Land of Exile

Cho Chŏng-nae

Cho Chŏngnae (b. 1943) is a prolific writer who made his debut with “Calumny” (Numyŏng) in Hyŏndae munhak magazine in 1970. He received the twenty-seventh Modern Literature Award in 1981 for “Land of Exile” (Yuhyŏng ŭi ttang, first published in Hyŏndae munhak the same year) and the Republic of Korea Literature Award for “Door to Humanity” (Ingan ŭi mun) in 1982.

As a writer, Cho expresses a belief in the value and dignity of human life and strives to relate the life of the individual to the flow of history. He is particularly concerned with the twin impacts of war and division on the Korean spirit and with the connection between such events and Korea’s social history. Like the main character Mansŏk in “Land of Exile,” Cho Chŏngnae’s people are frequently the unfortunate victims of Korea’s history, both ancient and recent.

From 1983 to 1989 Cho devoted himself to a ten-volume, 1.25-million-word roman fleuve, The T’aebaek Mountains (T’aebaek san-maek), named after the three-hundred-mile chain that mins from Kang-wŏn Province in central Korea south to the city of Pusan, forming the backbone of the peninsula. Critics have hailed the work as “the masterpiece of the 1980s.”

Cho states that the work “deals with the tragedy of Korea’s division with a mind to overcoming that division.” “Unification is impossible,” he adds, “unless we strip away our postwar anticommunism and form a more objective, balanced judgment whereby we criticize the historical blunders and distortions of the right wing and affirm the historical sincerity and meaning of the left.”

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“Please, mister . . . I’m old and worthless, and my only wish is to close my eyes in peace. I beg you, look on me with pity.”

The old man fervently rubbed his palms together. He could scarcely have been more ardent before the Buddha himself. And, as if that were not enough, he knelt on the floor.

“This really isn’t necessary, sir,” said the director. “I fully understand your difficulty. Here, now, won’t you have a seat?” He made an awkward attempt to help the old man up.

“Please, mister, promise you’ll take him,” the old man pleaded, bending even lower.

“All right. I’ll see that he’s admitted,” the director managed to answer, revealing his contradictory feelings.

“Oh, thank you, mister! I’ll never forget your heavenly grace, even when I’ve passed on to the next world.”

Still kneeling, the old man bowed two or three times, palms pressed tight against his chest. His eyes misted over with tears.

“Sir, please take a seat.”

Why didn’t he just leave the boy at the gate and disappear without all this pleading? I’ d have taken him in anyway, thought the director.

The old man reseated himself with some reluctance in the chair, then groped in his pocket, sniffing continuously.

“Here, mister—it’s all the money I’ve got. Take it, will you? It’s not much but it’s a token of my gratitude.”

There in the old man’s rough hand were two creased ten-thousand-wŏn notes.

“No, no, no. Keep it, sir, and use it for medicine or something. We’ll take care of the boy.”

“Take it, I’m begging you. The last expression of the heart of a useless father. If you won’t accept it, then how will I be able to tum and leave? Please, mister, take it.”

The old man’s tear-filled eyes spoke many times more fervently than his words.

“Well, if you insist.”

The director accepted the money from the old man’s trembling hands.

“And here’s some underwear for him.”

The old man briefly rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and then proffered a small bundle.

“Oh, yes.”

As the director took the bundle, he heard a groan of paternal emotion.

“I would have bought an extra change of clothes, but after I got him the underwear I didn’t have enough money, you see.”

The old man spoke as if to assuage his guilt, biting back tears that worked the comers of his mouth.

“There’s no cause for concern.”

“And please take good care of this.”

The old man carefully produced an old scrap of paper. The director read at a glance the six syllables laboriously drawn on the Paper: “Father is Ch’ŏn Mansŏk.”

“This is my name. ‘Mansŏk’ means ‘ten thousand bushels.’ They say my grandfather gave it to me. The life of a poor commoner is nothing but hopes and sorrows, and he wanted me to have this name so I’d become a rich man with ten thousand sacks of rice. But look at me now.”

The old man heaved a deep sigh of despair.

“I know I’m a poor excuse for a father, but I thought he should at least know my name.”

“Yes, of course. Every son must have a father. It’s only natural that he should know.”

As he spoke, the director examined the old man anew. Here before him was a man with a pitiful fate, worn out by life and withered like a fallen leaf.

The old man called his son back in from the hallway. Though he had said his son was six, the boy looked thin and scrawny like a wild melon vine in a drought—he was probably malnourished. The child’s wretched appearance prompted new pangs of sorrow in the old man.

It’d be a mistake to stay with him to the bitter end, the old man thought suddenly. A father’s remorse, rehearsed countlessly before his visit here.

“No matter how hard your life is, you’re not helping yourself by neglecting your health like this. You’ll have to be more Careful. Don’t slack off or you’ll be in trouble.”

The doctor’s words had shattered Mansŏk’s belief that he would be with his son until the end. That ugly picture showing a jumble of bones—what the doctor called an X-ray—seemed to say that his life was like a candle burning low.

Even before the old man had talked himself into visiting the hospital, he suspected how sick he was. Even before he began bleeding from the mouth, there had been other symptoms. His body would shake strangely if he drank, and as the days passed, he had found it increasingly difficult to exert himself. His co-workers, who worked hard and so ate heartily, were aware of the decline in his health even before the doctor.

He began to fear he might breathe his last on the job or on the street. Either way, it would have amounted to abandoning his son as an orphan. Would he live another year? Another two years? He had no way of knowing. Entrusting the child to an orphanage was the only way, he thought, to maintain the family line.

“Ch’ŏlsu, from now on you’ll be living here with the director. I want you to do what the man says. Understand?”

As he spoke, the old man bent down and searched the child’s small face.

“And you, daddy?” the child asked briefly, looking into his old father’s eyes.

“There you go again. I keep telling you I’ll find your mother and bring her back!”

The old man deliberately used a sharp voice.

“When?” countered the child anxiously, all the while staring directly into his father’s eyes.

“The moment I find her. …”

“What if you don’t find her?” the child persisted.

The old man was speechless for a moment. Cold sorrow filled his heart.

“I’ll be back. I’ll find your mom and bring her back … honest,” said the old man confidently.

“Daddy, you promise.”

The boy stuck out his little finger. But instead of hooking it with his own to seal the promise, the old man stared intently at his son.

Poor little kid. Why did you have to be born to the likes of me and end up this way? I want you to grow up strong and healthy, well fed. … Poor little kid.

“Daddy, promise!”

“Okay, okay.”

The old man stuck out his finger, suppressing the massive sobs that surged and tore at his throat.

A small, slender finger linked in midair with a thick, rough finger.

“Daddy, you’ve got to find Mom and bring her back,” said the boy, squeezing and shaking his father’s finger as he spoke.

“Okay, okay.”

“I’m going to pray every night that you find Mom quick.”

“Okay, okay.”

The old man fought back his tears.

My sweet little boy. How are you £0ing to make it all alone? If I had a only known, I wouldn’t have let you be born. What a useless fuckup I’ve been. … Poor little kid…

“Ch’ŏlsu, you be sure to mind the director, now. He won’t let you go hungry or make you sleep on straw sacks. It’s going to be a lot better here than living with Daddy. Now, you mind what the director says. Understand?”

The boy, perhaps anticipating the impending separation, nodded sullenly. “Now then, Ch’ŏlsu, come along,” said the director, signaling that the time had come.

The old man unhooked his finger from his son’s and straightened up, then nudged the boy toward the director. The boy’s thin back resisted the prodding with a pressure that passed through the old man’s hand and spread hotly through his body.

“No cause for concern,” said the director, precipitating the farewell. “I hope… you….”

The old man bowed deeply several times, but in the end he couldn’t get the words out. He seemed to hesitate over his threadbare satchel, but then hurriedly turned and left the office.

“Daddy!”

The old man didn’t look back.

He went down the hallway, and as he shuffled out onto the playground the tears finally gushed forth. “Daddyyy! You’ve got to find Mother and bring her back!” Across the playground, at the main entrance to the orphanage, he could still hear the boy’s ringing cries, The old man had intended not to tum around, but that simply was not to be.

He turned. His son, the director’s hands on his shoulders, was standing in the vestibule, waving.

“Daddyyy! You’d better come back.”

The old man turned away as tears welled up once again.

“That bitch should be drawn and quartered! Abandoning the poor little kid and running off…”

The old man trembled and angrily clenched his teeth.

His wife’s face, laughing mindlessly, appeared before his tear- blurred eyes.

“Worthless bitch!”

He hurled insults as if somebody were actually there in front of him. Then he wiped his eyes quickly with the back of his hand. The illusion of his wife disappeared without a trace.

Hatred raged again like fire in his heart. He had spent two years searching the countryside, carrying his young boy on his back, determined to spare neither of them once he caught up with the pair.

“What a stupid fool I was!”

The old man released a despondent sigh. He was tormented as much by the undying hatred he felt for his wife as he was by feelings of remorse.

What notion of glory had possessed him, a homeless common laborer, to set his sights on such a blossom? Though he had been a party to the affair, it still made no sense to him at all. The only thing it had brought was regret. It vexed the old man beyond endurance to know that if he had steered clear back then, he would not now be putting his son into a stranger’s hands.

“Why do you still live alone, Mr. Ch’ŏn? Aren’t you lonely?”

When a woman began to make advances like this he knew he should reject them outright. But he felt agitated, like a cat that had caught the smell of fish.

“Why do you ask such questions when you live alone, yourself? Aren’t you lonely?”

But even as he parried, his nose began to tingle at the woman’s smell, which made him feel so odd.

“Since no one will have me, I live by myself, facing this hard life alone. I was born to be lonely—what can I do about it?” she said, suddenly dispirited.

The old man found he was pitying her, but he could feel his heart hammering at the same time.

How stupid can you get? I’ve spent half my life on the run or else hiding out. How could I be Suckered by the smell of a woman?

He had to steady his throbbing heart. He had to hold out. If he couldn’t, he’d have to leave this construction job for another.

This construction project provided Plenty of work—unusual for winter. The industrial complex was to begin operating by spring, and before then they had to finish not only the buildings themselves but the workers’ apartments, too. So, jobs were abundant and the daily pay was not only generous but always on time.

