was the least he could do, you know? He wanted to pull out the harpoon too, but easier said than done. Throwing a harpoon is like making a bad life decision: it’s so easy to do, but so impossible to take back once the damage is done. Instead, he cut the line with the knife he kept on his belt. The moment he cut it, the whale dived and resurfaced some distance away, then headed straight back to where my grandfather was clinging to the buoy, struggling to stay afloat. He said it watched as he flailed pathetically, filled with shame, all tangled up in the line from the harpoon he himself had thrown. According to my grandfather, the beast came right up and gazed at him with one enormous dark eye, a look of innocent curiosity that seemed to say, “How did such a little scaredy-cat like you manage to stick a harpoon in the likes of me? You’re braver than you look!” Then, he said, it gave him a playful shove, as if to say, “Hey, kid, that was pretty naughty. Better not pull another dangerous stunt like that!” All the blood it had lost was turning the ocean murky, and yet it seemed to brush off the whole matter of my grandfather stabbing it in the back. Each time my grandfather got to this part of the story, he used to slap his knee and shout, “That monster’s heart was as big as its body! Completely different from us small-minded humans.” He said the whale stayed by his side all night until the whaleboat caught up to them. The other whalers had been tracking the buoys in search of my grandfather. As soon as the ship appeared in the distance, the whale swam in a circle around him like it was saying goodbye and then dived again, even deeper than before, the harpoon with my grandfather’s name carved into it still quivering in its back. Incredible, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s quite a story,’ Reseng said.

  ‘After that narrow escape from a watery death, I guess my grandfather had some serious second thoughts about whaling: he told my grandmother he didn’t want to go back. My grandmother was a very kind and patient woman. She hugged him and said if he hated catching whales that much then he should stop. He said he sobbed like a baby in her arms and told her, “I felt so scared, so terribly scared!” And then he really did keep his distance from whaling for a while. But those crybaby days of his didn’t last long. They were poor, there were too many mouths to feed, and whaling was the only trade he’d ever learned. He didn’t know how else to provide for all those hungry children squawking at him like baby sparrows. So he went back to work and launched his harpoon at every whale he saw in the East Sea until he retired at the age of seventy. But there was one more funny thing that happened: in 1959 he ran into the same sperm whale again. Exactly thirty years after his miraculous survival. His rusted old harpoon was still stuck in its back, but the whale was just swimming along, all gallant and free, as if that harpoon had always been there and was simply a part of its body. Actually, it’s not uncommon to hear about whales surviving long after a harpoon attack. They even say that once, in the nineteenth century, a whale was caught with an eighteenth-century harpoon still stuck in it. Anyway, the whale didn’t swim off when it saw the whaling ship; in fact, it cruised right up to my grandfather’s boat, the harpoon sticking straight up like a periscope, and slowly circled it. Like it was saying, “Oi! Long time no see, old friend! But what’s this? Still hunting whales? You really don’t know when to give up, do you?”’ The old man laughed.

  ‘Your grandfather must have felt pretty embarrassed,’ Reseng said.

  ‘You bet he did. The sailors said my grandfather took one look at that sperm whale and dropped to his knees. He threw himself on the deck and let out a howl. He wept and called out: ‘Whale, forgive me! I’m so sorry! How awful for you, swimming all those years with a harpoon stuck in your back! After we said goodbye, I wanted to stop, I swear. You probably don’t know this since you live in the sea, but things have been really tough up on land. I’m still living in a rental, and my brats eat so much, you’d be shocked at what it costs to feed them. I had to come back because I could barely make ends meet. Forgive me! Let’s meet again and have a drink together. I’ll bring the booze if you catch us a giant squid to snack on. Ten crates of soju and one grilled giant squid should do it. I’m so sorry, Whale. I’m sorry I stabbed you in the back with a harpoon. I’m sorry I’m such a fool. Boo-hoo-hoo!”’

  ‘Did he really yell all of that at the whale?’ Reseng asked.

  ‘They say he really did.’

  ‘He was a funny guy, your grandfather.’

