The wall reminded her of a night five years ago. Chaos had erupted, the sound of guns and shouting coming from all directions. They had hid in the foxhole they had secretly dug near the kitchen hearth. When they emerged days later, Fang Tong had fled, his family slaughtered. Fang Tong went on to buy a house in Yongjing, take another wife, and sire more children, ending up living almost exactly as he did before.
Since Fang Tong fled to town, the house the woman was staring at now belonged to the militia. It was their banner that flew and their guard who stood watch.
She looked elsewhere into the distance. The fields were flooded with sunlight, and birds flew high and unfettered in the blue sky. When would she and her husband get to have land like that? She sighed and stared out at the land they had managed to purchase, a plot on the red mountain. They had tamed the harsh earth of the slope, and now it was arable, but they could not plant anything other than sweet potatoes for the time being.
They could try planting millet, maybe sorghum … She did not mean to, but she began thinking of her homeland again. Her field by the young pines that brushed her knees! Her coffin would be pelted with soil before she forgot that field! How every crop took root in it and thrived! That bastard, she thought as she imagined Old Man Chambong walking up to that field. Her heart throbbed, and her hands and feet trembled. She tried with all her might not to think of her homeland, to keep from flying apart in anger. She found herself standing in the yard and listening to the loud twitter of the sparrows hopping on a pile of hay in the corner.
She turned and went back into the house. Everything in the room called out for her touch. She took up the broom and swept the floor. She caressed the holes in the straw mat as she thought of how they had to have a good life and show that horrible Old Man Chambong … She held back tears. No matter how determinedly they worked the land, their only rewards turned out to be hunger and poverty. What a fate this was, and how cruel was it that God blessed some but cursed others! She carefully swept each room. A sweet potato rolled away from her broom. She picked it up, put it in a basket of them, and started to snap off their sprouts. Most of the peasant houses had the kitchen and the main room in the same space, with a cauldron installed in the corner. She prepared her food beside it. When they first arrived, more than anything else she hated the houses, which felt like caves or cowsheds at best. There was nowhere for her to go when they had a visitor, so she had no choice but to sit while silently facing the guest. But now the presence of a male visitor did not bother her, and the house was more or less tolerable. They never forgot to keep a secret foxhole dug near the mouth of the earthen oven. Whenever they heard gunshots, the family would leap into the hole and stay inside for days on end. They kept their clothes and crops in it, taking out what they needed for their daily lives. They had to do all of this because of the soldiers and the bandits.
She finished handling the sweet potatoes and started sorting through the red beans. The sound of the beans bouncing and rolling soon echoed through the quiet house. Her eyes felt tired, and the sparrows grew louder. She began to think. If they were going to start sowing tomorrow, they needed rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and if Bongshik did not meet Fang Tong then he would not be able to bring the rice, but he ought to bring home the other food for side dishes …
Her thoughts faded as she grew sleepy. She rubbed her eyes and went outside. Her eyes came to rest on the hardened bricks of fermented bean paste hanging from ropes on the wall. That’s right, she needed to hang up the rest of the bricks. She brought out a basket of the blocks and started hanging them one by one outside the door, brushing the dust off the older ones and lifting each of them from the wall for inspection. She should make some soy sauce and a jar of chilli paste … but then, she would need some salt …
She sighed and sat down, thinking of home once more. They used to brush their teeth with salt because it was so common … One could flush out an upset stomach with just a handful of salt … Compared to some of the things they had had to do without since their banishment, salt seemed like such a small thing, but she had cried many times over their lack of it. Twenty won and ten jeon for a mal of salt! A peasant farmer could never afford an entire mal, buying it instead in smaller packets. They could only afford to preserve things whenever they had some salt, and when the bean paste would rot instead of fermenting they had to make do with the sparsely-seasoned preserves, but because the preserves were so bland, any dish she made from them would be bland as well.
