Dust and Other Stories

by T'aejun Yi

  Yonggi, Hŭngbongi, Haksuni, Pongsŏngi.… Could they really be called friends? We grew up swimming naked in the same streams. Because of this I know that Yonggi has a scar on his leg and I know how many moles Pongsŏngi has on his back. I had grown closer to Haksuni after we’d paired up in the three-legged race at sports day and won first prize. I know exactly what their grandparents are like and I know all about their parents. Even the smallest details of their homes are familiar to me. I even know who has a pear tree in their yard and who has a sweet apricot tree on the hill behind their house …

  That reminds me! That letter from Haksuni last spring …

  I realize that I still have not replied. That I’ve even ignored his requests. I had failed to reply immediately not so much because I was busy but because I had simply wanted to ignore the letter. I still remember its contents.

  I read in some magazine that you’ve published a book of stories called Moonlight. Why haven’t you sent me a copy when you know how much I like storybooks? And what kind of title is that? Wouldn’t it be more elegant to have something like Shades of the Autumn Crescent or A Moonlit River’s Night? It must be a love story? Anyway I’d like to read it. I hope you send me a copy, and let me ask you another favor as well. I can’t send any money, but if you could buy one of those little clay pipes and send it along with Moonlight, then I’ll be able to smoke some cigarette butts. I heard they only cost about ten chon at the night market …

  He hasn’t left our farming village since elementary school, so it wasn’t really surprising that he would compare a short story collection to a storybook like Shades of the Autumn Crescent, but I still found it a little unpleasant, and even if I were to send him Moonlight, it was clear that it would not meet his expectations, and so I had quietly forgotten even the request for a pipe.

  I regret this now. I regret the fact that my foolish pride had triumphed over the simple kindness of sending him a copy, no matter whether he would understand the book or not.

  I walk to Chin’gogae and take a look at the clay matroos sailor pipes. There’s nothing in the realm of ten chon. They’re all at least five or six won. They seem even less appropriate for him than Moonlight.

  I move on to the Osakaya bookstore. Before I even turn to the books, I take a look at the people in there, but there’s no one I know. Nothing stands out among the new books either, and then a store employee comes along and starts beating the books with a duster, though what kind of dust could have settled in the rainy season is beyond me. Driven away, I go into the Japanese-Korean bookstore, but I can’t see anyone I know there either until, from the midst of the unfamiliar faces, someone approaches me, shaking the rain from a glistening raincoat.

  “Isn’t that Yi?”

  As I listen to the voice, I gradually recall a face from the past, without the glasses he’s wearing now.

  “Kang …”

  I have the right name. He’d been in my class at middle school. He grasps my hand, and as he shakes it seems to be recalling times gone by, so that he keeps on shaking my hand for quite some time before leading me off to the Ponjŏng Grill. When we remove our hats in the cloakroom, I see that he has a crew cut, and when we remove our coats I notice the Japanese national flag pinned onto the collar of his Western suit. He runs his fingers along that collar, while we ask for a table and sit down.

  “I’ve been keeping up with your katsuyakuburi in the press over the years.”2

  And then he asks, “So, have you made some money?”

  “Money?”

  I force a smile, which harbors several different layers of meaning, and then I ask, “So you’ve done well?”

  “Let’s see, I’ve caught a few nice fish …”

  He keeps urging me to drink and empties a glass himself, before affecting a laugh and adding, “No doubt you’re already aware of this, but the ways of the world are just like fishing, d’you get my meaning? You need some bait … ha, ha.”

  He seems to be quite a man of the world.

  “I’ve been out on the coast of Hwanghae Province, working on the mud flats.”

  I’ve no idea what he’s talking about.

  “Ah, I see that you’re a gentleman of the inner room.”

  According to his explanation, his work involves blocking off the outer limits of wide marshes to stop the tide coming in and out in order to reclaim land.

  “I’ve made something like four to five hundred acres so far.”

  And looking disappointed that I seemed to have no notion of the value of such work, he added, “If I do well, I could make as much as five hundred thousand won. I’m getting well known at the High Command.”

  “High Command?”

  I know this cannot be the term that means the opposite of a mistress, but I don’t know what it does mean.

  “Ha, you’re wasted in Seoul you are, you don’t know the High Command? The Government General!”

  He revels in my embarrassment. And then he brags that when he visits the Secretary-General for Political Affairs he can say anything he likes, after all isn’t he increasing the national territory by creating fine fields and rice paddies out of places that are merely marked as ocean on a map?

  “I haven’t tried yet, but if I make an effort, I could get a county magistracy for sure.”

  He calls for the waiter and suggests we order lunch. But after we’ve ordered, he changes his tone.

  “Hey?”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you connected with some girls’ school?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Why don’t you help me find a wife?”

  His affected laughter resounds once again.

  This is getting really unpleasant. If only we hadn’t already ordered, I could get up and leave.

  “Listen, don’t you want to help make a friend comfortable? I’m not joking, this is for real. I’m single at the moment.”