For over thirty years he had wandered from one construction project to another, but he had never come across one as lucrative as this. And it was winter. If a lucrative job can lead to problems, then this one sure had.

“Life is so short, Mr. Ch’ŏn. What do you do for fun?”

“What sort of crap is this?”

“Is this your idea of a good time, drinking soju every night?”

The woman stared directly at him as she poured him a drink.

“Does anyone drink for fun? If I was having fun, I wouldn’t be swilling this stuff.”

“Then we’ll have to find some real fun for you.”

“What sort of ‘real fun?’ I Just work and eat, one day at a time.”

He tossed down his drink and crunched on some pickled radish.

“Who says you have to ’just work and cat, one day at a time.”

Without the pleasures of a wife and kids? What kind of life have you had, Mr. Ch’ŏn, living this long without a family? Maybe you think you’ll live forever, but you’ll get old, and what if you suddenly get sick? Think about it. And who’s going to bury you when you die? Who’d offer even a bowl of cold water to your memory after you’re dead and gone? You drift through this world following construction jobs. In the next world, do you intend to be a wandering ghost?"

“What is this shit? Why the hell are you running off at the mouth like this?” he shouted, Suddenly alarmed.

“Oh, dear! I’m scared to death! Come on, don’t get angry and just think for a moment. Am I wrong to say this to a man who still lives by himself?”

“Lay off! Tease a leper for being a leper and he gets angry… .”

“Then it’s not too late—if you’ll just give up the leper’s life.”

“What are you saying?”

As he studied the florid eyes of this laughing woman, he felt something like an electric shock stinging his groin."

Since this woman Sunim worked at a soup-and-rice house, she saw Mansŏk once a day when he came to eat. Vague rumor had it that she had once been married but was driven out, and that the owner of the soup-and-rice house was some distant relative. One thing was clear: she was not one of those barmaids who litter a construction project like rags.

Sunim’s words forced Mansŏk to reconsider his circumstances. Sunim had probed, as if with tweezers, at a very painful spot. These ideas had crossed his mind from time to time, but he always tried to forget, to put them out of his mind. On days when these thoughts did come to him, he would get more drunk than ever.

He had experienced countless women while wandering from one construction project to another over the last thirty years. The relationships were not based on feeling but were business transactions. If people looked on manual laborers as the dregs of humanity, then what was to be said of the women who lived off them, spreading their legs to fill their gullets? No matter how long you waited, you’d never hear one of them talk like Sunim just had.

Actually, it had been altogether too long since Mansŏk had heard such words, full of feeling and concern for his future—especially from a woman who was not a barmaid or a prostitute. Mansŏk almost forgot how short of money he was, or that he was forty-nine. Struggling with his surging feelings, he knew he couldn’t dismiss these thoughts as easily as in the past.

Why her interest in an old man like him, Mansŏk had asked, when there were so many younger construction workers coming and going at the soup-and-rice house?

“I don’t know why. I just felt that way,” she answered, her words trailing off and her face flushing.

“If I’m forty-nine and you’re thirty-three, how many years do you think separate us?”

“Deep feelings, like the Great Wall, withstand time,” answered Sunim, quoting history.

“My aching back… .”

Mansŏk could say no more.

Hearing Sunim’s words, Mansŏk began some personal calculations. He wanted to raise kids to follow after him. If he cut way back on his | drinking and saved on eating out, he would probably have enough to support a family. If he tightened his belt and lived frugally, then he might be able to sink some roots and be done with the life of a wanderer. She might be the mate he was meant to have and so live a normal life.

This forty-nine-year-old bag of bones, worm by a life of manual labor, was suddenly revitalized, like a spring tree bursting out in buds. Even his spirits, once always clouded with gloom, now cleared suddenly like the skies in autumn. The booze he used to drink nearly every day barely touched his lips. And he took overtime on the night shift he had once so carefully avoided. Still, he felt no weariness. It was as if he had regained the strength he had known at twenty, when he had worked himself bone-weary in order to bring Chŏmnye home as his bride.

After three months of struggle, he had a tidy sum of money in hand.

“Well, I’ve saved enough to get us a rented room,” Mansŏk said awkwardly to Sunim.

“Already? I guess I had you pegged right all along! Those younger ones could never have managed this. Oh, how I’ve waited for this day!”

Sunim was much more happy and pleased than he had ever expected.

They didn’t need a wedding ceremony. They rented a room and set up housekeeping.

Mansŏk’s sudden taking of a bride didn’t go unnoticed among the loudmouths at the workplace.

“Better watch out! One whiff of a thirty-year-old woman, and a fifty-year-old man can fall on his face.”

“Sure, sure. A woman’s clam at twenty may be soft and fleshy, but at thirty it’s tight and sticky. You’ll come on to her like a stallion at first but she’ll turn you to jelly before you’re done!”

Mansŏk gave a broad, indecent grin.

“Eat your hearts out, shitheads! I still have what it takes to produce ten sons.” |

Actually, Mansŏk couldn’t have been happier. His much too long life as a wanderer was finally at an end. And now hope began to appear dimly for a future that had once seemed sad and gloomy. He had resigned himself to the idea that one had to fight his way through life with just bare fists. But, to some extent, that was an idea that belonged to an earlier time of frustration. The desire to live one day like a normal person had always lain hidden deep inside his heart.

The evening they moved into their “bridal chamber,” Mansŏk’s heart was alive with the sorrow and pain of times past.

“I can tell from the way you talk that you’re from the Chŏlla region, but is this the first time you’ve been married?” asked Sunim after they had finished their first round of love to mark the marriage.

“So what if this is the first, or the tenth, or even the twentieth time I’ve married?” Mansŏk brusquely countered. He was absorbed by other thoughts.

“So what? Well, it’s just that I find myself worrying about things, now that we’re married.”

“Then worry about worms you might have cooked into the food. I don’t have a wife and kids somewhere else, if that’s what’s bugging you. Why don’t you think about our future instead?”

“But shouldn’t I know where your home is, why you tumed into a wanderer, where your parents and brothers and sisters live?”

“Oh, shut up!”

Mansŏk sat bolt upright in bed, his angry eyes bulging with fear- some danger.

“What are you, the town clerk? A policeman? Why are you poking around, digging up useless scraps of the past? You and me, we’re just a couple of people whose eyes happened to meet, who rubbed bellies, and now we’re trying to live together. What’s so important about the past? Why the crazy prying? I had so little to show for my life, so of course I ended up drifting like some cloud. Look, I’m just a plain commoner—no home, no family records. If you need to know that kind of stuff, you’d better pack up and get out—now!”

Mansŏk was agitated—enough to thrash her, perhaps.

“No, no. That’s not what I meant at all! I only asked out of concern. …I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

The scolded wife, Sunim, rolled over and sank into a deep sleep. Mansŏk, staring intently at her gaunt shoulders, felt sorry. All she had done was ask her new husband a polite question and he had let himself get worked up. But he couldn’t help it. Because of his past he had spent nearly thirty years hiding out or being chased like a criminal. You could call it a life, but how did it differ from death? For all that times had changed, he still could not go home again—proof of his continuing guilt. If he were to go back to his home, where the Ch’oe clan lived, they would probably bury him alive, no questions asked. It was a past he’d never told a soul, ever since he had fled his home under cover of the early evening dusk, driven by gunfire of the People’s Army, with which he had sided until the day before.

“Dirty slut!”

Mansŏk gave a shudder. Just the thought of it made his body stiffen, sent the blood rushing to his head. And the scenes of that time flashed into his mind unchanged, as if ignoring the passage of time. His memory had never been very sharp, and by the time he was forty he had begun to forget things that had happened only a few days before. But if why was that one time implanted so vividly in his mind? Even photographs turn yellow after thirty years, but this memory didn’t know how to change. And it wasn’t just appearances that hadn’t changed. Even the smells of different scenes remained vivid. Why was this?

“They should have cut the head off her dead body!”

Mansŏk closed his eyes tightly and expelled a hot breath.

If that bitch of a wife Chŏmnye hadn’t been completely stripped, I probably wouldn’t have killed her. If she’d just been naked from the waist down, I could have overlooked it, thinking she was suffering at the hands of that bastard. But that bitch, already pregnant, took off all her clothes and rolled with him.

As vice-chairman of the People’s Committee, Mansŏk had to be away from his house for two days to deliver a report to the Municipal People ’s Committee. The journey had been a great boost to Mansŏk’s spirits.

“Comrade Ch’ŏn, your revolutionary struggle has been glorious. Your appointment as chairman, comrade, is only a matter of time. Have a good trip.”

The words of the People’s Army commander, spoken as Mansŏk set a out on the road, rang in his ears. If only he could become chairman. Unseen by the two subordinates walking beside him, Mansŏk curled his hands into fists. The power he had enjoyed as vice-chairman was not enough. It wasn’t that he needed reasons to avenge the twenty-five years of hunger he had suffered. But, if only he became chairman, all of Kamgol, Hangnae, and Chukch’on would be his—it was a sure thing.

Actually, there were more than just one or two things wrong with Sugil, the present chairman. He might do rather well for a while, but then there would be times of indecision, when fear or hesitation paralyzed him. Sugil had been made chairman only because he was three years older than Mansŏk.

Even when Elder Ch’oe’s oldest grandson Hyŏnggyu, was about to be executed, Sugil had wavered like an idiot. The grandson, who had studied law in Seoul, was rumored to have slipped back into the village. Sugil could have brought the entire Ch’oe household into the matter and ruined them, but he had settled for a secret investigation. For the family had already been devastated by the execution of Elder Ch’oe’s son, who had served as town administrator some time before. After four days of hiding, Elder Ch’oe’s grandson was apprehended in a bamboo grove dugout at his uncle’s house.

He had been dragged out back to a pine tree, his fate clearly determined. Gaunt and tight-lipped, he held his captors in a penetrating stare.

“It was Hyŏnggyu who contributed the pig we sacrificed for my mother’s mourning,” whispered Sugil in a trembling voice.

“Does that mean we should let him live?” challenged Mansŏk, giving him no leeway.

“Well, I’m not saying we really have to do this… .”

“Let us be resolute, Comrade Chairman, for the good of the revolution. …”" Mansŏk deliberately raised his voice in imitation of the People’s Army commander.

