by T'aejun Yi
Sanggŭn looked up into the mountains behind them, smiled, and went back down to the main village.
Several days later, the chairman of the Township Farming Committee, who was known for his sweet-talking, went to visit Tiger Grandma.
“What’s all this fuss because you can’t drag me down there? Do you think I’ve nothing better to do than sit down with kids young enough to be my grandchildren, to recite “This is a cow, this is a chicken” and to repeat it all without even the excitement of a shaman’s do? So I don’t know how to read, but I don’t owe you nothing! I’ve lived to sixty-five without owing anybody a letter, or even a prayer! I’ve done nothing wrong, so why the hell don’t you stop bothering me, telling me what I don’t know and all that!”
The chairman merely smacked his lips and went away again.
And so this Tiger Grandma emerged as an obstacle in the project to completely eradicate illiteracy in Twenty Walls, and because of this one woman remaining illiterate, all the women of the village, who were just barely beginning to walk toward the light and rid themselves of various superstitions, were unable to completely free themselves from their superstitious attachments. While they easily forgot the letters they had learnt while the hangul school was closed throughout spring, summer, and autumn, they continued to be influenced by Tiger Grandma and her mountain of superstitions in their daily lives. Many would ask Tiger Grandma to select an auspicious day when leveling the ground to repair a house, or ask her which days they should send their daughters-in-law to their parents or their daughters to their in-laws. Each time this happened Tiger Grandma would never fail to interject sarcastically and loudly, “Don’t people who’ve learnt the letters know how to choose a day? What on earth’s the point of learning those damn letters then?”
It seemed as if more than a couple of old people might refuse to attend the upcoming winter school as long as Tiger Grandma were left out and they could see her resist the pressure to learn to read. Those who had worked hard all the previous winter and just about managed to fumble their way through “This is a cow, that is a chicken,” just as Tiger Grandma had complained, were supposed to move onto a real textbook this coming winter.
“What can we do to make sure that Tiger Grandma comes to the school?”
From early autumn this question became a major headache for all the members of the Federation of Democratic Youth and Children’s Alliance in Twenty Walls, including Sanggŭn.
“I wish she’d move to a different village!” said one honest youth.
“If that old woman would just go deaf. Then no one could go hear her tell a fortune, could they!” added one quick-tempered youth in anger.
“But none of this talk is helping …”
This was the ever-hopeful Sanggŭn. Whenever leaders from the township or county or someone from the party’s social groups showed up, he would always confer with them about the problem of Tiger Grandma. But they didn’t have any good ideas either. Then one day Sanggŭn had to go to the county office on some errand and happened to mention the situation at the end of his conversation with the representative there, and that person’s words gave him courage as well as a clue toward solving the problem. This is what the person said, “Korea’s high illiteracy rate is one of the most toxic remnants left by Japanese imperial rule, so the project to eradicate illiteracy is an important step in cleaning up those toxic remnants of Japanese imperialism. To open the eyes of the likes of Tiger Grandma, who cannot read, means expunging the most deeply entrenched feudal remnants from our most conservative villages, but it also means to utilize in the best way possible the great dedication to the people of this grandmother, who likes to work. We have to rate highly the lifestyle of this grandmother who loves labor. She is a woman of good character with many positive qualities. A woman like her must have a strong sense of pride, so please try to influence her positively by stressing her strengths and ensuring she doesn’t fall by the wayside.”
Sanggŭn spent several days absorbed in thinking about the best way to properly utilize Tiger Grandma’s pride for both her sake and that of the village.
On the day that the newly built adult schoolhouse was to be completed, Sanggŭn gathered together everyone involved and announced that he had come up with a plan to deal with Tiger Grandma, who lived closer than anyone to the new schoolhouse. Of course, at first not everyone agreed with his plan, but eventually it was approved, in no small part due to Sanggŭn’s firm belief that perseverance would open up a path and his willingness to accept full responsibility were they to fail.
Sanggŭn did not encounter too much difficulty in encouraging Tiger Grandma to attend the opening ceremony for the adult schoolhouse. Because the opening ceremony for this building was a big event and a happy occasion for the entire village, he said, they were inviting those village elders who had always worked the hardest for the village as honored guests. Worked the hardest for the village … at these words a flash of anger flickered in her sunken eyes.
“This is village business too, isn’t it?”
“Um, it certainly is!”
In fact, whenever something went on in the village that demanded everyone rush in to make a fuss, Tiger Grandma would always be there; she was at the head of the line when rebuilding river banks, repairing wells, or fundraising, and precisely because she took the lead the project would be sure to progress quickly. Yet deep down she felt that she was more rightfully owed respect within Twenty Walls for chasing away the resentful spirits of those who died in childbirth from mothers who could not expel their afterbirth, and for ridding patients of malaria with peach branches, and for choosing the right day for all kinds of special occasions. It was with a feeling of pride for these acts that she took up her place amongst the honored guests at the adult schoolhouse, having taken out her most-prized, brand-new clothes, which though only made of cotton she was wearing for the first time since the land reform.
