That wind! What will it do to us?
She thought of the countless apples and peaches that must have fallen in the night. But this made her strangely happy. At least she would be able to have her fill of the fruit that was not ripe.
‘All the fruit will fall from that wind …’ she heard her father say in the other room.
‘That is exactly right,’ said her mother. ‘The money the fruit will bring in won’t be enough, and the vegetables aren’t any better. We need to dismiss some of our workers.’
‘I thought of that, too. But cabbage season is coming. So …’
‘So, what? Use them for cabbage season, then dismiss them.’
‘Should I?’
‘Do it.’
Sleep fled from Subang altogether. Who were they going to dismiss? Mr Meng? Mr Chu? Who would it be? She listened hard but all she could hear was the even breathing of them sleeping.
*
‘Subang, come make breakfast!’
Subang woke with a start at her mother’s summons. She found that she had fallen asleep with one hand on the door.
‘That lazy girl! Does she need a good whipping if we’re to see her face this morning?’
Now she simply had to get up. She rubbed her drowsy eyes and reluctantly pulled herself out of bed.
A fresh breeze shook the fringe of her hair. It made her wake up in earnest. She looked up at the sky.
When will I ever get to sleep as long as I want?
The sky was still dark except for a pewter light rising in the east. She stared at it for a minute and glanced at the kitchen door. Standing outside like this was not scary, but the kitchen frightened her this morning. She looked towards the workers’ quarters and back to the kitchen door. She wished everyone would wake up soon.
She jumped at the sound of the gourd cup splashing in the well. A cigarette was also being lit in the dark.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Me.’
It was Mr Meng’s voice. She ran towards him.
‘Mr Meng, light the fire in the kitchen for me.’
Mr Meng drank his water and went towards the kitchen. The door creaked open. Subang followed him up to the threshold and hesitated before the smoky darkness of the interior. What if there was something in there?
She heard a match being struck and saw Mr Meng’s thick arm place the celadon lamp on its wooden stand.
He turned to her and smiled. ‘All right, then. Now that I’ve done something for you, you must do something for me.’
She smiled back. ‘That business again?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘The mistress has to say yes, first.’ Then she remembered what she had overheard the night before. She stole a look in the direction of the master bedroom and bowed her head. ‘Actually, Mr Meng …’
Mr Meng sensed she was about to tell him a secret. He took a step closer to her. Instinctively, he knew she was about to say something about the mistress.
‘Actually … I’ll tell you later.’ Subang peeked up at him.
Mr Meng smiled more widely and left her in the kitchen. Subang watched him walk into the darkness and thought how it was not necessarily him who would be dismissed. It could always be someone else.
She heard the sound of the gourd cup splashing again. She turned her back to the sound of the accompanying murmurs and went to the opening of the furnace where a wisp of black smoke was escaping into the kitchen. She washed the iron rice pot that was installed above the furnace opening.
The mistress is a bad person …
Only when the rice began to boil did her mother drowsily leave her room. Subang stood to attention and wondered what she would be scolded for this morning.
Her mother yawned loudly and trudged towards her. ‘What vegetables did you do?’
‘Leeks, ma’am.’
‘Did you use too much oil?’
‘I didn’t.’
Her mother gave her a look. She turned and went out the door. Only then did Subang look up.
Her mother’s glittering earrings! They flashed their menacing light with her every step. She could barely breathe until that telltale glitter was out of sight. Sighing, she touched her own earlobes where she, too, wore a pair of earrings, given to her by her mother. She hated them and made a face whenever she looked in the mirror. Once, when she was younger, she had taken them off. After the slap and the scolding she received for it, she dared not do it again.
She heard her mother yawning once more. Grey light tinted the grape vines outside the kitchen door. She put out the fire and stood up, wondering if any grapes had been knocked down as well. It was still too dark to tell.
She was too scared of her mother to venture out. She could not stop thinking of the grapes, though. A little while later, when there was more light, she saw that not a single grape had fallen from the vine. She comforted herself with the thought that maybe more of the apples and peaches would have fallen.
The sun began to rise once she had served breakfast and finished washing the dishes. She scraped together her own meal, picked up a basket, and went out to the vegetable patch. Her brother Wubang came bounding up towards her.
‘Did any peaches fall?’ Subang asked Wubang.
‘None here. Maybe some did on the other side.’
Mr Meng, who was nearby, said, ‘The mistress gathered them all up. She’s going to sell them cheap to the servants.’
Wubang nodded and went to the house. Subang watched him go. Wubang would get to eat peaches, then. Subang felt her heart, which had been anxious for fruit all morning, sink into sadness and pain. Mr Meng held his hoe high up before plunging it into the earth. When he lifted it, a great haul of potatoes followed, tumbling out of the dirt.
Subang picked one of the potatoes up. ‘Oh Mr Meng, look at these!’
‘Aren’t they beauties?’
Subang nodded. Mr Meng admired the fringe that came down to her long lashes and thought how good it would be to find a woman someday and get married.
