by Junghyo Ahn
“Sure,” Yonghi said, already hurrying to the gate. “Sorry we pestered you,” she said to Ollye. “I’ll come back to say hello to you when we open our shop.”
Watching the two strange women hurry along the riverbank to the snake hunter’s shack, Ollye thought the purple and red colors of their blouses were like butterflies. Butterflies flying free. She stepped down from the stoop, suddenly reanimated, and hurried to the kitchen saying to Mansik, who was washing Nanhi’s dusty hands with a wet towel, “I’ll go out and find something to cook for side dishes, Mansik. You look after Nanhi while I’m gone.”
She took the smudged bamboo basket from the kitchen and a hoe from the back yard. And for the first time in a month, she left the Chestnut House. She looked up and down to see if anybody was watching her. Nobody was in sight. Hugging the basket and the hoe in her arms, she dashed down to the road. Out on the road, she thought it was ridiculous for her to run. Nobody was chasing after her to drag her back to the house.
She tried to compose herself and walk confidently but she could not shed her uneasy feeling. Her knees were shaky. She felt uncomfortable outside the house. Her heart was palpitating when she reached the log bridge. What would she do if she encountered anyone?
She heard a splashing sound under the bridge. She stopped. The splashing sound stopped, too. She looked around once more, and then down under the bridge. Bong, who had been bathing naked, alone, looked up at her, startled, frozen there under the bridge, holding his crotch with his little hands. She was also embarrassed, seeing that the boy was on the verge of bursting into tears. It was obvious that this young friend of Mansik’s dreaded her.
For a moment, she thought of going back home. Now she had no doubt that other villagers would react more or less the same way to seeing her. But she was determined not to turn back. She had to go on. Anywhere away from her house. She decided to get as far off the road as possible to avoid chance encounters.
She went down to the rice paddies, made a long detour along the web of dikes around Hyonam village, and hurried to the nearest slope. She went up to the lookout shed by a watermelon patch. The patch owner slept at the open shed on summer nights to keep the watermelon-thieves away, but it was usually abandoned during the daytime. This slope was one of Ollye’s favorite spots for collecting herbs like shepherd’s purse, fernbrake, and wild lettuce for dinner. She searched among the grass stalks for sowthistle, sagebrush, bellflower and other edible plants. When she had collected enough herbs, Ollye went into a nearby grove of alder trees to conceal herself and rest. She sat on a soft bed of clover and watched the open field and the open river beyond. Withered leaves whirled down in droves from the aspens by the turnip patch at the foot of the slope. She inhaled the cool breeze. A silent, peaceful feeling, bliss, slowly overwhelmed her.
Sitting all alone among the trees, Ollye looked down at the village. The lonely poplars on the riverbank were being stripped of their leaves by the passing wind, and nothing moved on the sandy shore of Cucumber Island. Mudfish Pool looked like a stain of spilt mercury in the middle of rice paddies that were divided into many large or small rectangles by the dikes. She saw Bong hurriedly pass by and head for the ginkgo tree, but could not find the purple and red blouses anywhere. They must be in the snake hunter’s shack, she thought.
The soothing sense of freedom she had briefly felt was gradually overshadowed by a consciousness of isolation as she sat there, watching the village and brooding. Why, why on earth had she been chosen as the victim that fateful night? She wondered if she had conceived the bengkos child. What would happen to her, to Mansik and Nanhi, if she gave birth to a child of yellow hair, blue eyes and black skin? She might be carrying the bud of that monstrous creature in her womb. Even now, her skin crawled with shame and pain to think of that horrible night.
Ollye looked over at the Hwangs’ rice paddies in the southern gorge of General’s Hill, where Old Hwang and his son were shearing the rice with four hired hands. Standing in a file, the six men chewed into the dense rice plants like a silkworm eating away a mulberry leaf. Some distance down the stream two women were hurrying on their way along the road from Outer Kumsan, carrying large wooden pails on their heads. One of them was the Tuktuwon Woman and Ollye guessed that they were taking lunch rice to the Hwangs’ paddies. Carrying lunch out to the fields during the busy harvest season used to be Ollye’s work, but things had changed. Now everything was different from what it used to be a month ago. One long month ago.
