The Dwarf (Modern Korean Fiction)

by Cho Se-hui

  The adults rushed to the hospital, children in their arms, but then they too had trouble breathing because of the stench in the air. Their eyes smarted, their throats grew hot. Those who could not bear it ran out onto the streets. Fog settled over downtown and the residential areas; streetlights could no longer be seen. Chaos broke out and public order collapsed in an instant. Thieves and thugs seized this unimaginable opportunity and ran wild. The residential areas emptied out, their occupants fleeing for the highway that led toward the heart of the nation. All this happened in the space of three hours, from nine o’clock to midnight, but the people of Ŭngang shuddered at the exposure of their helplessness in the face of a great terror. In this short period the Ŭngang people experienced the full spectrum of anxiety. Although no one could have expressed it, they realized they were living under ecological conditions without precedent in the history of Ŭngang. The next day they told themselves they had better try to solve the problem. But before long they ran up against a massive wall and ultimately they made a listless retreat. The prime movers of Ŭngang were in Seoul. The people of Ŭngang thought they could hold public meetings or even demonstrate if need be. They were left with mouths agape when they realized too late that this was impossible.

  Yun-ho was forever thinking about how his father was involved in something terrible.

  The many factories, the people who managed them, and the people who directed those managers, all were in Seoul. To run the factory machines they used only the minimum energy required by the laws of physics, and with a fraction of this energy they measured and announced the level of pollution in Ŭngang. Before the people of Ŭngang go to bed they check the wind direction. From the factory zone where the dwarf’s children work, the wind sweeps the toxic gases and sooty smoke inland or toward the ocean. The Ŭngang people think no further. They don’t think about the laborers in this factory zone where upwards of one hundred thousand tons of wastewater a day are sent flowing to the sea. As long as the air doesn’t hang over the factory area and then blow toward the residential area, these people do not awaken from their deep sleep. Nor do they need to know that there are four labor supervisors in the Ŭngang central district office of the Labor Bureau. These four supervisors oversee more than a thousand places of business. One person is responsible not for two hundred and fifty workers but for two hundred and fifty places of business.

  It is there that the dwarf’s children work and live. When he first arrived, the dwarf’s elder son thought that his life there could get no worse. His first night in Ŭngang he had spent in the office of the workers’ church, he had told Yun-ho. There he saw a survey the workers had filled out for the people at the church:

  1. Motive for seeking work

  a. Poverty: 58.1%

  b. Family discord: 15.1

  c. Aspiration for city life: 12.4

  d. Friend’s urging: 11.7

  e. Other: 2.7

  2. Desired workplace requisite

  a. High pay: 8.4%

  b. Humane treatment: 71.6

  c. Opportunity to learn job skills: 19.1

  d. Other: 0.9

  3. Level of work-related fatigue

  a. Always: 59.8%

  b. Sometimes: 33.8

  c. Seldom: 5.7

  d. Never: 0.7

  4. Do you think the Labor Union executives are company agents?

  a. Yes, most are: 39.1%

  b. Yes, to a slight extent: 28.3

  c. Not at all: 19.2

  d. Don’t know: 13.4

  5. Do you think that anyone in our country who works hard, consumes wisely, and saves can live well?

  a. Yes: 41.3%

  b. To an extent: 21.5

  c. Only with difficulty: 33.5

  d. Impossible: 3.8

  His eyes kept returning to several of these figures: the 58.1 percent who mentioned poverty, the 71.6 percent who mentioned humane treatment, the 59.8 percent who were always fatigued, the 39.1 percent who thought almost all the Labor Union executives were company agents, the 33.5 percent who considered it somewhat difficult to live well, and the 3.8 percent who thought it impossible to live well. The dwarf’s elder son thought about the despair, antipathy, and alienation of the handful of those who had responded “impossible.”

  “I knew then that I had to do more than just work,” the dwarf’s elder son had said later.

  “Why was that?” asked Yun-ho.

  “You shouldn’t have to ask. The day I went to work at Ŭngang Motors seven people on the assembly line were kicked out.”

  “Kicked out? You mean they were fired? Did they do something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “There’s no labor union—is that it?”

  “No, there’s a union.”