A pungent smell made Subang turn to see Mr Chu and some other workers come out with buckets of manure to lay on the field. She blushed, thinking of the thing that she had tried to forget for a moment. But she still could not bring herself to talk to Mr Meng about it.
She also wondered what her mother or father would think if they knew she knew. Not sure of what to do, she hung her head.
The sound of cicadas echoed in the air. Then, she happened to spot Wubang as he was coming out of the house.
He wore a crisp suit and carried a book bag in one hand, a peach in the other. Subang watched him for a long time. When her envy made her look down in shame, she saw her old blue dress and felt disgusted with herself. Was this all she would get to wear? Wubang got to wear nice things, as did her mother and father, but she never got anything nice and new. She could feel the tears coming.
‘Hey! Pick up some of these potatoes. Look at this one! It’s as big as you are.’
Mr Meng pushed it with his hoe, and it rolled to Subang’s feet. She quickly picked it up. Her tears suddenly changed to laughter. The potato ought to taste good steamed.
‘Are you crying?’ asked Mr Meng. He was looking directly at her.
His words almost sent Subang over the edge into tears. She bit her tongue.
Mr Meng remembered what she had said to him that morning and thought she must have received a beating again the night before.
‘Did the mistress hit you again?’
She shook her head.
‘Then what?’
Subang raised her head. ‘Oh, Mr Meng!’
Her tone was so serious that Mr Meng could not reply. He waited, wide-eyed, for her to continue to speak.
‘Subang! Pick some chillies!’
Subang jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice. She blushed. Mr
Meng did not know what to say. He could only stare at her.
Subang quickly made her way to the chillies in another part of the patch. As she picked them, she kept asking herself whether she should tell him or not. She should not, of course, considering her mother and father. But the secret was a burden that kept making her sad.
What am I going to do about Mr Meng, Mr Chu, Mr Lee, and all the others, all the nice people who know nothing but work, the work that they share with me? How can such people be anything but good? People like my parents, who never get their hands dirty – can we really say they are good people? If all my mother does is lie about and be lazy, how do chillies grow from plants, how do potatoes grow in the earth? Maybe only the people who work are good. But for all this, we don’t even get to wear nice clothes …
Somehow, she had learned to associate good clothes with nobleness and intelligence.
She left the hot sun for the shade of a peach tree. She half-listened to the sound of Mr Meng’s digging. When he stopped and did not continue after a long pause, she looked up in his direction.
Are the potatoes all out? Are there a lot of them?
Mr Meng put the potatoes in the basket and hoisted it on to one of his shoulders. He walked towards the house. Subang felt a warm feeling as she watched him. The pile of potatoes, especially, gave her a jolt of indescribable joy.
That’s good money once they’re sold at market. Father will buy rice and wood with that. And Wubang’s suit, and Mother’s clothes … but not my clothes … Father is a bad man …
If that money were Mr Meng’s or even any of the other workers’, she was sure the first thing they would buy would be clothes for her.
She had a moment of doubt. Would they really? Who knew what they really felt?
Then, she remembered that Mr Meng had bought the pin in her hair from his cigarette money that one time. She touched the pin, stroking it gently.
They’re not like Mother and Father at all.
Mr Meng walked towards her.
‘Mr Meng!’
‘You’re touching the pin again.’ He smiled.
She felt on her fingertips the tiny roundness of the red glass beads of the pin. Tears began to fall from her eyes.
‘Mr Meng, you got me this pin. What are you going to get for me next time?’
Mr Meng could not bear the sight of this little girl being so moved over a little pin, one that had only cost a few coins. How she must suffer at the hands of her stepmother! He felt his own tears coming.
‘Whatever you want!’
‘Really?’
Her little chest heaved with waves of gratitude. Mr Meng saw Subang’s eyes were bloodshot.
Then, she came towards him, looked around for a moment, and whispered into his ear. Mr Meng’s eyes grew large and rage coloured his cheeks.
He stepped back and thought for a moment. Subang urged him to go away and begged him again and again that he must never tell her mother and father she had told him. She was grimacing, but another part of her felt relief.
The next morning, Mr Meng sat down with Subang’s father, Mr Wang, and submitted the following conditions:
1. No matter what happens, we cannot be dismissed until spring.
2. Each of us gets a new change of clothing.
All the workers were ready to quit that day if these conditions were not met.
Mr Wang’s eyes grew wide. How could they have known something he had only whispered in his bed? He forced himself to close his eyes and appear calm, but his eyelashes trembled with rage.
‘We can’t take you at your word,’ said Mr Meng, ‘so we had this written out for you to press your seal on.’
Mr Meng slid a piece of paper towards him. No matter how hard Mr Wang tried, he could not think of another way other than hiring new people. That would be even more expensive, however, as they were so close to harvest season.
He pressed his seal on the paper.
*
A few days later, Subang was found dead. The pin still glittered in her hair.
