Yi Jongdo returned home and gave the sealed letter to Jinu. “There are three letters. I wrote more than one because one might be misplaced. Give these to the interpreter and have him go to Mérida and send them.” Yi Jinu took the letters and went to Gwon Yongjun’s house. The Mayan woman stared blankly at him; she was naked. Gwon Yongjun took the letters. “Is this that letter?” The boy nodded, but his eyes strayed to the woman’s breasts. “Very well, I will go to Mérida and mail these myself. Life on the hacienda was too much for an aristocrat of such high status as your father anyway. And the hacendados of the Yucatán will have gotten their money’s worth from the Koreans by now, so they shouldn’t have too much to complain about. Don’t worry, you can go back now.”
The next day, Gwon Yongjun rode a carriage into Mérida. He ate a pork dish at a Chinese restaurant in an alley in Mérida’s southern market. His stomach full and his spirits high, he enjoyed the sunshine in the park that faced city hall and the cathedral. He looked around the cathedral. He admired the Baroque façade, which was completely different from the architecture he had seen in Seoul, and then went inside. Begun in 1561 and completed in 1598, the cathedral was built on a Mayan ruin, with stones taken from Mayan temples, but Gwon Yongjun had no way of knowing this. He was only impressed by the walls, so thick and strong that he wondered if it had once been a fortress. The stained-glass windows turned the intense Yucatán sunlight into brilliant colors and lit the dark interior. The cathedral, built during the colonial period, expressed the abnormal lust for power of Spanish politicians and clergy; it was far too large for the city of Mérida. Gwon Yongjun was exposed to that lust for power without any filters whatsoever. To him, the cathedral’s majestic size and splendid height were its clearest aesthetic message. The feminine charm of Korean temples that bowed low on mountain slopes felt like a symbol of weakness and servility.
He walked north along the city’s central road and found himself in front of another church. It was a Jesuit church built in 1618 for the order’s missionary and educational work in the Yucatán. Ignacio Velásquez’s ancestor José Velásquez had met his comrades here. Yet he drew a line between himself and the Jesuits, who had turned toward their peaceful work as he waged war on the native religions of the Mayans. Gwon Yongjun sat on a bench in Hidalgo Park, across from the Jesuit church. The Grand Hotel, along the south end of the park, tempted travelers with its magnificent exterior. On the hotel’s sign was written in large letters that it had opened in 1902. Gwon Yongjun counted on his fingers. It was a brand-new hotel, only three years old. Being a hotelier in Mérida wouldn’t be bad. If one had the money.
A university and high school were located next to the Jesuit church, and dozens of students were chattering in the small schoolyard. When one of them stepped up on a raised platform and began to speak, applause poured out. With his limited Spanish, Gwon Yongjun had difficulty following the speech, but because he heard the name of President Porfirio Díaz a number of times, and because of the heated tone of the speaker, he had no doubt that the subject was politics. People flocked to the square, and the usually dull city center of Mérida was suddenly transformed into something like a market swarming with hundreds of people. The speaker did not seem to be of the lower class—judging by his speech, his sharp suit, and his hairstyle. He looked like a successful bourgeois or a hacendado. His polished shoes shone dazzlingly in the sunlight. Students and citizens listened attentively to his words and shouted and clapped with every sentence.
As the speech reached it climax, mounted police galloped past the bench where the interpreter sat. A few carriages followed, clattering over the cobblestones. Decorated with gold and jewels, these magnificent carriages turned north and the mounted police split into two groups, one continuing to escort the carriages and the other swooping down on the meeting. The square soon became bedlam. The crowd, comprised primarily of men, scattered into the web-like alleys of Mérida. The mounted police blew their whistles and secured the area, but they did not pursue the crowd any further.
Gwon Yongjun approached a street vendor and asked, “What on earth is going on?” The vendor replied indifferently as he swept the ground: “According to the new law, it is illegal for ten or more people to assemble. Going to church is the only exception. Isn’t that ridiculous? The old dictator is shaking. What does he think would happen in this backwater town?” Gwon Yongjun asked, “What were those carriages?” “Those were the carriages of the governor of Yucatán. He’s scared stiff as well.”
