by T'aejun Yi
After we moved to Seoul I saw less and less of my mother’s family, as I was busy moving around within the city—first because of my studies and then later because of work—and then a few years later, my grandfather passed onto the jeweled pavilion while I was in Edo, and my uncles scattered, leaving behind the Dragon Pond their family had lived next to for generations to head for Manchuria and other places in the northern territories, and so my connection to that place grew gradually more faint.
And yet, as I began to visit the water once more to fish, the first place to come to mind while I sat by the waterside was that Dragon Pond. I took pleasure in it all by myself, almost as a kind of legend because the road was so remote and no one was likely to recognize me even if I were to go there. Whenever I visited various fishing sites and found the mass of people dizzying, or when a pleasurable excursion ended sometimes even in curses, the urge arose to lower my fishing rod just one more time in Gentleman’s Pond or that Calf’s Dying Spot, where the only sound to be heard was from the cicadas, and the wild lilies smiled, and that desire grew ever more urgent until finally last summer I made a resolution, prepared my traveling clothes several days in advance, and chose a day with a cool breeze to set off on a dawn train to visit Dragon Pond, my heart aflutter, as if I was on the way to visit a loved one.
Ah! Perhaps it was because two or more of those decades had passed during which the mountains and rivers are said to change, but does that mean we can’t even trust the mountains and rivers over time? A young girl was rinsing her rags beneath the “big stone bridge” in the middle of the village, but there was no more than a small gully, a muddy puddle, no longer a stream! In the past even in winter you could strike the ice with a rice-cake mallet and a carp the size of your hand would be floating underneath, just like that. I asked why the water in the brook had decreased so much, but this turned out to be futile, because the little girl washing her rags had never seen the brook as it used to be. It was the height of the farming season, and the village was quiet, completely deserted. Even if I were to meet somebody, we wouldn’t recognize each other, and so I simply gazed in the direction of the upper village, where my mother’s family used to live, before heading toward the Calf’s Dying Spot with a plan to do some fishing first of all.
I walked as far as should have been necessary. But when I reached the point where the Calf’s Dying Spot should have been, I was still completely lost and hesitated a while. The whole area seemed to have been filled in and the mountain razed, to be replaced by a red muddy track going up the slope. I asked a farmer doing some weeding, and he said that I was in the right place. The pond where the calf had supposedly died had disappeared some time ago now, and a track had been created in its stead to take trucks in and out of a mining operation, which had started up in the valley on the other side of the hill. I looked more closely to see just a trickle of water flowing down a narrow gully. I turned back to the farmer and asked some more: the source of water for the brook out front had been taken away by the Irrigation Association’s reservoir, and the water trickling down here came from paddy fields and the like; even the Hannae Stream, which had once flowed through Gentleman’s Pond, had run dry, having been turned into catchment for the townspeople’s drinking-water supply. When I asked whether the water in Gentleman’s Pond had dried up too, he replied, “Water? It’s just a dry riverbed.” All had come to nothing. Since I had come this far, I sweated my way up to Gentleman’s Pond in the hope of retracing old memories, but the nut pine wood on the ridge had been cut down to skeletal form, leaving the ridge white and covered in gourd-bowl-shaped graves; it looked like a public burial ground. Have that many people from here died since then? There should be water, but there was none. Only when I went closer could I hear a water-like sound. It seemed rather strange though, because it seemed to stop and start rather than flow continuously. It turned out to be the sound of someone else walking on the gravel. I looked up to see an old lady as white as a ghost, rising up from beneath the rock cliff at Gentleman’s Pond. A shiver went down my spine, and I stood still.
What could it be? She climbed falteringly up to the gravel patch, where she bent right over. She was picking up pebbles and collecting them in her skirt. After gathering pebbles for a while, she straightened her back, turned around, and walked back down to the foot of the rock cliff with faltering steps. Although I couldn’t see any water, I could hear it. The sound I’d heard earlier was that of pebbles being poured into water. The old lady’s head, with hair sticking up like green onion roots, rose up the bank again. She climbed up to the gravel with the same faltering steps, placed pebbles into her skirt, and then went back down again. I was at a loss as to what was going on. There were several different legends about goblins at Gentleman’s Pond, but this was daytime and a clear day at that; it was beyond common sense to think that I was seeing a goblin. Yet if she were human, then not only did a white-haired old lady seem out of place here, but her actions—picking up stones in order to fill in the water—were beyond my comprehension. I looked around and saw people scattered around the mountain fields weeding. I summoned my courage and made sure to step noisily on the gravel while I walked toward the old lady, who was climbing back up from the foot of the rock cliff, having made yet another splash in the water.
“Hello?”
The old lady looked straight ahead with tired, murky eyes, gasping.
“Why are you putting stones in the water?”
No answer. She bent over to pick up more stones and went back down to the water. When she came back up, I asked again, louder this time.