Perhaps sensing something strange afoot, the commander came up behind them.

“What are you two doing?”

Sugil’s face froze instantly as he gazed, imploringly, at Mansŏk.

“We were saying how we ought to waste no time in dealing with this reactionary,” replied Mansŏk quickly, all the while keeping an eye on Sugil, whose head now drooped with apparent relief.

“Good! Then deal with him at once!”

At the commander’s word, Mansŏk winked a signal to his subordinates. The three men hoisted their bamboo spears and lunged at Elder Ch’oe’s grandson, who was tied to the trunk of the pine. Screams, long screams, spread forth—screams that seemed to tear through the mountains, rend the skies, rip open the very earth. Sugil stood rigid as a post, eyes tightly closed. You ass, you don’t deserve to be chairman, thought Mansŏk, watching him with a mocking sneer.

Quite unlike Sugil, Mansŏk listened to the drawn-out screams with a pleasure that thrilled every joint in his body. The sense of pleasure was, in fact, one of sweet revenge. All the sorrow and pain and mortification they had all known over generations of slavery, and that he himself had endured for his twenty-five years, was slowly, slowly washed away by that thrilling pleasure. For Mansŏk, this feeling amounted to an exhilaration even more intense and passionate than what he felt on top of his wife, Chŏmnye. That sensation was also maddening in its way, but it was too short-lived, and it was followed by a sudden, precipitous hollowness, But the pleasure he took from the screaming lasted as long as the time it took for the unforgettable memories to float up one after the other and then vanish; and, although he was left with a feeling of loss, there was none of the precipitous hollowness.

Buoyed at the thought of soon becoming council chairman, he arrived at the Municipal People’s Council. He accepted the urgent directives handed down there and retraced his twelve-mile route home that same day.

When he got back to the council office the sun was about to set. After walking some twenty-four miles this long summer’s day, Mansŏk was about as tired as he could be. There was no one in the office. He sent his two subordinates home. He would have to meet with the commander personally in order to convey the directives. After resting a while, his feet up on the desk, Mansŏk suddenly became aware of something. There was no reason the office should be empty like this—unless there had been some sort of emergency. He couldn’t just sit around like this—he had to check things out.

Mansŏk went out back toward the attached living quarters. He sensed somebody was there.

Closer to the quarters, Mansŏk paused instinctively. A kind of human presence that felt strange to him emanated from the place. He strained to listen. It was clearly the sound of a man and woman making love. Mansŏk tensed, a queer sensation writhing within him. Involuntarily, he shot searching glances left and right. What brazen fool, in broad daylight, in the council’s quarters …? By now he had pressed himself close to the window.

Mansŏk almost cried out. He couldn’t identify the man, whose buried face was turned away. But the one on her back, moaning, eyes tightly closed, mouth half open, was his very own Chŏmnye.

Mansŏk’s head spun and everything seemed to tum dark. The next instant, a rush of heat burst from his stomach, fed as if by flames.

He grabbed the biggest rock he could find. Then he kicked open the door and jumped inside.

“You slut! You filthy slut!”

The man, spread out on top, stiffened abruptly and sat up, just as the rock thudded against the back of his head. His naked body vomited up an oddly short scream and tumbled to the floor. At almost the same moment, the naked woman jumped up. Arms crossed over her breasts, blanching with fear, she waddled to a comer of the room. Mansŏk, eyes blazing and teeth clenched, stepped closer to her. Cornered, unable to retreat further, the woman trembled, her nude body shriveling before his eyes. Mansŏk approached her like an animal. He had come to within one step of her.

“Don’t—please!”

And then she darted forward, trying to slip away. Mansŏk delivered a hard kick to her stomach. She gave a short cry, like the man had, and rolled onto the floor.

Mansŏk ground his teeth fiercely and turned back to the man. The fellow moved spasmodically, blood streaming from his head. An arm, stretched into empty space, twitched. The man seemed to be clutching for something. Mansŏk grabbed the prostrate man’s head and turned it toward him, then stepped back in shock.

“No! You son of a bitch!”

It was the People’s Army commander. Mansŏk had thought all along the man was from the army. But who would have dreamed it was the commander, someone Mansŏk had trusted like heaven itself? His rage at being deceived, worse than his anger at the sight of his wife’s face through the window, pulsed through him. The commander, his eyes rolled back and his arm still outstretched, was writhing toward a Russian-made submachine gun nearby. Mansŏk grabbed the weapon, aimed at the man’s groin, and pulled the trig- ger. A staccato burst.

Mansŏk turned to his wife. In the moment just passed, she had steadied herself and was crawling on all fours toward the door. His wife’s big buttocks loomed before him. The parts exposed between them seemed, like those of a pig, filthy and repulsive. Mansŏk aimed at that spot and again pulled the trigger. Another staccato burst.

When the bullets were exhausted, Mansŏk threw down the gun. The room had become a sea of blood where two sprawled corpses spewed forth their intestines.

Mansŏk had to get away. He ran from the building and lit out toward a path into the mountains.

“The world is a place where we must live according to reason. Who are you? Who do you think you are to beat on people as if they were dogs? It won’t do, it won’t do at all. You’ll face the wrath of Heaven. The wrath of Heaven!”

The sound of his father’s voice followed him all the way. He could just glimpse his mother’s smudged face, Mansŏk’s three-year-old boy was beaming happily as he called, “Daddy! Daddy!”

His new wife, Sunim, never again asked about the past and went on managing the household as it should be done. Mansŏk must have been thriving on this life, for he felt like a new man—embracing a young wife and able to sleep with a deep warmth unknown to him before.

The heat shimmered and danced on the far side of the construction site. The apartment complex was moving toward completion on schedule.

“I’ve been feeling a little Strange lately,” said his wife, averting her eyes.

“Maybe it’s something you ate,” offered Mansŏk, as if to suggest she buy a bottle of digestive.

“That’s not it. The flowers haven’t bloomed for two months now.”

“Flowers?” Mansŏk asked. But then a light turned on inside his head.

“Oh, you mean, you’ve had news?” asked Mansŏk, excitement in his voice.

“That’s what I mean,” responded his wife, mimicking Mansŏk’s tone and giving him an embarrassed glance.

“Just pop us out a son. I’ll work hard and take good care of him,” said Mansŏk, grabbing his wife’s hand.

“That’s disgusting! Children don’t ‘pop out’—they’re born.”

His wife laughed bashfully.

“If you had known I’d have to spend my life crushed under the heels of those rich bastards, you probably wouldn’t have let me be born in the first place. And then I wouldn’ t have had this damn luck.”

“Listen to this crap—he says anything that pleases him! At your age, what do you know, boy? When you live a few more years you’ll understand.”

His father had reproached eighteen-year-old Mansŏk no further.

At age twenty-one Mansŏk had taken a wife, though his heart wasn’t in it. He cared little for his parents’ concerns and, though he regarded wives as an amusement, this one was unusually well turned out. Her face was so pretty as to be wasted on her low class status. So it was that he married as if it were something unavoidable, and having slept with her he became a father. But he still hadn’t wakened to the meaning of the word father—hadn’t even begun to think about it.

But now he was fifty, and his wife was pregnant. And his father’s words of thirty-two years before had come back to him, though he didn’t know why. Was it because the years had brought understanding with them, as his father had predicted? Mansŏk was dimly aware of something deep and inexpressible in the notion that we live a life only to continue our blood line.

As his wife’s stomach gradually swelled, work at the construction site was coming to an end. Sunim was frightened at the thought that they would soon have to take to the road in search of another construction site. So she went out job-hunting for him.

“Don’t be foolish. What have I ever learned to do? All I know is farming and day labor—what the hell use is it to go job-hunting?”

Mansŏk tried to dissuade her from the outset, but she wouldn’t listen. Several days later, she finally found an opening for a watchman. But just as Mansŏk had suspected, he was underqualified even for a job like that, one requiring only night work. He fell short in several respects. They required at least a middle school education, age thirty-five or younger, financial guarantor, and background investigation. After asking at a few more places, his wife gave up.

“I’ve been thinking I might as well go back to the soup-and-rice house. We can’t live a wandering life.”

At the mention of the soup-and-rice house, Mansŏk went through the roof: “We what? Can’t what? You rub bellies with me and then decide we’re going to live here until we die. Is that it? Now open those ears of yours and listen, before I break off those pretty legs: You just park yourself in a comer and stay put! Whether we eat or go hungry, we’ll do as I see fit.”

Mansŏk kicked open the door and went out.

But when he thought it over, his wife’s feelings made sense. How could he leave her with a baby in her belly, wandering off to who knows where in search of a job? But then, what else could he do? Besides being uneducated and barely able to read, he was an old man of fifty. When he thought of his age, his future seemed black indeed. It was a question of how long he could continue at manual labor. His daily pay at the construction site was already pegged to a rate different from that of the younger laborers.

There was, however, one person he could go to—Mr. Pak, the on-site engineer assigned to the construction of the apartment complex. Even though he was a well-educated young man with an important job, he was quite without arrogance or pride. He was warm and sympathetic even toward the unskilled manual laborers. Mansŏk had gotten to be on quite good terms with him.

After putting it off several times, Mansŏk finally made up his mind and saw Mr. Pak. He spelled out his situation in every detail to the engineer.

“I can see you’re up against it. Let me ask around, and then why don’t we meet again tomorrow,” said Mr. Pak with his usual kindness.

The next day, the engineer had a job ready for him.

“Well, it’s not much. You’ll have to do odd jobs in the apartment Superintendent’s office, and the pay isn’t very good. I’m not even sure you’d be interested.”

“Much obliged, Mr. Pak! If it’s really for me, I’ll take it—no questions asked. Much obliged.”

Mansŏk bowed over and over. Good humor now shone where black clouds had once engulfed his heart.

And so Mansŏk became a handyman. The monthly pay was barely enough to put food on the table. Even so, Mansŏk was as happy as if he had plucked a star from the heavens. He had pleased his wife, and for the first time in his life he found himself drawing a monthly wage. Finding the job less demanding than construction, he applied himself to his new tasks.

His wife bore him a son, and Mansŏk was happy beyond comprehension. But when he thought of his boy growing up and marrying, his face suddenly froze. Even if the boy married at twenty, Mansŏk would then be seventy. Would he live that long? The thought sent a chill into his heart.

