Some died, some escaped.
53
IT WAS MAY AGAIN, three years that month since they had first set foot in Mexico, but not many people talked about that. The labor went quietly and simply, like a closed monastery where a vow of silence had been taken. After a number of strikes and riots, the hacendados and the immigrants learned how to get what they wanted from each other without resorting to serious threats. The hacendados accepted that the Koreans were different from the Mayans. From the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, they were the only Koreans in all of Latin America, so their solidarity had to be strong. Furthermore, their core was comprised of soldiers, intellectuals, and city dwellers, so they had a relatively high level of literacy and knowledge. Whipping did not work with them. For their part, the immigrants no longer antagonized those who ran the haciendas. This was not because they understood what it meant for hundreds of small and medium-size haciendas to be jumbled together, but because they knew there was nothing more to be gained from the hacendados. It was also because they had come to the painful realization, through a number of attempted lawsuits, that all the institutions and laws of the Yucatán were favorable to the hacendados. For this reason, the immigrants worked like seasoned soldiers about to be discharged. They counted each and every day, but they obediently did all that was required of them, dreaming of the outside world.
Some of the more restless workers had already paid the hacendados eighty to one hundred pesos and walked away. Most of these went to Mérida or Mexico City and found manual labor, but a few of them were determined to return to Korea. Gwon Yongjun was one of them. More and more people were learning Spanish, decreasing his value as an interpreter, and since he had earned enough money, he did not particularly want to stay in the sweltering Yucatán.
“Look here, I have to go back,” Gwon Yongjun said as he ate a tortilla laden with cabbage kimchi. A girl who was gently rocking a baby in a hamaca turned to look at him as if she had just been burned. “How could you do that?” Gwon Yongjun’s expression showed that he had expected this reaction from Yi Yeonsu. “How? Even a fox dies with its head turned toward the place where it was born, so what is so strange about saying I’m going back to my native land? Come with me if you want.” Gwon Yongjun pushed the kimchi tortilla into his mouth.
“Ijeong will come back. He’ll come back and be a proper father,” Gwon Yongjun said slyly. The Mayan woman came in and neatly folded the laundry she had taken off the clothesline. A brief silence fell. Yeonsu had known that such a day would come, but she had not known it would come this fast. She lifted the child from the hamaca. The netting left checkered marks on his bare bottom. He looked at Yeonsu and his lips moved slightly. “Omma.” Yeonsu held him to her. Gwon Yongjun lay down with his head on the Mayan woman’s thigh and said, “You have no cause to scowl at me. I’m not the one who did you wrong, am I? He’ll come back next year. If he can avoid the police, the bandits, and the hacendados, that is.” He smacked his lips. “Ah, there are so many things I want to eat, I can’t bear it. I’m going back.”
“I can’t go.” Yeonsu hugged the child hard. Gwon Yongjun flashed a smile. “You have to go. Do you plan on starving to death here? Who will feed you? Your parents? Your brother?”
Yeonsu took the child and went outside. She could not think. After she had had relations with Gwon Yongjun, she had not been terribly surprised or flustered by anything again, but this was different. It seemed as if she had aged many years at once. The Gwon Yongjun she had known until now could not be called an evil person, but neither could he be called a good person. At first he liked her, and he treated her more luxuriously than was necessary for the privilege of embracing a young daughter of the royal family. When her stomach swelled, he even told a lie for her that no one would believe. No one openly contradicted it.
“He’s sleeping with two women,” people would mutter behind his back. The women at the cenote expressed their open scorn for the girl who had fallen from being the only daughter of a literati to being the concubine of an interpreter. If she picked up an item of clothing that had fallen from a woman’s laundry basket and returned it, the woman would wash it again. Her child did not get along with the other children. It was her first child, so her milk did not come easily, but when she went looking for a wet nurse, they turned their heads. Only the Mayan woman with whom she lived, Maria, offered her breast. A strange friendship grew between these two women who lived with one man. Maria’s mammary glands swelled on the day Yeonsu gave birth. Before Yeonsu’s first milk came out, Maria happily fed her milk to the newborn, who had a distinct Mongolian spot on his buttocks. She might have been thinking of her own two children, who died young. They, too, were born with spots on their buttocks, proving that they were the descendants of those who had crossed the frozen Bering Strait so long ago. Maria handed the child over to Yeonsu whenever she wanted him, even if Maria was feeding him. If Yeonsu handled the child clumsily, she brusquely took the child and cared for him.