  “Then it’s possible to get fired without cause? Didn’t the union officials do anything?”

  “They work for management.”

  “What kind of a labor union is that?”

  “It’s a labor union.”

  “He’s going to have more unhappiness.” This was Ŭn-hŭi talking.

  “Do you think you’re happy?” said Yun-ho. “He needs something to work for, just like anyone else.”

  “You’re right!” Ŭn-hŭi exclaimed.

  There was just one thing Ŭn-hŭi wanted that summer. Yun-ho knew what that was. And he knew what the dwarf’s elder son wanted as well. There was nothing Yun-ho could do for the dwarf’s children, though. The machines that operated in the factories were things of precision, but society was full of peculiar habits, surveillance, inefficiencies, and dangers. To the dwarf’s elder son, everything looked black, like the steam engines you see in photographs.

  The dwarf’s younger son went to work for Ŭngang Electronics, where his first job was to load and carry castings on a metal handcart. For three months he worked as a trainee. When he began to do polishing work, one of the union officials handed him a piece of paper.

  “He didn’t join the union,” Yun-ho said.

  “He won’t be happy either,” said Ŭn-hŭi.

  “He started reading books so he’d know what demands to present to management. He spoke with the workers he trusted and told them to drop out of the union.”

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “His dream is a new union.”

  “Where does his sister work?”

  “Ŭngang Textile.”

  “How’s Yŏng-hŭi?” When Yun-ho asked the dwarf’s elder son about his sister, the son shook his head.

  “She’s not working,” he said. “She got a dismissal notice from the company.”

  “What’s the reason?”

  “They say she wouldn’t listen to her immediate superior. But I’m not worrying. The young people in the union are onto it and they’re doing a good job.”

  That was the first time Yun-ho had seen the dwarf’s elder son smile. Yun-ho couldn’t talk long with him. The dwarf’s elder son was busy. He still didn’t know that the economic life of our country is essentially controlled by dozens of people who don’t appear in the public eye. They run large factories and load their products onto sixty-thousand-ton freighters docked at Ŭngang’s inner harbor.

  “It won’t work,” the dwarf’s elder son had said later. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Me, my brother, and my sister, and the people who work for Ŭngang.”

  “Aren’t you expecting too much all of a sudden?” Yun-ho asked.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” the dwarf’s elder son had said without meeting Yun-ho’s gaze.

  The American air conditioner his father had installed certainly did spew out cold air, and it did so without a sound. July and August of that year were extraordinarily hot. The machines in Ŭngang’s factory zone kept running that summer. There was too much Yun-ho didn’t know. The dwarf’s elder son had wept countless times after starting work at Ŭngang. He’d been threatened countless times, subjected to violence, hospitalized, even been taken into cu
stody. His face was unrecognizably drawn. His eyes alone looked extraordinarily large. His ideals tormented him.

  “My dream is something very simple,” he said weakly.

  “I know,” said Yun-ho.

  He observed Yun-ho quietly before speaking again. “We haven’t been able to hold the general meeting or the union rep meeting that we scheduled. Everything’s one-sided. Nothing goes according to the law. All we do is lose. I’ve lost face with the people I work with. And the only thing I’ve given them is more trouble.”

  “I’m sure they understand you.”

  “What about you?”

  “I understand you.”

  “Then you have to help me.”

  “How?”

  The dwarf’s elder son rested his hand on Yun-ho’s back.

  “Take me to your house. I won’t budge from your room. When I see my opportunity I’ll leave.”

  “What the hell are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got to see him.”

  “See who?”

  “The man who runs the Ŭngang Group. Your next-door neighbor.”

  “What are you going to say when you see him?”

  The dwarf’s eldest son let his hand drop from Yun-ho’s back. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “You’re out of your mind!” Yun-ho shouted. “You don’t solve anything by killing people. You’ve lost your mind.”

  “Fine,” he said in a soft voice. “I don’t need anyone’s help. I’ll do it myself, under my own power.”

  “You’re killing yourself. Who in God’s name are you going to die for?”

  “No one.”

  “Well, then?”

  “Let’s not talk anymore.”