But on this day there was something of which Tiger Grandma was not so proud. She had not stepped to the forefront when it came to raising the funds to build this schoolhouse and had ultimately even shirked making a contribution of several measures of rice. Now she was full of regrets: if only she had known events would take this course, she would not have resented a sack of rice let alone a few measures!
On the morning of the first day of classes at the newly built schoolhouse, Sanggŭn visited Tiger Grandma once more. This time he was accompanied by five or six others, including the chair of the Farming Committee, the chair of the Cell Committee, and other members of the Federation of Democratic Youth; he hoped to make a more dignified impression, even though he planned to do most of the talking.
“Grandma, you owe us a favor!”
“Come in, come in. A favor? And why not two, if I can?”
They went inside and sat down, and then Sanggŭn began to speak in a more polite fashion.
“Grandma, we need your help this evening.”
“What do you mean?”
“Grandma, we need you to do something for our village this evening.”
The pupils seemed to rise out from Tiger Grandma’s sunken eyes. There would surely be a momentary change, but would it be a spring breeze or a frost that would emerge from those eyes?
“This evening we will hang the bell at the school and ring it for the first time. Now could we leave that job to just anybody? We’re here today because after a discussion we decided that one of our village elders should ring the bell, and we all decided that we should ask you.”
“Really …”
They all looked at once at those eyes, which could easily have turned ferocious. But this was no frost for sure. She wriggled her protruding chin a couple of times and then burst out laughing.
“You hold a special position in our village, don’t you grandma?”
“Well, I know this is Twenty Walls, but I don’t see why you have to keep on annoying me like this. You want me to go to the school and ring the bell? You want me to make a fool of myself in you
r exorcism?”
“This is village business too, isn’t it?”
Tiger Grandma struck a serious expression and replied.
“It certainly is!”
That evening Tiger Grandma not only rang the first bell at the adult schoolhouse, but she was also installed as the president of the Twenty Walls Adult Schoolhouse Support Committee.
“What do I know to be president? What’s possessing me? What’s gotten hold of you all?”
“Will the women in this village listen to anyone but you, grandma? We’ll do all the work, all you have to do is show up at the school each evening as an elder looking after our school. Please just keep an eye on anyone who misses a lot of classes or who stops studying, and give them a talking to. This is village business too, isn’t it?”
For once, Tiger Grandma did not say, “Um, it certainly is.” All of the students—children, adults, and the older people—whispered to each other. In the confusion that followed some said Tiger Grandma, who couldn’t recognize a single letter, was now the president or chair of some school society, and some children even said she was the headmistress. Tiger Grandma ran home, embarrassed to the hilt.
The teachers came to fetch her first one day and then a second, but from the third day Tiger Grandma was waiting out front of her own accord. And when the students started to call her “Grandma President of the Support Committee” no one objected. Here and there murmurs could be heard, however, including from the unforgiving Little Grandma, who coughed a couple of times and said to herself in a rather loud voice, “What, so you get to be president because of your age? Not because you’ve studied hard?”
Tiger Grandma ground her teeth when she heard this. She didn’t think she would hear something like this from someone growing old in the same village. How could someone so well known for being a dunce, who had married into a family in the village and even had a grandson but still couldn’t remember the memorial days for the ancestors in that house, how could someone like that complain about her own lack of learning just because they knew a few letters? If those letters had been stones, Tiger Grandma would have chewed them up and swallowed them on the spot, even if it meant breaking all her teeth. She took a gulp of saliva and responded.
“You’re younger than me, aren’t you? Let’s see where we are a month from now. If I only study by looking over your shoulder, I’m not afraid of someone with your memory …”
A month later Tiger Grandma and Little Grandma were already worlds apart in their reading ability. When they were learning the row of letters beginning with ch’a, Little Grandma was told off several times for not knowing the letter ch’ong. Her daughter-in-law, who was sitting by her side and feeling sorry for her, gave her a hint, “Ch’ong, it’s ch’ong. Think of ch’ong, the guns that soldiers carry around on their shoulders.”
“That’s right, it’s the soldiers’ gun ch’ong, that’s how I remember it! Ch’ong ch’ong …”
But when the teacher quizzed her on the letter ch’ong the following evening, she started to feel dizzy. Her daughter-in-law couldn’t bear to watch her blink and blink, and prodded her on in a low voice, “Have you forgotten about the soldiers?”
And Little Grandma went a step further from ch’ong to blurt out, “Kkwang, bang—that’s what it is!”
The whole school erupted in laughter.
By this time Tiger Grandma, president of the Support Committee, had written the following letter to her grandson Yŏngdol, who was serving in the People’s Army.
“Yŏngdol, are you all right? Are you keeping warm? Is your commanding officer well? You must listen to what he says. You must have seen our General Kim several times by now. Your grandma has been made President of the Adult School Support Committee. I’m very busy learning to write and taking care of school things. Your mother is also studying hard. I wondered what the point of learning to write was, but this is it. Your favorite millet has done well this year. When will you have a holiday? You must do your best for our country. Our cow has had a calf. I agreed to be president because they said there was no one else, but it’s hard work looking after all these ignorant people. Everyone tries to talk at once, it’s enough to hurt my ears. I have a mountain of things to say, but my eyes are beginning to blur, so I’ll stop here.”
