by Cho Se-hui
“Just use drugs.”
“Drugs?”
“We make a drug that makes them happy just to work. We’d have to put it in what they eat and drink at the factory. We’d have to form a first-rate research team and have them develop it. It would take a lot of money to begin with, but in the long run there’s no better way.”
“That’s enough,” Mother said. “You think about such awful things.”
“It’s not me who’s awful,” I said. “The thing that’s really awful is this world. Some countries already inject people who want to break away from their social system.”
“Those people must be sick.”
“Disease has nothing to do with it.”
“At any rate, don’t be telling your father notions like that. He judges all of you on every little thing. I want to see that you get the same opportunities as your older brothers. You understand, don’t you?”
Not once had I doubted Mother’s love. The measure of her love for each of her children was always equal. Father was different. He liked to tell us that the most essential ability for a manager was a talent for taking several heterogeneous elements and synthesizing them into a whole. In doing so he was giving us notice that he could never hand over power to somebody lacking this talent. Talk about what went on at the factories had never made its way inside the household before Uncle’s passing. But that wasn’t the case these days, Mother said. And this time, she added, there seemed to be something serious going on at the machine shops. So that’s it, I thought to myself. The machine shop was in the south. A man with eight fingers used to come up from down there. He wore dirtier clothes than the workers, used a dirtier handkerchief. If my thick-headed cousin had heard this news, he would have said, “I’m not surprised—he’s different.” It seemed Chi-sŏp was giving me a wake-up call from a distance. But he hadn’t been able to come up to comfort the dwarf’s family. Here was a man who stood opposed to us. Here was a person who had grown unhappy analyzing himself, analyzing his co-workers, analyzing us, the people who suppressed them with our economic power. Mother prepared to leave for a Patriotic Women’s Volunteer Corps fundraising meeting for needy neighbors. Her young secretary helped her. I went right up to this woman and told her we didn’t owe a speck of debt to this society. Smiling awkwardly, the young woman stepped back. She wore thin clothes. I imagined the little instruments of delight hidden beneath those clothes. My lust threw my mind into disorder. I went up to my room and watched the young woman depart with my mother. The watchman pushed open the iron gate. Mother’s car disappeared in the grove of broadleaf trees. A short time later our steward came to ask me something. The water in the pool needed changing, and he wanted to know if it was all right for the girls to go in and splash around for a bit before it was drained and cleaned. Before answering I asked him to get in touch with our island house, where I was thinking of taking some friends a few days later. And then I told him of course it was fine with me as long as it helped them do a good job of cleaning the pool. But one of the girls would have to come up and help me put away my books. For the first time I heard him say thank you. I put the tape with the Berlioz music into my VCR. The sixteen-year-old girl with the blond hair wrapped her arms around a man. The girl from three mornings earlier came up without a sound. One by one she picked up the books that lay scattered all over and cradled them in her arm. A book titled Human Engineering pressed against her swelling chest. I couldn’t remember when I had first heard Berlioz. My sister immediately below me liked me because I liked Hindemith. I took hold of the girl’s arm and the books dropped. The blond girl’s clothes loosened and fell from her shoulder line. “Look!” I said. “Different from your television.” The girl did as I said. Something astounding was happening on the screen. The girl stood stock still. She breathed with her chest and shoulders. My hand went to her, touched her, and she trembled. It never ceased to amaze me that girls harbored the river of life in their little bodies. The man on the screen had violated the blond girl’s body. You’re a woman now, he said. “All right, go on down,” I said to the girl, whose body was hot by now. “Take a dip before the water’s drained.” The girl looked up at me with a face grown pale. A tear welled up, she turned and went downstairs, and I lay down on my bed. I read a book. I thought I would read some economic history before Father returned home. The author quoted another economist as saying that economists would have broader responsibilities in the future. I read awhile, then fell asleep, and just before I woke up I had a dream. In the dream I was casting a fishnet. I went into the water wearing goggles intending to watch the fat fish that came into my net get caught in the mesh. A school of fish came toward my net. But they weren’t fat fish. They were only some big-spine