Friend

by Paek Nam-nyong

  “Comrade Judge, thank you very much. In truth, I, not very long ago, should’ve gone to Sun Hee’s house and encouraged her …”

  The deputy director looked at Jeong Jin Wu with self-reproachful eyes as he explained his shortcomings.

  11

  It was a sunny afternoon. The warm sunlight awoke the trees, flowers, and grass from their wintry slumber. The soil was still damp from the rainstorm of a few days ago, and the strong winds set the dark clouds adrift beyond the horizon in the vast sky. The spring air was fresh, and the muddied river had cleared.

  Sun Hee brought laundry from her house to wash by the river.

  She had to wash Ho Nam’s dirty clothes before she went on the tour to Seong Gan with her troupe. She could have washed the clothes at the neighborhood laundry center, but she didn’t want to encounter any of the neighborhood women or hear any of their comments on her marital problems. The river was frigid from the melting ice somewhere upstream, but the riverbank was her safe haven, a remote place where Sun Hee could find peace in solitude.

  She scrubbed the stains off the clothes and repeatedly rubbed her numbed hands. She clasped her hands tightly and stared blankly at the clothes. She fell into deep thought.

  She had told her deputy director that she would quit and waited anxiously for his response, but for some reason, he didn’t bring it up again. After the deputy director came back from the courthouse, he didn’t hassle Sun Hee for more information about her marital problems. He simply told her to prepare for the upcoming tour. He also suggested that she should practice more and gave her some time off to catch up on her housework. Sun Hee was grateful to the deputy director for not adding more work problems to her marital problems.

  She felt as though some of her burden had been lifted and continued washing the clothes. Her fingers had become stiff and numb from the icy water, so she rubbed her hands fiercely and blew on them. When her hands regained life, she picked up the clothes and started to head home.

  Just then, Sun Hee identified a man with a bucket and a shovel hobbling along the upper section of the riverbank.

  It was unmistakably Judge Jeong Jin Wu. He was shoveling some sand by the riverbank and tossing it behind him. He then took off his shoes and rolled up his pants.

  When Sun Hee saw the judge step into the river in his bare feet, it gave her a cold sensation. She assumed the judge was planning to use the sand to fix his furnace. She was bemused to see a respectable judge slogging through the freezing water to collect sand. Jeong Jin Wu appeared helpless and pathetic. He could have called his apartment maintenance man and had him send some workers to fix the furnace for him, Sun Hee thought. But she also concluded that the judge was something of a handyman and liked to solve his own problems.

  Although Sun Hee tried to mind her own business and return home, she felt sorry for him. She kept glancing over her shoulder to see the judge shoveling laboriously in the icy river.

  It was not long after Judge Jeong Jin Wu rolled up his pants and entered the river that his feet and ankles started to sting from the cold water. Despite the pain in his feet, he continued to dig with his shovel. Soon, his feet became entirely numb.

  He dug up a big clump of sand and took it out of the river. On examining it more closely, he was not pleased with the quality of the sand and knew that it was not going to work as casting sand. He slumped with disappointment and stared at the flowing river in defeat.

  Many years ago, when he and his son had come to this river to rinse salt out of seaweed, he had seen an area in the middle of the river that had superb sand.

  But, he thought to himself, if the sand is truly superb, then why hasn’t the factory already taken it?

  Jeong Jin Wu stood still to let his feet regain feeling, but he did not want to waste too much time. He was intent on going into the deep section of the river, near the huge boulders. This time, he took off his trousers and thermal underwear.

  Passersby saw Jeong Jin Wu in his underwear nearly waist-deep in the freezing river. They stopped to watch this unusual spectacle. Some muttered jokingly that he was out to catch the enormous legendary fish that dwelled in the depths of the river.

  The water had come up to his waist. He huffed and puffed each time he took another step into the river. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, and his entire body became paralyzed with numbness. He gently lowered the shovel to the floor of the river and took a scoop of the sand from between the boulders. Carefully, he lifted the sample out of the water without dropping it back to the bottom.