She might have been spared this ordeal if her husband had been alive, Ollye thought. Somehow he would have protected her from the bengkos. Living all alone, ostracized, she missed him more and more, often wondering how her life might be different now if he was alive … if he was alive. …
On summer evenings, she used to shiver in ecstatic excitement as the whole house burst with the intense smell of his sweat when he burned wet grass in the yard to smoke away the bothersome mosquitoes, or when he hungrily swallowed potatoes and rice, or when he smoked rolled tobacco sitting cross-legged on the stoop, or when he cleaned the dirt from under his fingernails with a broken twig, or whenever he was just there near her. She missed his masculine odor, his blunt thumbnails, his front tooth, broken in the middle when he had fallen upon the stepping-stone while moving a big soy sauce jar to the kitchen, and his huge rough hand that fondled her breasts and crotch every night in the dark.
She shook her head to drive away her memories and looked down at the peaceful river. The two women, Yonghi and Sundok, came out of the snake hunter’s shack and headed for the ferry. They did not seem to be in a hurry at all. Perhaps they had managed to buy the hut from the old man. Ollye wondered why these two women wanted to buy a house here so badly. And who were the “visitors” they had mentioned?
Ollye had been tempted, momentarily, by the unexpected opportunity to escape when Yonghi had asked her to sell the Chestnut House that morning. But her life had taken root here too deeply for her to break away. Ollye’s parents had been sharecroppers for the Buddhist temple on the slope of the Three Peaks Mountain for years until her father started a love affair with a woman worshipper who frequented the temple to seek transcendental peace of mind but never neglected her worldly desires. Their affair lasted too long and she came to the mountain too often, and the suspicious husband finally hired a woodcutter to shadow his wife. This insatiable woman and Ollye’s father were caught while engaging in their illicit pleasure in the woods at night. The husband, infuriated by the woodcutter’s report, ran up all the way to the temple from the town, barged into the worshippers’ quarters in the middle of the night, flogged his wife half to death with an oak stick, and dragged her away like a hog to the butcher. Two days later, Ollye’s father, who had hidden in the forest, sneaked back into his room at night, packed his things and vanished, never to return. They heard the rumor months later that the two adulterers had secretly rendezvoused at Kangchon and eloped to Wonju.
Abandoned by her husband and too ashamed to stay at the temple any longer, Ollye’s mother came down to Kamwa village and built a shack at the foot of the mountain. But she had no means of support for herself and her young daughter. Then one day, about a month after she had built the hut, a young man came to see her from Kumsan village and told her to remove the shack and go away because that land belonged to the Hwangs. She would not comply with the Hwangs’ order, for she had no place to go and she had expended much effort in building that shabby little hut. The argument dragged on for months. In the meantime the Hwangs came to sympathize with her and eventually allowed her to sharecrop a piece of their land near Hyonam village. This was how Ollye first met Old Hwang when she was only ten years old.
It was also Old Hwang who later arranged her marriage with Kim Indong when she grew up. The marriage, at sixteen, brought her glimpses of hope and happiness never known to her before; most of her young years had been spent toiling all day in the scorching sun or shivering all night in winter’s cold. Building a new life with a husband of her own filled he
r heart so she was not as sad as she was supposed to be when her mother died. Although the little river-side hut they lived in was always dark and filled with smoke, she felt her whole body brim over with mysterious strength when her husband was at home with her. She could persevere against all hardship as long as he was there.
She shook her head again to drive away the futile longing for her husband. She was alone now, and she had to learn to live alone. She missed him more at the moments when life was hard, but she would have to be tougher. The more she missed him, the harder she had to try to forget him, for there was nobody in the world who could save her now, except herself.