The addition of a baby cost more money than another adult would have. His wife began to complain about his pay. But Mansŏk ignored his wife’s grumbling and lavished all his attention on the growing baby. When the new year arrived without a pay raise, his wife’s complaints intensified. Of course the pay wouldn’t increase just because they thought it should. A handyman was only a temporary post.

What is meant by living? For all Mansŏk knew, it was taking time by the spoonful and dying little by little as he drank it. The reckoning of his age, those bundled nodes of time, was truly frightening. Forty-eight was different, as was forty-nine, and fifty showed a face more different still. As tree leaves change the day after a frost, so did his age seem to rush headlong into oldness. Year by year his body was losing its vigor.

The baby, perhaps inherently immune to childhood in a poor family, grew in good health. Mansŏk chose the name Ch’ŏlsu for the baby, hoping his son would grow into a worthy man, the sort who appears in elementary school textbooks. In time, their life became more pinched, and his wife’s complaining grew more shrill. But Mansŏk, preoccupied with affection for his baby boy, managed to forget such trials.

Several months before the boy’s fourth birthday, Mansŏk had to give up his handyman’s job because of an administrative cutback. It was as if he had walked up to the edge of a cliff on a dark road. He had never felt such dark despair for the future. And his agony was made more pressing by his obligation to a wife and child. His livelihood, from the very next day, was in immediate question. Mansŏk collected his wits and went out to the construction site to ask around. But, aside from possible manual labor, there was nothing he could count on. After wandering about for several days, he leamed that there might be work at a construction site opening up more than fifty miles away.

“As long as I have life and breath we’ll eat. Take good care of Ch’ŏlsu while I’m gone. I’ll send money every couple of days.”

Mansŏk set out for the construction site immediately.

He saved up his daily wages and sent some home every ten days. The vitality remaining in. his fifty-three-year-old body was exhausted beyond what even he had believed possible, but Mansŏk gritted his teeth and bore on. He was driven by the conviction that he could not let his little son go hungry, his son with the bright and shiny eyes. To a manual laborer, liquor is almost like food. But Mansŏk drew the line— no more than half a pint a day. And, for a liquor snack, just kimchi and pickled radish. Finding unique sustenance and joy in saving and sending home his pay, he endured his bone-wearying fatigue day after day for more than two months.

Then one day Mansŏk received a letter. He took one look at the contents, leapt up with a cry, then slumped back down.

He went straight home and found their room coldly vacant and his son, quite unaware, in the care of the Soup-and-rice house. His wife had run off with some young guy.

“Just you wait and see, you whore! Until they shovel dirt onto my face, I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth. And, when I’ve caught you, bitch, I’ll tear your crotch into a dozen pieces.”

Mansŏk, fiercely grinding his teeth, grabbed the boy into his embrace. Before his raging eyes there came alive a vision of entrails strewn about in a sea of blood and the prostrate, naked corpses of a man and a woman.

“My luck with women was bad from the start. Why should the second time be any better? All I can do now is find her and kill her. Let’s just see how far she can run, the stinking bitch!”

A chilly smile formed on Mansŏk’s lips and a steely, bloodthirsty glint shone in his eyes.

When he discovered, too late, that she had been careful enough to collect even his modest room deposit, Mansŏk shook with even greater a rage. After gathering the few pennies he could from selling off his household effects, Mansŏk hoisted the baby onto his back and set out on a road leading nowhere.

They had probably gone to Seoul, someone said: maybe Pusan, said somebody else—all nothing more than guesswork. He decided to start with Pusan, which was closer, and have a look around. As he and the boy moved from city to city they occasionally went hungry and sometimes even begged. Unlike the days of his youth when he had wandered from one job to another, the world now seemed vast and desolate. At times, on days of endless drizzle or when snow blanketed them, Mansŏk, his little boy gathered in his arms, cried silent and endless tears.

What do people mean by “living a lifetime?” Where am I going? What am I doing here in this strange land where I don’t know nobody? They call you a human being, but is this how you end up if you never should’ve been born? You mean to tell me some people are born noble and some people are born low? Where in hell did they get the idea of nobles and commoners, anyway? We’re just the same—same faces, same minds…. So, what’s the difference? Was it my mistake? Just because you’re born low class, do you have to live like you are? Is the passion in me so different from the others? Is that why I did what I did? Maybe this is what I get for slaughtering so many people like dogs for those three or four months. I probably don’t deserve to be alive today. But I didn’t ask to be low born, like my father. Was I greedy? Can’t you be greedy if you’re a commoner? I’ll drift like this and then I’ll die—it won’t be long. But then what happens to the kid? How’ the little fellow going to turn out? He’s all I’ll leave behind. As long as I’ve got the kid in my arms, I can plug on, in spite of it all. Tomorrow’s another day, another place I have to go—but where?

Mansŏk was unable to deal with such agony.

After a while, his wandering brought him close to his childhood home. As in times past, Mansŏk’s heart throbbed and his legs tensed. He thought he might try slipping into the village under cover of darkness, but the next moment he gave up this idea. He couldn’t possibly muster the courage.

Was this what old age did to a man? He was tempted and vexed like never before. Even while strictly avoiding the place all these years, he had twice approached the outskirts of his home village, on both occasions taking advantage of the night. In the end, though, he had forced himself to leave; his crime was still very much alive.

It was after Mansŏk and his son had wandered for a year and a half that he began to spit up blood. His body seemed withered, desiccated. He knew time was short, but still he sought out a hospital, since his young boy’s well-being weighed heavily on his mind. The X-ray made it look like he had lived out his term. He headed for Seoul on the last leg of his search for his wife. And so, as his last task on this earth, he wandered Seoul for six months, looking both for his wife and an orphanage. Unable to keep up his strength, he had decided to entrust his son to an orphanage. He was spitting blood more and more frequently. He had come to fear that he would infect and kill his son if he clung to him any longer.

“I was going to raise my kids to be just right… . We’d live as bright as bells and I’d make my kids into gentlemen,” the old man mumbled to himself as he tottered away, looking as if he were deranged, his back to the orphanage. Tears ran into the sunken hollows of his cheeks.

The images of his two sons’ faces, one superimposed on the other, shimmered in the old man’s clouded vision. One was his first son, Ch’ilbong, who had died at the hands of the People’s Army when he was three; the other, whom he had just left at the orphanage, was Ch’ŏlsu.

The old man knew the time to go home had finally come. This would be his third attempt. Though it might result in his death, he was now determined to set foot on the soil of his home.

It was after the war that he learned that his father, mother, and son, Ch’ilbong, had been slaughtered by the People’s Army.

“Who’s this? It’s not Mansŏk, is it?”

When Mansŏk had appeared one night out of the darkness at a drinking house near the ferry, three years after the fighting ended, Old Hwang was as startled as if he had seen a ghost.

“What are you doing here? What are you up to?”

In spite of the impenetrable darkness, Old Hwang looked all around him as he spoke rapidly.

Mansŏk felt himself propelled into the room. At the same time he stiffened with a chill at the thought that he had actually come where he shouldn’t be.

“Just listen—don’t make a sound. The very night you ran away those crazy sons of bitches wiped out three members of your family. Who would have thought they’d even go after a three-year-old kid?”

Mansŏk was struck dumb. That was the outcome of three years’ unrelenting, anxious fear.

“Since you’ve come all this way, you might as well spend the night here. You can leave tomorrow morning before dawn.”

Old Hwang added, with an agonized expression, that Mansŏk would probably be buried alive were he ever caught.

“I knew I did real bad, and that’s why—to clean myself—I volunteered for the army as soon as I ran away. For three years Straight I plowed through one battleground after another. I can’t count the times I was almost killed. But somehow I’ve managed to survive so far… .”

Mansŏk spoke with a pathetic look, seeming to ask for exculpation.

“Did you really do all that?”

Old Hwang stared into Mansŏk’s eyes, apparently surprised.

“Would I lie to you, Mr. Hwang, just to hear a few nice words?”

“Then, you really have done something that counts. But it isn’t enough to help the Ch’oe family ease their hatred of you. The people are still mortally bitter. They’ll probably never get over it. Go away. Go far away and start another life.”

“I’ll have to—seeing what I’ve done… .”

Even while saying this, Mansŏk was having trouble dealing with it, overwhelmed by a new surge of sorrow and regret. Cloaked by darkness, he had retumed to his native soil, but he could never hope to live here again. He had come to ask about his family. But to hear himself bluntly told to go far away caused a strange sorrow to well up within him, a sorrow he couldn’t cope with.

“Our world today is just what it was when you people ran around like maniacs. There’s only one difference to speak of—it’s under new ownership. This world’s as treacherous as a see-saw.”

“I must have been out of my mind. Even my mother and father, and they didn’t do anything… .”

“Think about it and you’ll see it wasn’t just your fault. Not that I know anything, but I think it’s the times that are at fault—the times. If you’re guilty of anything, it’s for having a temper like a hot pepper. That and your youth.”

“We thought our day was coming. … We were so angry, so fed up with living like animals. … It was all an awful madness.”

Mansŏk heaved a long sigh, like a mighty wind that sweeps the hills and valleys before subsiding.

“You know, I still remember. How old were you—about twelve? I mean, when you shoved Elder Ch’oe’s grandnephews into the river. Ever since then, your temper’s been as prickly as a fruit thorn. Your father had to put up with a lot of hardship because of that.”

Old Hwang, with a pained expression, kept clucking his tongue.

“They dragged Father away and kicked the hell out of him. Not me, but Father. And then, they even ran him out of the village. That’s when the hate, like a snake’s poison, began to fill my heart.”

Mansŏk’s husky voice had turned hoarse. Though he might forget his birthday from time to time, he was unable to forget those events. All the same, it was also a memory he didn’t wish to dwell on.

It was September and a cool wind had been brushing the reeds. Around this time of year the oak leaves were showing signs of changing out of their usual deep green and the hairy crabs were starting to fatten up.