During meals, her habit now was to look closely at her husband’s expression and feel as if she were at fault. Her husband never said a word, but there were times when he would take a bite and grimace, and resignedly put down his spoon. She would feel the rice turn to sand in her mouth, put her spoon down too, and look away. Not even able to serve up a hearty broth for her husband who came home drenched and stinking of sweat and hard work … she was worthless! Could she truly call herself a wife?
Sometimes, her husband would dump a spoonful of chilli flakes into his bowl to stimulate his appetite. His eyes would tear up, their capillaries fit to burst, and beads of sweat would form around his mouth. Why are you adding so much dried chilli, she would almost say before catching herself. And here she was, responsible for the family’s meals … what was she to do?
She sighed again, looking down at the remaining bean paste blocks, wondering what she was going to serve for dinner. She heard footsteps and looked up. Her daughter Bongyeom was back from school, carrying her book bag.
‘Why have you brought your book bag?’
‘It’s a half day. Oh, you’ve taken out the bean paste blocks.’ Bongyeom beamed as she picked up one of the blocks and inhaled its aroma.
‘Did you see your father on the way home?’
‘Yes. Fang Tong is here.’
‘Fang Tong? You’re sure?’ She let out a sigh of relief, only now realizing how nervous she had been all morning. ‘Where did you see your father?’
‘Fang Tong’s house. He was sitting with the militia. I don’t know what they were doing.’
The tension spreading to the woman from Bongyeom’s sudden frown! ‘Was Fang Tong with them?’
Bongyeom nodded. Then, she smiled. She took out shallots from her book bag. ‘So many shallots growing behind our school!’
‘Enough for a whole meal.’ The woman fondled them in approval before choosing one of the bigger ones, twisting off its stem, peeling it, and eating it. Bongyeom also popped one in her mouth.
‘Mother, if only I had some exercise shoes …’
The words had escaped her by accident, and Bongyeom fearfully looked away from her mother to the shallots on her lap. She could almost see, between the shallots, the lovely exercise shoes that her classmate Yong-ae wore as she ran as light as a sparrow.
‘You crazy child and your wants!’ The woman rubbed her nose and glared at her sideways.
Bongyeom felt the weight of the shallots turn into that of new exercise shoes. She mumbled, ‘Mother, every single want to you is crazy.’
The woman turned to her. ‘What else can your wants be? When we can barely afford to educate you, and you’re going on about exercise shoes! Look, child, it’s only thanks to the Enlightenment that you’re getting an education at all. When we were growing up, where would we have gone to learn? We had to fetch the water, weave hessian, tend the fields, and the only thing we could wish for was a pretty pair of straw sandals … Your father and mother are breaking their backs on the fields, but you’re going on about exercise shoes! Be glad you’re not starving. If you want to go on about your crazy wants, don’t go to school!’
‘You’re not the one sending me to school.’ Bongyeom felt slightly scared by her own rebellion, but she persisted.
The woman’s face turned red with fury. ‘Fine, even if it were your father sending you to school, I would’ve told you to quit. What kind of a daughter are you? Talking back just because she ha
s some learning in her head instead of being silent when she’s spoken to! Yapping away with her jaw hanging loose! Fine, we have no money … If we had the money to buy you those silly shoes, we would’ve given Bongshik more schooling.’
Bongyeom could barely keep down the raw shallots she had been eating without any rice or water. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Why don’t we have any money? Why can’t we send Big Brother to school?’
Then Bongyeom remembered something that her teacher had talked to her about, and she realized it was not her mother who was at fault for their poverty. But she could not help resenting her mother whose first instinct was always to castigate her daughter.
‘How do I know why we don’t have money! Why were you born to beggars instead of rich parents! You useless child, I’d be better off without you.’
Bongyeom stared at her mother. She was reminded of what happened at last autumn’s threshing, how her mother and father’s harvest of rice was all taken away by Fang Tong. Her mother’s face then was the same as it was now. Mother and Father, who knew nothing of resisting, nothing of fighting back! Her mother, who was so wretched it was almost pathetic!