  I don’t ask whether he’s merely not yet married, divorced, or even widowed, but I come to my senses in a flash at the word “friend.” He uses that term way too freely.

  “We’re friends meeting up after a long while, so have a drink.”

  He pushes another beer on me, belches, and adds, “If we weren’t friends, would I ask you such a thing, having just bumped into you like this?”

  Our lunch begins to appear. I can’t forget his earlier words, “The ways of the world are just like fishing.” Maybe I’m the one being caught right now. Maybe it’s me who’s swallowing his bait.

  “When it comes to women, first of all looks are important … what do you think?”

  I think, “Okay, he’s beginning to fish now,” and hesitate, “Well …”

  Then I think that with fishing the benefits are not all the fisherman’s to reap. It’s not impossible for the fish to simply pull the bait off the hook and eat it. I decide to fill up on all the expensive dishes that he orders and urges me to eat.

  Later on he says, “As you’re a literary sort, I bet you’re better than me at love, marriage, and those kinds of things. If it’s someone you choose, I’ll go along with it unconditionally … this isn’t a joke. This might seem like I’m boasting, but one of my friends at the High Command … that’s right, do you know Minister X?”

  “Does it seem like I would?”

  “In just a few days he’s going to become a provincial governor. People like him have introduced me to daughters from wealthy families, but it’s your introduction that I want. Can’t you recommend me a superb new woman, the kind that you read about in novels? I won’t make her life difficult.”

  He continues, “I’m only telling you this because we’re friends, but since I’ve been single naturally I’ve associated with women of the demi-monde, and not only is it bothering my body but it doesn’t look very good, and …”

  He then gives me his business card and explains that he has no choice but to stay at the Pijŏnok Inn when he comes to Seoul for the sake of business, and he asks me to keep in touch. After we�
��ve parted in the street, he doesn’t walk far before turning around and shouting out, “I’m relying on you!”

  From now on, when he tells someone that he’s caught a few fish, maybe that will include having fed me lunch today.

  The rain keeps falling. My back is throbbing now that I’ve had at least two glasses of the beer that my body can’t tolerate. I suppose this is all a way for me to study the ways of the world.

  My wife must be in a better mood by now. But if I go home that coldness might return of its own accord.

  “I won’t make life difficult for her.”

  I can’t forget Kang’s words.

  I’m a husband who makes life difficult for his wife!

  I go around the back of Nangnang and enter Chinatown. Back when my wife was having trouble breastfeeding, someone told her to try eating pig’s foot, like the Chinese do. We bought some to try, and her milk started flowing again. She grew to like it so much that even now she’s no longer breastfeeding, she would be over the moon if I bought some for her. I go into the Garden of Heavenly Abundance and buy one of the biggest feet they have. Then, on the way home, I stop by the Han Bookstore. I decide to leave the pipe for another day, but first I send a copy of Moonlight to Haksuni.

  The hills of our Sŏngbuk-dong are still shrouded in misty rain.

  —The Ninth Day of the Eighth Month of the Year

  of the Fire Rat, in Songjŏn

  First published in 1936; translated from

  Kamagui: Yi T’aejun tanp’yŏnjip (Hansŏng tosŏ, 1937)

  1. Four years after Yi wrote this story, the Government General did indeed issue an ordinance exhorting Koreans to adopt Japanese-style names.

  2. Typical of elite Koreans in the later years of Japanese colonial rule and indicative of his own collaborative stance with the occupying Government General, Kang injects many Japanese words and phrases into his sentences. Here katsuyakuburi refers to Yi’s “activities.”

  THE BROKER’S OFFICE

  Whoosh! Water came pouring out from under the fence of the house in front. The crash had caught Mr. An by surprise while he was busy counting on his fingers, and now he peered down into the drain over his broken glasses, eyes protruding like those of a chicken about to peck at its feed. There were all kinds of things mixed up in the pearly rinsing water: squash stems, eggshells, empty bean pods.

  “So they’re making mung bean pancakes, huh …”

  For five or six years now, Mr. An had ended his sentences with a sneer and a “damn it” or “huh.”

  “It must be the Autumn Festival tomorrow or the next day, damn it.”

  He licked his lips unconsciously. Saliva had gathered in his mouth at the oily smell piercing his nose. Suddenly the old days seemed like a lie, those days when he had been doing all right and worried about things like toothache and tooth decay. Now his underused teeth felt as sharp as drill bits.

  He ground down on those sharp teeth and looked up.

  The sky seemed to stretch for a thousand miles or more with puffs of cloud drifting here and there. The white clouds dazzled his eyes, like clean, washed-out calico. He thought of his own dirty chŏksam jacket. He looked down at his sleeves and did not raise his head again for a while. A tragic sense of loneliness lingered on his face, of a kind that no piece of mung bean pancake or glass of rice wine could assuage.

  He blew into his sleeves, dusted them down with his hands, and lay down with his head rested on a wooden pillow.

