Dust and Other Stories

by T'aejun Yi

  “What’s the point of thinking about the past? As long as I’m alive … ha, ha.”

  He planned on living the rest of his life with a smile. To be fair he was somewhat shallow by nature, but he was also cracking more jokes recently. This aspect of his character did not match Mr. An’s permanently sunken eyes and the sullen “damn it” with which he brought every sentence to an end.

  “Hey, you old fool, shall I buy you a drink?”

  Insulted at being called a fool, An would fly into a rage.

  “Bastards like you don’t know how to measure your drink.”

  “And d’you think playing cards day and night will bring your mother back to life?”

  When Sŏ kicked his cards away, An gasped and flushed bright red before quickly picking up his belongings, which amounted to no more than a fan and a pack of cigarettes, and walking out with a scowl as if he would not return.

  “If he were a woman, he’d have to be a concubine!”

  Major Sŏ burst out laughing, but Mr. An did not reappear for a couple of days.

  One evening An’s daughter gave a dance performance. Her name was An Kyŏnghwa, and she had been in both Osaka and Tokyo as a member of the Saturday Society, before showing up in Seoul five or six years later having made a name for herself as a dancer. This was to be her first public performance back home. Sŏ had pestered An to go, and even An had straightened his shoulders with pride when his daughter’s picture and story appeared in every newspaper. He got hold of as many free tickets as possible and handed them out to several other friends in addition to Sŏ.

  “Huh, is that your daughter, the one in the middle lifting her leg up?”

  The others all sat stupefied, but Sŏ spoke in a disapproving tone, as if he were watching something outrageous.

  “They say that when it comes to dancing, the more civilized the country, the less clothes they wear.”

  This was An’s attempt to block any further comment.

  “Well, I don’t know … men these days must be fools …”

  “Why?”

  This time the criticism came from a different friend.

  “When we were young, we’d never have put up with anything like that …”

  “Damn you … can’t you act your age …”

  An exploded with rage.

  One dance had finished, and the bright lights had been turned back on.

  “You should tell her to go back to being an actress. At least actresses don’t run around exposing their thighs like that!”

  “Why do you have to poke your nose into other people’s business? So you know something about the size of inner rooms and side rooms, but what do you know about anything else? If you don’t like it, just get out!”

  An was furious. And at the condescending mention of inner rooms and side rooms Sŏ flew into a rage as well. In the end he stood up, but not before shouting, “And what do you know? You fool!”

  After this incident, An did not appear at Sŏ’s office for almost a month. And then it was only because Pak Hŭiwan went and fetched him.

  Pak Hŭiwan did not sleep at the office like Mr. An but whiled away his time there regularly. In fact, he did not just come to pass time but to study as well. He had a nephew who worked at the courts, and ever since Pak had heard about the push to hire scribes who could write Japanese, he had carried around a copy of the Fast Course in Reading the National Language, from which he would recite in the same style in which one might read from the ancient Chinese classic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

  “Kin-sang dokko-e yukkiimassukka? Where are you going, Mr. Kim?”

  The cover of the Fast Course in Reading the National Language was covered with greasy fingerprints and even jet-black dirt from his hair, because he sometimes placed it on top of his wooden pillow and rested his head on it to take a nap. As a result the small characters that read “Compiled by the Government General of Korea” could no longer be seen, and certification as a scribe seemed as distant as ever.

  “What’s the good of you or me acquiring a trade when we’re half-dead? What kind of time do we have … huh!”

  If An had been shuffling his cards half the day and they still had not fallen correctly, he would vent his wrath by snatching the Fast Course in Reading the National Language out of the murmuring Pak Hŭiwan’s hands and hurl it into the street.

  “And what kind of luck are you hoping for when all you do is wait for the right cards to turn up day and night?”

  “I’m just killing time.”

  Yet deep inside, An burned with greater worldly ambition than Pak. An’s daughter went back and forth to Pyongyang and Taegu, even touring the provinces, and she seemed to make some money, but what with fixing the house and buying a gramophone in order to open a studio, and having to run around socializing, there seemed to be no room for her father in her budget, especially as she considered him a nuisance.

  After observing his daughter’s mood carefully, An had once ventured to speak, “Look at this, perhaps it’s because the cotton padding’s old, or the way it was sewn, but the lining’s gone in my trousers. And sometime soon I’ll have to get myself a new shirt.”

  “Of course, I’ve been meaning to buy you one.”

  She answered easily enough, but An did not see that shirt until winter had already passed. And when he had asked for just one won to mend the bridge of his glasses, she had gone out of her way to change a one-won note in order to give him a fifty-chon coin. He had paid five or six won for those glasses back when he’d had a little money, so there was no way the bridge could be fixed with just fifty chon. Of course, there were bridges to be bought for fifty chon, but it was in An’s nature to buy something neat, and he hated buying something that did not match his face. Instead he resorted to tying his glasses with string and spent the fifty chon on cigarettes.

  “Why didn’t you get your glasses fixed?”

