Coarse Sand
Hwang Sun-wŏn
Hwang Sunwŏn was born in 1915 near Pyongyang and educated there and at Waseda University in Tokyo. He was barely in his twenties when he published two volumes of poetry, and in 1940 his first volume of stories was published. He subsequently concentrated on fiction, producing seven novels and more than one hundred stories.
In 1946 Hwang and his family moved from the Soviet-occupied northern sector of Korea to the American-occupied south. He began teaching at Seoul High School in September of that year. Like millions of other Koreans, the Hwang family was displaced by the civil war of 1950-1953. From 1957 to 1993 Hwang taught Korean literature at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.
Hwang is the author of some of the best-known stories of modern Korea: “Pyŏl” (1940, trans. 1980 “The Stars”), “Hwang noin” (1942, trans. 1980 “An Old Man’s Birthday”), “Tok chinnŭn nŭlgŭni” (1944, trans. 1980 “The Old Potter”), “Hak” (1953, trans. 1980 “Cranes”), and “Sonagi” (1956, trans. 1990 “The Cloudburst”), among others. In a creative burst in the mid-1950s Hwang produced the story collection Irŏbŏrin saram tŭl (trans. 2006 Lost Souls), This volume, a series of variations on the theme of the outcast in a highly structured society, is unique among Hwang’s story collections for its thematic unity.
Hwang began publishing novels in the rgsos. During the next two decades he produced his most important work in this genre. Namu tŭl pit’al e sŏda (1960, trans. 2005 Trees on a Slope), perhaps his most successful novel, deals with the effects of the civil war on three young soldiers. Irwŏl (1962-1965, The sun and the moon) is a portrait of a paekchŏng (outcast) in urban Seoul. Umjiginŭn sŏng (1968-1972, trans. 1985 The Moving Castle) is an ambitious effort to synthesize Western influence and native tradition in modern Korea.
Also in the 1960s and 1970s Hwang’s short fiction became more experimental. Some of his most memorable and challenging stories date from this period: “Ŏmŏni ka innŭn yŭwŏl ŭi taehwa” (1965, trans. 1989 “Conversations in June About Mothers”), “Mak ŭn naeryŏnnŭnde” (1968, trans. 1989 “The Curtain Fell, But Then…”), “Sutcha p’uri” (1974, trans. 1980 “A Numerical Enigma”). Hwang’s creative powers were undiminished as late as the 1980s, as the highly original “Kŭrimja p’uri” (1984, trans. 1990 “A Shadow Solution”) demonstrates.
Indeed, the length of Hwang’ literary career, spanning seven decades, is virtually unparalleled in Korean letters. But it is his craftsmanship that sets Hwang apart from his peers. It is safe to say that Hwang is the consummate short- story writer of twentieth-century Korea. His command of dialect, his facility with both rural and urban settings, his variety of narrative techniques, his vivid artistic imagina- tion, his spectacularly diverse constellation of characters, and his insights into human personality make Hwang at once a complete writer and one who is almost impossible to categorize. If there is one constant in Hwang’s fiction, it is a humanism that is affirmative without being naive, compassionate without being sentimental, and spiritual without being otherworldly.
“Wang morae,” translated here, was written in 1953 (in his collected works, with the exception of his first story collection, Hwang cites the month and year of composition tor each of his stories) and was first published in his 1956 collection Hak (Cranes). It is one of a number of Hwang’s stories that concern mother-son relationships.
COARSE SAND
lt was the day that year when the apricot blossoms began to drop from the trees and scatter on the wind.
His mother always returned home by daybreak, but today it was nearing sundown and she still had not come back. Tori held back his tears and lay quietly looking and looking at the chamber pot by his head on the floor.
When his mother came back each day at dawn, the first thing she would do was reach for the chamber pot and use it. Tori always woke up to that sound. All too early in life Tori had learned to awaken at the slightest noise. When his mother pulled the bedclothes up over her head, Tori would reach to touch his mother’s breast. She would always push his hand away roughly, saying, “Did you come into this world just to pester me?” The strong smell of liquor would then roll over him like a wave. His mother’s body would be hot and feverish, and lying there behind his mother’s back, trying to hold in his breath, ’Tori would wonder whether she could be sick or if she hurt somewhere. And his mother would spend the whole day in bed exactly like a person who was sick.
