by Bandi
“Ah! Whichever way you look at it, it’s best to travel by train,” the curly-haired man muttered to himself, pleased to catch sight of this mode of transport. Mrs. Oh was equally gladdened by the sight, as it meant that ordinary trains would now be able to pass through the branch station. But that happiness was fleeting. As soon as the special train’s long tail had vanished from sight, leaving great reverberations in its wake, a ghastly vision appeared in front of Mrs. Oh’s eyes—the uproar of that station waiting room, where a bomb had seemed to go off at the sound of the first ticket inspection!
Worn out by the rain and the waiting and the hunger, people now at the point of madness surge out through the door and windows in a great tide. The narrow passage between the ticket inspection windows transforms into a sea of people. Screams come from all sides; people push and shove, no longer caring about their tickets, just struggling to extricate themselves from each other’s flailing limbs, walls creaking as they fight forward….
Mrs. Oh catches sight of her husband’s white head, only for it vanish back into the melee. She spots him again—he has Yeongsun on his back. He is waving one arm. Finally, she sees him suffer the same fate as the rice scoop that falls into the boiling vat of porridge! Screams and shouts …
“Yeongsun!” Mrs. Oh cries out. Startled, she jerks awake from her vision. Seeing that no one else in the car is paying her any attention, she guesses that no words have actually passed her lips. The car’s quiet burr as it rolls along the road kindles a sweet languor within its walls.
Mrs. Oh’s reminiscence was abruptly dispelled by her husband’s calling her name. “Is the child asleep?” the old man asked, unable to sit up and look for himself. Mrs. Oh looked down at the girl in her lap.
“Yes, she’s asleep.”
“Ah, so I was telling that story to myself, then!”
“Thank you, anyway. Now you should get some rest too.”
“You think I can sleep in my condition?”
“Oh, and to think that while you and that child were going through hell, this stupid old woman was sitting in a comfortable car …”
“There’s no need to keep going back over that. Would you have preferred all three of us to suffer? There’s no point to those ‘if onlys.’”
“Aigo, when will the two of you be fit and well again?”
“Wait!” The old man pricked up his ears. “Is that your voice?”
Knowing only too well the cause of his surprise, Mrs. Oh stayed where she was. Yes, it was her voice—ringing out from the loudspeaker at the edge of the village.
And so I ended up being ushered over to a car parked on the new highway. And next to the car was the Great Leader himself, Father of Us All….
These were the words which Mrs. Oh had dutifully mouthed four days previously. Alighting from the car that day, she’d been desperate for news of her husband and granddaughter, but had been greeted instead by a swarm of journalists. So persistently did they hold their microphones up, she had no choice but to open her mouth. The result had been broadcast on both radio and television for the past two days, but this was the first time her husband had gotten to hear it, as he’d made it home only the previous evening, after stints first at the railroad and then at the military hospitals. He’d been told about it by Mrs. Oh, but hearing it for himself was a different matter; no wonder he was surprised.
He was straining to hear, afraid of missing a single syllable. Mrs. Oh’s face flushed as if someone had discovered her doing something untoward. If only a hole could have opened up she would have hidden herself in it then and there; even a mouse hole would have done! Her voice booming out of the loudspeaker was like a blade picking at the wounds of her husband and Yeongsun. How could it seem any other way, with her bragging about her own good fortune when two people she loved had spent those selfsame hours in a hellish situation, a pandemonium, which might well have been their end?
Mrs. Oh wished the broadcast would hurry up and end. How many days had it been already … and still the loudspeaker jabbered on and on, until the whole world must surely have had its message rammed into their ears.
The Great Leader had me ride in the car the whole way—he wouldn’t set off again until I agreed.
Eventually, her speech ran its course. Now it was the turn of the feverish broadcaster to add insult to injury.
