The millet fields we passed were submerged but the patches of grass growing by the side of the new road were bright green. Sometimes, to our consternation, the road looked washed out, but the bus would mightily drive through the deluge to the other side. The air was fragrant with gasoline, and the engine rumbled courageously as we sliced through the torrent.
The sky, the mountains, the fields, they were all speeding past now. The bus felt faster than our train was. Soon, it came upon a pine forest and climbed a sharp incline. The road was much more familiar now, wider than I last remembered it, and the colour of the earth was the exact shade of red that I remembered from my childhood. The pine trees, sitting demurely by the road, looked beautiful in the rain, their tufts of needles looking soft like the hair on the head of a baby. We climbed and climbed, and the dark mountain on either side of us was like black smoke. The rain hitting the pine needles sounded like the roar of the ocean. The rumbling of the engine kicked up a notch.
Once we turned a corner, the bus abruptly came to a halt. The driver tried to restart the engine but failed. He hopped off the bus with his assistant. Anxious, I looked out of the window and was scared out of my wits to see that the front wheels of the bus were perched precariously on the edge of a cliff!
The passengers were in such a rush to get off the bus that my face got mashed against the chest of one of the male passengers. Too afraid to sit by the bus, I went to the side of the road and crouched down by the face of the mountain. I was too relieved to have escaped with my life to think about anything else at that moment. My eyes were met with the deep blue of the bellflowers growing on the mountain. The inside of the bus had been cold, but the outside was even colder, and my teeth loudly chattered as I tried to get warm. The passengers gathered around the driver and his assistant as the two assessed the situation. The people on the bus seemed to be mostly students returning for the holidays. There was also a fat man with a woman who was his sister or wife, and a man with a large head who wore a traditional white robe.
The driver tried to dig the wheel of the bus out and occasionally threw a worried glance down the cliff. His speeding had brought the bus to this. He discussed something with his assistant for a long time before the assistant, under orders of some sort, ran down the winding mountain road.
If it were a matter of pushing the bus we would’ve pitched in, but the bus needed to be pulled from the edge. The back wheels were sunk in mud so the bus couldn’t be driven backwards, either. The road we had come up was obscured by the turns we had taken, and half the sky was simply mountains flanked by more mountains. Because of the weather, I could only see the little section of road we stood on. I felt as if we were floating in the clouds.
I noticed a faded path through the pine trees in the mountain, neglected now because of the new road. At the other end of it, I could make out through the mist a field of millet that was hugged by two ridges of the mountain range, slender as horses’ backs.
I was pinning my hopes on the assistant as I sat there, shivering in my inadequate clothes. The rain soon thinned, and the green carpet of the pine disappeared into the white fog as the forest ran up towards the sky.
Everything that was happening felt like punishment for having neglected my mother these past five years. I swallowed my sighs when I spotted the assistant in the distance. He was passing some millet fields, approaching a thatched-roof house on the mountain. As I puzzled over the fact that someone should be living here in the mountains all alone, I saw the assistant quite deliberately enter it, as if it were the house of a close acquaintance. What on earth was he doing there? Was he getting help or borrowing some tool? I rubbed the mist from my eyes and looked again. The fence made from millet stalks looked as if it were made of matches and the roof looked low and old. The tiny yard shone from puddles, and the mountain itself seemed to fence in that small house. The assistant emerged with a man who seemed twice his size. I was glad for the help, but the sight of the bus teetering on edge was more than making my blood run cold; I was afraid a terrible disaster was about to happen. One couldn’t help having terrible visions of the vehicle plunging into the valley below.
I couldn’t quite make out how far off the assistant and the man were now. I waited for them, staring down that path through the pine trees I had noticed before. The blue mountain seemed to appear and disappear behind the mist. The other passengers saw the two men come up the steep path before I did, as they were closer to them than where I was sitting, loathe to move as it was so cold. The students cheered as the man appeared, helping the assistant up the path. He carried a thick rope in his hand. The assistant, exhausted, promptly collapsed on the road as soon as the man pulled him up to it.
The driver quickly took the rope from the man and bent over the back of the bus. The passengers crowded around him. I wondered if I should go up to the bus myself but crouched down again after a few steps. I was too hungry or sick by then to make the effort.
The assistant seemed to have caught his breath as he pushed the passengers aside to help the driver. I looked away for a moment and saw the man who had brought the rope, who was now standing a little way off, staring down at his house.
He was very tall and broad-shouldered, with a slightly bent back and thick hair that grew outwards in all directions rather than lying flat. It hadn’t been cut for a long time and was tangled rather unattractively. It was streaked with white, which made him look as if he was in his forties or fifties, but his demeanour was somehow younger. He looked worried as he stood there, staring off down the mountain.
The driver stood up. ‘All right, then! Pull the rope.’ He held out the other end of the rope to the man.
The man calmly took hold of it and glanced among us to see if anyone would help him, but no one stepped forward. Understanding he was alone in this, he tied the rope to his waist. The passengers gathered behind the wheels and wherever they could get a hold, intending to help push the bus back. I decided I should pitch in as well and joined the others, gritting my teeth as I got ready to push.
