by Hwang Sunwon
“Why don’t you give us a few sweet potatoes?” said Myŏngju.
“They’re not big enough yet.”
“You could always dig one up and take a look.”
“Listen, you,” said Chaedong, making as if to poke her cheek with his finger, “how about coming back later on, after the sun goes down?”
“You and your filthy mind! What do you think you can see at night?”
“So what if it’s dark? The moon’ll be up. If I dig ’em up in broad daylight, the word gets out—’Hey, Chaedong’s got sweet potatoes!’ But I’ll bet I can find some that are ready to eat.”
Myŏngju pretended to scowl at him. “I bet all of them are ready to eat.”
Chaedong merely chuckled.
A slender layer of cloud broke off from the cloudbank above; its bluish shade, now thicker, now thinner, enveloped Chun’gŭn. His eyes focused on Myŏngju’s hefty bosom and the outline of her swarthy face, and he rose to his feet. He made his way among the burial mounds dotting the sunny foot of the hill, anxious to leave before Chaedong and Myŏngju noticed him. Off to the left of the mounds the earth had recently been tilled, exposing furrows of reddish soil mixed with bits of sweet potato leaves.
Chun’gŭn decided to revisit the hill north of the village, where he had been that morning.
Uncultivated land spread out beyond the pines to a band of gray hills, tinged with azure blue, that creased the skyline.
Chun’gŭn, enveloped in the shade of the pine limbs, was watching a stream that sparkled like the scales of a fish. Closer by stood an oak, and from behind it there appeared, plodding upward, a young man.
“Well, you’re over here today,” the young man said by way of greeting.
“I kind of go where my thoughts lead me.”
The young man followed Chun’gŭn’s gaze, which had returned to the stream winding through the fields. “Might be nice to climb that hill over there.”
Chun’gŭn, thinking the young man had misperceived the object of his attention, focused upstream where the bends in the stream disappeared and said, “Which one of those hills do you think that stream comes out of?”
“Hard to tell unless you follow the water all the way up. Isn’t it the highest one?”
“No, it’s the one next to it—the one with all the trees.”
“It sure does have lots of trees, just like this one here—that’s the way it ought to be.”
“I think we’ll have an early fall—look how blue the sky is. And that stream looks awful chilly.”
Chun’gŭn rose and gave his sheltering pine a whack with his walking stick. The sound rippled through the hills.
Chun’gŭn set off, followed by the young man, whacking the oaks and pines with abandon, trying to strike a second tree before the previous whack came echoing back. With one last mighty whack he strode ahead, passing only a few trees before this last echo coursed among them.
Chun’gŭn and the young man came to a small, exposed dropoff. A rivulet clung to its base. Upstream flew a kingfisher.
“Nice if this hill was a little higher,” said the young man. A grasshopper lit on his arm. Before it could escape he pincered its legs.
“It must have been high enough in the past, but then we lost most of the trees. . . . When that happens you get one mudslide after another, and this is how it ends up. When I was little I used to come here for wood, and then one year, I forget when exactly, there was a mudslide. For all I know, where we’re standing now might have come down from up there on top.”
“You know, your face has a good color, maybe because I’m seeing you out in the open like this.”
“I’m not so sure about that. All I know is, I’m not throwing up blood like I was in Seoul.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t always be looking for shade—just go where your feet lead you. And you know, the way you bang those trees, you look as healthy as anybody.”
“You think so?”
“Of course your family must be awful worried.”
“Well, they don’t know I’ve got bad lungs.”
“They don’t?”
“You’re the only one around here I’ve told.”
“Well, that’s hard to believe, but I appreciate it. And I want you to know that I’ve always been open with you too.”
“Well, I have to confess, when I’m up in these hills I just want to be by myself. That’s why I told you I was sick—so you’d keep your distance from me.”
“Well, it doesn’t scare me,” the young man said, his large mouth opening in a chuckle. “No reason to be scared of life, long as you don’t try to predict it—it just moves on its own, like a mudslide.” This seemed to set the young man to thinking. “I take that back—actually life is very mysterious.”