Tori would wait for the sunlight to shine brightly through the papered door, and then slip carefully out of the bed so as not to wake his mother. He would slide the door open quietly and go outside. He would pick up his mother’s rubber shoes and hold them. He would look inside them. As always, there would be mud and coarse sand in them. It was dirt from the tailings at the gold placer mine by the stream nearby.
When his father was still living and worked as a day laborer at the gold mine, he always came home with dirt and coarse sand on his shoes, too. Tori could not understand why his mother brought that same dirt on her rubber shoes every morning, when his father had worked during the daytime carrying earth at the mine.
lt would be nearly evening when his mother finally got up and cooked something for supper and the next morning’s breakfast. At these times the only part of his mother that barely suggested a sick person was her heavy-lidded eyes, and they seemed to get brighter every day. After she had fixed their supper, his mother would return to bed and lie down. Each day Tori would make up his mind to stay awake until his mother went out that night. This always turned out to be a useless exercise, for without realizing it, he would drift off to sleep anyway.
During the night he might wake up needing to go to the bathroom and open his eyes. Of course his mother would not be there. In the early morning he would open his eyes at the chamber pot sounds, and then he would know his mother had come back. As always his mother would turn her back and go to sleep, behaving like a sick person.
This day it was the usual time for his mother to prepare supper and breakfast, but still she had not returned. Tori was sleepy. He slumped forward, dozing where he sat waiting. Startled, he sat up in surprise at the sound of the door sliding open, and saw the landlady standing outside.
The landlady closed the door, saying, “So that bitch didn’t even come back last night,” and continued to mutter something to herself. Then she opened the door again and came into the room. She went straight to the wooden box they kept in a corner of the room, opened the lid, and looked inside. Quickly she picked it up and put it outside. After that she rolled up the grimy bedding that was lying open on the floor where it had been used, and said, “The cheap whore hasn’t paid her rent for two months.” Then she spin around, looked at Tori, and said, “Your mommy won’t be coming back now. She’s gone away, far away.”
Tori could not take in what the landlady had said. Did she say mother wasn’t coming back? Why would that be? But when he saw the landlady take out the chamber pot, too, it really seemed as though his mother would not come back. Tori then burst into tears. He was eight years old at the time.
It was warmer than being in bed at home. At the same time it was colder than it had been in his own bed. Tori spent the night on the warm corner of the floor by the chimney at the restaurant that sold beef soup and rice.
“Hey, I’ve been looking high and low for you!” It was the pockmarked lady. He was glad to see her. She would probably know where his mother had gone.
One day not long after his father had died, Tori’s mother had asked him to go and bring the pockmarked lady to her. That day his mother had even given Tori money to go and buy himself some candy. Tori had sucked the hard candy drops until they were all gone and then had returned home. It could hear his mother speaking inside.
“I can’t stand this suffering any longer! I suppose I’ll have to do what you say and try to improve my lot.” Tori had no idea what she was talking about. He did think, though, that his mother’s eyes had a strange look in them that day.
The next day the pockmarked lady had come again. This time she brought a man with her. The man had a handlebar moustache and was wearing a suit with puttees on his legs. Immediately Tori had noticed that there was coarse sand from the gold mine on his shoes. Even to the little boy, though, this man gave the impression that he was not a person who carried hods of earth as his father had. That day, too, Tori had received money to go and buy candy. And this was the first time he had seen his mother put powder her face. From that night his mother began her habit of coming home each day at dawn.
This time the pockmarked lady quickly started to wipe Tori’s running nose with the inside of the hem of her skirt, and she was telling him, “Your mommy told me I should take care of you, so you need to do what I say.” At first Tori couldn’t grasp what she was trying to tell him. He simply thought that if he followed her he would be able to see his mother. “Sure,” he thought, mommy is probably waiting for me over at the pockmarked lady’s house."
The pockmarked lady’s house was in a new neighborhood that had been built close by the mine fhelds. Now, however, she was taking him in the opposite direction, toward the foot of the mountains.
When they had arrived in front of a house with a big gate, the pockmarked lady put her mouth down close to Tori’s ear and whispered, “From now on you’re going to be the young master in this house. If you do what f new mommy and daddy say, the world is yours. All right?” But Tori could not figure out what this was all about.
They cut his unkempt hair and made it look neat. They scrubbed away every bit of the accumulated dirt from his whole body. They dressed him in new clothes. They even changed his name to Sŏbi. And he had to say Father and Mother to people he had never seen before in his life.
The next day he entered school. He didn’t have any friends. During recess time he stood off by himself at one side of the playground. He would look down and see the road. Far down at the end he could see the piles of tailings at the gold mine. He tried to figure out the location of the house where they used to live.