“Are you trying to fill in all of the water?”
Only then did the old lady nod.
“Why?”
She was silent once more but continued her work.
This place had once been a deep and wide pond, second only to the Calf’s Dying Spot, but with the gravel leveled, the flow of water had been completely cut off. This strange old lady was diligently trying to fill in the few yards of water remaining beneath the rock cliff.
Only Kŭmhak Mountain remained unchanged from of old. White clouds clustered around its peak while it dozed peacefully. I managed to find a few wild lilies blooming bright red on the rock cliff. Thinking of Mencius’s words, that to climb a tree to look for fish could cause no harm, I put down my fishing gear and sat for a while in the sweltering sun until there was nothing left to do but return to the village. The old lady was still carrying her stones to the water with true devotion and took no break despite being drenched in sweat.
I did manage to find a hut in a melon field. Recently it’s impossible to find anything other than the yellow Kinmaka melons. The white, persimmon-red, and black melons of old seem to have become extinct. Perhaps they didn’t suit the age of enlightenment either, because they did not bear fruit as prolifically as the Kinmaka, and now they’re hard to find.
So even melons can become classics! I ate a Kinmaka that was just a little more fresh than those I buy in the street of Chongno while the owner of the melon field hut solved the riddle of the white-haired old lady at Gentleman’s Pond for me.
She was neither a goblin nor a senile old woman, but simply a tragic mother. Her youngest son had become depressed about his handicapped body and drowned himself at Gentleman’s Pond. She had a water exorcism performed to try at least to recover his spirit, yet what had emerged most unexpectedly was not the spirit of her son but that of a slave girl from the inner village, who had drowned herself some decades earlier. Because people say that spirits only emerge from the water if someone else goes in to take their place, her son’s spirit could not be retrieved without another drowning, no matter how many exorcisms were performed. While alive her son had hovered in corners because of his handicap, and now in death she was unable to guide her son’s spirit out of these dark waters at the bottom of an isolated cliff and pray for him to enter the eternal heaven; unable to bear this thought, she had thrown herself into the water several times only to be repeatedly rescued
by her eldest son, thus failing to become the water spirit who might take the younger son’s place. When the waters had finally begun to dry up at Gentleman’s Pond, and only more pebbles were washed down with each rainy season, she had thought heaven was not ignoring her after all, and everyday she would come out to work on filling up the little water that remained. What an unbelievable, yet all so sincere, human story!
I climbed up to the upper village to take a look at my mother’s family home. A middle-aged woman carried a small child, who must have been her grandson, on her back and was chasing chickens away from the straw mat in the yard. When I asked if I might take a look at the men’s quarters since I was passing by, she said that her son was out somewhere but I should go inside and make myself comfortable.
As I entered the yard to the men’s quarters my memories were dazzling, but nothing looked familiar at all. The veranda was nowhere near as high as it had seemed when I had gazed up at it as a child. Where sliding doors had once been hung on three sides, there were now glass windows. There was no sign of the plate once affixed to the front of the quarters, carrying the words “Thoughts by a Moat Pavilion,” nor of the carp-shaped bell that had once hung from the eaves. The sliding doors were closed. I walked around the veranda toward the lotus pond. There was not a single lotus to be found, only clumps of sweet flag and frogs leaping into the water, caught by surprise. This was the lotus pond where the frogs had once croaked so loudly at night that my grandfather would order a servant to throw stones into the water to silence them while he slept. Across from the pond the thatched hut remained. My grandfather had complained that the large men’s quarters looked empty and desolate and so had a veranda built onto the small room in the hut, where he ate his meals in the three winter months. The new owner did not appear to be taking care of this hut, because water full of rotting straw was dripping down the walls and pillars. Above the sliding doors between the veranda and the room, I could make out the traces of several lines of writing. The paper was very faded. I was delighted to see what I thought must be the only brushstrokes of our grandfather remaining in this house and took a closer look; the thick strokes in the style of Yan Zhenqing seemed somehow fitting to my grandfather.
I end the day sitting among the luxuriant trees, keep myself tidy by washing in the pure waters of the stream, eat fine herbs that are picked in the mountains and fish caught in the river. With no set time to rise or sleep, I simply follow what feels comfortable …
The bottom of the paper had faded and fallen away, so I could not read any more. It was a fine piece of writing, lacking any trace of the vulgar world and fitting to that thatched hut. Later, when I returned home and looked it up, I realized it was a piece by Han Tuizhi. Yet although the words belonged to someone else, they well described my grandfather’s life at one point.
“With no set time to rise or sleep, I simply follow what feels comfortable …”1
Sitting down on the veranda, I gazed up at the clouds surrounding Kŭmhak Mountain’s peak and murmured to myself. “If the lord of this thatched hut were still alive today, what would he think of the Calf’s Dying Spot and Gentleman’s Pond?
He lived well and died well!
Perhaps nature, too, comes and goes with its lord!