Gwon Yongjun had an ominous premonition about the future of Mexico—from the mounted police’s uneasiness as they suppressed the crowd, from the sarcastic shouts of the students, and from the faces of those who took part, so full of conviction. No, this country might not last long. He returned to the bench and drew from his leather bag the letters that Yi Jongdo had taken such pains to write over a number of days. He read them slowly. After the formal salutations, including apologies for being such a dull-witted fellow to trouble the emperor’s spirit, there followed tale after tale of the woes his people suffered in Mexico. Yi Jongdo wrote that he would gladly take responsibility for his mistaken judgment. But he could not bear to look upon the suffering of ignorant people. He begged the emperor to have mercy on them and rescue them. Gwon Yongjun snorted. Aristocrats like this were precisely the reason that Korea had fallen. This Yi Jongdo had never once lifted a machete with his own hand, yet when he opened his mouth he was quite convincing. How much did he really know of suffering? All he did was sit in his house and recite the sayings of Confucius and Mencius!
Gwon Yongjun took out a match and set the three letters on fire. The flames leaped up and swallowed the paper in an instant. The ashes scattered with the wind around Hidalgo Park. He returned to the hacienda with a refreshed spirit, telling Yi Jinu that he had sent the letters, so he should not worry. He didn’t forget to warn him that it might take a full three months for a reply to arrive, given Mexico’s inferior postal system.
48
IJEONG AND YEONSU’S MEETINGS continued night after night. Perhaps they believed that the darkness of the lightless fields would hide them. Their trysts grew bolder. The first person to notice was Lady Yun, who was suspicious when her daughter came in each night drenched with dew. “Where on earth have you been?” Yeonsu shut her mouth tight and made no reply. Lady Yun did not directly tell her daughter what to do. “You can’t get married here, you know. It is most important to exercise restraint. The life of a woman is to endure, to endure, and to endure some more.” For the first time in her life, Yeonsu opened her eyes, looked straight at her mother, and asked, “Then what will you do, Mother? Will you keep me here in this house and make me a kitchen ghost?” Lady Yun spoke firmly. “We must go back.” “Where?” “What do you mean, where? Korea, of course. We will go back to Korea and have a proper wedding for you.” Yeonsu scoffed, “Do you really think we will be able to go back?” Lady Yun did not waver. “If I know nothing else, it is that the royal palace will do everything possible.”
“Do you know whom I meet every night?” Yeonsu struck back boldly. Lady Yun covered her ears and shook her head. “I don’t want to hear it. So please, don’t say anything. Just be ready to go back.” Yeonsu got up and paced back and forth in the house. “Think,” her mother said. “If you want to be scorned by even the lowly people of the hacienda, then you do as you wish. But, my daughter, you cannot hide anywhere. Everyone is watching you.”
This was the truth. Yeonsu was far too conspicuous to hide quietly and enjoy a secret affair. She was the tallest of the Korean women, and her round, thick cheeks, her high nose, and her neat eyebrows left such a deep impression that even when she appeared to draw water from the hacienda cenote, all eyes were focused on her. And the scent of roe deer blood emanating from her left a far more powerful impression than her looks. So there was no way that the acts of two young people in the brush every night would not be found out.
Jinu was also aware of his elder sister’s trysts. The rumor we
nt around and around and finally reached him. He noticed his sister’s jar when she returned from the cenote. It should have been sloshing with water, but it was empty. Why did it have to be an orphan, who was no different from a beggar? Why couldn’t it have been Gwon Yongjun? Then everyone would have been happy. He stood in his sister’s way as she tried to slip out of the house at night. Yi Jongdo, who had no idea what was going on, opened his eyes wide. “What is going on?” Jinu stepped aside. “It’s nothing.” Yi Jongdo cleared his throat and lectured him. “Even between siblings there must be a separation between the sexes.” Yeonsu gave up on going to draw water and sat sewing in the stuffy house, kept under watch in turn by Lady Yun and by Jinu. Her needle pierced her flesh a few times. Dark red drops of blood fell on her sleeve.
The overseer Fernando and Gwon Yongjun followed Ijeong after he finished the day’s work. Pushing his cart along the rail tracks and suffering from too little sleep after waiting all night for Yeonsu in the brush, he looked haggard. When he had handed over his bundles of henequen to the paymaster in front of the storehouse, Gwon Yongjun asked Ijeong to come to the office. “The work seems to be too hard for you,” Gwon Yongjun said to him. Ijeong told him that it was not. Fernando stared intently at Ijeong and said something in Spanish that Ijeong could not understand. He did hear the word “hacienda” a few times and had a bad feeling about it. Gwon Yongjun smiled and interpreted Fernando’s words. “Don’t worry. You’re going to a better place. Although it is a bit far from here.”