Yeonsu brought the child to her parents’ house. The door to the house was open. Lady Yun, in a dragging skirt, was fanning herself out front. “Mother,” Yeonsu said. Without replying, Lady Yun turned on her heel, went inside, and pulled the door shut by its flimsy handle. From inside came the sound of Yi Jongdo reading aloud, then stopping, apparently wondering why the door had been closed. Perhaps he realized why, for he began to read again right away. Mother, Father, I may be going back. Her lips moved slightly, but she could not say the words.
Her family had no intention of accepting her. One year after they had arrived at the hacienda, her younger brother was recognized for his fluency in Spanish and sold to a hacienda with no interpreter. Lady Yun’s depression grew worse, and she attempted suicide regularly, but she failed every time. Yi Jongdo had given up all hope of being rescued. It had been two years since the hacienda managers had begun visiting Mérida once a month and bringing back bundles of letters from Korea in their carriages, but there was no word from his noble cousin who sat on the throne. Instead, he heard the news that Yi Jun, the emperor’s secret envoy, had applied for a seat at the International Peace Conference in The Hague, but was rejected and committed hara-kiri. He learned that Prime Minister Yi Wanyong, acting for Japan, forced Gojong to abdicate the throne, and at this the people set fire to Yi Wanyong’s house. He learned that the army of the Korean Empire had its last disbanding ceremony at its training center. He learned that Gojong yielded his throne to his son. At all this news, Yi Jongdo dressed himself in clean clothes, bowed toward the west, and wept in sorrow. He blamed himself for having so rashly resented the powerless emperor. Thoughts of his daughter, pregnant out of wedlock and now concubine to an interpreter, never once entered his mind. He lamented the plight of the native land he had left behind on the other side of the world and confined himself to his house, agonizing over how to drive off Japan and build a strong and prosperous nation. Then he began to write down the results of this agonizing on paper. Of course, these were nothing more than idealistic arguments that had little relation to reality. There was no one who did not ridicule him as he bowed toward the west in the morning and shut himself in to establish the framework for a new nation in the evening. The immigrants had hung a shadow of hope on his letter to Gojong, and now they lamented their stupidity, counted the days, and thought only of living from one week to the next.
Without another word to her family, Yeonsu returned to Gwon Yongjun’s house. She said, “I will go with you.” Gwon Yongjun nodded, as if he had known she would come around. “You made the right decision. There is no other way.” He was already packing his things. “But I will leave the child behind,” she added. Gwon Yongjun was stuffing something into a bundle and he opened his eyes wide. “What? Leave the child? Why?”
She spoke boldly. “I want to start anew. When we return to Korea, send me to school. We have the money, don’t we? The child is a nuisance.” Gwon Yongjun didn’t seem to object to the idea. “Then what shall we do with the child?” She answered as
if she had been waiting for the question, “We will leave him with Maria. She likes Seobi.” Gwon Yongjun grinned. “Well, we can do that if you like.”
He called to Maria, who was hanging laundry outside. He told her that they were leaving the child to her and gave her money. Maria stared blankly at Yeonsu and simply nodded her head. She did not seem sad, but then she did not seem particularly happy either. Yeonsu took Maria’s large hand and expressed her thanks. Then she caressed her toddler son Seobi’s forehead and cried.