The apricot tree there was just losing the last of the petals from its blossoms. Suddenly he thought about that day last winter when it had begun to ??? so quickly, when his father had come home and said he had passed blood in his stool. After that his father began to look paler every day, but he refused to give up a single day of work in the gold mine. His condition had become so weak that he died before he had been in bed ten days.
On his way home from school Tori went and looked at the house where he and his mother used to live. It seemed as though other people had already moved in, because he could hear the crying of a tiny baby coming from the room where they used to be.
Every so often the pockmarked lady would come to the gate of the house where Tori was living. She would go inside and talk with his new mother in her room. When the pockmarked lady left, she would be carrying a bundle in her hand. On these visits the pockmarked lady hardly ever said anything to Tori. But he was glad to see her, thinking that someday she was planning to give him a chance to see his mother again.
One day when his new father had been out all night, he said he had been involved in a game of mahjong with some of his friends. On nights like that his new mother did not sleep at all, and she would go without food the next day.
One day his new mother told Tori to follow his father and see where he was going. As he watched, Tori saw his father go into a house down a secluded alley. A young girl picked up his shoes and took them in.
When his mother heard this, she changed her skirt, and he could see that her hands were shaking violently. She then followed Tori out. His father came running out of that house looking completely flustered, grabbing hig suit coat in his hand. Then his new mother came chasing out after him with her hair all in a tangle. Nothing happened in the street on the way back. When they were inside the house, though, his new mother began to claw and tear wildly at his father’s chest and gave him a thorough tongue-lashing. “All right, you just kill me and go and live with that bitch! Kill me! Right now! Kill me!”
It was a long while before his new father could get in a word. “Look here! Do you think for one moment I was there because I care about that broad? I only wanted to find a way to have a son, and that’s all.”
After that his father did not stay out all night anymore. Then one evening Tori’s new mother told him to follow his father, who was going out carrying the toilet kit he used for taking a bath. But his father went right past the bathhouse, turned down an alley, and went into a house. A young woman took care of his shoes when he went in. Tori was taken completely by surprise. It was the same girl he had seen the last time. She was now in an entirely different house. He turned around, but before he could leave the alley someone grabbed him by the back of the neck. How she had gotten there he didn’t know, but it was the girl he had just seen at the door. "You little good-for-nothing! What’s the big idea, making other people miserable like this!’ Her fingernails made marks on his neck that smarted for days afterward.
The following year before the fruit was ripe on the trees, Tori noticed that for some reason his new mother kept buying green fruit, storing it, and eating it. Then at the time of the first hard frost, his new mother’s stomach began to swell.
The pockmarked lady came. She asked the ages of Tori’s new mother and father, and then after spending a long time counting by bending and straightening her fingers, she said it was a boy for certain. This time when she left she was carrying a bigger bundle than ever before.
During the first month of the next year his new mother had a baby. It was boy. One day soon after they had celebrated the baby’s twenty-first day, the pockmarked lady came, for the first time in a long while. This time she had hot come on her own, but they had sent the maid to get her. And this time she didn’t go inside and talk with his new mother in her room; she stood outside and talked with his father. When they were through, Tori’s new father handed her a bundle of money.
On the spot Tori went with the pockmarked lady and left the house with the big gate. She was muttering something to herself. “When I figured it out, it was for sure going to be a girl, but then she had to go and have a boy.” Then looking around at Tori, she said, “Well, all your luck seems to be bad, and there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it!”
Tori did not know why the pockmarked lady was in such a bad mood that day.
Tori became the errand boy at the fabric shop. It looked as though the pockmarked lady had already talked to the people there, because when they left the house with the big gate, she had taken him straight to the shop. The work was not all that hard. The owner and his wife were really very kind. The pockmarked lady would stop in there every once in a while, too. The owner would always slip her a few pieces of material that was in season when she came.
Two years passed. He came to know the names of all the kinds of fabric. Then the owner of the shop decided to move to Seoul. He had plans to expand and open a larger store there.
He asked Tori to go along with them. Tori thought about whether he would go or stay. The pockmarked lady came rushing over and said that they would have to leave the boy behind. Now that she had said that, Tori thought so, too. Yes, he’d better stay where the pockmarked lady was, then he would be able to meet his mother when she came back.
The next day Tori moved over to the farm implements store. There was already an older boy working at this store. This boy seemed to have been doing his work for a long time, and would even take the place of the owner in buying and selling things. Unlike Tori, he slept at his own house and came to work every day.