  His daughter had asked him that evening.

  “Umm …”

  An did not reply. A few days later his daughter gave him another fifty chon. As she did so, for some reason, she added, “Father, your insurance payments alone come to three won eighty chon a month.”

  It sounded like she was asking him to die so that she could get the insurance money.

  “What business is that of mine?”

  “I did it for you, of course. Who else do you think I would have taken out insurance for?”

  An had to force himself not to say, “If you’re doing it for my sake, then why not give me at least a penny while I’m alive? What will I know about it when I’m dead?”

  “Why isn’t fifty chon enough to fix your glasses?”

  He did not bother explaining.

  “Father, are you really in any position to be so picky now?”

  But again the fifty chon all went on Macaw cigarettes. He had probably done this three or four times by now.

  “What use are children? Especially daughters.… It’s my own money that I need.”

  Each day An felt the need for money more acutely.

  “Is this world only good to you if you have money?”

  He had nothing better to do, and so he went outside for a walk; on every street high-rise buildings were under construction, and every neighborhood was expanding with picture-like modern culture houses. He had let his concentration lapse for a mere moment when a horn sounded at the back of his neck from a car shiny like a catfish that had just jumped out of water. He turned around to see the driver glaring at him—a fat, middle-aged man sat smiling in the back seat, his gold watch chain glittering.

  “I’m almost sixty … damn it!”

  An resented growing old. One way or another, before he got much older, he wanted to get hold of at least ten thousand won and bargain with the world again on his own terms. In this pitiful state what did it matter to him if modern houses sprang up, or if cars and planes increased like swarms of ants and flies? When he thought about it, his connection to the world had been broken the very instant
that money had fallen from his hands.

  “I might as well be dead, hadn’t I?”

  He had been asking himself such questions for a long time.

  “Is there no hope?”

  And, “You just need some kind of base, then you can get in the mix!”

  And again, “Just because you’ve lost money, doesn’t mean you can’t make it.”

  In other words, he had the confidence that he could make money, if he could just find some kind of base.

  And then, he heard the news from Pak Hŭiwan. It was secret information passed along from a certain influential person in government circles, who claimed that a second port city on the lines of Najin was to be built on the coast of Hwanghae Province. At this point only those in government office knew about the plans, but the land for the harbor construction was being bought up and there would be a public announcement from the authorities soon.

  “Is it wasteland or farmland?”

  An asked, his eyes wide open.

  “They say it’s dry fields.”

  “Dry fields? And how much is it a p’yŏng?”

  “Apparently it’s gone up a bit. When government officials buy, even country bumpkins notice something’s up, don’t they? But they don’t know why the officials are buying, you see.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, and apparently it hasn’t gone up that much.… Maybe twenty-five or twenty-six chon a p’yŏng will do it. Even so, it’s pie in the sky for us, right?”

  “Hum!”

  An’s temples throbbed. If it were true, then the sooner one jumped in the more money was to be made. In Najin too, as soon as a rumor arose that a port was to be opened, land that had been worth five or six chon rose to over one hundred times that within a year, and, depending on the land, three or four years later the most strategic places had increased in value by over one thousand-fold.

  “What’s the use of delaying when I’m half dead? Even if I sold out in the first year, I could make at least five won a p’yŏng for sure …”

  So An thought to himself, and then he sat down and asked more questions.

  “Just where on earth is this place?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Well?”

  “Only this one man knows. What he told me was that he had copied the plans and knows where the important sites are going to be, so if we could get ten thousand won in capital together, we could just buy those plots. And he doesn’t want too much either, he’s just asking for 20 percent of the net profit, not including expenses.”

  “I bet … Who would give such a tip and then step aside? … Twenty percent, you said? Twenty percent …”

  The more An thought about it the more this seemed like the base he needed. Not only was there the precedent of Najin, but, according to Pak Hŭiwan, relations with China were becoming more intimate with the establishment of Manchukuo, and as a result even common sense dictated that a large port on the coast of Hwanghae would be needed, which would serve a similar purpose to Najin. This was common sense even An could believe in.

  That day, for the first time in a long time, Mr. An bought expensive Pigeon cigarettes and smoked one all the way down on the spot before coming to the office. For some reason Pak Hŭiwan did not show up all day. An thought he must be running around trying to raise some money elsewhere. Major Sŏ had not yet returned, having left before lunch to try to strike some deal. An took his well-used cards down from the mantle of the sliding door.

  “Eh, look at that!”

  The cards did not usually comply with his wishes, but now they came up in the turtle shape first time. He wished someone were there to see it.

  “Whichever way you look at it, this is extraordinary.… Luck seems to be turning my way!”

  He threw a half-smoked cigarette into the street. He had now smoked several cigarettes on an empty stomach and his throat was dry. The discarded bean pods stuck in the drain of the house in front had now turned yellow.