“That makes no sense. I haven’t been here for that long, have I?” Gwon Yongjun took the contract that Fernando was holding and showed it to him. Of course, Ijeong could not read a document crammed with Spanish. “That is up to the hacendado for at least four years. Have a nice trip. A carriage is waiting outside, so you can board it immediately.” Ijeong glanced outside and saw a driver stroking the mane of a gray horse. “I need to stop by my house to get my things.” Gwon Yongjun shook his head. “What things? Just get in the carriage. You’ll have everything you need where you’re going. Those clothes of yours that even a beggar wouldn’t wear? We’ll send them later.”
“Am I going alone?” Gwon Yongjun nodded. Ijeong shot up from his seat and tried to dash outside, but Fernando, who had been waiting by the door, caught him by the waist. A few foremen and overseers put Ijeong in the carriage and bound his legs with shackles. Ijeong continued to struggle after he was caught; his arms and legs were scraped. “Young people have no manners.” Gwon Yongjun struck Ijeong on the back with a club. The workers who had submitted their henequen bundles for inspection by the paymaster and were returning to their houses could only stare blankly. One of them remarked, coldly and resentfully, “Serves him right for chasing women when he’s still wet behind the ears.”
Just as the carriage with Ijeong aboard was passing the boundary of the hacienda, Dolseok let out a shout and ran toward it. In his hand was a wrapping cloth that held Ijeong’s clothes and belongings. “I came to give you this.” Ijeong took the bundle and gave Dolseok a firm handshake. Who knew when they would see each other again? Ijeong said, “You must tell her. Wherever I go, I will surely return, and I will take her with me.”
Dolseok, who could not pass beyond the edge of the hacienda, stood beneath the limestone arch that served as a front gate and waved until Ijeong disappeared from sight. The carriage rattled for two hours and let Ijeong off at the entrance to another hacienda. A few workers had come out to greet Ijeong and take him in. They told him where he was. The name of the hacienda was Chenché, and the hacendado was Don Carlos Menem.
49
DON CARLOS MENEM was not at the hacienda. He was meeting with his friends in Mexico City, talking about the political situation. What had begun as a denunciation of the so-called Científicos, who talked only of science whenever they opened their mouths, had led to criticism of President Porfirio Díaz’s excessively pro-American policies. Menem shook the ashes from his pipe into an ashtray and raised his voice. “Those fellows mention Auguste Comte at the end of every statement, but what would that blasted old man know about the reality of Mexico? They are all busy feeding their bellies, those cunning fiends. Only conscientious people like us suffer.”
A young man who stood by with a cup of Darjeeling tea in his hand smiled down at Menem and said sarcastically, “Will the laborers at your henequen hacienda feel the same way?” Menem did not hesitate for a second before replying. “Of course! There is no hacendado in the Yucatán as benevolent as I. And what about your sugar cane hacienda?” The young man shrugged. “No matter how well we treat them, there are limits. We are not Spanish aristocracy, we are but Mexican businessmen. If we cannot make a profit, we must close up shop. Thus we cannot help but urge on lazy workers. Think about it: the neighboring haciendas bring in Chinese coolies no different from beggars, work them, and then sell their products at a low price in the United States, so what hacendado in his right mind would not do the same? In the end it is all about competition, is it not? And we must also compete with the darkies of Cuba and Dominica.”
“That is precisely the logic of Díaz, of his Científicos! Competition, competition, competition!” A middle-aged gentleman with a red beard leaped into the fray, his face turning red, too. The young man gave the English porcelain cup with the Darjeeling tea to a servant and smiled at him. “So what of it? We are all hacendados. We all want to bring in cheap laborers from the Philippines or Canton if we have the chance. No, this has nothing at all to do with our preferences. Even if we don’t want to, we have to. Like getting our hair cut!” No one laughed.
“Your premise itself is flawed.” A woman who until then had sat quietly and listened carefully to the men speak opened her mouth. “Porfirio Díaz tells us to cultivate sugar cane, henequen, and chicle, even if we have to import laborers. As you all know well, he draws in foreign capital and allows foreigners to manage the haciendas.” Menem agreed. “That’s right. American hacendados have entered the Yucatán as well. Those damned Yankees!” The woman continued: “He says that haciendas are vital to Mexico, but that is a lie. Sure, the Americans are in favor of them. They grow cheap agricultural products in Mexico, pack them up at the port of Veracruz, and sell them at a higher price in Europe. And in the process, owners of vast haciendas as large as the Netherlands or Belgium, and the Científicos of Mexico City, earn a fortune. In the end, only America and Díaz’s people earn money while the rest of us gasp for breath. What Mexico needs is not haciendas, it is democracy.”