This was the first letter that Tiger Grandma had written in her life, and that mountain of things to say included the story of Little Grandma reading the letter ch’ong as kkwang, but she hadn’t yet worked out how to write such complicated sentences. She spat on the end of her pencil several times and stopped there.
—January 12, 1949
Translated from Yi T’aejun,
Ch’ŏt chŏnt’u (Munhwa chŏnsŏnsa, 1949)
DUST
1
It had been a long time since Mr. Han Moe had taken out his prized paper twine bag. Bluish mold spores had blossomed in the old dirt stains. The spores did not easily shake out from the gaps in the bag, which had been woven from old Korean paper. He tried flicking with his fingernails and even held the bag up to his lotus-bud-shaped beard to blow on it.
When leather goods had been banned toward the end of the colonial occupation, Mr. Sŏng, an antiquarian book broker, had carried around this bag, which he had woven from paper twine made by taking apart old histories and volumes of the Comprehensive Mirror that were worth next to nothing. With its simple but elegant style, it could not help but attract the attention of Mr. Han Moe, book collector, antiquarian, and lover of Korean things, who had even adopted an old vernacular word for mountain as his pen name. Though he would hesitate over a won or two when bargaining for books, he had offered a generous price for this bag and ended up able to buy it for less.
Han had no sons. The eldest of his daughters lived in Seoul, but the youngest, and his fondest, had moved down to Pyongyang upon marrying, and it was partly to be near her that Han had evacuated in the final years of the occupation. As he went back and forth selling his house in Seoul and buying a new one in Pyongyang, he proudly carried the bag with him, and when he had finally moved the several thousand old books that he had collected over more than three decades—enough to reach up to the rafters and make the proverbial ox sweat—it was into this bag that he had placed the inventory of his books and the checks for their carriage.
Over the five years that had passed since then, both before and after Liberation, this bag had done nothing but sprout mold spores each summer alongside his old books in the attic.
When Liberation came Han had wanted desperately to go to Seoul to see all his friends and his elder daughter’s children, whom he had not seen in a while, and he had wanted to see the libraries belonging to Japanese scholars that were sure to pop up here and there at bargain prices. Yet being overcautious by nature, Han had not left Pyongyang.
In the aftermath of Liberation and before public order had been restored, burglaries and fires had occurred frequently here in Pyongyang too. It was fire that Han feared above all, more so than burglary. Since the end of the war he no longer had to worry about bombs, but his fear of fire remained unabated. In the absence of a separate library that might offer more protection, his books were piled up in the attic and in his own room; at night, the thought of a fire kept him awake to the point where, though no Buddhist, the whole world seemed like a burning house, and he could not relax for even one moment. From time to time, he would go out to the nearby Yŏn’gwang Pagoda for some fresh air but would always have to turn back several times to check with his own eyes that the hearth had been well and truly extinguished in both the inner room and the garden room, which he had rented out, and even then he would repeatedly entreat his wife to take care before finally setting out once more.
Han had taught classical Chinese and calligraphy at the same middle school in Seoul for more than twenty years. He had been able to support his small family by taking in student boarders and devote his entire monthly salary to the collecting of old books.
Back then, the Japanese had yet to start acquiri
ng Korean books, and with little competition he had been able to procure extremely rare editions from the Koryŏ and early Yi dynasties at cheap prices. Against all entreaties, he had stubbornly stayed away from books with pages missing and editions with missing volumes, and whenever faced with two identical books, he had invariably chosen the one with the most interesting history of ownership. Although not large in number, Han’s book collection had caused many scholars and libraries to salivate for some years now, precisely because it contained so many rare and pristine books. He had been approached several times by the Government General Library and both the Kyŏngsŏng and Tokyo Imperial University libraries, as well as by some notable Japanese scholars, with generous offers to buy all or part of his collection. Yet he had refused all such offers, even though it meant having to live modestly, and he also did his best to avoid lending out his books for photoreproduction.
I would rather burn my entire collection than allow it to be used to support the distortion and defamation of Korean culture and history by the Japanese Empire! Whatever happens, one day our nation will rediscover our language and letters, and we will be able to freely research and appreciate our own culture and history! It’s only because I believe that such a day will come that I can go without food and clothing to collect these books!
Such was Han’s secret wish. Because of this wish, the August 15 Liberation had brought more joy to him than to most, and later, when the Kim Il Sung University had been established in northern Korea and scholars from there had come to him expressing their respect and requesting that he make his book collection public, he had been moved to tears and felt the most rewarding pride in this labor of the past three decades.
It was also true that Han had in the meantime been thinking even more ardently of Seoul. In Seoul there were more collectors of a like mind, who understood the special nature of the library he had worked so hard to build and who had envied it for quite some time. If only unification would bring about a stable nation in which interest and passion in culture could thrive, he hoped to reveal his rare collection with a public exhibition, which would have a great impact on the scholarly world, and he would then donate his books to the nation or some library, gathering respect and praise from friends and scholars alike.