Mansoék was out catching crabs with two of Elder Ch’oe’s grand-nephews. The crabs lived in tunnels they dug between rocks on the reed flats. They were such dimwitted creatures that if you carefully stuck a reed-flower stem into the tunnel and worked it around, pausing a few times, they would bite right into it with one of their big claws. A crab that did that was as good as caught. Those things were so stupid that, once they clamped down with a claw they never let go. Even if the claw broke off from the crab, whatever had been grabbed stayed clamped in the claw. Somehow the children got it into their heads that if your finger was bitten you might as well kiss it good-bye. This fear of losing a finger was probably why the children weren’t eager to catch crabs—though the animals made a savory treat when roasted and dipped in soy sauce.

Mansŏk was known among the children for his skill at catching crabs. And it was true. He was quick to spot their tunnels, he lured them with impressive Skill, and he was adroit at handling a hair-covered crab dangling from a reed-flower stem. The other Children were full of admiration at this talent of Mansŏk’s.

Mansŏk had come by this accomplishment alone and at a cost in agony quite unknown to the other children. Mansŏk had begun at the age of six to rummage around the reed flats that stretched wide along the river’s edge. Unknown to the others, there were lots of tasty things in the reeds to Satisfy an appetite. Kingfisher eggs in the Spring, their chicks in the summer, crabs in the fall—all filled Mansŏk’s empty stomach. His family could not even feed him plain boiled barley and so his empty stomach always growled. Since he would be out to satisfy his hunger, there was nothing scary to Mansŏk about the crab claws. In the beginning, he didn’t have a finger that wasn’t bitten. Once you’re bitten, you have to slam the crab against the ground. When the claw breaks off the crab you grit your teeth and remove the part that’s digging into you. But if you try this while the claw is still attached to the crab, you’re setting yourself up to get bitten on the other hand by the remaining claw. And if you end up with a finger from each hand caught in each claw, then what?

While he was suffering alone, not a finger without a bite, Mansŏk became rather skillful at handling the crabs. The pain of a crab bite wasn’t something you’d soon forget. Sparks would flash inside his eyes and even the tip of his penis would bum. And the finger would hurt as if it were falling off. But he never lost a finger. That much pain was no big deal, Mansŏk thought, if he could rid himself of the hunger that colored his vision yellow and made his knees buckle.

But the pain so scared the other children that they had no heart for catching crabs, and the children of the Ch’oe family, in particular, would back away at the, mere sight of a crab flourishing its ten hairy legs. Mansŏk inwardly scorned and dismissed such children: “You kids think just because you’re from some rich man’s family that I’m not so good. Well, if I was going to take you out, I could do it with one punch!” he would mumble to himself.

On that day, Elder Ch’oe’s two grandnephews had offered him three sweet potatoes if he would catch them five crabs. It wasn’t a bad piece of business and so Mansŏk set out to provide. Murmuring to himself about well-boiled sweet potatoes, Mansŏk threw himself into the task. He was twitching a reed-flower stem at what was to be the fourth crab when a scream pierced the air. Mansŏk sat bolt upright.

The younger of the two Ch’oe children, a nine-year-old, had been crouching beside a small crock that held the catch. Now he was gasping for breath, jumping up and down, and screaming madly. And there on a finger of the hand on the arm that was flailing the air was attached a crab. The older brother, who was Mansŏk’s age, not knowing what else to do, was calling “Mother! Mother!” It was obvious that the younger boy had been playing with the crabs as they crawled around the inner sides of the crock, and had got himself bitten square on the finger.

Mansŏk dashed over, grabbed the boy’s waving arm, and swung it downwards with all his might. But still the crab dangled from the finger. He pressed the boy’s palm against the ground and drove his heel down on the crab. Its body was crushed and the claw fell off. As usual, the claw still held fast to the finger. The kid was still letting loose his gasping cries, but Mansŏk quickly managed to open the claw and release the finger. It began at that moment.

“You son of a bitch!”

Mansŏk saw stars. The older boy had just punched Mansŏk in the cheek.

“What’d you do that for?”

It was so sudden that Mansŏk was in a daze.

“Don’t play dumb.”

Again the fist came flying.

Mansŏk had no time to duck, and as he absorbed the blow it began to dawn on him that he was being blamed for something he hadn’t done. Perplexed, he retreated several steps.

“I know what you’re up to. Lay off the rough stuff,” yelled Mansŏk, confronting them and poised for a fight.

He set his teeth and his eyes took on a threatening glint. Surprised by Mansŏk’s nerve, the older boy hesitated.

“It’s all your fault that my brother got bit, so now I’m telling you to stick your hands down in there.”

The bigger boy pointed towards the crock full of crabs while the little one studied his hand and cried mournfully.

“What?”

Mansŏk felt his stomach turning over. Again he was up against the unfairness he had to face because he was a commoner. The prejudice wasn’t something expressed in words. Since it was unreasoning, words were unnecessary, completely useless. It all came down to doing a she was told.

But he couldn’t stick his hands inside a crock full of crabs. It wasn’t a question of being at fault or not. The other kid was his own age, not an adult. He couldn’t let that kid order him around. He’d sooner drop dead on the spot.

“Well, are you going to stick them in or not?” the big kid yelled.

“You’d have to kill me first!”

Mansŏk confronted him with a scornful laugh.

“How’s that? Someone of your sort defying me? Maybe we’d better take you up on that. Sure, why not? Hey, Tongjin, let’s half kill this asshole!” said the big one to his brother and the two raised their clenched fists.

“Hey, boy! Don’t make trouble, no matter what you think. Remember your origins. He who endures is the better man.”

Every time there was trouble, big or little, his meek and gentle father would repeat these words. Even in the midst of this attack by the two ganged up against him, his father’s words popped to mind. But they couldn’t ward away this drubbing.

Mansŏk ducked the fists that came flying at him. Though he didn’t live or eat very well, he had a body that started hauling firewood before he was ten and, since he turned ten, carried a backrack. And he was skilled enough in fighting to make quick work of the two Ch’oe boys, who had been brought up eating meat.

Mansŏk knew how to win a fight in a single round. The big boy, whose punch had missed, sprang at Mansŏk, panting. Mansŏk took aim at his groin and let his foot fly. The boy, unable even to cry out, fell flat on his back, writhing.

“Get up! Come on, get up!” cried the younger one, shaking his older brother, who lay pale and twisting on the ground.

“Your tum to get punched, asshole!”

Mansŏk pulled the younger one up by his collar and gave him a ruthless thrashing. By now, Mansdék was not himself. He had a sharp and fiery temper that, once aroused, he could not control. So much so, that his mother would curse him as “tiger bait.”

Mansŏk had the fearsome thought that he could kill these two with no one being the wiser. It crossed his mind that he could pummel them some more and then throw them in the river. So he beat them unconscious and dragged them one by one to the edge of the river, and it was then he was discovered by grown-ups from the village.

His father was dragged to the Ch’oe house, beaten half dead, and carried back home. Now barely able to move, he was to be thrown out of the village. His father fell to the ground, crying and pleading for mercy, but the men from the Ch’oe household loaded all the household effects onto a cart and dumped them by the river. His father had to build a dugout for them to live in on a mountain slope across the river. Having lost their tenancy with the Ch’oes, they were reduced to going hungry as often as they ate. But his father neither punished nor rebuked Mansŏk.

“You’re just like your grandfather. Your blood’s too hot for a commoner!”

His father, bedridden with pain, mumbled half to himself as tears ran down his face.

It was not until four years later that his father was forgiven by the Ch’oes and allowed to move back into the old house.

“Would you know, by any chance, how my parents’ graves… ?”

He finally let out the words he had so hesitated to say and then dropped his head.

“You should be ashamed. Who do you think would volunteer to bury them in the face of all that bloodthirsty terror? We were all afraid that we’d get into serious trouble, including me.”

Old Hwang spoke very directly. Mansŏk, his head lowered, gave no response.

Mansŏk had never hoped that his parents might possibly have a grave. All he wanted was to know their final resting place.

When it came to reactionaries, could any have been more reactionary than him? His mother, father, and three-year-old kid suffered a harsher death than anyone else. Who would have dared to step forward and offer to care for their bodies? In what pit were they buried together?

“Mr. Hwang, thank you. I’ll have to leave you now.”

Mansŏk rose.

“What are you talking about? Have yourself a nap and leave before cockcrow.”

“No, that won’t do. If they catch Sight of me moving around at dawn, you’ll be in a prickly Situation, Mr. Hwang. It’d be best to slip away right now.”

“Had I known you’d leave like this, I would have made you a rice ball or something.”

“Mr. Hwang, as long as I live I’ll never forget the time you saved me.”

“No, no. Neither you nor I has done anything wrong, except for being born with the wrong blood in our veins, I understand what’s going on inside you. When you really look at it, a man like me has nothing to boast of. People like me who seek an easy life, laughing in Spite of this and laughing in spite of that, are no better than spineless idiots. Compared with people like me, how much a man you are! You are really what a man is. So, for you to thank me is to insult me. To have kept a secret of your whereabouts was the proper duty of a small man like me who’ll never live so boldly as you.”

Moisture was forming in Old Hwang’s eyes.

“Mr. Hwang, I wish you a long, long life,” said Mansŏk in a choking voice, his head lowered in contrition.

“Forget it—every bit of it! Go and live your own full life. That’s your way out.”

Mansŏk parted from Old Hwang in the darkness.

As soon as Mansŏk’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark he could faintly make out the river’s course. Looking out at that river, he could no longer move. A ferry across the river could have taken him to his home.

Mansŏk had made his way past the village shrine when gunfire began to sound behind him like beans popping on a skillet. In between the shots he could hear shouts of agitation. Mansŏk was unable to run as fast as his burning heart urged. Today he had already walked twenty-four miles, going and coming, and was thoroughly exhausted.

The sound of gunfire came gradually closer. When Mansŏk reached the ferry, Old Hwang was just tying up his boat.

“Mr. Hwang. You’ve got to help me!”

“What happened?”

“I’ve just killed the People’s Army commander. Please, take me in your boat.”

“Are you crazy? If we go out in that boat, we’ll get shot dead in the middle of the river. Quick, run to the reeds! To the reeds. The fog’s just started to rise and it’ll be dark soon. Run quickly! Now!”

Old Hwang stamped his foot and Mansŏk made a dash for the reed flats.

Twilight, the grayish-yellow of a cuckoo, blazed on the river’s surface, and the evening fog rose slowly along the shores. Wind, passing through the reeds, raised the sound of a baby’s whine, while the stalks themselves undulated in the waves. Mansŏk felt relieved and turned all his strength to crawling through the flats. With this much wind blowing against the reeds, the ripple caused by a single man does not stand out. This he had leamed from experience, having been in and out of these reeds since he was a child.