“Do you hear this, listeners? These words of boundless gratitude toward our Great Leader, toward our socialist system! Such is the love our Great Leader holds for us, a pleasant route has now been opened so that our people can travel free from discomfort under these skies and beside this sea, and happy laughter rings out all along that route, like that of this old woman, Oh Chun-hwa.”
Run on, run on, train, run on
The whistle sounds a note of love….
“Aahhh!” Her husband’s high-pitched moan abruptly drowned out the broadcast, echoing inside the room.
Cuckoo, cuckoo …
The cuckoo had stayed silent for a while, but now its call broke out again. Mrs. Oh fancied that the sound was coming out of her husband’s chest, a clot of blood being coughed up which was all the anguish he couldn’t put into words. How could such agony fail to bite deeply, the pain of having to watch with his own eyes as his hip bone and his granddaughter’s leg were broken? To say nothing of that pain now being recklessly aggravated by the broadcaster’s boast of the “pleasant route”!
Yesterday, when her husband and Yeongsun had been transported home from the hospital, he had told Mrs. Oh in minute detail all they had suffered at the station. Based on his account, the vision that sprang up in her mind while she was riding in the car had been no illusion, but almost an exact mirror of reality. The only ways in which it didn’t quite tally were that the walls of the ticket barriers were not pushed out—though four of the gates did collapse—and that the pair had been buried in the tide of humanity with Yeongsun not on her grandfather’s back but clutched tightly to his chest. How on earth would the pregnant young woman have fared in such a free-for-all, with her stomach already paining her? And those three could not have been the only victims, the only ones to have their limbs snapped, to have their hips twisted, to end up having a miscarriage….
But those cries of pain which, if combined, would be enough to cause even hell to overflow, had all disappeared somewhere, drowned out by the sound of “happy laughter”—apparently swelled by Mrs. Oh herself! Laughter produced by one who had had the fingernails of both hands ripped off! Were such things possible in this world? How could the screams and cries of such a mass of people be transformed into “happy laughter” without a cruel sorcery being at work?
Mrs. Oh shuddered. All of a sudden the image of a demon working just such black magic flashed in front of her eyes. Some ancient, hugely corpulent demon which conducted itself extremely freely. Having dexterously whipped up the magic which had created that “happy laughter,” it was now waddling busily back and forth preparing a similar spell. Only this time, the object would be not Mrs. Oh herself but her daughter, who had given birth in the maternity hospital.
Mrs. Oh shuddered again. So far, thanks to that demon’s sorcery, the people of this land had been living lives turned entirely on their heads, utterly different from the truth.
Yeongsun’s shrill voice, which was making noises as though she was fending something off, snapped Mrs. Oh right back to her senses. But the child on her lap was just mumbling in her sleep, her breathing an even ebb and flow. Mrs. Oh thought she must be dreaming, perhaps reliving the moment when her leg had snapped.
“Is she sleep-talking?” Her husband seemed likewise to have been busy with his own thoughts, only for the girl’s voice to jolt him out of them.
“Yes, that’s all it is. She’s settled down now…. You try to get yourself some sleep.” Mrs. Oh wished she could give him some comfort, some relief from his aching, smarting thoughts. “Why keep tormenting yourself, it’s all done with now….”
“What? I wasn’t thinking about that a
t all,” her husband said. “I’m not bothered about any old broadcast…. I was just thinking about what story to tell the girl when she wakes up.”
That was the kind of man he was. Caring more for his wife’s distress than his own, he refused to admit to being racked with painful thoughts, seeking instead to veil his own suffering with whatever it might comfort her to believe. Nor did Mrs. Oh intend to strip away that veil. If nothing else, it might help ease that torturous night for both of them.
“You’re right—when she wakes up she’ll be begging for another story. I’ve never known a child to be so rapt when she’s listening to something!” Mrs. Oh said.
“It’s lucky there’s something that can ease things for her.”
“In any case, don’t worry. I’ve got an old tale up my sleeve.”
“Hoho … Pushkin again?”
“No. The story of Pandemonium this time.”