  “Just you wait, by next Autumn Festival …”

  That evening he told his daughter what he had heard from Pak Hŭiwan. He might have encountered a few failures, but he was still the Mr. An who had spent more than ten years in business, and his way of exhorting investment surprised even his daughter. He sounded like a different person. She did not respond immediately, but must have been unable to forget what he had said, because the next morning it was she who brought the subject up first and asked even more questions, above and beyond what An had asked Pak Hŭiwan. An, in turn, had given detailed explanations beyond those given by Pak Hŭiwan, asserting that the net profit would at the very least amount to more than fifty times their initial investment, even if they settled accounts within one year.

  His daughter was enthusiastic. Within four days she had turned her studio and house over to a trust company and borrowed three thousand won. An was so happy he wanted to jump up and down, as if he had become a millionaire or something.

  “You bastard Sŏ, all this time you’ve secretly looked down on me. I’m going to have you find me a house even better than yours. People like you are house brokers by nature, what’s so special about that?”

  But on the day the money was released from the trust company, some young man he’d never seen before showed up and blocked An’s way. This turned out to be the daughter’s boyfriend. She did not let even one chon fall into her father’s hands, but had the young man handle all the money. At first An could not contain his anger, but within a few days they agreed on a compromise; if they were going to accrue a net profit of fifty or sixty thousand from their three thousand won, what did it matter if ten thousand or so went elsewhere? And so, An followed unwillingly behind the young man, who was as good as his son-in-law.

  One year passed.

  It had all been a dream. And as dreams go this one was nightmarish. They had bought land worth three thousand won, but however much they pored over the newspapers everyday and kept their ears to the grapevine, news of a port being built surfaced neither in the newspapers nor any rumors. There was talk of land values in Yongdangp’o and Tasa Island rising thirty- or even fifty-fold, with millionaires being made overnight, but elsewhere there was no news for a while, and then later they found out through Pak Hŭiwan once more that they had all, even Pak, been tricked by this certain person in government circles. The entire scenario had been dreamt up by this person, who had bought up land too hastily when he heard about a survey of a proposed site for a port, and had then needed to sell it on when the plan had been abandoned due to some defect.

  Although Mr. An had not been allowed to touch even one won of the money, the thunderbolt fell on him. He couldn’t bring himself to eat, even when he had missed three or four meals, and he couldn’t go home to eat anyway. All he could do was sigh.

  “When money’s at stake, can a child’s filial duty really be discarded like the root of a cabbage?”

  It was alcohol and cigarettes that he craved more than food. Needless to say, he could not get his glasses fixed. He could no longer get hold of ten chon, let alone fifty.

  As the Autumn Festival approached, the weather was fine, as it was every year. The sky seemed to stretch for a thousand miles or more, with puffs of cloud drifting here and there. Some of the white clouds dazzled his eyes, like clean, washed-out calico. Once again, An thought of his own dirty chŏksam jacket. But this time he did not blow into his sleeves or give them a shake. Instead he quietly used those dirty sleeves to wipe away his tears.

  The summer had been exasperatingly hot, but then the first frost had fallen unusually early, perhaps as an omen that the coming cold would be extreme too. The cosmos blooming over the fence of the Chōsen Industrial Bank residence, which Major Sŏ passed every day, was now shriveled and black, as if thoroughly parboiled.

  The Major’s head ached. It was most likely because the previous night he had tried to cheer up a tearful Mr. An by taking him first to a Chinese restaurant and then to eat some loach soup, with the result that they had b
een out until two in the morning. He had eaten a few spoonfuls for breakfast, but his mouth was still parched. An was surely feeling just as bad, and so the Major dutifully went down to his office, thinking he would drag An out for a drink to chase away their hangovers even though it was midday. Once there he discovered that the cloth banner bearing the words “Broker’s Office” had not yet been hung up.

  “Hey you … what time do you think it is to be snoring away?”

  But there was not a snore to be heard. When he opened the sliding door, he received a shock. There was blood on An’s lips, and his face was ashen grey. The air in the room was damp as a dirt cellar.

  “No …?”

  First, Sŏ closed the sliding door behind him, and then he rubbed his eyes to take another look. An was long gone, leaving behind just his corpse and some kind of medicine bottle lying on the floor.

  It took a while before Sŏ registered the tragic event.

  “Oh …”

  He thought he should go to the police, but then decided he should tell the daughter first, and went to fetch her from the An Kyŏnghwa Dance Studio, which he had heard about so often. He let her cry for a while before asking, “Shouldn’t we tell the authorities?”

  “No, please don’t do that.”

  She flinched.

  “Don’t?”

  “My …”

  “Your what?”

  “There’s my reputation …,” she pleaded.

  “Reputation? That’s absurd, how can someone so concerned with their reputation let their father die like this?”

  An Kyŏnghwa collapsed in tears again. She held onto Sŏ’s legs when he tried to leave and would not let go.

  “Help me!”

  She repeated the words several times.

  “All right, I’ll keep this a secret, but will you do as I say?”

  “Yes.”

  Sŏ sat down again.

  “You took out some insurance for your father, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did, only simple life insurance.”

  “Whatever it is … how much will you get?”