From the day he arrived there, Tori had to sweep the courtyard and draw the water. When the owner was off in the country selling implements, Tori also had to take care of the shutters and open the shop.
There was an eight-year-old boy in the owner’s family. In spare moments Tori also had the job of taking care of this child. Tori made things for him, He made eyeglasses out of wire, and whittled a top from wood. He made him a shuttlecock to kick and a kite to fly. Tori was happiest when he was taking care of this boy.
Once during the night Tori got out of bed and was on his way to the toilet. As he was passing by the door of the family’s room, for some reason we paused and stood before the door. Through the small pane of glass in the center of the door he could see the boy lying asleep with his arms around hi mother’s breast. And the mother had one arm around the boy’s neck.
In the darkness Tori, too, reached out instinctively for his mother’s breast, His mother responded by holding him as well. But in the next instant his mother turned away and lay with her back toward him. Tori had to get away from that door as fast as he could. He made up his mind then that he would never again look in through the glass in that door.
The very next night, however, Tori found himself stopping again in front of that same door. This time the boy was sleeping facing the other way. All the same the boy’s mother had one arm curled around his neck.
One night when the owner had come back from a trip in the country, he was sitting in the store working on the account books and figuring on the abacus. Tori took the chance to slip out as if he had to go to the bathroom, and went in the house to look through the door again. That night the boy had his arms tightly clasped around his mother’s neck. In the darkness he also put his arms out and hugged his mother’s neck. As he did this, someone’s hand grasped him by the back of the neck. It was much stronger than the grip of the young woman who once had caught him in the alley next to the bath house.
“So, now that you’ve gotten your hands on someone else’s gold ring, you’re looking for something else to steal, I suppose!” It was the owner’s voice. Next the palm of his strong hand caught Tori on the side of the face and made stars flash before his eyes. “Come on, now! Give me the ring!”
He said that a gold ring that had been on the dressing table had disappeared the day before while his wife was out doing the washing. Tori held his hand over his red, stinging cheek. He didn’t know what the owner was talking about.
The older boy who worked in the store opened the back door a crack, stuck his head in, and then pulled it back quickly. At once Tori remembered. Yesterday when he thought the older boy had probably gone out to the toilet, Tori had caught his eye as he slipped out of the door of the owner’s family’s room, still wearing his shoes. Tori was about to tell the owner about that, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had heard some time ago that the older boy’s father had suffered a stroke and was an invalid. The image of the boy’s father appeared before his eyes, even though he had never actually met him. What he saw was the image of his own father before his death.
The owner of the store sent the older boy to bring the pockmarked lady. That night Tori was put out of the place and had to go with her. When they had gone a short way, the older boy came running after them in the darkness. He put something into Tori’s hand. It was money. Tori shoved it back, and noticed that the older boy’s hand was damp with sweat.
After they had gone a little farther, the pockmarked lady stopped walking and said, “I was planning to buy a spade and a hoe, maybe tomorrow, but now I guess I can’t because of you. They said you took it, so let me see the ring.”
Tori didn’t know how to answer. Then the pockmarked lady became less direct and asked, “Did you sell the ring? Since you’ve already sold it, why don’t you just let me have a look at the money?” Tori was still completely silent, so the pockmarked lady went on muttering to herself. “Your old man, too, he was hypnotized by anything gold. Kept swallowing bits of gold and arse sand right along with it until it ground through his guts and killed him.”
Tori thought there must be something terribly important for him to understand in what the pockmarked lady was saying that night.
The pockmarked lady’s house was at one end of a row of houses a short distance from the gold mine. These houses had been in the mining area, but during the previous year when the mine was played out, the houses were picked up and moved away to their present location.
It was a small one-room house. Inside a young man and woman were drinking, passing the wine cup back and forth. They appeared to be quite drunk.
“Say, come over a little closer.” The man grasped the woman under her arm and pulled her toward him, at the same time sliding his other hand into the front of her blouse. The woman twisted the top part of her body as if this tickled and said, “Are you sure you’ve had enough to drink?” Then she pushed the small servin g table across the floor out of the way and turned out the light. She spoke and acted as though other people were not even there at the other end of the room.
The pockmarked woman lay down in the place where she had been sitting. She then reached out in the dark and with her hand signaled Tori to lie down, too.