Ollye watched the four boys climbing the opposite slope toward the Hwangs’ graves beneath the Eagle Rock. She could not recognize their faces because of the distance, but she knew they were the four village boys who used to play with her son every day. They did not play with Mansik any longer. She was sorry for her son, the innocent prisoner. She was sorry that he had to suffer along with her.
She looked over at the river. The two women were getting off the boat on the shore of Cucumber Island. Ollye picked up her basket and stood, ready to go home. She was going to cook a nice meal this evening for her children. Engrossed in her own distress, she had neglected them. She wanted to make up for it. Even if she could not free herself from this curse, she had to help Mansik overcome it. She was a mother.
Ollye passed the lookout shed and hastened down the slope. She wanted to be back with her children as quickly as possible. There must be a change, a new start to her life, she thought. And her children’s.
When she reached the road, Ollye saw the Toktuwon Woman and the miller’s wife coming down the other road from the rice paddies, carrying empty lunch pails on their heads. Ollye was at a loss. She was going to meet these two women at the spot where the roads converged near the log bridge. The two women saw her and faltered, too. The miller’s wife said something to the Toktuwon Woman, and then they started to walk slowly again. Even if she could avoid the embarrassment of encountering them face to face at the fork in the road, Ollye dreaded the idea of walking all the way home with the two women staring at her from behind. She slowed down. The two women slowed down too. It was clear that the two women were controlling their pace to meet her at the intersection. Ollye could not run any more. She had to face what was to come.
When they met at the fork in the road, the three women stopped at the same time as if on cue. Ollye hesitated, wondering whether she should greet the woman of the Hwangs at least, if not the miller’s wife. But she could not say anything. She did not know the proper words to say at a moment like this. She did not even have the courage to look them in the face. She turned her eyes to her house across the bridge, hoping either of the two women would say something, anything, to her. But they kept quiet, observing her from head to toe curiously. Then they started to run toward the bridge, laughing.
Ollye watched them scamper away, giggling. Perhaps I should have sold the house this morning, she thought.
TWO
Sitting cross-legged in the meditating posture squarely before the door of his room, Old Hwang gazed at the Three Peaks Mountain looming in the morning fog, thinking. Even the trees on the riverbank, having shed most of their leaves, looked chilly, for this was the Day of Cold Dew.
Old Hwang was upset because of the two strange women who had visited his county yesterday. The glaring colors of their outlandish attire had gotten on his nerves from the moment he first saw them from a distance. He was merely curious at first, but he gradually became suspicious as they visited the rice mill and then the tobacco shop as if they were looking for something definite. By the time they went to the Chestnut House, he wanted to find out what kind of women they were and what they were after. But he could not just walk into Ollye’s house and ask questions of the strange women. They should have come to see him first if they had any business to transact. He could not tolerate such impertinent persons. When Ollye glanced at him over the fence but ignored him, he was infuriated, for he had never before been insulted by her like that. He had to return to the rice paddies, fuming, “Insolent women! Insolent women!” He could no longer stand there in the road like a fool watching them.
Before returning to the rice paddies, Old Hwang dropped in at the Paulownia House to wash his muddy hands and found the miller’s wife at the well with the Toktuwon Woman cleaning the rice for the workers’ lunch. He asked why those shameless women had visited the miller earlier. She said the two women had wanted a house.
“Why did they want a house here?” the old man said.
“I don’t know, Master Hwang. They didn’t tell us why.”
On his way back to the rice paddies, the old man saw the two women hurry along the riverbank to the snake hunter’s hut. He concluded that these outsiders were very serious about their business, and decided to send his son for the snake hunter to ask him why they wanted a house.
When Old Hwang asked him if the women had wanted to buy his hut, the snake hunter, averting his eyes guiltily, said that he had sold it.
“Sold it!” the old man said, his fury already mounting. “Did you by any chance ask them the reason why they want to buy your hut?”