“Pandemonium? The abode of the demons?” her husband asked.
“Yes. Would you like me to tell it to you first?”
“Ha … I’m not Yeongsun.”
“Yeongsun isn’t the only one who could do with something to ease her pain.” Mrs. Oh couldn’t make it through this remark without a lump rising to her throat.
“I’ll play Yeongsun, then.” Nor was her husband’s answer free from such evident emotion. Just about managing to control her trembling voice, Mrs. Oh embarked on the story she’d been planning.
“Once upon a time there was a garden, surrounded on all sides by a great, high fence. In that garden, an old demon ruled over thousands upon thousands of slaves. But the surprising thing was that the only sound ever to be heard within those high walls was the sound of merry laughter. Hahaha and hohoho, all year round—because of the laughing magic which the old demon used on his slaves.
“Why did he use such magic on them? To conceal his evil mistreatment of them, of course, and also to create a deception, saying, ‘This is how happy the people in our garden are.’ And that’s also why he put the fences up, so that the people in other gardens couldn’t see over or come in. So, well, think about it. Where in the world might you find such a garden, such a den of evil magic, where cries of pain and sadness were wrenched from the mouths of its people and distorted into laughter?”
Mrs. Oh began to choke up again, though she herself was not aware of it. The calculation she’d made when she began the tale, that it might offer just a brief moment of respite, had been misguided. The night had deepened; yet another bout of “happy laughter” was spilling out from the loudspeaker, casting into ever-starker relief the plot of that old tale, which was not really old at all.
30th December, 1995
On Stage
The mournful dirge flows out from the loudspeakers in a continuous stream, traveling slowly through the downtown streets where the rain keeps on falling. Its leaden cadence even filters into the meeting room of the municipal security department, adding further bleakness to the already subdued atmosphere.
To those gathered in the room, the announcers’ voices seem unusually deep and clear, and they fancy that they see tears streaking down from the ceiling. The sound of the rain, the sound of the wind … Looking out beyond the window, its glass blurred by a solid stream of rainwater, they see the trailing tendrils of a gnarled old willow whipping through the air like a nest of snakes. When the wind pauses to gather its breath, its absence amplifies the sound of the rain, which pours down the roof in a plaintive whoosh.
All of these things taken together seemed an apt expression of our nation’s mood, throwing the word “mourning” into stark relief. Those of us sitting here in the meeting seemed to be caught up somehow in a scene from a play, out of kilter with the real world.
The atmosphere of the meeting had built to a distressing tone, which caused us all to fall silent for a time. Now, when the director of the secret services, the Bowibu, shook himself and resumed his address, his voice sounded shrill and somewhat tinny in contrast to the measured, plaintive tone of the announcer.
“Now that every flower bed in this city has been stripped bare, now that we have risked poisonous snakes and landslides to bring further tribute from the fields and mountains, can we say that our Great Leader has been suitably mourned, sit back and rest assured of our loyalty? Absolutely not! Not when the very behavior we exist to stamp out has reared its ugly head within our own Bowibu family. In these tragic days, when even drowning ourselves in our own tears would not express the depth of our sorrow, there are those who sneak off to drink and flirt under the pretext of picking wildflowers!”
The Director, still clutching his tear-soaked handkerchief, brought his fist down on the lectern with such force he seemed to want to smash it to pieces. The wood shuddered in protest, and there was a perilous moment when the glass of water bouncing on its top seemed about to capsize.
“This point has already been emphasized, but you must remember that while our Great Leader’s funeral is still in progress our agents must exercise the utmost vigilance, keeping their eyes and ears peeled at all times, their fists clenched and at the ready. And you must instill this necessity in them. Only then will we avoid falling victim to any further goblin trickery. I cannot stress this point enough. Well, that will be all for today.”
The Director underlined his words by sharply clapping his journal closed, then followed that with a more restrained rap on the lectern. “Comrade Inspector for the Union of Enterprises, come to see me before you leave.” This was spoken relatively quietly, but still loud enough to reach the ears of everyone in the room.