fish—a collection of bones and spines with two eyes and a pectoral fin. Hundreds, thousands, of these big-spine fish making bony, spiny sounds were caught in my net. I grew scared. I got out of the water and pulled out the net. Countless big-spine fish came up, caught. They freed themselves from the mesh and came up at me spitting thousands, tens of thousands, of phosphorescent rays. Every time the spines touched me my skin was torn open. I woke up screaming for help, in pain from being torn to shreds. Poppy red twilight touched the west-facing window. Beautiful, I felt; I went to the window and looked down. I could see the tiniest particles in the atmosphere carrying the light. The white wall reflected the twilight toward the woods. Deceased Grandfather’s old dog crept out from those woods. The girl who had been ready to accept me with her heated body called the dog. After setting the dog’s bowl in front of her she clasped the dog’s neck tightly in her arms. As the dwarf’s older son was being led out, the dwarf’s wife had done the same to him. The workers had gone outside and wept. Chi-sŏp hadn’t been able to come up. People’s love saddened me. At that moment I saw the watchman push the iron gate shut. Father’s car emerged from the grove of broadleaf trees and slid to a stop. I thought I would visit a psychiatrist the following day, without anyone knowing. If Father learned of my weakness, I’d be the first person he would skip over. Love would gain me nothing. Rehearsing the brave words I would speak in a hearty voice, I opened my door and went out.
Epilogue
THE MATHEMATICS TEACHER entered the classroom. The students saw he didn’t have the textbook. The majority of the students trusted this teacher. As many as one-fifth doubted him. They were the ones who hadn’t scored well in mathematics on the college preparatory exam.
“Gentlemen,” he began. “This has been a challenging time for you. You’ve really put your heart into your studies, all of you. But the math scores, which are my responsibility, are lower than ever before. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. This may sound like an excuse, but the responsibility for these lower math scores on the preparatory exam does not lie with the math teacher alone. To discover precisely who or what is responsible we would have to list numerous things: the authorities who devised this system, the educators and parents who accepted it, the designers of the multiple-choice questions where you select one of four answers, the people who print the exam questions, the manufacturer of poor-quality pens, the exam inspectors, the key-punchers, the supervisors, the programmers, those responsible for the level of humidity in the computer room, the computer that assumed the role of judge—and of course you gentlemen yourselves who took my class, the guidance counselor, who always makes irrelevant requests of me, your teacher, who must stand before you gentlemen and teach, and above him the vice-principal and principal, and finally the plans and their implementation, the schemes, the failures, and whatnot, of those elements outside the school that influence the state of mind of you gentlemen and myself, the teacher and the taught. In spite of all this, I can’t help taking upon myself the full responsibility.”
“Who did it?” a student asked. “Who placed that responsibility on you, sir?”
“They did,” the teacher said.
Another student rose. “Could you please be more specific?”
“They did. Who can be more specific than t
hat? One of their characteristics is that until the day they die they won’t assume responsibility for a single thing. They all have plausible alibis. Until now you gentlemen have put your heart into your studies, and since this is the last class hour you will have in high school, I hope you’ll understand if I talk about something unrelated to the entrance exam. Through no choice of my own, I’ve given up the subject of mathematics. I’ve received notice that starting next semester I’ll be teaching ethics. As you gentlemen are well aware, ethics are principles realized in practice as moral standards. If you gentlemen were the decision makers, would you take a person who had been stigmatized as a failure in the teaching of mathematics and saddle him with the teaching of ethics? No one knows this, but there is some terrible scheming going on. What it comes down to is removing ethics from the curriculum. It’s also a scheme to develop you gentlemen and your successors as human capital. Gentlemen, we are not the ends, you and I. Rather, we’ve become the means without realizing it. I should have sensed their intent, but you gentlemen and I have been in a rush—you in order to go to college, I in order to see that you pass the examination—and we haven’t been able to read their true intention. We’ve been too busy. But was this busyness something we did for our own self-esteem, as one might expect? It’s a short hour, but please give this some thought. I’m going to make myself comfortable now—please forgive me.”