Menem was fascinated by both her charm and her speaking ability. Who knew that such a powerful poison could come from those beautiful lips? But such poison was sweet to him. “That’s right, Lady Elvira. What we need is not haciendas, it is democracy. But this is impossible with Díaz. You would all agree to that?” Those seated around the study all nodded. But their gazes were filled with distrust for each other. Democracy instead of haciendas? They knew better than anyone else that there was not a single person in Mexico who could achieve this. It was either more haciendas or more power!
“Hmm, very well.” Lady Elvira rose from her seat. “Then there are some people I would like to introduce to you. You can all come here next week, no?”
Groups opposing the dictator gradually began to appear.
50
WHILE MENEM WAS FREQUENTING the anti-government salons of Mexico City, taking care of both his love life and politics at once, the Chenché overseer Álvaro took the place of the graceful hacendado and played the role of the villain. He confined the Ulleung Island fisherman Choe Chuntaek, who had been caught trying to escape, in the hacienda jail and had him whipped. He referred to the agreement between Menem and the Koreans that he would provide corn and tortillas free of charge yet deal severely with escapees, but the flogging inflicted on Choe Chuntaek was overly cruel. The last riot erupted because of the hacienda store, but this time it was because of the whipping. The working conditions worsened drastically while the hacendado was gone. Before, all work had en
ded when the sun set, but now they had to work overtime at the henequen hemp mill until late in the evening—and for the same pay.
No one knew why the cowardly old bachelor Choe Chuntaek had tried to escape. No one knew where he would have gone if he had escaped. He did not know a single word of Spanish. He had insisted that his fellow Koreans must not learn Spanish, that if they learned Spanish they would not be able to return to their homeland. When asked why, he repeated the same words, as if frustrated with the questioner. “I’m telling you we just can’t. If we learn Spanish we will forget our own language, and then how will we go back?” He carried on continuously in the Ulleung Island dialect, which other Koreans had a hard time understanding, and if a foreman called his name, he pretended not to hear. When his work was finished and the paymaster asked him, “Cuántos son?,” how many henequen leaves he had cut, he merely held up his fingers to indicate the number, never letting the Spanish numbers that he knew pass his lips. He chose a moonless night, waited until everyone was fast asleep, took the small amount of money he had saved, and climbed over the hacienda fence. He was discovered by a sharp-eared Mayan guard and caught before he could get far.
The retired soldiers met once again. Jo Jangyun, the Deva King Kim Seokcheol, the half-pint Seo Gijung, and the reticent sharpshooter Bak Jeonghun called the men together one day before the break of dawn. The whalers and peasants from Pohang made up the main force. There was also Ijeong, who had arrived the night before. He was not in the mood to participate in any struggle, but he was also not the type to hide at home sizing up a situation. He was glad to have finally been reunited with Jo Jangyun and the soldiers, and the talk of the fight they were planning to carry out stirred his hot blood. His rage at the hacendados, selling them all like dogs and pigs, suppressed his desire to give in to despair and plunged him into this new situation. Once again, the men armed themselves with machetes and picked up stones and put them in their pockets in advance. Ijeong was given a machete as well. Just in case, they decided to divide themselves into three groups, each led by experienced soldiers. The aristocrats, who did not want to fight, were left out. Women and children were told to stay at home. With a great cry, the men ran toward the hacienda jail where Choe Chuntaek was being held. The guards out front were demoralized and fled. The men broke down the door and rescued Choe Chuntaek, but he had already lost his senses and collapsed. Enraged even more at seeing him this way, they thronged toward Don Carlos Menem’s house, as they had done the last time. Yet the overseers and foremen who were gathered at the house were not as yielding as they had been the last time. They immediately went on the counterattack, firing their long rifles. Bullets grazed a few of the Koreans’ arms and thighs. It was still before sunrise, so they could not tell exactly where the bullets came from. The other side aimed at the torches the men carried, until they had no choice but to douse the torches and retreat. A few of them threw stones, but there was no way they could storm the high wall of the house. As soon as the Koreans began to retreat, the foremen and Mayan guards led by Álvaro all leaped out with a shout. The sound of gunfire, like corn popping, rang in their ears. With their escape cut off a number of times, the mob fled toward the storehouse and jail where Choe Chuntaek had been confined. “Damn it, we’re completely trapped!” Jo Jangyun and Kim Seokcheol blocked the storehouse door with the chairs and desks from inside and put wooden boards up over the windows, building a barricade. Jo Jangyun said, “Since it has come to this, let us make our stand here. If they kill us, it will only be their loss as our buyers, so I don’t think they will fire at us indiscriminately. We’re better off here. If we hold out for only a few days, their loss will be great, so they will ultimately try to negotiate with us.”
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