by Cho Se-hui
“Here’s a hundred fifty thousand wŏn,” Myŏng-hŭi’s mother had said. “The first thing you want to do is let your renters leave.”
Mother silently accepted the money. “No one else will move in knowing the house is going to be torn down.”
“That’s what I mean. Spare yourself all those mean things they’re saying. Since they want to leave, let them go.”
“But how can I take this money?”
“Myŏng-hŭi ŏnni liked you,” Yŏng-hŭi said to me. “You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Enough,” I said.
Yŏng-hŭi played her guitar. The moon rose above the smokestack of the brick factory. My radio wasn’t working; I missed several days of lectures for my high school correspondence course.
I couldn’t keep the promise I’d made to Myŏng-hŭi. I dropped out at the beginning of my third year of middle school. I couldn’t attend any longer. Mother and Father hoped I’d continue my studies. But they didn’t have the wherewithal to support me. Upon close observation Father appeared much older than others his age. Apart from those of us in the family, no one knew this. Father was three feet three inches tall and weighed seventy pounds. Swayed by their preconceptions of these physical defects of Father’s, people didn’t realize he was old. Father fell into a state of resignation and depression at the realization that he had entered his twilight years. His teeth were going bad and many nights he couldn’t sleep. His eyesight weakened and his hair thinned out. His attention span and powers of judgment diminished, not to mention his willpower. Over the course of his life Father had done five kinds of work—selling bonds, sharpening knives, washing windows in high-rises, installing water pumps, and repairing water lines. And then one day he announced he would do something else: He would work for a circus. He brought home a hunchback and they proceeded to discuss a variety of things. First, he could work as an assistant to the hunchback. The two of them discussed the routine they would perform. At this point Mother protested. We raised objections as well. Father backed down listlessly. The hunchback sat looking at us with a blank expression. He left with tears rolling down his cheeks. From the rear he looked absolutely dismal. Father’s dream was shattered. Shouldering his heavy toolbag, Father went out in search of work. It was that evening that it happened.
“Children!” Mother called out to us. “Something’s wrong with your father’s voice.”
“What is it?” I asked him. Father didn’t say a thing.
“I’d better go to the drugstore,” said Mother. She stepped down into the yard.
“Get me some alum,” said Father. It didn’t sound like his voice. We could hear his stubby tongue rolling up inside his mouth. Mother came back with some lozenges called Hibitan.
“They didn’t have any alum, but this is supposed to be better—you suck on them. Here, will you take them, please?”
Father silently accepted the medicine and put one of the lozenges in his mouth. After this, Father couldn’t speak well. His tongue kept curling up inside his mouth. When he slept, he bit his tongue.
“Your father is worn out,” Mother said. “Don’t depend on him anymore. The three of you need to go to work instead.”
Mother cried. She went to work at the print shop bindery. Wearing a rubber thimble, she folded printed sheets. I grew fearful. I left to start work as an assistant in the print shop office. I learned later that without sweat you gain nothing. Myŏng-hŭi wouldn’t see me. She gave me the cold shoulder. In the space of a few months Yŏng-ho and Yŏng-hŭi dropped out of school as well. We felt more comfortable about that than you might think. No one harmed us. We received unseen protection. Just as aboriginal peoples in South Africa were granted protected status in designated areas, we received protection as a different group. I realized that we could not set foot outside our area. After putting in time as an office helper and then with line spacing, special characters, and type distribution, I did type resetting. Yŏng-ho did printing. I didn’t like the idea of both of us working at the same place. Yŏng-ho felt likewise. And so before he started at the print shop he tried doing odd jobs at an ironworks. And he worked at a furniture shop. I went there and saw him at work. I saw little Yŏng-ho standing amid the din and the haze of sawdust and I told him to quit. Although there was an awful din at the print shop as well, there wasn’t any sawdust. We worked ourselves to the bone. Our wrists thickened in the print shop. At the time, Yŏng-hŭi worked in a bakeshop located in the corner of a supermarket on the main street. If nothing else, we were grateful that she worked in a clean environment. Yŏng-hŭi wore a sky-blue uniform. Through the bakeshop window Yŏng-ho and I watched her work. She was pretty. People would not have believed Yŏng-hŭi was the daughter of a dwarf. We thought that no matter what, we should study. If we didn’t, we’d never be able to leave our area. The world was divided arbitrarily between those who had studied and those who hadn’t. Ours was a terribly backward society. It operated exactly the opposite of what we had learned in school. I read any book I could get my hands on. After I moved up from type resetting to typesetting I developed the habit of reading what I was working on. If I felt my little brother and sister needed to read it, I would take the galleys and run off several proofs. Yŏng-ho and Yŏng-hŭi listened carefully to what I said. Eagerly they read the proofs I brought home for them. The truth was, these efforts involved no great sacrifice on my part. I passed the high school qualifying exam and entered the correspondence high school program.
Late one autumn night that year Father took me for a ride in the sewer creek in a small wooden rowboat. He silently plied the oars.
“Come back!” Yŏng-hŭi shouted from the yard. “That boat’s not safe!”