  As soon as he examined the clump of sand, he shouted with joy. The sand was translucent, fine, and firm, the same sand he had seen many years ago with his son.

  As he waddled back to the riverbank, Jeong Jin Wu seemed to have forgotten about his frozen limbs. He pulled a long stick from the bucket, which looked like a fisherman’s bait container, and a rope from his backpack. He then tied the rope onto the bucket and hung it around his neck.

  From the other side of the river, he heard women giggling.

  Jeong Jin Wu looked at the path where people were standing and then boldly went back into the river. The icy water did not bother him as it had before. His body had become used to it by now.

  He dug up the sand and placed it in the bucket. It took some time to fill it halfway. He came out of the water and placed a large plastic bag on the ground. He then poured the sand into the bag. He rubbed his legs to get his blood flowing again and then returned to the river. He repeated this a few more times and collected enough sand to fill the bag. He then put the bag in his backpack.

  The people standing by the road, curious at first, decided Jeong Jin Wu was an eccentric. They shook their heads in disdain and went about their business. They did not understand why he had to go so deep into the freezing river when there was abundant sand on the riverbank.

  Jeong Jin Wu quickly put on his pants and threw the heavy backpack over his shoulders. He put the stick back into the bucket and held the shovel in his other hand. The backpack was filled with wet sand, which made it extremely heavy. He started to feel the weight of the sand on his lower back. As he walked down the path, he felt the backpack weighing down his shoulders, causing him to drag his feet.

  He had done this to help Seok Chun, but he was having second thoughts, wondering if all this trouble was absolutely necessary. Judge Son had once complimented Jeong Jin Wu for going out of his way to do things for others. He could not accept that kind of compliment from Judge Son. If he could prevent a divorce and regenerate the couple’s lost love, then going out of his way for them was no trouble. How wonderful would it be for Seok Chun to appreciate what he had done for him, and for him to complete the new machine with this sand? Seok Chun would be able to complete the remote control, improve the multispindle machine, and come home with a sense of accomplishment. Seok Chun would then be able to spend more quality time at home with his family. Family and work may appear to be different at times, but affection was the thread that held the two together. Therefore, the duty of the law lay in restoring dysfunctional families and not only in arresting criminals. That was why, even though the backpack was burdensome, he continued trudging along the path.

  Jeong Jin Wu stopped by a tree on the side of the road to rest. He put the heavy backpack down and leaned the shovel against the tree. Without the weight of the backpack, his shoulders felt as if they were going to float toward the sky. He pulled out a cigarette, took a deep drag, and blew out the smoke. He felt his frigid body warming up.

  On the pathway, a woman was walking with a book under her arm, completely preoccupied with her thoughts. It was the coal miner’s wife, the schoolteacher, who lived on the second floor of his apartment building. She had committed her life to helping her students and had always worried about her husband’s addiction to alcohol. She was wearing the same old sweater that she had worn on that rainy night when Jeong Jin Wu saw her waiting for her husband to return from work.

  When she saw Jeong Jin Wu, she smiled. Then
she stopped, utterly perplexed.

  “My friend needed sand, so …” explained Jeong Jin Wu, pointing to his wet pants.

  The schoolteacher tried hard not to look at Jeong Jin Wu, and tried harder not to look at his pants.

  “Has your wife returned from her field research?” asked the schoolteacher, searching for another topic of discussion.

  “I imagine she will come back when the weather gets warmer up there. By the way, are you just coming back from a student’s house?” Jeong Jin Wu asked.

  “Comrade Judge, you make it sound like you were following me.”

  “I even know what you were thinking as you were walking back.”

  The schoolteacher peered at him with curiosity and kept her eyes from glancing at his wet pants.

  “You were thinking about how to punish the students who didn’t come to school today, right? Am I right?” Jeong Jin Wu chuckled.