  “If you want to see him, go to Brazil,” Yun-ho said, suppressing his anger. “He’s taking some time off with his youngest daughter; she’s seventeen. Go to the resort area in Santos and shout his name.”

  “I’ll have to wait till he gets back,” said the dwarf’s eldest son. “I’ve got to kill him.” And then he turned away.

  There was nothing Yun-ho could do to help the dwarf’s elder son. There was one person alone that Yun-ho could help and that was Ŭn-hŭi. Ŭn-hŭi wanted Yun-ho. She would visit him, sit without saying a word, then return home. Yun-ho took Ŭn-hŭi to the hotel in the gloomy, unlit alley. The hotel with the frayed red carpet.

  Yun-ho placed his index finger against Ŭn-hŭi’s lips. Ŭn-hŭi spread her fingers, placed them over her eyes, and looked through them at Yun-ho. When he took Ŭn-hŭi in his arms her dress made a rustling sound as it rumpled up. Naked, Ŭn-hŭi covered Yun-ho’s face with her hands, then brought it to her bosom. Yun-ho tightened his arms about her and Ŭn-hŭi breathed in deeply. But it was no use. For Yun-ho had run up against a fundamental moral issue. “That’s why we have to put an end to this now,” he mumbled. As Yun-ho held Ŭn-hŭi in his arms there arose in his mind an image of Ŭngang chock full of dark machines.

  We’ll form an organization—he can’t do it all by himself, thought Yun-ho as he left the hotel that day.

  The Cost of Living for a Family of Ŭngang Laborers

  I DIDN’T WANT TO LISTEN any more. Yŏng-hŭi was talking about the town of Lilliput near Lake Hastro in Germany. I wasn’t catching all the details, but I could tell it was a sad story. When she thought about our departed father, tears always appeared. Lilliput is an international town of dwarfs. Dwarfs from various countries have gathered there to live. Recently the world’s shortest man, a Turk whose height is thirty-one inches, moved there. The dwarf population of Lilliput steadily increases. In places other than Lilliput dwarfs live lives of inconvenience and danger because the scale of everything is too large.

  For dwarfs there is no place as safe as the town of Lilliput. The necessities of daily life, not to mention the houses and furniture, are made to size for dwarfs. There is nothing there to endanger the life of a dwarf—no suppression, no fear, no discrimination, no violence. The town of Lilliput has no dictators. No one to parcel out small shares of power to his followers, no one to draft cruel laws. There is no large industry, no factories, no managers. The dwarfs who have gathered there from various countries have reduced the world to their scale. They have exercised the vote. They have disregarded anything that smacks of nationality. They all participated eagerly in the vote and chose Marianne Char as town manager. This woman’s height is thirty-nine inches. Through their collective power and their ardent wish for an autonomous community they established a town of dwarfs. Yŏng-hŭi sounded excited. I thought of the dwarfs there as revolutionaries. They don’t worry about the sons and daughters who will be born there. They were miserable in the places where the giants lived.

  Currently the dwarfs of Lilliput are debating such issues as medical care suited to their needs, social psychological problems, and financial matters. There are several points still to be resolved, but Marianne Char, the town manager, has said, “We are very happy.”

  Yŏng-hŭi wrote the word happiness. She thought of our departed father. I saw tears gather in Yŏng-hŭi’s eyes. Father should have lived in a place like Lilliput. There would have been nobody to say, “Look at the midget.” If Father had lived near Lake Hastro he wouldn’t have died before his time. “Murdered Father”—that’s what Yŏng-ho had said. I hadn’t been able to prevent him from saying it. When I thought about the deep, pitch-black interior of the brick factory smokestack, I felt a choking sensation. Father’s stature was small but his suffering was great. Father’s height was forty-six inches, his weight seventy pounds. I often dreamed of Father during my early days at Ŭngang. In the dream Father looked no more than twenty inches tall. Tiny Father was dragging a huge spoon. A copper spoon coated with blue tarnish. From above his head the blazing sun beat down. The copper spoon was too heavy for Father. Exhausted, he put down the spoon, which was taller than he, and rested. And then he climbed into the spoon and lay down. Lay down in the copper spoon, which had grown hot in the blazing sun, and went to sleep. I lifted the end of the spoon and shook Father. He didn’t open his eyes. Father was shrinking in the copper spoon. Crying, I took Father’s copper spoon and shook it.

