Boksoon’s father opened his eyes. His demeanour frightened me. I put a hand over my pounding heart as I stared at him. His face was taut with rage. His teeth were clenched together, his jaw trembling from the effort. I was so overwhelmed, I didn’t know what to think. The lamp dispassionately illuminated his face.
After a long while, he turned to me.
‘Do you think such a thing might have really happened?’
My eyes felt so hot that I had to look away from his gaze. I couldn’t answer his question. My whole body shook. I heard the sound of raindrops pounding on the corrugated tin roof.
February 1934
Blackie
The sound of scuffing. The door to the classroom shakes as a dog’s paws scratch at it. The claws peeking out of the tufts of black fur look as sharp as knives. The door swings open and in jumps a black dog with long, floppy ears. Its curly fur, shining eyes, prominent snout, and taut, slim body give it an air of well-bred dignity.
The children stare wide-eyed, some laughing. The teacher, who has been writing on the blackboard, turns at the sound of laughter and sees the dog. It approaches him, wagging its tail. As glad as Kim is to see the dog, he cannot help but flare in anger at the intrusion. He picks up a leash from his desk and throws it at the dog. The dog skips aside but does not back away from Kim. As it still tries to approach him, the hairs on the tip of its gently waving tail are as white as gourd flowers. Soon, though, it whines and barks as it rushes out of the classroom.
‘All right, then. Don’t forget your homework tomorrow.’
Kim’s voice is a little shaky. His face is flushed a splotched red. The rise of flesh below one of his eyes is twitching.
The children whisper amongst themselves as they pack their bags.
‘Was that the principal’s dog?’
‘No, it’s Mr Kim’s.’
‘It was at the principal’s house though …’
Kim listens and realizes he has let his emotions get the best of him again. He silently berates himself for being small-minded; someone condemned, for the rest of his life, to the constant exposure of how pathetic he is. But, he almost shouts out loud, he does not envy the broadminded!
He does not envy them at all.
The children bow, and Kim leaves the building, his head throbbing and his legs shaking. Of course, he has not eaten for two days. The smell of new paint in the corridor almost makes him faint, and he lets his body ride the current of students leaving the school. The dusty air smells like chemicals, like shoe polish, and the sound of shoes rumbling on the floor is like the beating of drums. The red leaves of the poplars outside the window spin as they fall to the ground, and the distant blue sky peers in through the glass. A very familiar scene.
‘Mr Kim, are you sick?’
Kim turns, and the effort blots out his vision. He blinks to clear it and sees a worried student standing in front of him, the very student who had been dragged away by the police as a suspect! He stares at the student’s left cheek that is obscured as if by fog.
‘It’s you!’
But once the words are out of his mouth, he sees that it was not the student he thought but another, a current one. He leans on this student’s arm as he is escorted to the staff room. Along the way, he wants to open his mouth and scream.
*
Kim feels better once they are at the door to the staff room.
‘Send for a carriage,’ he tells the student and goes inside alone. The staff room is cloudy with cigarette smoke, and he does not want to look up to meet anyone’s gaze. He keeps his head bowed on the way to his seat. Sitting down, he cradles his head in his hands and closes his eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ It is the music teacher’s voice.
Suddenly, Kim imagines the face of Principal Choi, and the thought drains the life from his body. He scolds himself as weak, for being unable to come to a decision, and the despair overwhelms him. And these teachers, who have abused his weakness to do all sorts of underhanded things!
He stands up so quickly that the staff room seems to spin. He forces his legs to comply as he walks to the principal’s office. Principal Choi is getting ready to leave but stands still when Kim enters. Choi’s beard is as black as ink, his lips thick as sausages.
A mendacious smile reaches the principal’s eyes behind the yellow of his dirty glasses. ‘Did you want to talk to me about something?’
‘Yes. I did.’ Kim feels like he is about to suffocate.
Principal Choi’s plump hand, lying on the blue desk, is white, unlike his face, and unlined like that of a young man. Choi stares at him as if to ask, ‘Well, what of it?’ The eyes flashing behind his glasses look very deep.
‘I went to your house last night,’ Kim says, ‘but you weren’t there.’
‘I see. Is that all?’ Principal Choi asks, as if he is eager for their conversation to end.
Kim tries to calm his beating heart. He takes a deep breath. ‘I don’t think I can teach anymore. I don’t feel well.’
‘You don’t?’ Principal Choi frowns at this unexpected turn. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
Kim bites down on his lip, trying to suppress his discontent. His head hurts. There’s a ringing in his ears. His rage has shattered and turned into something like sadness.