  Jeong Jin Wu put on the backpack again. The schoolteacher missed her opportunity to assist him.

  “We’re going in the same direction. Can I help you with anything?” asked the schoolteacher.

  She picked up the bucket and shovel for the judge. Jeong Jin Wu tried to stop her, but she had already begun walking ahead.

  They had been walking without saying a word to each other for a while when the schoolteacher broke the silence. “Actually, I was thinking something along those lines.” She spoke in a soft voice. “It’s probably a coincidence to run into you like this, but every time I come back from this student’s house, I always feel a bit annoyed with the court for divorcing his parents.”

  The mention of court jolted Jeong Jin Wu’s attention. He was at a loss for words and listened carefully to the schoolteacher, who appeared to be speaking about something that had been troubling her for quite some time.

  The schoolteacher continued, “One of my students, Chae Yeong Il, has been living with his stepmother for—”

  “Wait a minute!” Jeong Jin Wu interrupted. “Chae Yeong Il? How old is he?

  “I believe he’s … uh … thirteen years old.”

  “Thirteen? Who’s his father?” Jeong Jin Wu asked impatiently.

  “His father is the sales manager at the electric power plant … uh … Comrade Chae Rim. Why, do you know him?”

  Jeong Jin Wu adjusted his backpack and avoided looking at the schoolteacher. How could he not know the sales manager? The memory of that day in court six years ago was coming back to him.

  That woman, who was living in the mountains with her children. The one who dreamed of raising a harmonious family. The one whose tears rolled down her freckled face in court. The one who pleaded with her husband to acknowledge her and respect her dignity. The children who were separated because of the divorce. The frightened seven-year-old boy, Chae Yeong Il.

  “I know a little bit about him. I met him a few years ago,” said Jeong Jin Wu.

  He made it sound like a casual remark, but he was perturbed at the very thought of the child. An unsettling memory of Chae Rim and his children, which had been buried in his mind, was haunting him again. It had haunted him a few days ago in his office, and it was haunting him now. Even so, he turned his attention to the schoolteacher’s words like a magnet to metal as she described Yeong Il’s stepmother.

  Chae Rim remarried soon after the divorce. His new wife was ten years younger than he, a young woman for whom raising someone else’s child was not a priority. Like most stepmothers, she cared little for her stepson. She would wash his clothes but never buy him new ones. She would prepare food for him, but never the dishes he liked. She would scowl at him in the absence of his father, but in his father’s presence, she would coddle him and shower him with affection. Her orders to him to clean his room extended to the living room, the bathroom, and even the kitchen, while she rested. Chae Rim was Yeong Il’s father, but his stepmother was his master. Yeong Il dared not complain about his stepmother to his father lest he be forced to endure harsher mistreatment from her in his father’s absence. She cared very little for his well-being, much less his education.

  Her only aim was for Yeong Il to graduate from secondary school and find work in another town, away from home, out of her sight. She wanted him out of the house as quickly as possible and wondered if secondary school could be accelerated. But she would have to wait five more years for her desires to come to fruition. This irritated her, and the irritation was made known to Yeong Il every day. Maternal love had been replaced with moral apathy, and his happiness had been extinguished by her tyranny. Yeong Il had been living in fear and oppression for the past six years, suffering in the grip of his stepmother. He was an unhappy child in dire need of parental love, in desperate need of the simplest love from anyone who would offer it.

  Fear had made him an introverted student. He would sit quietly in class, aloof from the rest of his rambunctious classmates. He had no friends, and no one wanted to be his friend. His teachers had attempted to help him socialize with the other students, but by the end of the day, he would walk home by himself.

  One day during the art lesson, the art teacher taught the class about the anatomy of a grasshopper so that the students could draw one. The next day, Yeong Il brought to class a wooden grasshopper, which he had carved at home, and shared it with his peers. The wooden grasshopper also jumped because Yeong Il had attached a small spring to it. The result was more than an art project; it was a piece of clever engineering.