Here it comes again, Chun’gŭn told himself. He needs to unburden himself. Chun’gŭn saw the grasshopper, only one leg remaining, fly from the young man’s hand.
“I kicked my wife in the stomach once—when she was pregnant.”
“Really? What happened then?”
“I never meant to do it, and when I saw her go down, it really put a scare into me.”
“Don’t tell me you’re breaking up with your wife?”
“That’s about the size of it—I’ll decide for sure by autumn.” The young man briefly clamped his mouth shut, which made it seem even wider, then continued: “She was squirming around on the floor, holding her stomach and whimpering. I hated her just then and I kicked her in the stomach again, like I was taking an ax to her. And the damn woman asked me what the baby inside her had done to deserve this; for years she’d never looked me in the face, and here she was giving me a look that cut right into me.” The young man’s eyes lit up inside their thick lids.
“Must be maternal instinct.”
“Who knows? If only she’d had a miscarriage. Truth is, I was hoping against hope not just for a miscarriage but that she’d drop dead herself. But as hard as I kicked her, that baby inside held on to life. I tell you, life is very mysterious. And when she finally had the baby, I hated my wife even more—but not the little one.”
As Chun’gŭn was thinking that the relationship between the young man and his wife might one day be mended on account of their baby, he heard a village rooster crow. It occurred to him that Myŏngju might go out to the sweet potato field that night, and he grabbed a handful of wild chrysanthemums, though they hadn’t blossomed yet.
Around sunset that evening the villagers gathered some hay and made a fire in which the children could have fun burning their old, worn-out straw sandals. The children set the sandals on fire and tossed them into the air. Bats chased the falling embers.
The only light admitted by the small hole in the rice-paper window-pane came from the stars. Chun’gŭn felt the beginnings of a slight fever. In the gloom he managed to locate the lantern and place its glass enclosure against his cheek.
The enclosure was a receptacle for Chun’gŭn’s fever. When the side touching his cheek lost its coolness, he turned the lantern to a different side.
In the city, when Chun’gŭn’s evening fever came up, Namsuk’s cold cheeks served the same purpose. Her cheeks were soon as warm as Chun’gŭn’s feverish ones, and took on more color. And when Chun’gŭn was pulling away and she touched her cheeks again to his and rubbed them, her tears would moisten his cheeks and lips.
Chun’gŭn’s tears formed a single line as they flowed down the lantern’s enclosure.
Mechanically he repeated the words “happy man” to himself as he set the lantern down. He lit the lantern with a match. The wick produced a smoky odor.
The sooty ceiling struck him as emblematic of the life his parents had led. He took a deep breath of the smoke, but it only made him queasy. And when he discovered his shadow, cast by the flickering light of the lantern, almost touching the ceiling and then shrinking oddly, he threw open the window. A small fire of mugwort plants had been lit in the yard to keep the mosquitoes away; it sent aloft a fitfu
l stream of smoke and then flared up. The soy crocks on their terrace and the sunflower next to them looked more true to life in the moonlight. The chickens on their perches in the shed poked their heads out from beneath their folded wings and shook them back and forth.
Chun’gŭn went out, tamped down the fire with his foot, then turned his back on the resulting stream of smoke.
His legs were wet before he knew it. He was traversing the upper reaches of the ancestral burial ground. From the dew-soaked grass came the incessant chirping of insects—except where Chun’gŭn’s footsteps landed; there the chirping would die out one moment only to resume more loudly as soon as Chun’gŭn had passed.
He arrived at the burial mounds. The bluish-black leaves of the sweet potatoes in the field that angled down from the burial ground glinted in the moonlight. Chun’gŭn skirted the upper verge of the ground and spotted Myŏngju crouched in the field. He hid behind a large pine.
Myŏngju was scooping the earth with her bare hands, and the sweet potatoes, thick and thin alike, rolled out one after another. She was anxiously placing every last one of them in the folds of her skirt when at the far end of the field Chaedong’s shadow arose. He stole up behind Myŏngju.