A stunted man sitting near the window turned to his bespectacled neighbor. “Did I hear right?” he murmured. “The Union of Enterprises?” His name was Hong Yeong-pyo, and his title was the very same that the Director had just called out. His neighbor nodded in confirmation, and Yeong-pyo abruptly felt several dozen gazes trained on him, as if he were caught in the beams of a battery of searchlights.
So it was you the Director was alluding to just now, when he said “within our own Bowibu family”! The message of those sharp eyes was loud and clear. As Yeong-pyo stepped forward, the words “to drink and flirt” echoed in his ears, and the face of his son Kyeong-hun swam queasily into his mind.
As soon as Yeong-pyo was standing in front of him, the Director waved a piece of paper in his face. “This came straight from one of our agents,” he snapped, his voice stinging like a slap. “‘During the period of mourning for our Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung, Union of Enterprises employee Hong Kyeong-hun went to gather flowers in the foothills of Mount Baekryeon, where he was seen holding hands with factory girl Kim Suk-i—’”
“Kim Suk-i?” Yeong-pyo broke in, unable to restrain himself.
“That’s not all! Holding hands, and also drinking alcohol. I have the evidence right here.” He jerked his chin in the direction of a small plastic bottle on the desk next to Yeong-pyo. “It was still reeking when the agent brought it to me. Go on, smell for yourself.”
But for Yeong-pyo, the issue was not one of alcohol. Kim Suk-i? Which Kim Suk-i? Surely not the elder girl, whom everyone called “Big Suk-i.” Little Kim Suk-i, then? Let the Director be ignorant of that at least!
Luckily, the Director had a different interpretation of the horrified look on Yeong-pyo’s face, imagining his subordinate to be aghast at the thought of having questioned his superior. “Quite right,” he said, in a slightly softer tone, “the evidence of the report is perfectly sufficient. So what do you think, Comrade Hong: Can this be classed a general incident, or is it a political matter?”
“Of course it’s political. Such behavior would be disgraceful at any time, but now! Now, when the inestimable loss of our Great Leader …” As though on cue, tears ran down Yeong-pyo’s cheeks, sallow and sunken owing to a longstanding liver complaint. Even Yeong-pyo himself found it difficult to comprehend. How could the small cup of sadness sitting inside him produce a whole pitcher’s worth of tears? But shedding them right now, in front o
f the Director, made them truly worth their weight in gold….
“That’ll do, that’ll do.” The Director, too, sounded somewhat choked, though he quickly recovered himself. “You know, Comrade Hong, the recommendation was to come down hard on this. But your feelings on the matter are clearly not to be faulted. You don’t need me to explain the severity of the incident, and in any case, we went over all that in the meeting.”
The Director softened his tone even further, sympathizing with this man who was so clearly ravaged by disease, and who was after all one of his own. “There won’t be any official sanctions. I dealt with the report personally, as it concerned our Bowibu family. Go on, and take that bottle with you. Use it to bring your son to his senses.”
“Thank you. Thank you.” Bowing twice, Yeong-pyo left the Director’s office.
The rain and wind were still as strong as they’d been at the start of the monsoon. A knot of people stood outside the main door, huddled under the awning in the hope of even a brief letup. Yeong-pyo pushed past, out into the street, muttering to himself that it was all right for some.
Each step threw up a splash of muddy water, while thin streams of rain poured over his chin. His armpits began to prickle with heat, a sign that his worked-up mood had provoked his liver, which had begun to harden as it lost its battle with the disease. But Yeong-pyo rarely had the luxury of attending to his pain. His son had an “incurable sickness” of his own, and one whose remedy was far more urgent. As he walked, Yeong-pyo unconsciously tightened his grip on the bottle concealed in his trouser pocket, squeezing so hard that the plastic buckled. For the second time that day, a voice from the past echoed in his ears.