  The schoolteacher recalled that day and said, “Students like him are rare. If we guide him to the right path, then he could be a great engineer someday.”

  She paused for a moment before continuing.

  “But ever since last year, he has become more and more of a problem. He skips school on a regular basis and fights with his classmates. The other parents complain to me about him. He seems to cause trouble every other day. I just don’t know what to do with him.”

  Jeong Jin Wu empathized with the schoolteacher’s disappointment.

  “Comrade Judge, truthfully, I thought that I had done my best as his homeroom teacher. But I can’t neglect all the other students for Yeong Il’s sake.”

  Self-reproach and sorrow cast a shadow over the schoolteacher’s face.

  “Last Sunday, our school went on a spring picnic trip. The students had fun doing a treasure hunt, catching insects, and picking leaves and flowers. At lunchtime, I sat with my class, and we all opened our lunchboxes to eat. Just then, I realized that Yeong Il wasn’t sitting with us, so I looked around for him. I thought I saw him sitting here a moment ago … So I went looking for him around the entire park until I came upon a huge boulder next to a small brook. Yeong Il was sitting there!”

  The schoolteacher took a moment to regain her composure before proceeding with the story.

  She quietly approached the boulder and noticed that Yeong Il was sitting with his sister, Yeong Sun. They were sharing their lunches. Although they lived in different homes, they had been going to the same school, seeing each other every day but forced to act as strangers. Yeong Sun kept giving Yeong Il food that their mother had made for her. Rice cakes, fried vegetables, stir-fried beef, and bean sprouts. Their mother had prepared more food than Yeong Sun could eat. Yeong Il was on the verge of crying and could not control his chopsticks. Next to him was his lunch box, untouched, unopened. His stepmother had packed just rice and boiled spinach. Tears streamed down the schoolteacher’s face. She left the siblings and sat by the brook. Many thoughts raced through her mind. She realized that no matter how devoted a teacher was to her students and would, therefore, do whatever it took to help them succeed, that devotion waned in significance compared to the love between siblings. She realized that the parents had deprived the siblings of their love for each other and the siblings were the ones who suffered the most from their parents’ divorce.

  “You may have used your best judgment in divorcing the parents, but I feel that separating these children was a crime. Comrade Judge, why did the court permit the divor
ce? Was it for the adults’ new life, their newfound happiness? Can there be happiness for parents who deprive their children of happiness?”

  The backpack full of sand pressed down on Judge Jeong Jin Wu’s shoulders. He felt chills run down his back, a feeling colder than that of the river.

  Did I give the wrong verdict that day? Is that why these memories keep haunting me? What if I hadn’t divorced the couple? The children may have been better off than they are now, but the wife, who was working in the mountains with her children in agony, would have had to live with Chae Rim. She wouldn’t want that. He had disrespected her, belittled her, and exploited her like a housemaid. For ten years, she had sacrificed her health and her youth for her husband. She had lost all sense of self-worth and, needless to say, her pride. After enduring her husband’s betrayal for all those years, she was not willing to forgive him.

  Jeong Jin Wu had not regretted divorcing Chae Rim and his wife six years ago. Yet the schoolteacher was telling the truth about how the children had become the victims of the divorce, and that alone stung his conscience. The verdict was the correct one, but there was still a lingering concern that he could not get past. It was more than a legal matter; it was a societal problem. Although finding happiness in a new family and the son’s healthy development were problems that existed outside the court, he felt deeply responsible. This was also the responsibility of Chae Rim and his ex-wife, and he felt that he needed to reprimand the parents, who still caused problems for the family. He was distressed by the thought that there might be other divorced couples out there who had not completely settled this issue about the welfare of their children. But what made him even sadder was the fact that many of these divorce cases repeated themselves under the same pretenses—irreconcilable differences.