‘And – push! Push!’
We all shouted it together. The man stood a few steps away from the bus, pulling at the rope, with a generous amount of slack between his grip and the end that was tied to his waist. His calloused heels in his peasant’s straw sandals went up and down with our shouts. His toes were so long they were practically fingers, and they were heavily calloused as well.
‘Push! Push!’
The length of rope between the man and the bus was taut, and I could hear the fibres in it snapping. My heart was chilled at how the effort looked like a tug-of-war between the man’s very life and death. One false move, and the bus would go careening down the cliff, the man with it. But strangely enough, there wasn’t a single person who suggested he not tie the rope to his waist. The backs of his feet were soon caked with mud, and the thick veins of his hairy legs coming out of his short trousers were popping out from his exertions. The pushing had helped with the cold, but now I felt as if I was going to vomit from the effort. I stepped away and went back to my old spot on the other side of the road. The world was spinning around me. I had to close my eyes to calm myself. When I opened them again, the passengers looked as yellow as the bus itself. My gaze stopped on the man. His head was bowed and he was panting, his white-streaked hair wild about his face, his deep-black eyes half-closed, blue veins standing out above his thick eyebrows. His clothes were wet, and I could make out the outline of almost every bone and muscle in his body. The rope was wrapped tightly around his waist.
I heard a sound. The man had fallen on one of his legs. The rope around his waist looked more dangerous than ever. He got up as if nothing had happened and still pulled with all his might. His large, furious eyes and the mud splattered on his face made him seem otherworldly. He must have torn his trousers when he fell, and his muddy knee showed through the tear.
Only when he had righted himself again did the pass
engers continue to heave and shout in unison. Seeing how they had barely managed to keep the bus from slipping when he was down, it must’ve been a very dangerous moment for them indeed.
A woman who had been worriedly standing by the bus ran up to me and said that bits of the cliff supporting the front wheels were breaking off. I quickly got up, and the woman and I searched for rocks to wedge underneath the wheels for traction. We searched as widely as possible but there weren’t many that would suffice, frustrating us no end.
Darkness was falling quickly on the pine forest. It made all of us afraid. The woman and I dug around until our fingernails were practically falling off. But soon, we had a good enough rock to wedge against the wheel, and some of the students helped us with the search for other rocks.
The man fell again. While we stood holding our rocks, staring at him in worry, he fell yet another time.
He was, by then, more covered in mud than not. His trousers had torn at the crotch, but he immediately got up and pulled again. He threw the rope over his shoulder and wrapped it around his body once more under his arms, his chest straining towards the sky as he pulled. His straw sandals had come off and were rolling around in the mud, his toes gripping the earth.
We got the hang of what we were doing and got more rocks to spread near where the man was standing. When I approached the man with a rock, I saw that his knee was bleeding, and I quickly turned my head away and fled. Whenever I came back with a rock, I carefully looked at the cliff as much as possible and not at him. A student said he’d found an abandoned gold mine, and we were carrying rocks from it to the bus when we heard shouting coming from the passengers who had stayed.
We stood frozen in place, not knowing what was happening. One of the students who had stayed waved at us to come join them. By the time we came down to the bus, we saw the vehicle was beginning to budge!
We quickly laid out our rocks and pushed again with all our might.
‘Push! Push!’
The bus was moving back bit by bit. I was standing so close to the woman in front of me that I could smell the camellia oil in her hair. I couldn’t stop worrying about the cliff behind us and the man in front of us, so I kept glancing up to see if he was there.
‘Oh!’ cried the woman in front of me.
My heart jumped at the sound. The man had fallen on his leg again. As he righted himself, he was pulled a few steps back, the bus also edging back to the cliff. He pulled again, flailing his arms in the air.
We shouted as we leaped back from the bus.
The man ignored all else as he sustained his effort on his one good leg, dragging his injured one behind him.
His hair stood on end, and every muscle in his leg bulged. The black hairs on it seemed to writhe like living creatures.
We shouted our mantra as we took hold of the bus again and pushed as hard as we could. The man, perhaps tired now, kept teetering, but he always righted himself. Our throats were sore from the shouting.
And, in a flash, the bus was in the middle of the road again.
The man collapsed, his head on the ground, unable to get up. We ran to him as he lay there in his torn trousers. His red legs were shaking like leaves in a storm.
But when the driver and his assistant came to help him up, he quickly got to his feet on his own.
His tunic had been torn to rags, and his chest and underarms bled where the rope had grazed his skin.
‘Shall I carry my mother here now?’ he asked the driver in an urgent voice.
His words stopped my heart.
The driver hesitated as his assistant untied the rope from the bus and carried the coil over to them.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said the assistant, ‘but there is so much rain today and it’s almost dark, and we don’t know if the bridge by the hot springs is passable, so what about tomorrow instead?’
He then turned and urged us to get on the bus.
The man stared at the assistant and the driver. From his eyes, I finally realized the man was really a young man, only about twenty years of age.