Hunger awakened Humpback. It was black inside the tent. The darkness was total and nothing was visible. Whether he opened or closed his eyes, there was only darkness. He realized he had made a mistake not eating those instant noodles. Instant noodles for breakfast, instant noodles for lunch, and when again at dinnertime he had heard “instant noodles,” he had gone for a walk instead of eating. After the girl had been put in the hospital he’d eaten nothing but rice gruel and instant noodles. He couldn’t stand it—he wasn’t some laboratory mouse. The tonic peddler they called The Boss had said the girl would rejoin them, but they’d gone through three towns and eleven villages and she still hadn’t shown up. She was a dirty, homely girl but she made good rice and good soup. She had grown up in an orphanage. Suddenly she had developed a high fever, and The Boss had taken her to the hospital. It seemed to Humpback he would continue to eat instant noodles until she hooked up with them again.
Humpback rose carefully so as not to disturb the strong man they called The Master, sleeping beside him. His shoulders touched the side of the tent. He would certainly be beaten up in the darkness just for disturbing and waking the strong man. The strong man wasn’t eating well these days, either, and appeared to be losing strength. When he broke rocks he avoided the hard ones, and he could pull a car with his teeth only half the usual ten yards. And he was reluctant to perform the knife trick—the one where he strapped the long sharp blade of a knife to his palm with nylon cord, pressed the tip to his stomach, and then released it. It was a frightful stunt whenever he saw it. Watching it gave him the sensation that his body tissues, skin and all, were being shredded by the blade. If a lot of tonic was to be sold, then this trick was essential.
Although the strong man was losing strength, he was still a mighty man. Humpback had no intention of suffering a useless beating by disturbing him in the dark. He placed his feet carefully, stopped, listened. Only the sound of Squatlegs breathing. He groped with his hand. The strong man wasn’t there. Humpback struck a match and lit the lantern. No one but Squatlegs. Squatlegs was asleep on his back with his legs, which were perpetually flexed at the knees, drawn up. Humpback went outside. The call of some small creature came to him from a dense grove off at a distance. Humpback didn’t know the name of this small creature producing the faint cry. He didn’t know it was suffering from water it had drunk from a branch of the river tainted by wastewater from a factory upstream. Humpback felt utterly dispirited as he looked about. He went back in the tent and shook Squatlegs awake.
“Get up!”
“What’s the matter?” Squatlegs pawed at the air and Humpback helped him sit up.
“Nobody’s around,” Humpback said.
“What?” Squatlegs slowly asked. “You mean they left us behind?”
Humpback raised the tent flap. Squatlegs quickly scooted outside. His small body was enveloped in darkness.
“Don’t see The Boss’s tent, do you?” Squatlegs asked. “Or his car, either.”
“Like I said, they’re gone.”
“Leaving us by ourselves?”
“I’ll bet The Boss did the same thing with that girl who cooked for us.”
“She’s in the hospital.”
“How do you know?” Humpback asked. “Did you see her there?”
“I saw him take her to the hospital.”
“So did I. I’ll bet he took that sick girl any old place, then drove back.”
Squatlegs bit his lip. Then he held his breath and listened.
“What’s that?” Humpback asked.
“Hmm?”
“I thought I heard something.”
“Birds flying around,” Squatlegs said. “Looking for food.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Shit.” Squatlegs grew angry. “How many times have I told you? It’s a goatsucker. It sleeps during the day. Keeps to the trees and sleeps.”
The two friends held their breath and listened to the fluttering wings of the goatsucker as it flew low overhead. The sound disappeared into the mass of darkness held in the dense grove’s embrace. Almost simultaneously the two friends thought of their wives and children, who had come to this dismal place outside Seoul.
