by Junghyo Ahn
White breath steaming out of her mouth like puffs of smoke, one morning Ollye asked her son abruptly, “You hated me because I was a U.N. lady, didn’t you?”
Mansik nodded his head yes. He did not need to think because his answer had been ready in his mind for a long time. Mansik had hated not only his mother but the bengkos, the neighbors, the Kumsan boys and virtually everything related to that village. That was why he did not hesitate to admit that he had hated his mother. But he realized instantly that something was different now and that he should have thought for a moment or two before giving that spontaneous nod. Plodding in the stream of refugees with the rooster in his arms, Mansik looked back over shoulder in the direction of his home, several days away over so many hills. Mother had not told him definitely where they were going, but he was sure they would never go back to Kumsan. “We cannot return home even if we want to,” Mother had said while crossing the Soyang River. Her voice made him suspect that she still retained some attachment for the land of her birth and young womanhood. Mansik was different. He was happy to be free from the cursed place, and he would never, never go back, even after the war was over. But his feelings had been changing without his knowledge. He had come to believe that all the hatred which had consumed him belonged to Kumsan. Out here in the cold, Mansik did not need his hatred. What was the use of hatred, after all?
His resentments no longer burned in his heart, for Kumsan itself had ceased to exist. The Chestnut House, Dragon Lady Club, Aunt Imugi, Chandol and Toad, Kangho and Bong, the gravekeeper’s hearse shed, and General’s Hill had vanished from his world. The past was gone. He would never meet his friends again, and he would never fight in another Autumn War with the Castle village boys. Recalling the young boys of the two villages roaring and cheering and throwing stones in the autumn field, Mansik had a queer feeling that he had become a grownup overnight. The Autumn Wars of West County were over for good and he was now in the grownups’ war, a war that went on too long because the grownups wanted to fight in all seasons.
If the legendary general had come galloping on his silver stallion in time, there would have been no need for the bengkos to come to liberate them. If the bengkos had not come to West County, he would have had no reason to hate his mother….
Mansik finally opened his mouth to say, “But not any more.”
“Not any more what?” said Ollye, who had forgotten what she had asked her son.
Mansik did not explain. He did not feel any need to tell her about his feelings.
“Oh, that,” said Ollye, understanding belatedly. And she did not say anything further. She gazed for a moment at Mansik’s hand, the hand that had only three fingers left to hold the rooster. Then she turned her eyes to the south again.
They walked and walked, but there was no end to the procession of the refugees. Sleeping uneasily crammed in with strangers in the dirty rooms of abandoned houses, following the flow of the strange faces along the roads and through the villages with unknown names, sometimes mingling with the retreating military vehicles, passing through the ruined towns and streets, listening to the howitzers that sounded closer and closer, glancing at the bodies of those who had starved or frozen to death on the road, watching the dreadful landscape of war, Ollye and her two children trudged farther and farther away from home.
Mr. Ahn was born in Seoul in 1941. He studied literature at Sogang Jesuit University, then worked as reporter, columnist and editor at the English-language Korea Times and Korea Herald. He has published three novels and has translated nearly a hundred books into his native language. His first work to appear in English was White Badge published by Soho Press in 1989 in the author’s own translation, as is Silver Stallion.