The driver tossed him a perfunctory farewell and turned away. The man collapsed.
The rain began to fall harder.
As the bus started again, we felt sorry for the man and opened the windows to at least apologize to him once more, leaning out into the rain. The man, who had been silently still, got up with a rock in his hand and flung it in our direction. We quickly leaned back and shut the windows, our guilt turning to terror.
The bus sped along as it had previously. Clang! I flinched at the sound of a rock hitting the bus.
‘What was that all about?’ asked a passenger to the driver’s assistant. Shivering and wondering the same thing, I turned towards the assistant myself.
‘He wanted us to take his dying mother to the hospital, but she was in such a state that it looked like the bus might as well be a hearse by the time we got her there. If we had known the bridge by the hot springs was all right, then maybe …’
I finally understood why my heart had stopped when the man had mentioned his mother. I burst into tears.
I leaned out of my window to catch a last glimpse of him. He still stood there, the rope tied about his waist, throwing rocks.
August 1938
Anguish
‘You poor damn bachelor!’
My husband’s spoon clanged against the floor as he grabbed R’s wrist. R was drunk, almost as drunk as my husband, and he had been getting up to leave.
‘Oh, please let me go. I’m drunk. I must go and sleep. I’m very sorry, ma’am. I keep coming here and disturbing your peace …’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, please sit,’ I urged him. ‘Why don’t I go buy more drink …?’
‘Yes!’ my husband said. ‘That’s a good wife. Go get some more drink.’
R snatched away the empty bottle my husband was putting in my hand. ‘I really can’t drink any more!’
‘Oh, you old bachelor!’ My husband grabbed the bottle back and gave it to me. I took it and practically fled the house.
The night was dark, and I felt a cold breeze against my face as if I were entering a gloomy forest. By the time I returned from the Chinaman’s store with the bottle refilled, R, who must’ve heard my footsteps, burst out of the gate and took the bottle from me.
‘Thank you, ma’am, thank you so much … I am so sorry to trouble you,’ he said, his breath in the cold air like alcohol-tinged rice steam. I silently followed him back into the house. There was the rictus of a smile on my husband’s face at the sight of the bottle!
‘It’s very dark outside, no?’ R said as he poured the drink. I thought again what a nice man he was.
‘So,’ my husband interjected, ‘are you really not going to get married?’
I sensed they were carrying on a conversation they were having while I was gone. I glanced at R. He smiled, took a long swig, and said, ‘Well …’
My husband sang ‘Sakewa namidaka (Is Wine Tears?)’ so hard that the tendons on his neck stood out.
R nonchalantly chewed on the side dishes and said, ‘Prison is a terrible place. It makes one so useless.’ He sighed. ‘Ma’am, I was trashed when I was in prison. I have a story to tell about what happened afterwards. Would you like to hear it?’
Sadness filled his narrow eyes. I blinked, taken aback by his sudden intensity, and turned to my husband. All he did was beam at the bottle of wine.
‘Let’s drink that a bit later and listen to his story first,’ I suggested.
My husband regarded me with affection. ‘My dear wife knows nothing about man and his nature. Don’t you know there’s nothing like listening to a good story over a long drink? All right, young Rhee, speak!’ He gave a hearty laugh.
R laughed along, but there was something sharp and focused on the sound as if he were gathering his thoughts together.
<
br /> ‘I’m telling you this story only because I’m drunk … You must forgive me.’
‘All right, I will. We will.’ My husband was beginning to slur while R sounded clearer than ever.
R smiled wanly.
*
As I’ve told you before, I’ve never been married. I was never interested in marriage, and later on, I couldn’t afford it, anyway. My friends who had married were full of regret. Think of how difficult and frightful it is for people in our situation to get married.
I was born in Hamheung, but I grew up in Vladivostok. I call Vladivostok home. The people of Russia at the time were fraught with civil struggle between the Reds and the Whites. Then one day, I was forcibly taken in by the Reds and emerged from brief captivity as a Bolshevik. I was a young man and my re-education period was short, so what new consciousness I would have achieved then was meagre. It was just the mood of the times. From then on, I took up arms and joined the Red Army. A few years later, Russia entered its constructive phase, and I came out to Manchuria.
In Manchuria, I was too busy running about to sit and give my behind a rest. We had many successes and failures and were chased by government troops one week and bandits the next. I had long decided to live and die by the Red cause, living day to day as I walked the line between life and death. Who could think of marriage in such a thrall? It wasn’t as if I didn’t feel aroused by women, but to us, sex was such a small problem. Oh, the invincibility we had back then!
I felt like I could race across the Manchurian plains with just a few Chinaman’s dumplings in my pocket. Fanning the flame was the consciousness of the people rising as the winds of the era began to blow. The people of Jiandao! Koreans made to flee from their unbearable country, ready to live or die in a foreign land! No one has suffered more under blade and bullet than the people of Jiandao have. How many massacres, even just the ones we know about, have they lived through? The world they found themselves in was what created their fearful rage and determination.
The Underground Village Page 10