  Mother said to me, “There’s nothing to worry about.” She ran her fingers through my hair. “Don’t think about being the man of the family. And then you won’t have that dream. Whatever you do, don’t think about all the heavy responsibilities you have now that Father has passed on.”

  “The thought of being the man of the family has never entered my mind,” I said.

  “Oh yes it has,” Mother said. “It’s something you yourself aren’t aware of. Those thoughts are there, somewhere inside you.”

  As Mother had said, those thoughts were there, in a corner of my mind.

  “You’re the eldest son, my boy,” Father had always said. “If anything should happen to me, you’re the pillar of the family.”

  “Yŏng-su,” Mother had said, “I can still work, and Yŏng-ho and Yŏng-hŭi are all grown up. We’ll trust in your decisions and we’ll follow you.”

  The city of Ŭngang was utterly different from the town of Lilliput. This pained Yŏng-hŭi. It was a land where all living things suffered. We had come to Ŭngang in order to live. In Ŭngang we had resumed our daily routine, which had ceased for a time after Father passed on. I used to think there was nothing as abstract as life. It was neither tangible nor visible. It was something Father had given to us. To use the terminology of a biology book from my middle school days, Father had reproduced something identical to himself, propagated his race, and passed on. According to Mother, Father had passed on to a different circle of life. Father’s body was reduced to half a handful of ash in the crematorium. Mother did not want to believe it, even when she received that half a handful of ash. She didn’t believe that the dead disappeared completely. We scattered that half-handful of ash over the flowing water. Yŏng-ho and I wiped away tears with our fists.

  “All done with your homework?” Father had asked.

&
nbsp; “No.” Using my ruler, I drew a pointed triangle.

  “Do your homework.”

  “This is my homework.”

  Father peered at what I had drawn.

  “It’s the food pyramid,” I explained.

  “What use is it?”

  “It explains the food chain.”

  “Explain it to me, then.”

  “These green plants way down at the bottom are at level one. The animals that eat those plants are at level two, the small meat-eaters that eat those animals are at level three, and the large meat-eating animals up above are at level four.”

  “Yŏng-ho,” said Father, “can you explain this as well as your brother?”

  “No, I can’t,” Yŏng-ho had said. “Not the way Brother did. We’re down at the bottom. For us, there’s nothing to catch for food. But above us there are three levels of things that want to eat us.”

  “Father needs to rest!” Mother had said. “He’s been working too hard all these years. Now he can have a good rest.”

  “Mother, you’re the one who should rest,” I said.

  Mother set afloat the white paper wrapping that had held the half-handful of ash. We sat beside the water and watched the water flow. Father disappeared. The breeze blew. The sun felt warm. Several birds flew past Mother. I saw a hillside worn away by a mudslide. Yŏng-ho and I stopped crying almost simultaneously. Father’s death transformed our daily life. When we moved to Ŭngang we started worrying about everything, even our breathing. At first we took extremely feeble breaths, as if we were desiccated beans.

  Yŏng-ho went to work first—at Ŭngang Electronics Plant One. Yŏng-hŭi went to work at the Ŭngang Textile Plant. Once I was sure these two younger siblings of mine had gotten their jobs I went to work at Ŭngang Motors. All three of us started out as trainees in Ŭngang Group factories. We began working at jobs completely different from what our departed Father had done. Each of us was merely one among numerous workers operating machines inside huge factories. And there again we were trainees not yet familiar with the job skills. Even in that group we belonged to the lowest class. In any event, now that we were working in those big factories we were able to find housing not far away. Consistent with our social standing, we lived in a slum. The work we did was unskilled labor. Yŏng-ho loaded and carried castings on a metal handcart. Yŏng-hŭi, still in training, cleaned the central corridor leading to the workrooms. I delivered small parts to the people on the automobile assembly line. A single automobile was made of an incalculable number of parts. The workers who were senior to me worked hard. Those on the assembly line regarded me as just another machine. To the factory manager the workers were one big machine.