By the time he had made it to the middle of the wide and even stand of reeds, Mansŏk heard three or four gunshots at the riverbank. Mansŏk waited until it grew pitch dark before he leapt into the river. Avoiding the main roads, he went up into the mountains.

At that time his very life had rested in the hands of Old Hwang.

Early July through early September had been like a dream for Mans6ok. For those two months, Mansŏk really believed the world was his.

They said they would liberate the farmer-laborers. They said rich men and landlords would be eliminated and all power would go to the commoners. Mansŏk had no need to think or mull. He was in his element, like a fish in water. He waved a freshly Sharpened sickle and a bloodthirsty glint shot from his eyes.

The first thing Mansŏk did was bum down the Ch’oes’ ancestral shrine hall.

“Starting now, I’m going to rip the Ch’oe family up by its roots!” he shouted as he stared at the flaming building. “I’ll wipe them all out! There’ll be nothing left with a cock hanging from it.”

Nobody dared get in the way of Mansik and the deadly sickle he brandished. Anyone who challenged him would have lost his head to the flying sickle. Some who were fast on their feet managed to escape him, but not the Ch’oe men, who were all caught and dragged in. They were beaten until half dead, and each day one of them died, tied to the pine out back.

Even though the Ch’oe family was in constant mourning, not a single bier was to be seen; they hadn’t been able to retrieve the Corpses.

Among the entire Ch’oe family there was no food to eat, not in any of their houses. All their cereal and grains had been looted, so thoroughly that they could not even make gruel.

“It’s not right. You wouldn’t treat animals like that—how can you do it to humans? They have little children there—you’ve got to at least let them cook gruel. Mansŏk, boy, change your mind and let them at least cook gruel. These things simply aren’t done, even if you were avenging your own father’s murder.”

His father clung to Mansŏk as he pleaded.

“You’ve got to stop this reactionary talk. You’ve suffered this all your life and you’ re still not disgusted? Is that it?”

Mansŏk shook himself loose from his father and shot a look skyward.

“You’ve got to get rid of this bullheadedness. Whether you like | them or not, those people have given us our daily bread.”

“Father, is that all you can say? If you don’t change your attitude, and soon, do you know what will happen? You’ll end up just like those damn Ch’oes.”

A cold look had come over Mansŏk’s face.

“Unless you change. I think you exaggerate, Father. When have those people ever fed us? We worked our fingers to the bone so the likes of them could get big and fat, and all we eat is chaff and sweepings—it’s barely enough to live on.”

His daughter-in-law showed with her eyes that she took her husband’s side.

Old Mr. Ch’ŏn kept his mouth shut after that. They had all changed so completely, even his daughter-in-law. People who change their minds face death, they said. The two of them were like different people. His son could butcher people without blinking an eye, and overnight his daughter-in-law had cast off her modest manner and turned into a genuine adulteress. His daughter-in-law, as head of the Alliance of Democratic Women, was wielding power just like his son. For this beautiful daughter-in-law, whose eyes had always been demurely lowered, to have changed so much deeply grieved the old man. No, it’s that Communist Party that makes people change so. The more he thought about it, the more frightened and fearful he became.

Mansŏk was so intent on being the eagle who, wings full out, soared as he wished that he was totally unaware of the fires that smoldered beneath his feet. He had no inkling that his wife had fallen madly for the pistol-packing People’s Army commander, who ran everything so briskly with just a few words. Even when she would tum down Mansŏk’s bedtime requests because she was “tired,” rather than growing suspicious he would feel sorry for burdening his wife, who had struggled during the day to accomplish revolutionary tasks.

Mansŏk stuck to out-of-the-way villages to avoid being picked up by the People’s Volunteer Army. All the while he was tormented by that ugly dream each night—the dream of a man and woman writhing naked, then collapsing, their guts spewn out on the floor in a sea of blood.

If the thought came to him while he was eating, he would become nauseous and unable to eat any more. After about one month on the run, he heard that the People’s Army had lost the battle and were, for the most part, withdrawing to the mountains. Mansŏk thought deeply on what would have become of him if none of this had happened and he had remained in his native village. The world would have turned inside out again. Obviously, the Ch’oe people who had managed to escape would have descended on him. He then would have had no course but to run off with the People’s Army.

The war had ended. But the mopping up was not yet finished, just as sweeping remains when the threshing’s done. There were the Red guerrillas who had escaped into the mountains on the prowl at night, as well as those who had sided with the rebels, still to be ferreted out.

“Needless to say, it’s very clear. Don’t you think? Some went to the mountains but those who didn’t see the handwriting on the wall were overthrown. They were rounded up and faced an ugly fate.”

Old Hwang shook his head as if loath to draw his story out any further.

Mansŏk released a sigh, long as the river’s course. And he slowly stepped through the darkness. Just as Mr. Hwang had said, he had no choice but to go and live somewhere far away. And now he had nothing—nothing gained, nothing saved, nothing whatsoever. Just emptiness and absurdity.

He really had wanted to go to school. But they told him learning wasn’t for just anyone. They told him that commoners had their own tasks that were different—gathering wood, packing a backrack, and grazing cattle. While the Ch’oe kids sat in the shade of a tree eating watermelons until their stomachs burst, he had to be out leaping around the sun-baked paddy paths, shouting himself hoarse to shoo the birds away. In winter, of course, he had to gather up the children’s book bags and carry them to school.’ While dressed in clothing padded several times thicker than his and wearing mittens as well, those children complained they couldn’t carry book bags because their hands were cold.

To get two rice cakes to eat, he had to show them his cock and peel back the foreskin, in spite of the pain it caused. To have a single persimmon, he spent half a day as their horse in a horse-riding game. He was willing to do most anything if it meant putting something in a stomach that knew only constant hunger. But that was only until he was thirteen or fourteen. After he turned fifteen, he began to grit his teeth until the roots ached.

“Mansŏk, Mansŏk! You’ve got to let me go! I’ll give you all my fields and paddies if you’ll just let me go.”

Some of the Ch’oes were rubbing their palms in supplication hard enough to start a fire when they breathed their last.

“Mansŏk. I mean, Vice-Chairman, sir. Your esteemed father and I were friends for thirty years. Won’t you spare me? Please…”

Some gushed tears as they writhed on the floor of the porch.

“Comrade Vice-Chairman . .. Comrade… Vice-Chairman…”

Some, lips trembling, couldn’t manage to speak.

Some shit their undigested food, some pissed themselves sloppy, some trembled from head to foot but then went stiff as boards.

Not one of them still trumpeted the grandeur, the arrogance, the self-importance, or the authority that they had shown a few days earlier. “You ill-bred trash! You could leam manners from a dog! How dare you act like this before your betters?” Had even one among them responded in such a way, he might well have been allowed to live.

As if guarded by their departed souls, this land was not something he could retum to, thought Mansŏk as he tumed his back to the river and began to step quickly into the darkness.

Old Mansŏk, constantly wiping away his tears, took three or four hours to walk from the suburban orphanage to the downtown business district. Without a single coin to his name, he had no choice but to walk.

He found the pedestrian overpass that had earlier caught his eye.

The old man barely managed the strength to grasp the handrail and climb the steps. He took off one of his black rubber shoes and squatted down at the near end of the bridge where the two flights of steps from the sidewalk met. The single black shoe rested in front of him. He had to get a meal each day and he had to get the bus fare home.

He could no longer do manual labor, At whatever job site he inquired, they had no work to give him. His wrinkled and desiccated face was still a face, but his drooping shoulders revealed at a glance that this was no longer the body of a laboring man. Even if a sympathetic or even inexperienced foreman were to assign him some task, he didn’t have the strength to carry it out. Not only had his body grown loose and slack but he was apt to spit up blood if he taxed himself.

The old man’s eyes were closed, his head hung low. In his shabby appearance he was every bit the beggar.

The old man was not at all interested in how many coins had collected in the rubber shoe, for his heart was already home. With the day of his death drawing near, the old man was more inclined this way. At some point, his heart had started to focus increasingly on that place.

Home was a land where nothing whatsoever was left for him, a land with not a single face to welcome him. If there were something there it would be just an ugly past. For what reason could his heart, in spite of it all, be drawn to that place at the very risk of life? For all the thought he gave to it, he couldn’t understand his own feelings.

He had wandered some two years with the boy in tow, following the construction sites, as he searched for his wife Sunim. One reclamation project where he worked for a while was no more than twenty-five miles from his birthplace. At first, thinking he might run into some familiar face, he thought about finding some other place to work. But the conditions there were too good to tum his back on easily. Reclamation projects were always long-term, and since they were mostly government operations, they had the advantage of regular pay. He wavered a bit but then settled in with an attitude of resignation.

Two months passed, then three, without his encountering even one familiar face. During that time a hankering stole into his heart. He was taken with a wish to see Mr. Hwang, if only once. Once he got that idea into his head, he began to find himself often disconcerted. Count- less people worked at the site. Many shared the same life, each day exerting themselves and putting away three meals. But they didn’t

have the humanness suggested by a well-baked sweet potato or a warm, snug room on a snowy night. They worked together easily like a team when they were on the job, but when the work was done they would go their separate ways and quite forget their working life. The life of the wanderer has always been like this.

And they were not without women. But, compared with the men, these women were even more like vacant shadows. Selling their bodies for a few coins, they would tum into inert lumps of flesh just as soon as their task was over. Doing it with them, no matter how many times he tried, always left Mansŏk feeling like he had just bathed in a tub filled only to his ankles with tepid water. How he longed to be immersed up to his neck in a steaming hot tub of water! Suddenly the thought of his wife’s body came to mind. How he longed to be drenched with sweat and get that faint and listless feeling, like all his body’s strength had been drained away! But then came the memory that flooded in and instantly destroyed his longing. In broad daylight, in the council’s quarters, writhing . . .