“So now I only have to pay off your contract.” As if to once again establish his ownership of her, Gwon Yongjun grabbed Yeonsu’s waist as she cried. She turned away from him and he pressed his lower body against her. Maria got up, took Seobi, and went outside. Yeonsu grabbed the oak table with both hands, and received him as he slowly pushed into her flesh. Though it was their first coupling in a long time, her body opened surprisingly easily. He glanced down absent-mindedly at his genitals, going in and out between the folds of her skirt, and continued his mechanical, repetitive motion. A short while later, Seobi toddled into the room and stared vacantly at his stepfather’s face. Maria followed him in, embraced Seobi, and looked at the man and woman bent over the table. Yeonsu smiled at Maria; Maria smiled back. Then she went out again. Gwon Yongjun made a serene face and ejaculated. In the moment that his penis slipped out and his semen trickled out of her, she felt as if everything over the past few years were pouring out of her. This daydream made her careless, and before she knew it, she farted very loudly. Both of them were startled by this unexpected commotion. Gwon Yongjun giggled and fell down on the bed, and Yeonsu fell on top of him and covered her face. Gwon Yongjun slapped Yeonsu’s buttocks. At that, she farted again. It put her strangely at ease. Her wearisome relationship with him felt like a farce. Something that had been pulled so tight inside that it felt as if she would snap had now loosened. For the first time, she giggled and fully enjoyed the comedy of her own flesh. Gwon Yongjun called to Maria. She lay down between them and fondled Gwon Yongjun’s limp penis. The three of them looked like an affectionate family.
54
THE MEXICAN DICTATOR Díaz, during a press conference with the American Pearson’s Magazine, announced that he had made sufficient efforts for the modernization and economic growth of Mexico, and it was now time to hand his position over to a successor, if only because of physical debility. “I welcome the emergence of an opposition party in the Republic of Mexico. If an opposition party emerges, I will not consider it a sin but a blessing . . . I have no plans to continue my presidency . . . I am seventy-seven years old, and this is enough.”
He expected that when he made the announcement that he would not seek reelection, cries of “Please reconsider!” would sweep the whole of Mexico like wildfire. Yet the result was the exact opposite. He had opened a Pandora’s box. Liberals around the nation rallied around Francisco Madero. In no time, Madero emerged as a political opponent of Díaz. There were even those in the ruling party who took Díaz’s words at face value. The fight for succession grew fierce. Díaz reflected on his error of trusting too much in the people and immediately went into action. He ordered his henchmen to organize a movement to oppose his decision not to seek reelection. Then he cruelly oppressed any and all attempts to make good on his announcement not to run for the presidency.
People soon figured out the dictator’s intentions, but political ambitions had already been set free. Politicians like Aquiles Serdán were not cowed by this oppression. Serdán led the way in the struggle to oppose Díaz’s reelection. He organized a liberal club called Light and Reform, basing his activities in his hometown of Puebla. He attended the joint party convention of the Anti-Reelectionists, gladly casting a vote to nominate Francisco Madero as a presidential candidate.
55
AMONG THE RETIRED soldiers at Chenché hacienda, Kim Seokcheol and Seo Gijung paid to be released. As soon as they had enough money, they went to Don Carlos Menem, handed over their 80 pesos, and became free men. They went to Mérida and rented a small house together. The house was much smaller than their paja at Chenché, but it was incomparably more comfortable. They could wander about as they pleased, and there was a market nearby that was far cheaper than the hacienda store. They were particularly delighted to discover a Chinese restaurant and grocery, where they bought soy sauce and other ingredients so they could cook dishes similar to those in Korea.
“I feel strange,” said Kim Seokcheol as he loafed around in their room. “We could sleep for the whole day and there is no one to say anything.” Seo Gijung chided him: “Surely you don’t miss the hacienda, do you?” Kim Seokcheol waved his hand. “No, of course not.”
But their bodies were far too familiar with the rhythm of a henequen hacienda to easily deny it. In Mérida they still woke up at four o’clock. When they dressed and went outside, the light in the cathedral’s belfry was looking down on them. The money they brought with them gradually dwindled, and there weren’t that many ways to earn more in Mérida. “Maybe we should just go back to Korea.” But they didn’t have the money to do that. Even if they had had enough to travel, they would be just as hard-pressed to make a living when they returned.