The next thing he knew the pockmarked woman was already snoring. At the upper end of the room the young woman was giggling and then gave out a series of cries as if she was hurting. They acted as if no one else was in the room. Tori put his hands over his hears to stop the sound.
After a while the pockmarked woman’s hand came and rested upon him. He thought she must have moved it in her sleep. The hand began to move, though, groping to find his jacket pocket. He thought about pushing it away, but left it alone. He recalled how she had asked him to give her the ring a while before on their way over. Her hand even went burrowing into his pants, pockets. She was giving him a thorough going-over.
When daybreak arrived the young man had already left. The young woman was by herself, fast asleep with her limbs sticking out in all directions, The alcohol-induced animation had gone out of her, and compared with last night under the light bulb, her face now looked far more swollen and had a blotchy, yellowish cast. She looked older, too.
Tori went outside. He walked over toward the mine fields. This was the place where there had once been such a clamor about gold pouring out of the ground. Now there was nothing left but these endless huge piles of tailings that looked like enormous grave mounds.
Tori went over and sat on top of one of the piles of tailings. He picked up a handful of the worked-over earth and coarse sand. He tried putting some in his mouth. He could perhaps understand after all. How his father, not long: after beginning to work as a laborer in the mine, had always checked the chamber pot after he used it. And what he was doing when he emptied it into a washbasin full of water and inspected the contents so carefully. Then also why blood had begun to appear from that day when the sleet storm came. Tori was suddenly overcome with fright. Now he could guess why his mother’s shoes had coarse sand from this place in them, beginning shortly after his father’s death. He remembered last night and how the young woman and the man had acted. Soon after his father had passed away, his mother had called the pockmarked woman. She had brought the man with the handlebar moustache. At that time the pockmarked woman’s house had been here in the mine precincts. Even so, within Tori’s heart there was a voice crying out, “No, no!” Wasn’t the young woman still sleeping now at the pockmarked woman’s house, even though it was broad daylight? His mother had always come back to him before the break of day.
“I’ve been looking all over for you. I didn’t think you’d be here.” It was the pockmarked woman. Now it wasn’t like the last time she had come to find him, when he had slept in the corner by the chimney at the soup restaurant. This time he didn’t feel glad to see her. He didn’t feel anything.
“You’ve been crying. Why, do you hurt someplace? This time I found a job for you at the inn. But watch out. No more lifting things like the last time! Come on, let’s go.”
Suddenly Tori felt an impulse to ask the pockmarked woman what had happened to his mother, but he did not. He was afraid she would answer that she didn’t know. At the same time, he thought how lucky it was that at least he didn’t have to sleep again that night at the pockmarked woman’s house.
One day at dawn, the third time that the apricot tree standing in the inner courtyard of the inn had begun dropping its petals, Tori was sweeping the courtyard. The pockmarked woman bustled in, acting very important. She had been coming to see Tori every once in a while. She would come saying she needed money right away and would ask to borrow some from him. Tori had been giving her money out of his savings from the customers’ tips. This was the first time, though, that she had come so early, at daybreak.
“Well, your mother’s back.” It had been a long time since he had heard her speak in such a gentle voice. When he heard this, Tori was stunned and silent. The broom dropped out of his hands. He picked it up and stood it against the apricot tree. The broom would not stay straight and fell over. His hands trembled.
“Why are you hesitating so, child? Your mother’s here, right outside.” And sure enough, there was an older middle-aged woman standing just inside the gate. Her dull hair was completely disheveled. Her face was deathly pale.
“Well, what do you think? He’s all grown up now, isn’t he? Sixteen this year. Oh, how I’ve worked to try and take good care of him during all this time.” Tori’s mother made no response. His mother’s puffy eyes, sunken deep in their sockets, with matter not even wiped from the corners, looked so dull that she didn’t seem to be looking directly at Tori.
“Look, your mother’s sick. Hurry up and take her inside so she can lie down.”
She did walk like a person who was really very ill. He spread out bedding in a room in a quiet corner of the inn, and she lay down. As soon as his mother put her head on the pillow she closed her eyes.
As though she had been waiting for the chance, the pockmarked woman whispered in ’Tori’s ear. “Last night your mother bought some medicine with money I gave her. No one else could have gotten it for her, but because of me she was able to take it.” As she said this she put out her open palm before Tori. As always the pockmarked woman’s hand was soft and smooth.
Tori said they should hurry and call the doctor. Without opening her eyes his mother then said there was no need for a doctor, and just to leave her lying quietly the way she was. Her voice was terribly hoarse. Tori’s mother ate hardly anything for breakfast. At lunch time it was the same. For supper she drank only two or three swallows of broth from the seaweed soup.