He remembers the dark underground. He remembers the smell of the earth, the yellow light of the candles, the work they did day and night, that moment he simply had to rest his eyes. He had woken up by surprise, and then the very man standing before him now had said, ‘Do rest,’ and covered Kim’s shoulders with his own jacket, smiling. Choi’s hand that had brushed the earth from Kim’s face, warm as his own mother’s hand! Only ten years had passed since they had started working together, not knowing whether they would survive from one day to the next, but how things had changed now …
Kim wants to embrace the principal and burst into tears. It is true that Kim knows the reason why things are the way they are. But this attitude the principal has, his ignoring Kim’s suffering … how can Kim call him a friend anymore? His position may have made him this way, and perhaps Choi has hidden depths that are difficult to read, or it could be that his greed has compromised his beliefs … But was Choi not ready to give it all up, and was that not why he was dismissed as head of administration? Having thought himself into a corner, Kim tries to let go of his worries and calm himself. But the loneliness and empty feelings press down hard on his throat.
‘If you say you can’t teach … well, then. There’s nothing I can do.’
Principal Choi smiles! Kim feels like he has been struck across his face. He tries again to calm himself as the urge to grab Choi and convince him of his wrongdoing burns inside his chest. His eyes wet with tears. Choi’s face grows dim. How can they be so cruel to each other over such a small misunderstanding, especially when circumstances were once so harsh that they could barely draw breath from one moment to the next?
‘You must understand,’ says Kim, ‘that I do not want to leave the school. They insist I should be let go but is it not repulsive to scapegoat a teacher of clear conscience? Why should we have to do so!’
Choi’s face is grim as he gets up from his seat. ‘You’re right. I’m taking care of this myself. You’ve failed to do so by the very words you’ve just uttered.’
‘Principal Choi!’ Kim grabs Choi’s sleeve.
Choi takes up his cane. ‘That’s enough. We’ll dismiss some other teacher.’
Choi has said his piece. He slams the door as he leaves. Kim is so grateful that tears drop from his eyes on to Choi’s desk. He wipes them off and promises himself to talk through his pettier emotions someday with Choi. He is told the carriage is waiting when he comes out of the principal’s office, so he tells the other teachers that he is not feeling well and goes home.
*
‘Do you have any rice gruel?’
He opens the door and calls out, ‘Come here, Kyounghee!’
His wife leads little Kyounghee by the hand, giving him a worried look. His wife’s face looks dewy from the rice pot steam, her black hair thick and rich. Two trails of tears flow down Kyounghee’s face. Kim closes his room door and hugs Kyounghee tight. The baby smell of Kyounghee’s hair warms his fatherly heart. He can tell from Kyounghee’s tears how he must have looked to the principal that afternoon. Choi probably thought no better of him than another child. He hugs Kyounghee close and listens to the sound of tinder being chopped and water sloshing in the kitchen.
*
He has always known that he does not have any particular strengths. If he were forced to name one, perhaps he would say it was the fact that he never lies. And that once he is convinced something is right, he never changes his mind. But this is also his biggest weakness. Sometimes, he wishes he was greedy like Principal Choi, but only for a moment, as the thought always turns his stomach in the end. No wonder he clashed with the principal so often.
Whenever he found something useful in his house, he would take it to school for his students, and this was the source of many arguments with his wife. He would try to ignore her. Meanwhile, the other teachers were so selfish that their eyes were practically bloodshot from looking out for things to steal. His earnest nature was isolating in such a place, but he tried to console himself by thinking it a strength and not a weakness. His colleagues, however, thought him foolish, and now he is sad that he is beginning to agree with them.
He really is a man with no strengths after all.
*
The door opens, and his wife enters with a steaming bowl of rice gruel. Kyounghee, whom he thought was asleep beside him, jumps up and clings to her skirt. Kim thinks of how her sparkling eyes are so much like his own. He can smell the not-unpleasant scent of cooking from his wife’s skirts. Blue veins stand out near his wife’s eyes, and her demeanour is heavy with fatigue. Was it because of the hardships he had put her through? Kim takes the bowl from his wife and pities her, a woman who was so unlucky as to have met a man like him.
‘Stop that.’ His wife extracts her skirts from Kyounghee’s grasp and says to her husband, ‘Please, eat up.’
Her eyebrows are knitted with worry. Kim thinks of the bowl of rice gruel that he had slapped from her offering hands this morning.
‘Do give me one more bowl. And I will eat dinner tonight. Those bean sprouts you bought? I’ll have them seasoned.’
A glad smile rises like a clear breeze in his wife’s almost too-large eyes. She takes the empty bowl from him and goes out. How lovable are the very toes that peek out of the holes in her stockings? Kyounghee skips after her mother, crying out, ‘Mama, Mama.’
‘Dear! Blackie is here,’ calls his wife.
Kim gets up and opens the door to the courtyard. Blackie comes running towards him, smelling of dog and fresh early autumn air. It thrusts its long snout at him and licks everything it can reach.
‘Did I hurt you today, Blackie?’
Kim caresses Blackie’s back and leans back to take a look at the dog. After what he did today, a man would hold resentment in his heart and not give him a second look, but the dog only licks him, friendly and trusting. The long hairs above its eyes and the ends of its whiskers flash with reflected light, and its thoughtful gaze and lovely chinless snout pull at Kim’s heartstrings. He thinks of the dog’s face as being much more heroic than the flat, featureless circle that is his own. He gave up the dog when the principal, whom he had believed in so much, asked for it. Despite this, his heart always yearned for the loyal dog he had trained since it was a pup, a dog that could now fetch groceries and even deliver letters.