‘Mother, you have to know why we don’t have any money. Why can’t we afford exercise shoes? Why can’t we afford Big Brother’s education? You must see the reason why!’
She realized as she was shouting this that there was nothing wrong with her desire for exercise shoes. She began to recall a thing or two that her teacher had said to her …
‘You stupid girl, why else would we be poor? We have no land. If only we had some land …’ The woman’s heart was so full of sorrow that she closed her mouth. But she could not stop her memories of the field by the young pines, her eyes tearing up. She could almost see it through her tears, a wavering mirage.
The sound of gunshots! Mother and daughter bolted upright, their eyes wide. The dog that had been napping by the pile of hay was huddled to them in no time, barking.
Exile
They frantically went from imagining the bandits to the communists and back as they stared out at the next village. The sound of dogs barking made them feel more nervous than ever. The wind, so soothingly cool until a moment ago, turned into pure fear itself as it brushed against their skirts.
‘Oh, if only your father would come … Why are we just standing here, something seems to have happened, something has come …’
The woman’s face was contorted, and she could not keep still. More gunshots. They fled into the house. Now they were certain something had happened in the next village. People had been shot and killed, the woman reckoned, and a fire danced inside her that she could barely contain. But she dared not leave the house. She kept getting the feeling that something was coming towards them.
‘What are we going to do?’ the woman mumbled. ‘Bongshik hasn’t come home.’
Her husband was not safe, either. And what if the gunshots had something to do with him meeting Fang Tong and the militia?
‘You said you saw Father sitting with Fang Tong? With your own eyes?’ Her mouth was dry, and she could barely breathe. Bongyeom could not answer with her voice, so she answered with her eyes instead.
They heard the sound of footsteps. They jumped into the foxhole in the corner of the kitchen, clinging to each other as they stood over a sack of potatoes. Someone was coming to kill them!
A while later they heard, ‘Mother?’
The sound of her son’s voice brought the woman back to her senses, but despite shouting back to him, she could not bring herself to leave the foxhole right away. When she finally could, she was found herself speechless again. Bongshik stood before her, covered in blood, and her husband seemed to have collapsed beside him with blood running like a stream from his neck.
‘Oh!’ The woman let out a shriek and fell to her knees. All she could do was stare at her husband.
Bongshik’s heart went out to her. ‘Mother, you must be strong! It was a communist bullet. Please help me.’
He tried to raise her to her feet, but the woman sank to the floor again. All she could do was mumble, ‘Your father, your father …’
It was only when dawn was about to break when the woman could speak again, between bouts of loud, uncontrollable crying.
‘How was it you came to meet your father? Was he alive then? What did he say to you?’
Bongshik only smacked his lips as if he had tasted something bitter. ‘What’s the point in carrying on with this life!’ he spat.
Then, he sighed. He was only venting, as his mother’s expectant face made him uncomfortable. It had infuriated him that his father would act all grateful to Fang Tong and the militia, and he knew it would only come back to hurt his father someday. He had argued about this with him before, but his father was adamant. In truth, his father had little choice in the matter, as his life would have been made unbearable otherwise.
Bongshik had thought a hundred times that his father was on the wrong side, but once he heard from Yong-ae’s father that his own father had been shot, his rage at the injustice of the thing made his head hurt too much to tell right from wrong.
The next day, after his father’s funeral, Bongshik said he would be going for a walk. He never came back.
Mother and daughter waited fervently for him to return but come spring, they had not received so much as a letter. Unable to wait, they went off looking for Bongshik. They searched for him for a month but never found him. They came to Longjing, remembering how he would mutter about trying to work his way through school someday every time he had visited that town. But they did not find a single student who looked like Bongshik at any of the school grounds they lurked beside. After their visit to the last school there, the woman found herself going back and forth between resentment and worry over her child’s disappearance. What if something happened to him? Where was he? Had he fallen in with some bad men? Where would he be sleeping tonight? Her worries only deepened.