“I did, Master Hwang.”
“Well?”
“They wouldn’t tell me, Master Hwang.”
“So you don’t have any idea why they want to have a house in this village.”
“No, sir.”
Old Hwang exploded. “You, you—gutless idiot!” he roared. “Why didn’t you come to consult me before selling the hut to them? If you had any sense at all in that head of yours, you could see at one glance that they are women of dubious nature—women who travel without husbands or chaperones and make business deals by themselves!”
Old Hwang told him to go find the women at once and cancel the deal if he could not prove that they were decent respectable persons, which they certainly were not. That evening, while playing flower cards with the villagers at the tobacco shop, the snake hunter complained about the old man interfering with his right to sell his own house. The women must have paid him quite a chunk of money, or the snake hunter, one of the lowest men in the community, would not have complained so openly about Rich Hwang, risking a severe rebuke for challenging the old man’s authority. Nobody had sold or leased a house in the county for generations and they had no idea what a house was worth these days, but the villagers were sure that the women had offered the snake hunter a staggering sum, one so large that he would piss in Old Hwang’s face if he had to. The women had paid the whole sum in cash and asked the snake hunter to vacate the hut as soon as possible. These strange women seemed to work very fast.
Old Hwang was about to leave his house the next morning after a light breakfast of sesame soup to go to ask the miller if the snake hunter had canceled the deal yet when he spotted three strange women coming to the village from the ferry. “Sokku,” the old man called his son, who was feeding the ox. “Fetch those women here. I want to talk to them.”
These new visitors were dressed, and even walked, the same way as the two women who had been there yesterday. Hurrying to the log bridge to intercept the three women before they could cross the stream and head for Inner Kumsan, Sokku had a gloomy premonition that some evil spirit was hovering in the air over the village. Two women yesterday and three more today—women with painted faces in gay blouses and leather shoes were invading, crossing the river to steal something away from the farmers. But he could not guess what they were after.
“Wait, women,” Sokku said, hastening to the bridge, waving his hand.
The women in bold clothing stopped on the road, staring at the young farmer, who was now, gingerly, approaching them.
“Will you three come with me?” he said. “My father wants to talk to you.”
The three women looked at one another, affronted and amused at the same time. Then a woman with a hooked nose whose huge breasts drooped like a cow’s in her persimmon-colored blouse, the
one who looked the most aggressive of the three, stepped forward.
“Who on earth is your father that he wants to see us?” she asked.
After a momentary hesitation, Sokku simply pointed at his father who was standing before the Paulownia House, for he was not sure how to introduce his father to these women. The visitors seemed to show more interest in the imposing house with its tiled roof than the old man with grey hair and whiskers standing before it. The three women exchanged glances; the hooked nose one nodded her head. They obediently followed him.
The tall woman walking next to Young Hwang asked him in a sweet voice, “Is your house the biggest one around here? Have you lived here long?”
“Yes,” Sokku said uncertainly. He could not understand why she was trying to be friendly with him.
“You must know this village very well,” she said. “I wonder if you can do us a favor.”
Sokku did not reply because he was not sure what favor she was talking about.
The tall woman did not give up. “We heard that Sister Serpent had bought a house in this village,” she said. “Do you happen to know if there are any other houses for sale around here?”
Sokku was so amazed by her brash inquiry that he did not say anything more to them until they arrived at the Paulownia House. These women looked as tough as any man and Sokku wondered where and how they had earned so much money that they were able to walk into a village and buy houses on the spot. Old Hwang did not waste any time when his son brought them to him.
“I want to know who you are, and for what purpose you are visiting this village,” the old man said point-blank.
The women were dumbfounded for a brief moment. Then the third woman, who looked not a day older than eighteen, retorted, “We’re looking for a house we can stay in for some time. Anything wrong about that?”
“What do you want a house for?” Old Hwang demanded.
The women remained silent.