  ‘He was indeed. Anyway, after that, he gave up whaling and left Jangseng Harbour for good. He came up to Seoul and spent all his time drinking. I imagine he felt pretty trapped, given that he couldn’t go out to sea anymore, and with barbed wire strung all across the thirty-eighth parallel, he couldn’t go back north to his hometown either. So whenever he got drunk, he latched on to people and started up with that same boring old whale tale. He told it over and over, even though everyone had already heard it hundreds of times and no one wanted to hear it again. But he wasn’t doing it to brag about his adventures on the high seas. He believed that people should emulate whales. He said that people had grown as small and crafty as rats, and that the days of taking slow, huge, beautiful strides had vanished. The age of giants was over.’

  The old man swigged his whisky. Reseng refilled his cup and took a sip.

  ‘Towards the end, he found out he was in the final stages of liver cancer. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. As a sailor, he’d been guzzling booze from the age of sixteen to the age of eighty-two. But I guess the news meant nothing at all to him because no sooner did he return from seeing the doctor than he hit the bottle again. He gathered his kids together and told them: “I’m not going to any hospital. Whales accept it when their time comes.” And he never did go back to the doctor. After about a month, my grandfather put on his best clothes and returned to Jangseng Harbour. According to the sailors there, he loaded a small boat up with ten crates of soju, just like he said he would, and rowed until he disappeared over the horizon. And he never came back. His body was never found. Maybe he really did row until he caught the scent of ambergris and tracked down his whale. If he did, then I’m sure he broke open all ten crates of soju that night as they caught up on the years they’d missed, and if he didn’t, then he probably drifted around the ocean, drinking alone, until he died. Or maybe he’s still out there somewhere.’

  ‘That’s quite an ending.’

  ‘It’s a dignified way to go. In my opinion, a man ought to be able to choose a death that gives his life a dignified ending. Only those who truly walk their own path can choose their own death. But not me. I’ve been a slug my whole life, so I don’t deserve a dignified death.’

  The old man smiled bitterly. Reseng was at a loss for a response. The look on the old man’s face was so dark that Reseng felt compelled to say something comforting, but he really couldn’t think of what to say. The old man refilled his cup and polished it off again. They sat there for a long time. Each time the flames died down, Reseng added more wood to the fire. While Reseng and the old man sipped whisky in comfortable silence, each new piece caught fire, crackled and flared up ho
t and ferocious, then slowly burned down to glowing charcoal, and then to white ash.

  ‘I really talked your ear off tonight. They say the older you get, the more you’re supposed to keep your purse strings open and your mouth shut.’

  ‘Oh, no, I enjoyed it.’

  The old man shook the whisky bottle and eyed the bottom. There was only about a cup left.

  ‘Mind if I finish this off?’

  ‘Go right ahead,’ Reseng said.

  The old man poured the rest of the whisky into his cup and downed it.

  ‘We better call it a night. You must be exhausted. I should’ve let you sleep, but instead I kept talking.’

  ‘No, it was a nice evening, thanks to you.’

  The old man curled up on the floor to the right of the fireplace. Santa sauntered over and lay down next to him. Reseng lay down to the left of the fireplace. The shadows of the two men and the dog danced on the brick wall opposite them. Reseng looked at his rifle propped against the door.

  ‘Have some breakfast before you leave tomorrow,’ the old man said, rolling onto his side. ‘You don’t want to hunt on an empty stomach.’

  Reseng hesitated before saying, ‘Of course, I’ll do that.’

  The crackling fire and the dog’s breaths sounded unusually loud. The old man didn’t say another word. Reseng listened for a long time to the old man and the dog wheezing in their sleep before he finally joined them. It was a peaceful sleep.

  When he awoke, the old man was preparing breakfast. A simple meal of white rice, radish kimchi, and dwenjang soup made with sliced potatoes. The old man didn’t say much. They ate in silence. After breakfast, Reseng hurried to leave. As he stepped out the door, the old man handed him six boiled potatoes wrapped in a cloth. Reseng took the bundle and bade him a polite farewell. The potatoes were warm.

 

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