It was a futile dream to think that I would be able to take this most vulgarly painted fishing rod, bought in the market, and find the true happiness that exists only in legend now that there is no such thing as a life with no set time to rise or sleep!”
I guessed there must be some members of my mother’s family remaining in some of the houses in this village, but I bowed my head and walked back down the road and beyond, still thinking of the sadness of that old mother so devoted to trying to rescue her son’s spirit by filling up the water.
Living submerged by the current of the age is like a spirit living beneath the water. They say that even the mulberry fields turn into blue ocean, but it’s simply that all things follow the movement of the general current, and it’s not possible to fill the ocean back up by moving pebbles.
—The Third Month of the Year of the Water Horse
First published in 1942. Translated from Yi T’aejun,
Toldari (Pangmun sŏgwan, 1943)
1. The first version of this story, published in 1942, ended here. This final section was added when the story was republished in a 1943 short-story collection.
BEFORE AND AFTER LIBERATION
A WRITER’S NOTES
Apparently it was now called a “notice” rather than a “summons,” on account of the latter causing too much excitement, but there was no equivalent change in the unpleasant feeling brought on by the piece of paper that ordered Hyŏn to appear at the main police station, which the local policeman had arrogantly tossed down as if performing some irritating errand. A notice was no different from a summons in that it only created added anxiety for the already timid Hyŏn, even though he acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary in front of his wife’s blanching face. Despite this, he would rather deal with the notice immediately than wait until the following morning, since he would neither be able to focus nor eat properly for the rest of the day, and inevitably bad dreams would disturb his sleep.
Hyŏn subscribed to no particular ideology and had no previous convictions. Yet it appeared that he had now risen to the status of a quasi surveillance subject, judging from the fact that he was being asked to come and go from time to time on suspicion that he might be providing some kind of ideological leadership to young people—perhaps some rural youths had been caught in the wake of some incident, and his writings had come to light in the resulting house searches, a letter or two might have been discovered, or his name mentioned under questioning about contacts in Seoul. He supposed that were the situation serious enough to warrant imprisonment, they would have taken him away by now rather than send a notice or summons, but still he was constantly anxious and, this time, even quietly rather worried. Though he was a mere novelist, more than a few young men had visited him in their search for a possible solution to their contradictory dilemma: the Special Student and General Volunteer Systems offered the prospect not only of meaningless death, but also meaningless murder, for while their own deaths would benefit the enemy Japan, they would have to kill the friendly troops of China, Britain, the United States, and even the Soviet Union, who constituted the only hope for their own people. Hyŏn had met young men who had suffered severe nervous breakdowns in the course of a mere day or two, and one young man who had sent a suicide note the week following a visit. Hyŏn was no student-soldier, but when he pondered the future in the face of such extreme national suffering, even he could hardly control his sadness at belonging to such an unfortunate brotherhood. When he met complete strangers, he occasionally suspected they might be spies trying to probe his views, but then he would reproach himself for harboring such unforgiveable suspicions and in his excitement blurt out all his thoughts at first meeting. Sitting in his quiet study afterward, his face still flush with excitement, he would grow uneasy about what had just occurred until, realizing that he had already gone so far, he would feel the urge to make a more rewarding mistake in the face of the imminent end of the nation. Yet he was neither prepared nor strong enough to crack open the shell of his long-encrusted character and leave it behind. He could only summon a bitter smile at his own worthlessness as he repeated a phrase from a short story he had recently written.
“Living submerged by the current of the age is like a spirit living beneath the water. They say that even the mulberry fields turn into blue ocean, but it’s simply that all things follow the movement of the general current, and it’s not possible to fill the ocean back up by moving pebbles.”
“You keep saying it won’t be long now, but if those stubborn Special Forces or Volunteer Forces, or whatever they’re called, resist until the very end with their one-man boats, then surely even America with all its riches can’t build as many ships as there are Japanese soldiers. We’re just waiting for Japan to
lose … but it’s like trying to pluck a star from the sky!”
After yet another sleepless night, Hyŏn’s wife urged him to sell their house and move to the countryside. She wanted to go to a remote village far away from the authorities, where they could grow their own food and live in peace for once before they died. Hyŏn had thought of this too, but escape overseas was no longer an option, and, as long as they were under a Japanese sky, where would they find a village from the age of the sage kings Yao and Shun, one where the officials were nowhere to be seen and even the dogs were quiet at night? Yet, neither could they hold out forever in Seoul just because there was no paradisiacal peach valley, especially as Hyŏn—who would rather stop writing entirely than produce propaganda or write in Japanese—had been struggling to support them for a while now. All they had left was their house, and if they were to touch that, then the best plan would undoubtedly be to use it as security for a few fields in the countryside, rather than let it go for the measly price of a skewer of dried persimmons. And yet, it was no easier to replace the shell of their life than to break open the shell of Hyŏn’s character.