  “Two fours are eight, four fives are twenty, that’s a thousand … wait … a thousand? He said four, so that’s four thousand, four thousand p’yŏng … if the land goes for as low as five won a p’yŏng that still means four won seventy-five chon left over … four fours are sixteen, sixteen thousand won …”

  A recount brought the total to nineteen thousand won, that was how much he calculated he would make if he paid in just one thousand won, in which case how much would he make if he could pay in ten thousand won? He sat up with a start. His forehead pounded. He quickly unfolded his crossed legs and crouched like someone about to relieve himself. He squeezed his pack of Macaw cigarettes again, though he knew well that it was empty. Then he reached into his purse and took out ten chon; this was all that remained of the forty or fifty his daughter had given him three or four times already in order to mend his glasses but which he had squandered on cigarettes. His thin hand trembled slightly as it held the nickel coin. When he thought of Major Sŏ’s rough hands, his own seemed all too weak and feeble. Yet he had never once envied Sŏ, who made his living brokering houses, even though he might accept drinks from him occasionally and slept in his office, treating it like his own room. Sooner or later, An still believed, something would turn up and he would once again live in his own home, eat his own food, and face the world with his own strength and sense of dignity.

  He recalled the words of a physiognomist who had once told him, “Keep your fists clenched around your thumb and your property will never leave you.” He tried hard to follow this advice, but whenever he happened to look down, his damn thumb was invariably wrapped around the outside of his fist. His fabric store had failed and then he had gone into business selling furniture, using his house as security, only to have that store destroyed by a fire.

  “Bloody thumb! Go back in, damn it!”

  He tried pushing his thumbs against his palms and clenching both fists until they hurt. Then he headed toward the tobacco shop, holding the ten chon coin firmly in his clenched fist if only for an instant.

  The three old men would meet up in the broker’s office.

  The old man with the red face and big eyes, who always wore a horsehair hat and sat facing the street because someone might appear at any moment asking to view a house, was the owner, Major Sŏ. A former military man, after Annexation he had whiled away five years looking out for a moment that never seemed to arrive before acquiring this house brokering business to pass the time. At first the income had barely allowed him to avoid starvation, but from year eight or nine of Taishō (1920–1921) rich people from the countryside had flocked into Seoul, whether driven by taxes or for their children’s education. At the same time money had become more plentiful, and houses in central areas, such as Kwanch’ŏl-dong and Taok-chŏng, were selling for over ten thousand won as long as they were not too old. These deals brought in an income of three to four hundred won during some months from spring through autumn, so that after several years Sŏ had been able to build a house with some dozen rooms in Kahoe-dong, and then after a few more years he had begun to acquire land in the Ch’ang-dong area. Brokers’ fees had decreased considerably with the increase in the number of brokers and the emergence of large building companies, such as Kŏnyangsa, who made buying and selling directly the general rule. Nevertheless, since he had student lodgers in a house with more than twenty rooms, Major Sŏ wouldn’t fall behind with rice payments or be pressed to pay for fuel even if there were no other income in any particular month.

  “In life you get by somehow …”

  This was what Major Sŏ used to say. It had once seemed as if even the mountains and rivers would step aside at his command when he had worn a sword at the military training camp. He could not help but shed tears of sadness when he compared his spirit back then to his situation now—a mere buyer and seller of houses, owner of a broker’s office, everybody’s errand boy, who had to obey with a “yes, yes” whenever kisaeng, prostitutes, or the like asked him to find them a room to rent. He liked his drink anyway, but more than once he had been overcome by memories and headed off to a bar alone.

  Recently such memories surfaced less and less, perhaps because the vitality that constitutes the source of the military man’s spirit was also draining from his body. One day he had been at home and about to eat lunch when he heard the calls of some peddler, but the voice sounded strangely familiar. He listened carefully as that voice gradually drew closer; it wasn’t trying to sell anything, but calling out “Glass bottles, soy sauce tins bought here!”
Surely that voice belonged to someone he knew. He stood up in order to look out of the window and watched a middle-aged man pass by, holding a couple of straw bags and a pair of scales in one hand while calling out, “Any bags, newspapers, magazines?” It was definitely someone he knew, but at first he could not remember from where, the man’s name, or even what he used to do.

  “Ah! That’s it … it must be … really!”

  After a while he nodded. Just as the call for “glass bottles and soy sauce tins” was disappearing into an alley, Sŏ had remembered who it was.

  “My old comrade Major Kim … huh!”

  Kim had been a young officer, much younger than Sŏ, full of knowledge and talent and owner of a commanding voice that earned plentiful praise from their superiors. Even a couple of decades later there could be no mistaking that voice and figure. Sŏ was deeply moved when he thought of the young Kim and how he looked today; he put down his spoon and took several gulps of cold water.

  And yet the feeling did not last as long as it might have done in the past, when he had been younger and stronger. He watched his second son, now in the final year of middle school, return home and his wife lightly count out the dark blue notes for the rice store employee who had come to collect payment, and he said to himself: “You just have to live, there’s no other way. Some people even have to hide their shame and wander around like that … ahem.”

  He was not lacking a certain pride in the fact that his position was fairly respectable compared to such desperate friends.