Kim could not bring himself to walk away whenever he saw the dog chained up in the principal’s yard. Blackie would jump up and down at the sight of him and keen like a person, which stopped Kim’s heart and made him stand still for long periods of time in the middle of the street, unable to move on. He had to press down on his anger whenever the principal made a derisive, throwaway comment about the dog. But Kim would not dream of actually saying anything to the man.
His wife reappeared, with little Kyoungseon in her arms, patting their son’s back as she tried to stop his crying. ‘Do stop it with the dog. The principal and his wife don’t like how it tries to come here every chance it gets. We have to stop feeding it.’
Kim admired Kyoungseon’s wide forehead over his wife’s shoulder, so like that of his mother.
‘It only seems like I always feed it because it’s always coming here. But I’ve got to give it something now. The little bastard came into my classroom while I was teaching so I had to give it a whipping.’ He felt Blackie’s heart beating underneath its fur.
‘In your classroom? Here, dog!’ His wife holds out a bag of biscuits under its nose. The dog lies down and begins munching on them, its large teeth visible as it gnashes at the treats.
Later, Kim has to slap the dog’s behind to urge it to leave, before laying the sleeping Kyoungseon next to him in his room. He feels drowsy.
Such cowardice. You can’t even fight for what you want.
He abruptly wakes up when he feels his nose is blocked. Sweat sprouts from his forehead. The worries that had kept him up the night before are repeating themselves in his mind. His head pounds and his lips are parched. He asks his wife for a bowl of cold water and stares at the ceiling after drinking it. The room is filled with a smoke-like darkness. Only the crack above the door has a touch of moonlight seeping through. He hears the sound of his bowl being rinsed and Kyoungseon breathing somewhere in the darkness.
The principal said he would dismiss someone else, so surely he will keep his word. He’ll dismiss Mr Oh. We’ll know after tomorrow. Our actions this time might give them pause somewhat. The principal wants me to be the one who leaves, but that won’t happen, will it? When someone else is being dismissed…
He knows from the stares and whispers of the staff that he, more than the principal, is being criticized. This was why he was thinking of leaving the school, but he also has to think about keeping his family fed, not to mention the matter of how hard it would be to give up something that he has held on to for so long. He could simply turn a blind eye, but not when his unsympathetic colleagues and even his trusted principal were all but begging him to step down.
*
Seven years ago, when Kim had left Seodaemun Prison, he had come to teach at that very school through an introduction made by a friend. There was a rumour of a second deployment to Jiandao at the time, which made even long-time teachers slip away in the middle of the night. The neophyte Kim was left all alone in the school.
Every day another student was arrested, with many others running away as they feared for their lives. Soon, only a little over ten students remained.
Kim was so busy with his teaching that he could barely fit in a meal during the day. Three years passed, and as the situation in the country stabilized, the students and teachers began increasing again. Principal Choi had also come then, and Kim had helped him get settled and operate the school. Seven years of rebuilding the school staff, term after term, had finally culminated in the institution now looking more or less like a proper school. It had communal toilets, plastered walls and paint, a foyer, widened playgrounds, and most recently, a proper gate. Kim could finally kick off his work shoes and wear a proper suit.
The glimmer of greed Professor Choi had always shown was now in full bloom with the new orde
r taking over the country, and not every student felt comfortable about this. Kim kept giving up one thing after another to Principal Choi. This was due to the weakness in his personality, no doubt, but it was also because of his losing a sense of purpose in the new national situation.
After dinner, Kim goes to visit Principal Choi. The man’s firm answer that afternoon had been a relief, but he wants to make sure that Choi will keep his word.
The early autumn air should be as refreshing as a cold splash of water, but its effects do not sink past Kim’s skin. The crescent moon seems desperate, unable to decide whether to come or go, wandering alone in the great plain of the sky. It feels as if his food is stuck in his throat. He thinks about going down to the banks of the Hailan River for a while but decides against it.
When he passes the school, his footsteps turn towards the school grounds of their own accord. He grips the school gate. It feels smooth, and its paint smells fresh. He strokes it. Heat fills his palm. For seven years he had yearned to make this gate. Wherever he saw a grand gate, he would think of how the school would also one day have one. His dream had been realized only two months ago. Every free moment he had at school, he used to run out to the Chinese builder they had hired, supervising and nagging until the builder shook his head and said, ‘I can’t do this work anymore. I’ve done many jobs, but I’ve never met anyone like you!’
But Kim is not a brave man! Of course, the current state of the country is also to blame, but it is, in the end, his own weakness that is being exploited. His beloved school is being wrested from him. He looks down at himself, this pathetic slip of a man who will barely be able to afford a meal once he leaves this school. He lays his face against the railing of the gate before stepping on to the grounds. He can see the orange, prickly light of the night-watch office. The school grounds seem to undulate like vast, dark waves. The two-storey school building, rising in the darkness! He has touched every inch of it.
The Underground Village Page 17