Around sunset, they paid a visit to Fang Tong. They had thought of visiting his house since they first came to Longjing. The plan was to ask him for help if they could not find Bongshik on their own. Fang Tong came to greet them as they entered the main gate of his house.
‘You’re here. When did you come into town?’
He seemed glad enough to meet them. Bongyeom’s mother observed his expression closely and let out an inaudible sigh of relief that at least he was not throwing them out.
Fang Tong patted Bongyeom’s head. ‘Where were you? I visited your house once. I was sorry to have missed you.’
‘We’ve been looking for our Bongshik. Where might he be?’ The woman’s heart pounded as she waited for his answer.
‘I haven’t seen him. I don’t know.’
She lowered her head. Fang Tong took them into the hall with a long kang bed-stove where a young woman who seemed to be his wife sat and eyed both mother and daughter with suspicion. Fang Tong introduced them.
His wife said, ‘Come up and sit.’
They went up and sat on the heated floor. Fang Tong poured tea for them. The mother and daughter took in the scent of the light tea and glanced around. The room was wide, with the kang running down its length. The floor under the kang was paved with sparkling stone. There was a marble table by a window, and on it a goldfish swimming in a bowl and a few objects they did not know the purpose of. On the wall above the window was a framed photograph of Fang Tong and his family, along with a dizzying array of slightly faded paintings. On the wall opposite the table was a painting of Bultasan Mountain done in thick brushstrokes, and on the next wall was a mirror as large as a door. Outside the window was a flower bed, so blue it cooled the eye.
They were delirious, as if they had come into a field of stars. They became so ashamed of how their poor appearances looked in comparison that they could scarcely draw breath.
Fang Tong sat back and lit a cigarette. ‘You h
ave family in this town?’
Bongyeom’s mother lifted her head. ‘No.’
She felt a wave of loneliness hit her at his question. How pitiful she was to come to Fang Tong for help. She stared out the window to the flowerbed. What beautiful spring colours! The millet must have sprouted from the earth by now! She should be tending the fields, how strange not to be working. What were they to eat in the autumn …
She looked into the patch of perfect blue sky beyond, and it was like looking into that well-watered rice paddy she used to own back home. How she loved even the waters of that field! How tall the stalks would have grown by now! And was that sky not the same one that sheltered her old field? Where her husband’s solid legs, thick with black hair, had sloshed through the water as he worked … Her heart hurt as she turned to Fang Tong again. The thought of her husband being dead while Fang Tong was so alive and well made her head heavy with her rising sorrow.
‘You have no family. Where are you staying?’ Fang Tong asked after a long pause.
The woman’s sorrow and anger turned into tears that began to spill before Fang Tong. She lowered her head and wiped her eyes with a corner of her skirt. Bongyeom could not help but tear up too at the sight of her mother’s distress.
Fang Tong was dismayed. He was quickly beginning to realize they wanted something from him, a place to stay perhaps. What a mess. If he wanted to send them away before dinner, he would have to give them some money. But what if he let them stay for a while and work? A smile crept on to Fang Tong’s lips. ‘You have no family here. Stay with us. Bongshik knows this place.’
Hearing Bongshik’s name fall from Fang Tong’s lips added resentment to the woman’s sorrow and anger. When was Bongshik going to give word about his whereabouts? Had he met the same fate as his father, struck down by some bandit? She began to cry even louder. After that, mother and daughter stayed at Fang Tong’s house, living from day to day doing work about the place.
Fang Tong became friendlier by the day. On some evenings, he did not leave their room until late as they talked into the night. He sometimes brought them fabric or things to eat. Whenever that happened, Bongyeom’s mother was so moved that she would not be able to sleep until very late.
The Underground Village Page 3