When she had all the potatoes gathered in her skirt, Myŏngju rose. Chaedong was standing there. Myŏngju backpedaled, some of the potatoes falling free. Chaedong seized her by the arm.
“Got you, bitch!”
Chaedong’s lips were black in the moonlight.
Myŏngju tried to free her arm. Chaedong’s shiny black tongue came into sight, licking Myŏngju’s cheek. Myŏngju took a step back.
“I’ll let you keep the ones you dug,” Chaedong said before licking her cheek again. He released her arm.
Myŏngju frantically collected the scattered potatoes, then ran off. The dew, as abundant as the chirping of the insects beneath Myŏngju’s feet, reflected the moonlight one moment, then seemed to absorb the light and could no longer be seen.
Myŏngju had passed the white birches in front of Chaedong’s thatched hut when a shadow appeared before her. Even in the dark Chun’gŭn could clearly make out Kŭksŏ.
Myŏngju flinched, but recovered immediately: “Don’t scare me like that!” She made her way past Kŭksŏ, then turned back, produced a few sweet potatoes from her skirt, and placed them in his hands before running off.
Only then did Chun’gŭn emerge from behind the pine. His face wore a satisfied smile in spite of his fever.
The following day Chun’gŭn was outside in the sun, shooing away the chickens with a stick as his father threshed the first crop of millet. Amid the flying grains Chun’gŭn allowed himself to soak in the fragrance produced by the threshing. He felt that there was little to connect him as he sat there, the stick now idle in his hands, with his father, whose wrinkled face sprayed perspiration with every whack of the flail. Chun’gŭn tossed the stick aside and went into the inner yard.
The fodder chopper, blade up, lay at the entrance to the shed. Chun’gŭn picked it up by its cord and hacked once at the air. He tried to balance himself on one foot but tottered. He looked for something to chop and his eyes came to rest on his walking stick.
He touched the stick to the blade of the chopper, then turned absently toward the interior of the shed. His eyes met those of the cow, chewing its cud. He put the chopper down.
How round a circle could he draw? Closing his eyes, he rotated in a full circuit, inscribing a circle on the ground with the tip of his walking stick. Dizzy, he opened his eyes and saw that the end of the circle had missed the starting point. Inside this imperfect circle hopped a toad.
With his walking stick Chun’gŭn tapped the ground in front of the crouching toad to make it go away. The toad’s response was to work its head up and down. Chun’gŭn tapped the toad’s back. The toad puffed itself up but showed no inclination to move. Chun’gŭn had an idea. He caught a cow fly in the shed, and returned to find the toad perched beneath the cockscombs next to the soy-crock terrace. Chun’gŭn dropped the dead fly in front of the toad. As before, the toad merely moved its head up and down.
Chun’gŭn turned and left, thinking the toad might eat if he were not there watching it.
His mother had brought out the straw mat they used for drying grain and was beating the dust out of it with a stick. Chun’gŭn began to tattoo the mat with his walking stick.
“Easy, child,” said his mother. She peered at his face. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Is there anything in particular you’d like to eat?”
“No.”
His father approached and gathered up the mat.
His mother looked at them both. “You’re not going off again, are you?” she asked Chun’gŭn.
His father then spoke: “You don’t have to worry about the family graves as long as you’re here to close our eyes when we die.” So saying, he put the rolled-up mat under his arm and went back to the yard.
Chun’gŭn noticed that the toad hadn’t eaten the fly.
“That Myŏngju’s all grown up,” his mother muttered. “She’s going to make a fine wife for someone, and she’s as hard-working as they come.” She turned to Chun’gŭn. “You’re old enough to be thinking about a family of your own now. And we won’t be around forever. Your father sings Myŏngju’s praises—what’s your opinion? All we want to do now is sell what little land we have left and find you a wife. Myŏngju’s a hard worker, and she’d make a good wife. There are several families knocking at her door, and Kŭksŏ’s people are first in line.” Her bleary eyes examined Chun’gŭn’s face.
“Kŭksŏ will never be a match for her.” Chun’gŭn’s words, spoken before he realized it, surprised him.
Out in the yard, his father had resumed threshing.