Perhaps it was this rootlessness that made him want to see Old Hwang again. The men had one day off a week. That day was boring and frustrating for him. He wasn’t particularly drawn to drinking or gambling. But his heart did brim with thoughts of buying something like a bottle of rice wine and going to visit Old Hwang. Mansŏk held out as long as he could and then, sometime after lunch, he ended upon a bus. He got off the bus at the town of P, about ten miles before his home village. It wasn’t long before the sun was about to set. At a roadside shop, Mansŏk bought two bottles of rice wine. Then he found a place to eat. He ordered a double portion of soup and rice and a glass of soju. With ten miles to walk in the dark, he had to stoke up well. “You mean they’re still not done with the burying?” “That’s what I said.” “No kidding! How long has it been since the war ended? You mean they’ve been burying their people for two years now?” “Hey look. You can’t see anything but your rose-colored view of things. Are you telling me you don’t know how many of them were killed?” “I know. If the People’s Army had kicked them around for another six months back then, the Ch’oe clan would have been wiped out.” Mansŏk, his glass of soju moving to his lips, froze in place. A shock, at which his body seemed to stiffen, hit the back of his head.

With a flick of his eyes Mansŏk examined the faces of the two men. There was nothing familiar about them. Mansŏk unconsciously heaved a great sigh.

“So true. It’s a good thing for the Ch’oe family that the national army won when they did.”

“Yeah, but were they able to get their dead reburied properly then?”

“What? With so many people just buried like dried fish on a string in this pit or that, how could they tell whose bones were whose?”

“What a godawful mess! With no way of telling, what must the children have thought as they tried to rebury what they hoped were the bones of their parents?”

“God knows! I say devotion like that ought to be rewarded.”

“Well, while the Ch’oes care for their departed like that, what about the people who took up the rebel cause or the scattered souls of their families?”

“That’s not your worry. At this point the Ch’oe family is blind with rage. What would they care about the souls of dead traitors?”

Mansŏk, emptying one glass of soju after another, was growing coldly tensed. Unlike his heart, which told him to clear out of the place, his body, growing heavier, was sinking down into his seat.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. As long as revengeful spirits of the dead, for whatever reason, are out and moving around, that village will never settle down in peace, I mean.”

“So, will the Ch’oe clan therefore bury the commoners who they see as their enemies?”

“It’s a crazy business. When you think how they buried that silly Chŏmbagu alive—and he was nobody—then you know these Ch’oes aren’t normal people.” Chombagu, that dimwit with the coin-sized mole on the left of his forehead. He would dance for joy, grab a spear, and, as if his day had come, carry out whatever was asked of him. And, when he had run a spear through someone’s chest, he would show his yellow teeth and make a gaping laugh. That face was not a laughing face; rather, it was very much the look of an angry, growling dog. It was an expression that came of fear, and people called it his “dog laugh.” That is the Chŏmbagu who was buried alive. Somewhat deficient mentally, he clearly was unable to sense that the situation around him had worsened. Would Chŏmbagu have been laughing his dog laugh even while being buried alive?

Mansŏk’s arm trembled with anger as he raised the glass of soju.

“Anyhow, the Reds aren’t coming down from the hills these days, So we can get on with life. Even up to last year we were not able to Stretch out and sleep easily.”

“By now they seem pretty well rounded up. After Sugil, the chairman, was killed last October, not one has come down, even to his village.”

"So, then, the one who died with Sugil—his face bashed beyond recognition—wasn’t that surely the Mansŏk who had been vice-chairman, like they say?

“Could be. Having died, he would drop out of sight. If only Sugil had died and Mansŏk had lived to run away, then wouldn’t the Ch’oe family have suffered some more grim times? That Mansŏk was not your common baggage, I think. He was as venomous as ten poison snakes in one.”

“Oh, yeah. That roughneck was roasting snakes to eat before he was ten,”

“You bet!”

“But, Mansŏk kills a People’s Army commander and his own wife and then runs away. And this nearly two weeks before the People’s Amny pulled out. Wouldn’t Mansŏk have been a candidate for the People’s Army firing squad? So why would he have joined up with them again?”

“Oh, you really try my patience! Whatever else may have been involved, who did wrong? The guy who fucked somebody’s wife or the husband who killed the guy? And since they’d have their own baggage, too, wouldn’t old wounds—long forgotten—get opened up again? And, when the People’s Army was running in retreat, where were they to get anyone’s support? The help of one fierce specimen like Mansŏk would’ve been the same as the help of ten ordinary people.”

“That’s true. That’s sure true.”

Mansŏk, his face ashen, quickly got up and left. He set out in the direction opposite to where Old Hwang lived. There should be buses headed toward the construction site, he was thinking.

Back at the construction site, Mansŏk drank up the two bottles of | rice wine he had bought to give Old Hwang. And for four days he was sick in bed, unable to budge.

He had never gone catching and roasting snakes to eat before he was ten. True, he had often thought about what it would be like to eat roasted snake. People eat cows, pigs, dogs, and chickens. They eat grasshoppers and frogs. Yet there seems to be something about snakes that keeps people from eating them. Come summer, snakes were common in riverside reed patches and thickets in the foothills. Children, when they caught sight of a snake, would tum tail and mn away. But then, all it took was for somebody to catch one, then they would all grab stones and go on the attack. They would always make sure that the snake died in a welter of wounds. But, even then, the children would not retreat. If they didn’t chop it into pieces, the snake would drink the dew overnight, come back to life at dawn, and surely retum for revenge. The revived snake would go around to the house of each boy who had tried to kill it and kill him by biting off his penis. So the children were satisfied only if they could stone a snake to death and chop it into pieces, even at the risk of their lives. A child would grab hold of his crotch with one hand while throwing rocks with all his might. But Mansŏk didn’t throw any rocks. He was hungry and weak and had no need to exert himself to kill the snake; he was most concerned with what he might do to roast and eat its flesh. The eels caught in the river were incredibly tasty. Since snakes and eels looked much the same, he would be lost in thoughts of how sweet and nutlike was the taste of river eel when he put it hot and sizzling into his mouth. It looked like Sugil had turned partisan, attacked the village, and then gotten himself killed. He was, indeed, a miserable wretch. It had seemed to Mansŏk that Sugil, living with a widowed mother, somehow scraped along even closer to starvation than he did. “With luck like this, what’s the point of living? I’m just living for my mother. Once she’s dead and gone I’m going to give up this shithole world.” He would talk like this, Sugil who had more spirit than muscle. Becoming chairman of the People’s Committee, though, seemed to make him more energetic. Still, he had been somewhat troubled by all the random killing. In the end, he had died on his home turf. It seemed that Mansŏk had already been taken for dead by the people of his home village, particularly those in the Ch’oe clan. In that case, only Old Hwang and his wife knew of his existence. There was no way that word of his existence would slip out of the tight-lipped Old Hwang. His life had already ended. Now no trace of him whatever remained in his native place.

Mansŏk, sick in bed for four days, thought seriously about his lot in life. It was true emptiness, meaninglessness. If anything had changed, it was just that he went from tenant farmer to migrant laborer.

Mansŏk made up his mind never to go near the land of his home again. He had stuck to that decision for nearly thirty years now. No matter how good the job site, he always avoided it if it was close to home.

An evening fog was spreading thickly along the riverbank, like the aftermath of some sadness. The old man had been standing a long time, shoulders drooped as if weighted and staring vacantly at the swirling of the fog as it spread into a stand of reeds.

Would there still be, even now, so many hairy crabs in those reeds? He had roasted them to eat when he was young and, after he grew, they made the best of snacks to go with liquor. After knocking back a glass of soju the taste you could get chewing on a crab leg soaked in mellow soy sauce…

The old man swallowed and wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. The rough surface of his palm on the skin around his mouth felt deeply incised, like the scar of some wound. The old man looked down at the palm of his hand with a wasted feeling: A palm that had callused all it could, and then heaved up many little cracks. Perhaps it was the hardened excesses, but he could feel no pain even when stabbed by something sizable.

The old man gave a long, thin sigh. In the eyes that looked down into the palm there rose a melancholy the color of the fog.

Long years. Years that have flown by so fast. Empty, meaningless years…

The old man set his teeth so firmly that the comers of his mouth began to droop as he tumed his gaze once more toward the riverbank. The fog, like some living thing, was devouring both the rambling patches of reeds and the wide body of the river itself.

If it weren’t for those reeds…

The old man’s body trembled. Now that he finally stood face to face with the river, the memory of that day approached, tearing at the intervening years, so that it seemed to have happened yesterday.

The fog stopped spreading. Thin darkness was being laid out, one furrow after another. The old man felt a chill run down his back as he looked around. It was dark enough now to blur the outline of the mountain ridge. The old man felt the pang of hunger and a heavy fatigue that made him want to lie down. Now he just wanted to get to some tavern.

The old man turned heavy feet toward the tavem on his left, which stood unchanged from the old days, except that the roof had turned to slate. What worse could happen, he wondered in his miserable state, but still he waited until it was a bit darker. He was invaded to the marrow of his bones by a helpless sense of guilt.

Could Old Hwang still be alive? If so, he would be over seventy. He had left the running of the tavern to his wife while he operated the ferry by himself. This Old Hwang would launch his ferry for even one person, whether late at night or early dawn, winter or summer. This man who always had a smile didn’t seem to hate or be hated by anyone in the world. Everyone in any of the surrounding villages—Kamgol, Hangnae, Chukch’on—all felt warmly protective of Old Hwang and his wife. It was Old Hwang who had glanced up at him for the first time and bellowed,

“Why are you doing this? Are you crazy? The world may change and the times can be unpredictable but if you can’t rely on a man, he’s useless!”

“Be careful what you say Mr. Hwang! Please. As someone who should take the lead, how can you talk like that?”

“Well, now, listen to what I say. Haven’t you thought about what happened to the pro-Japanese collaborators after Liberation?”

“What are you talking about? Oh, do you think things today are just like they were back then? Well, I have just one last thing to tell you and I want you to open your ears wide and listen carefully. Since it was you who said it, Mr. Hwang, I’ll make like I didn’t hear it. But if you ever talk like that again, I’ll report you on the spot—no questions asked! Don’t forget that!”

Old Hwang, mouth agape, could make no answer.

He doubted whether his father and Old Hwang clearly understood what it was like to live in the world at that time or where the purpose of living a life lay. They both said one had to live by reason. Though he may once have known what reason was all about, he didn’t know now.

Old Hwang was probably so old now that even if they collided on some street corer they probably wouldn’t recognize each other. The times had rounded a long bend and flowed on.