Father rowed out into the stream anyway. Yŏng-hŭi’s faint outline came into view, beckoning us. Starlight glittered on the surface of the water. The boat was leaking. We had made off with some planks when the church on the hill was built. Yŏng-ho and I had risen late at night and brought them home. It was no loss to the church. Our boat, though, was in bad shape. Yŏng-hŭi worried about Father. I knew how to swim. In the middle of the stream Father took in the oars. The water in the boat was up to our ankles. I removed a shoe and bailed. Father took the shoe from me. He was smiling.
“Yŏng-su,” he said. “Remember the hunchback who was here yesterday?”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
I took off my other shoe and bailed with it. Again Father stopped me.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“It’s no use playing dumb. I know what you’re thinking.”
“What do you mean?” I asked respectfully.
He was talking about something that had happened three and a half years ago, not yesterday. It was the first time I had ever seen the hunchback. Father, however, continued.
“We used to work together. We did a balancing act on a huge wheel.”
“Father, what are you saying? When did you do that?”
“You’re the oldest son. If you, the oldest son, won’t believe me, then your brother and sister won’t.”
“I’m sure Mother doesn’t know about this, either.”
“Son,” Father said. “You’re the only one who needs to know. Your mother is ill. The hunchback who was here yesterday will come again. Don’t stop me. The other work is too hard for me now. How long did you think I could change water lines and install pumps? I can’t come down tall buildings on a rope anymore, either. I just can’t do it.”
“It’s all right if you don’t work, Father. We’re working.”
“Who told all of you to go to work?” Father said. “All you need to do is go to school. That’s your job.”
“All right, Father,” I said. “Now please give me that shoe.”
Father gazed at me, then returned the shoe. I bailed water.
“Yesterday the hunchback was here because he wanted to help me. He’ll be here tomorrow too. You say you’ve never met him? Don’t be ridiculous. He and I worked together. Rem
ember? Don’t you even think of trying to lord it over me.”
“When did you say that man was here?”
“Yesterday.”
“Please pass me those oars.”
Father gave me the oars. There was nothing I could say. It was three and a half years previous, and not the day before, when we had met the hunchback, but Father wouldn’t have believed me had I told him this now. I rowed carefully. The boat had sunk beneath the surface by the time we reached shore. I took Father in my arms and we made our way through the waterweeds. Both of us were soaked. Father was shivering all over. I handed him to Mother. There was no one in this world who was better at nursing Father.
“Something’s wrong with Father,” I said.
“You shut your mouth!” said Mother. “When is it ever going to sink in? He’s worn out, that’s why.”
That winter Father kept to his room. I retrieved the boat and tied it to a post. The days grew cold and I brought the boat into our yard. That same night the stream froze over.
In the evening Myŏng-hŭi’s mother visited once again. “Yŏng-hŭi’s Mother,” she said, “wait a bit longer. The price they’re offering for the occupancy rights keeps going up. It was a hundred and seventy thousand this morning, and now it’s jumped to one eighty-five. We were foolish to go ahead and sell—look at what we lost.”
“Goodness!”
“Fifteen thousand!”
Mother found the aluminum number plate she had pried off during the day and wrapped it in a piece of paper. This she placed in the wardrobe along with the condemnation notice.
“Yŏng-hŭi,” Mother called. “Where did your father go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yŏng-ho.”
“Father went out a little while ago. He didn’t say anything.”
“Yŏng-hŭi, where’s Eldest Brother?”
“Inside.”
“I wonder where he could have gone.” Mother’s voice had grown anxious. “Children, go find your father.”
I was reading the book Father had put down before he left. It was called The World Ten Thousand Years from Now. All day long Yŏng-hŭi had sat in front of the pansies playing her guitar with the broken string. It was the guitar we had bought at the Last Chance Market. That’s where I had gone to buy a radio for my high school correspondence course lessons, and Yŏng-hŭi had tagged along. I had found a radio in usable condition. Yŏng-hŭi had picked up a guitar lying in the dust and tried it out. She bent over the instrument and strummed it. Her profile, half covered by her long hair, was so pretty. The sound she produced on the guitar was a perfect complement to her. I wouldn’t be able to afford the radio now. So I found a cheaper one and gestured toward the guitar Yŏng-hŭi was holding. The radio broke down and one of the guitar strings snapped. Yŏng-hŭi played the guitar, snapped string and all. I didn’t know what was on Father’s mind. Father had borrowed The World Ten Thousand Years from Now from a young man who lived in the residential area across the sewer creek. His name was Chi-sŏp. He lived in a three-story house in that bright, clean residential area. The family had hired Chi-sŏp as a tutor. He and Father were able to communicate with each other. I had overheard Chi-sŏp. We could expect nothing from this world, he had said.
“Why is that?” Father had asked.
“Because the only thing people have are selfish desires,” said Chi-sŏp. “There is not a soul who knows what it is to shed tears for others. A land with such people and no others is a dead land.”
“I’ll say!”
“Haven’t you worked your whole life long, sir?”
“Worked? Yes, I have. And I’ve worked hard. Everyone in the family’s worked hard.”