All that day, whenever he had spare moments, Tori went into the room and looked down at his mother, who seemed to be sleeping and remained perfectly still. She didn’t look anything like the mother he used to know. Well, perhaps you could say that the heavy-lidded eyes were still there from before, even though right now they were sunken so deep and messy with matter in them. Tori thought that all of this, though, was due to her being sick. He would get a house ready for his mother, even if it could be only a little shack, and he would nurse her until she recovered.
At dusk, when he had taken the bags down to the station for some of the guests at the inn, he came back to find everything in an uproar because a guest in one of the rooms had lost his wallet. He said he had stepped out to go to the toilet and that it had been taken out of the pocket of his coat hanging on a hook on the wall.
Tori’s mother came inside the gate with tottering steps. It was the staggering walk of a very sick person. She said she had been outside looking for the toilet. Tori suddenly realized something he should have done. He hadn’t brought a chamber pot for her to use.
Tori felt happy as he returned from the china shop with the best chamber pot he could find. His heart pounded as he thought how he had once been so afraid his mother wouldn’t return when the landlady took away their old chamber pot, but now with this new one he would really make his mother his very own for good.
As soon as he returned, Tori’s mother held out an injection vial and told him to go and get one like it for her. Tori ran to the drugstore he knew down at the corner. When the clerk at the drugstore saw the vial, he said that you couldn’t buy that kind of injection without a certificate from a doctor. He said he had gotten into trouble with the owner the night before when he sold one of those to the pockmarked woman; she had kept after him until he gave in. Then a little while ago, too, an older woman had come and tried everything to get him to sell her one, but he hadn’t done so. “Do you have any idea what kind of medicine this is?” he asked Tori. Then he told him that the injection was made from opium.
Tori’s heart was cut to the quick. The pockmarked woman had talked about buying some medicine that was hard to get for his mother the night before. Then there was his mother’s staggering walk a while ago when she said she had been looking for the toilet. One of the guests at the inn had lost his wallet. Still, Tori shook his head: no, it couldn’t be so.
When Tori’s mother saw him return empty-handed, she found the strength from somewhere to sit bolt upright. “You stupid little fool! Can’t you even get one of these for me? It was a mistake to give birth to a thing like you to begin with! If I just hadn’t had you, I wouldn’t be in this mess today. look here at my stomach. This all comes from giving birth to such a fine character as you! You know why that nice supervisor at the mine wouldn’t have me? Because of this stomach! Next a crew chief on the railroad didn’t want me because of it. Then a little while ago I met a kind old shoe repair man. I thought even he would reject me, so I did what he said and started to shoot this stuff. A few days ago he was taken in for stealing someone’s shoes. There wasn’t anything else to do, so I came to see if you could take care of me, and is this the way it’s going to be?”
Immediately his mother’s voice changed to pleading, though, and she said, “No, everything is my fault. Whenever I look at this snakelike scar on my stomach I always remember that you came into this world covered with my blood, All the males in this world are heartless. Child, have pity on your poor mother. You have to save me. Just get me one shot. If you don’t, your mother’s going to die!”
Tori couldn’t stand to hear any more. He ran straight to the hospital. But they told him at the hospital that they always had to report patients like his mother to the police.
He ran back to the drugstore. He met the proprietor. “I’ll pay whatever you ask if you’ll sell me only one vial!” The owner looked skeptically at Tori’s face with the tears welling up in his eyes, and then said, “All right, I’Il let you have one if you promise you won’t buy this medicine anywhere else.”
Tori’s mother fairly tore the vial out of his hands and hurriedly put its contents into a syringe she had prepared. Her hands trembled as she thrust it into her breast, which had become nothing more than an empty bag of skin. “Oh, I knew you were my very own son!”
Tori’s face looked sad, but showed that he had made up his mind. He went to the owner of the inn and said that he would make up whatever money the guest had lost from his room that evening.
When he went back, he found that his mother’s breathing was even and she had gone to sleep. He turned out the light and lay down beside her. He then slowly put his arm around his mother’s neck. She did not push his hand away now. Tori gradually increased the pressure with his arm. His mother emaciated body gave a shudder like a dragonfly when its neck has been twisted. She was having trouble breathing. But Tori did not let up on his arm as he pressed harder upon her throat.
October 1953
Translated by Edward W. Poitras in 1975, and revised in 2003