The old man began to step into the twilight with a bit of a groping gait, as if he were making his way across Stepping stones. He had dilapidated bag strapped to his bent shoulders. After a few Steps toward the tavem the old man stopped and began to cough. He covered his mouth with one hand and clutched with the other at the clothing covering his chest. Without any sound at all the coughing only spun and hacked inside his throat. The old man was unable to stop the coughing, and his body shriveled up smaller and smaller.

The old man’s body was nearly in a squat when the coughing Stopped. When a fit of coughing racked him like this, his chest seethed with a nearly unendurable fever and seemed to flutter like shredded Tice-paper. And there came the sweat that drenched his entire body as it was being swept by a chill.

No good. It’s all over.

The old man shook his head as he had that thought again, Each time the coughing racked his chest, the old man felt death come another step closer.

His legs shaking, the old man placed his palms on his knees and Slowly rose. A stinking dizziness invaded him dimly like the fog spreading across the riverbank.

The old man paused in front of the tavem gate. Should I Say something to make myself known? But nothing came to mind and only the amiable face of a young Mr. Hwang flickered before him.

“Hello, anyone home?”

The old man shouted with what strength he had. But his voice, though he could hear it, was very weak and trembling.

“Who’s there?”

A man emerged from a shed and looked around.

The old man strained to see. Although the gloom of evening had already settled in, he could sense that the man in the distance was not anoldone.

Mr. Hwang’s son? the old man thought suddenly. That powerful youth, though a poor substitute for his father, had taken over the oars of the ferry.

“A big help to me. But that kid came into the world three years too early, I think. Ended up getting yanked around—first by this side then by that side. How it troubled me when that happened…”

He could hear Mr. Hwang’s voice vividly.

“Who is it?” a sturdy man in his forties was asking quietly.

“Huh … are you still running a tavern here?” the old man began, pushing aside a tangle of questions.

“How? When the bridge went in and the ferry was wiped out the tavern naturally dried up, too.”

Answering slowly and deliberately, he took in the old man’s shabby appearance with a look of dissatisfaction.

“They put a bridge over this river?” asked the old man, unable to hide his surprise.

“That was done some time back. You haven’t been around here for a while, have you.”

He slowly studied the old man with a different look in his eyes. The old man instinctively assumed a defensive posture. It was a dark refraction of the feelings experienced over the thirty years since that day. But, as a matter of habit, the old man did not in the least reveal the hard mass of those feelings when he opened his mouth to speak.

“I took up peddling as a young man when I got sick of farming.”

“Really? Well, were you able to make some money?” the younger man asked with a sarcastic tone. The old man’s shabbiness seemed very far removed from money.

“Could Old Hwang still live here?” the old man asked casually, suppressing his unquiet heart.

“Who is Old Hwang?”

The man shook his head, even his neck, showing that he knew nothing at all. Instantly, the old man felt abandoned. This man, clearly the owner of the tavern, didn’t know of Old Hwang. Had Mr. Hwang died? Had he moved away?

“You know, Hwang Sundol … ran the ferry …”

“Ah, the former owner here! He died more than ten years ago. His son sold us the place and moved off to the city.”

Nothing registered in the old man’s ears. He hadn’t come here to see his native turf. He had come to find Mr. Hwang. His heart was drawn to his birthplace while he wandered rootlessly, not just out of heartache for the troubled spirits of his dead parents but also because Mr. Hwang was there. But Mr. Hwang had already died some ten years before. It was money he had barely scraped together as a beggar, but even that bottle of rice wine he had bought and put in his bag—that was for Mr. Hwang.

“So, where are you headed now, mister?”

At the tavern owner’s question, the old man came out of his reverie.

“You wouldn’t happen to know, would you, where Mr. Hwang’s grave is?” The old man asked as he narrowly opened his watery eyes.

“Well, I really don’t,” the owner answered bluntly.

The old man kept nodding his head slightly.

“Go have a look around.”

With that the tavern owner turned away.

“I’m hungry … could I get a little something to eat?” the old man asked feebly to the tavern owner’s back.

“Well…”

“Don’t worry, I’m not asking for a free meal.”

“No, that’s not it. It’s just that we don’t have much to go with the rice. Let’s go in first,” said the tavern owner, again turning to go.

The darkness had closed in all around them. The old man looked down toward the riverbank. In the thick gray darkness he could not make out signs of the fog that had risen up in solid billows like a living thing. If only Mr. Hwang had been there. … A desolate sorrow spread through the old man’s heart like the fog that covered the riverbank.

“What are you doing, mister? Let’s go on in,” the tavern owner called. “I’ve got to urinate.”

The old man, noncommittal, went in the brushwood gate.

Since it was around dinnertime, the rice was brought right out.

“Could I have a glass of soju?”

Even before he gave thought to lifting a spoon, the old man first wanted liquor. As he spoke, he thought of the bottle of rice wine he had kept so carefully in his bag. He had meant to drink it, Sitting together with Mr. Hwang. He had bought wine to soothe away, cup by cup, the weakness and weariness that had overwhelmed his flesh and his feelings. This was only the third bottle of expensive rice wine that he had bought in all his life. He hadn’t been able to offer the first two bottles to Mr. Hwang and now, once more, it was the same thing.

The old man poured a glass of soju to overflowing and drank it in a gulp. “Ahh…” He closed his eyes softly as he felt the prickling force of the liquor ride down his throat. Throughout the wasted years he’d spent floating aimlessly about—pushed by the wind, clouds for a roof—what stood by him, unchanged, was just the taste of soju.

“Here, won’t you have a glass?”

He offered his glass to the owner.

“Oh, no. If I want to drink, I’ll serve myself. How can I take a drink from a customer?” said the owner, declining with a wave of his hand.

“Come, now. Don’t be so coldhearted, cutting the good feelings that come from sharing a glass. You can tell from the sight of me that I’m not the type who can often buy a second round. Please have one!”

The old man looked forlorm but spoke emphatically.

“If that’s the case…”

The owner took the glass.

The hand with which the old man poured the liquor trembled slightly but it righted the bottle neatly, just when the glass filled up.

“If you were looking for the ferry, mister, were you on your way to the Chukch’on area?” the owner asked as he returned the glass.

The old man just nodded his head, his eyes narrowed as if collecting many thoughts.

“I learned when I came here that everything from Chukch’on on belongs to the Ch’oe family.”

As before, the old man only nodded.

“I’m told the Ch’oe family came forward to build the bridge. And it seems they’re going to put up a middle school and high school, too, after a while.”

The old man nodded as he pulled out a cigarette.

“Actually, with one of them a national assemblyman, can’t they do anything they want? There may be other families around, but they’re all like beggars living off the Ch’oes.”

“Well…”

The old man was about to say something but then made as if to empty his glass.

“You were going to say… ?”

The owner gazed vacantly at the old man.

“Well … I was wondering what people have control over the Ch’oe household?”

“As far as I know, it’s the ones about my age. Not that there aren’t any old men but they all seem to stay in the background. All the same, I’ve heard talk. They say the old ones aren’t well received.”

“How come?”

“Not so smart, I hear. The really clever ones were all killed off in the war, they say.”

The old man fixed his eyes on the wall, his face tightly drawn.

“I understand that the Ch’oes dropped like flies during the war. Except for the Harvest Festival and New Year’s, they say the largest observance in the Ch’oe household is their joint memorial service in late July. A spectacle worth watching.”

The old man, eyes tightly closed, took one deep drag after another on his cigarette.

“Those Ch’oes had wielded such power, but once the war broke out and they fell into the hands of rabble, their lives weren’t worth shit. How could they ever be avenged? Though it seems there wasn’t a place those rabble didn’t go wild. The Ch’oes got the worst of it here, they say. Did you see such grisly sights then, mister?”

“Oh no, no…”

The old man stubbed out his cigarette and shook his head vehemently.

“Where were you living back then?” the owner asked, seeming to look gently into the old man’s face.

“I left here a little before the war began. So I don’t know a thing about what went on here during the fighting,” the old man asserted.

“They say it was one spectacle to behold. You sure missed quite a scene, mister.”

The owner seemed to be quietly anticipating some reaction to his story of those days, but when his expectation was frustrated a look of failure showed in his eyes.

“A real good spectacle? What could have been good about it? People killing and getting killed. Have the poor luck to see something like that and you feel sick for life!”

“How could such a scene be commonplace? What an event that must have been, the rabble going wild. Sure must have been worth seeing.”

The old man did not wish to reply further. It grated badly on his nerves to hear the man talk of “’the rabble this” and “the rabble that” but he told himself not to find fault. What could this man have known?

If he’s now about forty, then it happened when he was around ten; and if he’s thirty-five now, he was five then. The man takes the horrific killing and being killed of that time as simply another entertaining tale of long, long ago. That’s what thirty years adds up to.

“I’ve enjoyed the meal but I’d better be on my way.”

The old man struggled to his feet.

“It’s pitch black out there. Will you be all right?”

“I know these roads…”

Maybe it was the liquor, maybe fatigue, but the old man was staggering as he cut across the courtyard.

“It’s dark. Please take care!”

The owner shouted in the direction of the staggering old man as he receded into the darkness, his battered bag clutched tightly to his side.

The old man’s corpse was discovered beneath the bridge the following moming, the battered bag still clutched to his side. No one recognized his drawn face. In order to establish his identity, the police went through his personal effects. But all that came out of his bag were a few coins and a bottle of rice wine. About half the wine was left in the bottle.

Unable to dispose of the corpse right away, the police left it beside the road all day long. They made it visible to anyone passing by. But no one turned up who recognized the old man.

Quite a few people were attracted by talk that a man had fallen into the river and drowned. Among them was the owner of the tavern. It gave him a terrible fright, but the next moment he had cooled down. He figured there was no need for him to pretend for no reason that he knew the man and then suffer the annoyance of getting called to the police station.

“If we assume that he drowned himself last night, he probably threw himself in upstream near the old ferry crossing. So, during the night, he would have floated down here. Make out the incident report that way.”

A man in civilian clothing was giving the orders.

“I understand, sir.”

The uniformed policeman saluted him. With that, they unrolled a straw mat and began to cover the corpse from the head down.

Translated by Marshall R. Pihl