Chun’gŭn turned back to the toad. The cow fly still lay untouched. But then another fly flew from a soy crock, and the instant it came within range, the toad snapped it up.
Chun’gŭn had a sudden urge to go out to where the frogs were hopping about in the fields.
By the time he arrived at the sorghum field his back felt prickly from the sunshine. Some children emerged from the field, their mouths black from the smutty grain they’d been eating.
Rounding the corner of the field, Chun’gŭn came upon Myŏngju on one of the raised paths. She was hurling a frog to the ground. Seeing Chun’gŭn, she turned away, but not before he saw the array of frog legs she had skewered on a plantain stalk.
“You’re having pretty good luck, aren’t you?”
The frog Myŏngju had thrown to the ground was squirming near her foot.
“Can the baby eat them already?”
“Yes.”
The frog managed to flip itself upright and hopped off into the grass.
Chun’gŭn had a close-up look at Myŏngju’s swarthy face and ample bosom and then left, thinking he felt a dizzy spell coming on. Before he’d completed a circuit of the sorghum field he heard Myŏngju fling another frog to the ground.
From out of the field came another child with a blackened mouth, running past Chun’gŭn to join two other boys squatting on the raised path. Chun’gŭn approached. The boys were gathered around a buzzard hole waiting for its occupant to crawl out. Another boy returned from the stream with a mouthful of water and spit it into the hole. But it didn’t seem that the buzzard would be flushed that easily.
The boy who had spit the water was the first to notice Chun’gŭn; he ran off, with the other three boys following. They must have found another buzzard hole, because they all squatted some distance off, then went down to the stream.
It was then that the buzzard in the first hole emerged, beak and claws smeared with mud. Chun’gŭn grabbed it. The boys returned from the stream, mouths full of water, and squatted in a circle around the second hole. Repeating to himself “trespasser,” Chun’gŭn walked past the boys, deposited the bird among them, and strode off to the streamside without a backward glance.
&
nbsp; Down below the bank of the stream Kŭksŏ was watering his family’s cow.
Chun’gŭn came to a stop in front of the animal. “She’s chewed that grass right down to the stubble.”
With a handful of mugwort stems, long-faced Kŭksŏ shooed flies from the animal’s back.
“She knows where to graze. This is the only place she eats.”
“You know, I used to come here to cut grass for fodder. And here you are, all grown up and strong as an ox. Remember back when it was just me against you and some other kids in a water fight and I won? Now it’s the other way around—I wouldn’t stand a chance against you even if I had a dozen guys on my side.”
Kŭksŏ swatted half-heartedly at a gadfly on the cow’s back.
“And then there’s Myŏngju, she’s all grown up too, she’d make a perfect wife. . . .” Chun’gŭn realized that this was exactly what his parents had been telling him. Kŭksŏ probably had the same thought. Before he knew it he himself had swatted the gadfly; it fell to the ground. He stuck his blood-spotted palm in the stream.
Chun’gŭn kept his hand in the water while he tried to identify this bend in the stream among the various bends he had seen from the hillside. He had difficulty locating the place he frequented, so dense was the bluish-black growth on the hill.
Willow stick in hand, weighted down with frog legs so that it formed a U, Chun’gŭn was following the young man as he hunted frogs. His job was to skewer the frog legs. He made sure to avoid the remains discarded by the young man, the legless bodies with their innards showing.
The young man tore the legs from a frog he had just caught. “You have to rip the legs off as soon as you catch ’em—otherwise it gets real messy.” So saying, he handed the still squirming legs to Chun’gŭn.
“Let’s call it a day,” said Chun’gŭn.
“Think there’s enough for a meal? Naw, we need a few more.” The young man resumed poking through the grass with his foot. He found a frog, hurled it to the ground, and stomped its head. Chun’gŭn’s gaze was drawn again to the legs revealed by the young man’s rolled-up pants. They were strange-looking, the thighs long but the shins very short. It was impossible to tell where the calves ended and the ankles started, for they were of the same thickness. One of those legs kicked the remains of the frog, its mouth agape, into the grass.