“And you’ve never done anything bad? Never broken the law?”
“No.”
“In that case, you must not have prayed. Or else your heart’s not in your prayers.”
“I’ve prayed.”
“But look at yourself. Isn’t it obvious that something’s wrong? Haven’t you been treated unfairly? Now you must leave this dead land.”
“Leave? Where to?”
“To the moon.”
“Children!”
Mother’s anxious voice was louder. I put down the book and hurried outside. Yŏng-ho and Yŏng-hŭi were looking in the wrong place. I went to the bank of the sewer creek and looked straight up at the sky. The brick factory’s tall smokestack loomed near. Father was standing at the very top. Just one step in front of him hung the moon. Father took hold of the lightning rod and reached out with his foot. In that position he sent a paper airplane flying.
2
I lay in the grass near the bank of the sewer creek. I was damp all over with dew. With the slightest movement the dewdrops on the weeds and grass fell onto me. I had been lying there on my stomach all night long. I could see nothing. And then little by little the darkness began to retreat. A lump rose in my throat, a lump of pain at not being able to spend the final night in “our house.” The neighborhood was sound asleep. But it was unnecessary for me to wait any longer. The rumor that aliens had taken Yŏng-hŭi away in a flying saucer was ridiculous. From the beginning I had put no stock in it.
“Children!” Mother had said. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I had said. “I already went looking for her.”
Where the barbershop had been torn down I had come across The Lush.
“Don’t bother looking for her,” he said.
“Did you actually see her?”
“That’s what I said.”
The Lush had a hiccupping fit and wasn’t very coherent.
“Sir, you’re the only one who says he’s seen Yŏng-hŭi. Could you please give us some details?”
“Your father knows.”
“No, he doesn’t know, either.”
“How could that be? Your father sent out the signal and the flying saucer came.”
I needn’t have listened any further. But I stood there nonetheless.
“It looks like a huge dish. Creatures came out from the bottom and they led Yŏng-hŭi up inside—just like that. It’s called a flying saucer.”
The Lush was hit with another fit of hiccupping.
“Speak no more,” I said.
“Well, why don’t you go look for her?” said The Lush. “Go see where your sister is. No place she could be. I was so thirsty I woke up. No one else would wake up at that hour. They took Yŏng-hŭi and they flew off—just like that. They had big huge heads and little spindly legs.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
“I’m not going yet,” said The Lush. “I’ll drink these up and then I’ll have to go.” He pointed to the six windows and double-panel front gate stacked on the floor of what used to be his home. The day before, he had sold the tiles he’d stripped from his roof, his pump head, and two condiment crocks, and he’d drunk the proceeds. More than two-thirds of the people in our neighborhood had torn down their houses and left.
I rose from the grass. The starlight above had grown faint. Slowly the sky began to brighten. I heard the crying of young children. I retied my shoelaces, which weren’t loose, then jumped up and down several times. My older brother had emerged from our front gate and was walking along the bank. His shoulders drooped.
“Brace up, Big Brother,” I used to tell him.
“Bracing up isn’t the answer,” he said.
“Well, what about courage?”
At lunchtime he came to see me instead of eating. We hunkered down behind the machine room and talked.
“We don’t know how to put it into words, no, but this is a kind of fight,” he said. Big Brother had a way with words. “We have to fight just to get the basics. The fight is always a conflict between what’s right and what’s wrong. Think about which side we’re on.”
“I know that.”
Big Brother had skipped lunch. We were limited to thirty minutes for lunch. We worked in the same factory but led an isolated existence there. E
veryone in the factory worked in isolation. The company people recorded our output and evaluated us. Of the thirty minutes we had for lunch, they told us to spend ten minutes eating and the remaining twenty minutes kicking a ball around. We workers went out to the cramped yard and all we did was kick that ball. They kept us at a distance from each other—no socializing—and all we did was drip with sweat. And we didn’t have proper rest periods. The factory wanted to keep us in line. We worked into the middle of the night in a stuffy, noisy environment. Of course, it wasn’t about to kill us. But our pay, which didn’t reflect the horrible working conditions plus our sweat, kept our nerves on edge. And so, although we were still growing, we were stunted in certain ways. Our concerns and the company’s goals were perpetually in conflict. The company president frequently used the word recession. He and his staff employed this word as a smokescreen for the various forms of oppression they used against us. Otherwise he talked about the wealth we would all enjoy if we worked hard. But the hopes he spoke of held no meaning for us. We were more interested in having properly seasoned side dishes in our cafeteria meals. Things never changed. They only grew worse. Our twice-yearly raises were reduced to one. The night-shift bonus was much reduced. The workforce was reduced. The workload increased, the workday lengthened. The day we workers got paid, we watched our tongues. It was difficult to trust our co-workers. Those who spoke up about the unreasonable treatment were fired before anyone knew it. Meanwhile the plant kept expanding. A rotary printing press appeared, then a paper-folding machine, then an offset rotary press. The company president spoke of the crisis that confronted him. If he lost out in the competition with rival companies he would have no choice but to close down. These were the words we workers feared most. The president and his staff realized that.