Jo Jangyun stayed at the hacienda for the time being. During the course of a few strikes, he lived up to his reputation as the workers’ representative of Chenché. “I can’t leave,” he would say, but the truth was that something was writhing inside him. He already understood that many Koreans would ultimately have no choice but to remain in Mexico. If that was so, there would be a need for an organization to rally the Koreans scattered across the country. Now we may be contract laborers at the haciendas, shackled as bond slaves, but next year will be different. Jo Jangyun naturally began to imagine himself as the head of this organization. Is not this a place where there is no discrimination between high and low? It had been long since the few aristocrats at each hacienda had been reduced to pariahs. There was no way that those who could not properly handle a single task entrusted to them could secure political hegemony. Unlike them, Jo Jangyun had learned how to organize groups and had acquired leadership skills and a strong will in the Russian-style new military. Or maybe he was born that way: when his mother carried him in her womb, she dreamt that a tiger with two heads had leaped into the folds of her skirt. When he thought of it like that, his plans grew bigger. Why should I not be able to form a righteous army organization here that would cross the border between Manchuria and Hamgyeong province to attack and harass the Japanese army? Our nation has long revered culture and scorned the military, so we have come to this state of affairs. Mexico, where there were some two hundred retired soldiers, was the perfect place to establish a new independence army. Furthermore, there was no Japanese surveillance here, so attempting this task would be even easier.
From then on, Jo Jangyun began to spread the philosophy of “revering the military,” which he himself had devised, to those around him. The new nation that he imagined on that Yucatán hacienda would be ruled by a charismatic soldier or retired soldier, and it would pour all its strength into building independent military power. Under a universal conscription system, all citizens would have a duty to national defense. The press—he thought of those young scholars who wrote appeals to the emperor—would have to be subject to appropriate limitations. First, the military had to marshal all its strength to repel the surrounding strong nations, represented by Japan and Russia. Gojong’s followers, who had relied on diplomacy, were utterly naïve.
The number of people who sympathized with Jo Jangyun’s ideas grew. “When our contracts are finished and we leave the haciendas, let us collect money and found a school, one that reveres the military. And we will have to create an army.” “And weapons?” “For the time being, we concentrate on an organization; the weapons will gradually come about somehow. Might not a war break out between the United States and Japan? If Japan is fighting Russia, there is no reason why they might not fight the United States. If that happens, the Uni
ted States will give us weapons. Who knows the mountains and rivers of Hamgyeong and Pyeongan better than we do? We will return with dignity to our homeland as part of the American army and crush the Japanese. If we are to do this, however, we must organize the army in advance.”
Jo Jangyun began to write down these ideas. Great beads of sweat dropped from his forehead and soaked the paper.
56
CHOE SEONGIL WAS in a good mood as he swayed on his horse and headed toward the henequen fields. He wore a stylish, broad-brimmed sombrero, and a leather whip was tucked in his saddle. The cross that he had snatched from Father Paul sparkled in the light on his exposed chest. Seen from afar, he looked every inch a native Mexican overseer. When he arrived at the henequen fields, the Koreans greeted him. He slowly circled the fields, barely acknowledging their greetings. The henequen leaves cut by the machetes helplessly fell to the ground. The women and children bound them. Everything looked peaceful.
From afar, Choe Seongil saw the shaman moving about with difficulty. He lightly prodded the horse’s flanks with his spurs and trotted over to him. “Hey!” At Choe Seongil’s call, the shaman took off his hat and looked up. His eyes were blinded by the sunlight and his face scrunched up as he squinted. “How are you doing? Are you handling it?” The shaman nodded his head. “Well, do a good job, otherwise you’ll end up like Bak Gwangsu.”
When Choe Seongil had gone, the shaman spit violently. Mr. Lee, who had been working beside him, came up to him and sympathized: “That bastard thief. That hacendado’s bitch.” The shaman looked up resentfully at the sky, empty of even a single speck of cloud. “I wonder if Mr. Bak has died,” said Mr. Lee to no one in particular, as if talking to himself. “Well, whether he died from sickness or starved to death, one way or another he must be gone.” Mr. Lee struck a henequen leaf hard in his rage. “They keep saying believe, believe, but that hacendado and that bastard thief shut him up in that hut just because he’s sick, so who would want to believe what they believe? Even the grandmother goddess from our old neighborhood wouldn’t do something like that.”
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