September 1933
The Tournament
Seungho had fallen asleep before he knew it, but he was soon jolted awake. Was it time? He opened a window and looked out.
The usually busy avenue was calm, and only the electric street lamps shone their long beams through the trees. Seungho rubbed his eyes and ran out of the house.
He walked for a while rubbing his cold cheeks until he realized he was not wearing a hat. He doubled back, put on his hat, and set off again.
When he reached the park, with its poplar trees that grew so tall they pierced the sky, he was worried that Heesook would have been waiting for him a long time. But she was not there, and he felt glad and disappointed at the same time.
He leaned against one of the railings of the pagoda-roofed gazebo and kept looking around him as he did not know from which direction Heesook would appear. He was also nervous that someone might be taking an evening stroll in the park.
The chilly wind blew into the gazebo and made the leaves on the floor tumble about. It made him shiver and think strange, fearful thoughts.
It was already autumn here. They would still be wearing single layers down south, but here the cold penetrated the thick suit jacket he was wearing, down to his trousers. He crossed his arms and wondered how much time he had left as he glanced at his watch. He was suddenly reminded of the watch he had put up at the pawnshop a year ago.
Back then, when schools were turned upside down for questioning, several of his fellow students had been taken to the consular office to be detained. But the days were getting colder and they had entered custody wearing thin clothes, so he managed to get together some money from friends and pawned his watch to buy cotton-padded clothing to send them.
He thought about his schoolmates who were still being held. Were they sleeping in their dark cells right now? Or were they sleepless as they thought of their comrades on the outside? He felt a fire in his heart.
Sighing, he looked down over the railing of the gazebo. The pond shone like glass in the moonlight.
‘A moonlit night!’ he exclaimed as he looked up.
The few lights that could be glimpsed through the trees reminded him of his classmates scattered throughout the city. But those lights would conquer this park soon. He paced around the gazebo, wondering why Heesook was not showing up.
He heard the faraway sound of a passing carriage, hoofs clopping and bells ringing, and the sound of footsteps a little afterwards. Seungho ducked and looked towards the sound. The figure approaching looked like Heesook. Relieved, he stepped forward.
Heesook paused until she heard Seungho clear his throat. She walked up to him in the gazebo.
‘Have you waited long?’
‘No.’
Seungho relaxed as he listened to the sound of Heesook’s light breathing. They leaned against the railing together.
‘Comrade,’ said Seungho, ‘the reason I asked you to come out here …’
Heesook raised her head and looked him straight in the eye.
‘… is that I thought it would be good to enter our school in the football tournament being sponsored by the XX Committee.’
Heesook seemed to think for a moment before answering, ‘But comrade! It’s supposedly sponsored by the XX Committee, but in truth, it’s supported by all kinds of X in this city.’
‘Absolutely!’ Seungho replied quickly. ‘But even if we play in the tournament, we won’t be compromised as long as we are careful. I feel we must participate this time… Since the incident with the arrests last year, the morale in our school has hit rock bottom. Our participation shall not be about winning but to show the world that we are still alive and ready to fight!’ Seungho coughed before continuing. ‘In these reactionary times, the masses will despair in the face of active suppression by the ruling class. W
e cannot decrease our activities when the masses need us more than ever.’
Heesook glanced at the moon. How bright that damned moon had been that night, too, when she had to hide so many of her friends during the sweeping arrests! She suddenly thought they were being watched, so she took a quick glance around her.
‘You’ll need funds to enter. Where will you get the money?’
‘Well … that’s the hard part. As you know, the school would never pay for it … We’ll have to take up a collection. We thought of an idea. Some of us will work as day labourers on the Gilhwe Line for the railway corporation!’
Heesook was so moved that she felt her heart would burst. She quickly thought of what she and her comrades could do to raise some money. ‘We would like to do something as well.’
‘Well. What about … They say there will be a horse race held along with the football. At the racecourse right next to the football field.’
‘And?’ Heesook took a step closer, waiting to hear of this opportunity to raise more funds.
‘We saw some ads posted about jobs for women clerks. Have you seen them?’
Heesook thought of the racecourse and felt her face blush at the thought. But if her male comrades were willing to become day labourers on the Gilhwe Line, what work could she possibly find to be beneath her!
She looked directly at Seungho again. ‘Are you sure of it? If it’s true, we female comrades will gladly work there! What exactly do they mean by women clerks?’ She giggled, thinking of how they were going to pose as employees in front of all those people. The prospect was both funny and alarming.
Seungho was so grateful that he wanted to squeeze her hand. In that moment, she exuded a strong sense of camaraderie that transcended the fact that he was a man and she a woman.
‘It won’t be too strenuous. I imagine it’s something like making tea and guiding visitors. Tomorrow at the student meeting, let’s formally decide on what we’re going to do.’
Seungho stood up. Heesook noticed his broad shoulders and felt the strength of his solid determination flowing through him.
The Underground Village Page 20