“How much have we been sending them a month?” asked Humpback.
Squatlegs answered. “Three thousand wŏn for the first six months and two thousand for the last seven months.”
“Think they’re managing on that?”
“My kids are tough.”
“Let’s get out of here!”
“Where are we going to go?”
“We’ve got to catch them,” Humpback said. “Every day is a living hell for us—what’s the use of thinking about the future?”
“I needed that lump sum. Needed a hutch for the baby rabbits.”
“Put on your gloves.”
Squatlegs fished out his leather gloves and put them on. Balling up his fists and pushing against the ground, he lifted himself and moved out ahead. Humpback went into the tent and emerged with the lantern. He made up the few paces between himself and Squatlegs, who was scooting ahead. Insect calls came from the woods. The small creature whose name Humpback didn’t know was silent. The children would be sleeping now in the rented room outside Seoul. Perhaps one of them had awakened and was crying? And wouldn’t one of them be sick and crying? Humpback turned onto a narrow road. Squatlegs rolled himself sideways down a small hill, coming to rest in front of Humpback. Humpback bent over and Squatlegs grinned, his teeth white in the darkness.
They left the narrow road and came upon the branch of the river. The rocks in that river were extraordinarily hard. For the strong man Humpback only gathered rocks he expected would break easily, but when the strong man practiced with them he got bloody. He slapped Humpback with his bloody hands. Humpback’s nose bled. The Boss pretended not to see. He sat in his car counting money and the items in the medicine chest. Squatlegs, dangling from the rope, plopped down, scooted over, produced some cotton balls from his pocket, and plugged Humpback’s nose. The water in the river was absolutely filthy. Fish floating belly up were caught among the weeds. Humpback picked out several whose spines were bent and buried them in the sand. The sand had turned reddish brown.
They passed the unlit amusement park and Humpback came to a stop. Squatlegs couldn’t be seen; there was only the sound of him scooting along. Humpback found the well and lowered the little bucket. He drank until his face was raised toward the night sky, drank to fill his empty stomach. He pulled up a second bucketful and waited for Squatlegs. Squatlegs scooted up, breathing hard. He looked up, his face a mixture of sweat and dirt
, and removed his leather gloves. He drank from the bucket Humpback passed to him. Drank a little and poured the rest over his head.
They left the amusement park and turned up a steep, narrow path toward the expressway. Where the slope was severe, Squatlegs climbed sideways. Ahead, Humpback set down the lantern and descended. He lifted Squatlegs, carried him in his arms to the lantern, set him down, and plumped himself down. Squatlegs saw Humpback’s breathing and the large movements it created along his bent spine. And then while Humpback rested, Squatlegs continued on, scooting up sideways. Catching his breath, Humpback again climbed ahead, descended, and picked up Squatlegs in his arms. Repeating this process until they reached the expressway, the two friends lay down and rested on the asphalt. Humpback lay on his side and Squatlegs lay with his flexed legs upraised, as when he slept. In that position Squatlegs laughed. His laughter became intermittent, then ceased. A huge freight truck roared up on the opposite side of the center strip and sped past. This monster with lights for eyes shredded the night air with its frightening speed.
“No curfew once you’re on the expressway,” Humpback said.
“So that’s where we catch a ride to Seoul. The Boss is probably parked in front of a toll booth, waiting for it to open. If he gets onto the expressway, we’ll never catch him.”
“And what do we do when we catch him?”
“We’ll get rid of him,” Squatlegs said.
“Let’s just get the money. Together we can get what’s left.”
“I’m going to cut open his stomach.”
“Put away that knife.”
“Never you mind. I’ll do it myself—cut that son of a bitch’s stomach right open,” Squatlegs said again.
“All right,” Humpback said. “If that makes you feel better. But like I said, that’s not the answer.”